There is Only One War: Sermon for Remembrance Day November 9th, 2014

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remembrance sunday

Sermon for Remembrance Day, November 9th, 2014

Click link below to see the editorial cartoon referenced in this sermon

Bruce MacKinnon Editorial Cartoon

A couple weeks ago a Canadian newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, published an editorial cartoon that many have described as one of the most powerful and moving cartoons ever published. The drawing, by an artist named Bruce Mackinnon, depicts bronze soldiers stepping down from their stone war memorial platform to hold up a fallen comrade. The cartoon was published as a tribute to Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier who was killed during the terrorist attack on the Canadian parliament.

While on the surface this drawing is a heartbreaking depiction of the camaraderie that exists between members of the armed services, a bond that transcends death, there is in this depiction of that terrible tragedy on October 22nd, a deeper lesson for all of us. Today is Remembrance Sunday, and as 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of hostilities of the First World War, there will be services and commemorations happening at war memorials throughout the world, memorials just like the one Corporal Cirillo was standing beside.

We will remember today the 5-6 million allied soldiers killed in the First World War, the more than a million allied soldiers killed in the Second World War, as well the many soldiers killed in conflicts since then: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. We name conflicts after the country they happen in now and I think in our minds we think of war as something that happens between countries. It is us and them: Allied powers verses Central powers, Allied powers verses Axis powers, the United States verses Japan or Great Britain verses Argentina. The truth is, as what happened last month in Canada was a painful reminder, war isn’t so simple anymore. Perhaps it never really was.

The young corporal who was killed while on duty at that war memorial was not killed by an enemy combatant; he wasn’t killed by a foreign government or even a foreign person. He wasn’t at war with the man who killed him…not in any traditional sense. It was someone from his own country. It was someone that he had been willing to defend. This isn’t war as we like to think of it. There weren’t any negotiations or declarations and (although he was given a very dignified funeral) Corporal Cirillo’s name probably won’t wind up listed as a casualty of any specific conflict, and yet part of what makes that picture so moving is that we all know deep down that he deserves to be there on that monument just as much as those bronze soldiers do; his sacrifice is worthy to be remembered just as theirs is.

I think it is important to remember on days like today when we commemorate the many heroes of major world conflicts and on days like last October 22nd when we witness the senseless death of a lone soldier just doing his duty, it is important to remember on those days that there is really only one war.

There is only one war and we all have a roll to play in it. It is not the war against terror, or the world war, or the cold war. It is much older than all of those. It is a war that we have all been fighting since the dawn of humanity. It is, quite simply, the war between good and evil. The brave men and women who we honor today weren’t just soldiers in her majesty’s army, of the United States of America, or the Allied Expeditionary Force: they were soldiers in the one great battle and the one great war.

The war between good and evil isn’t a war between nations as we are sometimes painfully reminded. It is a war between wills. It is a war between the graces given to us by God: mercy, courage, compassion and our own sinful desires to be covetous, fearful and hurtful. It is a war between our noble desires to defend, protect and respect and our evil lusts to steal, kill and dominate. God has given us the freedom to choose which path we will follow: we can choose to follow the path of mercy, justice and compassion, showing respect to all and defending the weakest among us, or we can choose to follow the path of fear, hatred and intolerance. Either way, ground zero in the war between good and evil is right here. Right inside our own hearts.

We honor our veterans today and I think that perhaps one of the best ways that we can honor them is by looking at the choices that they had to make. When danger and evil threatened they could have succumbed to it, but instead they chose to stand up to it. On that terrible day last month, one Canadian chose to show honor and respect by defending the lives of his fellow men, another Canadian chose to show fear and hatred by taken the lives of his fellow men. We have those same choices to make every day of our lives. Do we stand up to evil, not just in the world but in ourselves, or do we allow ourselves to become the very thing we have been fighting?

This morning the choir is singing two of my favorite anthems: Jerusalem and I Vow to thee My Country. These songs have been criticized when used in church settings because of their nationalistic overtones. I would say to those critics listen to the words of these songs again. Pay attention to what they are actually saying: I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. The fight is my fight and it starts as a mental one. It starts as a mental fight between good and evil that then calls me to go out into my own country and build God’s kingdom there. This is not blind worship of a country for what it is, it recognizes that within the country itself is a struggle between the countenance of God and those dark Satanic mills; it is instead a call to action to do the work of transforming the country into what God is calling it to be.

I vow to thee my country begins by declaring the love that we have for country and the duty that we have to sacrifice and protect it, but it goes on to talk of another country: God’s kingdom, and it is to that kingdom that we owe our greatest allegiance. We cannot count her armies, we cannot see her king, but her fortress is right here…a faithful heart. And soul by soul that kingdom silently increases. The ways of that kingdom are gentleness, the ways of that kingdom are peace.

When lieutenant colonel John McCrae wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” he ended it with this stanza: “Take up our quarrel with the foe: to you from falling hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders’ fields.” Who is the foe? It isn’t Germany, or Russia, or Japan or Iraq. The foe is much closer to each of us than any of those places. It is the same foe we have always been fighting: we may call him Satan or the Devil or the evil forces of this world, but it is the same enemy and the battleground is taking place right in each of our hearts. We may know in faith that the war is won and that the victory is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ, but we still have battles to fight each and every day, and we still have sacrifices to make. Let us catch the torch and hold it high, let us keep faith with those who’ve died.

 

Institutions do not exist…Relationships do

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Institutions do not exist.

 

At least, not in the way that they often think that they do. Despite the Supreme Court’s concept of Corporate Personhood that allows corporations to be treated, at times, as if they were individuals, the truth is that institutions and corporations do not exist apart from the individuals that make them up. They can’t make decisions on their own; they can’t eat and breathe on their own; they can’t accomplish anything on their own apart from the individuals that work on their behalf. It is the living and breathing individuals working in relationship with each other that make corporations possible and apart from that, an institution’s existence is tantamount to an idea on paper, nothing more.

 

My reflections on the non-existence of institutions began swirling around in my head a couple weeks ago as the crisis at the General Theological Seminary in New York began to spill into the news. I should be completely clear here that I don’t have the same personal stake in GTS that many of my friends and colleagues do. I attended a different seminary and I don’t have any close affiliation with any of its board or faculty members, so my observation of the current fight between the Board, Dean and Faculty is really as someone who is an outsider to the community. Nonetheless, the tragic war currently going on at this school, seems to be to be emblematic of a larger problem that exists within the church as a whole: its all about trying to save the institution.

 

I have no doubt that both sides in the current conflict at General are primarily concerned with the best interests of the institution, but I would argue that having the interests of the institution at heart might be precisely the problem that has led to this impasse. When we start to love an institution for itself, we are liable to overlook and undervalue the real relationships that make those institutions possible in the first place. We must not see this as just a problem for one seminary in New York City though, but as a problem that the entire Catholic Church of Christ grapples with from time to time and that the Episcopal Church, among others, is struggling with in very specific ways right now.

 

Whenever I hear someone say that they love an institution I often wonder precisely what they mean: Do they love the building? Do they love the people that work there? Is it the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation that they love? When people say that they love the Episcopal Church, to what specifically are they referring? To the national church headquarters at 815 2nd Ave in New York City? (I doubt it) For me at least, to say that I love the Episcopal Church is a short-hand way of saying that I love the people within the Episcopal Church. It is a way of saying that I love what we as individuals are trying to do when we come together with the common mission of worshipping God and proclaiming the gospel. The church is made up of individuals who come together with a common purpose and a common mission; without individuals coming together and working and living in relationship with each other, the church as an institution or a corporation would simply cease to exist. The institution of the church and its corporate structure exist to support and facilitate those meaningful, purposeful relationships between individuals, but all too often we think of our relationships with our fellow christians as something that is necessary to support the church, and not something that it is necessary for the church to support.

 

When our Lord gave his summary of the law he instructed us to love God and to love our neighbor. Conspicuously absent from that list are any of the human institutions, corporations and associations which we routinely organize ourselves into. And yet, somehow we frequently manage to misdirect our affections away from the people that make up an institution, or the mission it serves, and we start loving the institution as a thing in itself, as if it were a person. Naturally, when something happens that threatens that institution, our first instinct is to try to protect and save it. And we will do anything to save the corporation…even if it means doing something harmful to those that make it up; even if it means sacrificing the original mission for which it was founded, even if it means breaking the relationships that made it possible in the first place.

 

The problem of putting an institution before human relationships begins when we convince ourselves that the institution, itself, matters.

 

Not the people that form the institution. Not the people it serves. Not its mission. The institution itself matters. We must do whatever we can to save the institution. Perhaps it is part of the self-perpetuating tendency of all groups, but spend any time in corporate America and you are bound to hear the argument that the institution must take (fill in the blank) action in order for its existence to continue. Our focus naturally moves away from the mission of the organization and it moves away from the people who collectively form it and run it, and we establish the institution itself as an idol to be worshipped. Although the CEO of General Motors never actually said “What is good for General Motors, is good for America,” still the mentality that what is good for the institution MUST be good for the people has a very firm grip on American corporate culture.

 

This may seem like a mere philosophical argument, but it has some painful real world consequences. In 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston erupted in the media, the most damning information, and that for which most people were rightfully outraged, was not the simple fact that a few priests had committed horrible crimes, it was the manner in which the crimes had been perpetuated by the institution’s desire to protect itself from scandal. In short, the institutional church perpetuated a system which harmed its most vulnerable members, purely out of a desire to protect itself from negative publicity. This is, of course, an extreme example of how worshipping the corporation or the institution itself can be devastating and harmful to the relationships of the people within the institution.

 

There are plenty of examples within our own denomination as well. The Episcopal Church always seems to be looking for the newest way to save itself. Whether it is the “Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church” or with the latest legal battle being fought on whatever front, the concern always seems to drift more toward the preservation of the institution than the preservation of the relationships involved. Any institution is only as strong as the relationships between the individuals who make it up. The institution itself is not a real thing, but the relationships are. When the relationships are broken, regardless of who is right or wrong, the institution is going to falter, and perhaps even fail. If we think that we can save an institution without saving the relationships that make it possible, we make a fatal error.

 

Whether it is the Universal Catholic Church, our denomination, our parish or our seminary, any time we make a decision to put the interests of the institution itself ahead of the interests of the people (and real relationships, and mission) that make that institution possible, we take a turn down a dead-end street. Saying that “what is good for the institution is good for the people,” is very tempting, but time and time again this has proven in practice to be just not true. Like any idol, once we have set an institution up as an object to be worshipped and adored, we lay the groundwork for the inevitable fight over who is going to have control over that object. Perhaps this is why our Lord’s instructions in the summary of the law are limited to loving God and loving our neighbors: they are two things that we cannot control. It is much harder to love something that you don’t have control over; you are forced to live in relationship with it.

 

Institutions, themselves, do not exist.

 

What does exist are the relationships we have with each other. Institutions are just fancy logos and ink on paper. The real corporations are all the collected individuals who work side by side, day in and day out in offices and factories, at desks and in laundry rooms with a common mission and purpose of working together to make something happen. The church doesn’t really exist either, not by itself. The institution of the church exists to support our relationship with Christ and our relationships with each other. Having apostolic succession, having ancient rituals, having scriptures and having venerable buildings are ways in which the church helps build those relationships, across time and across place, but lest we make an idol out of the church itself, we must remember that it is those relationships that are of the utmost importance, not the institution. The real church, the Catholic Church of Christ, is each and every believer worshipping side by side, across continents and across generations, loving God, loving each other and sharing the common mission of trying to tell the story of that love to the world. It is the relationships that we form “whenever two or three are gathered” that really matter. It is in those relationships where Christ is alive, and not in any ink on paper.

 

As I stated in the beginning, I did not attend General Seminary. A few weeks ago, one of my classmates from my own seminary sent out a facebook post recalling how we all supported each other on September 11th, 2001, our first week of classes. What a harrowing and awful time that was, and yet I look back now and think what a gift it was to be able to form relationships with so many talented and caring people at such a difficult time. Through all of the turmoil it was the relationships that we had with each other that made our class strong, and not the institution. I chose my seminary because I thought it was the institution that was important; what I learned was that it’s not really the institution, it’s the relationships that you make there.

 

While I am disheartened to see another institution in the church fighting in the tired-old style of corporate America, there is something I have seen these past weeks which has given me great hope. Regardless of what actions the Board and Faculty of General Seminary take or have taken, I have witnessed the students and alumni coming together across the continent and across social media to support and pray for and encourage one another. Yes, there has been griping and anger and raw emotion, but there has also been much love, support and companionship. Current and former students have joined together in a common cause and concern, and isn’t that what our institutions are supposed to be about in the first place: people working in relationship with each other with a common mission in mind? The true life of the institution is in those relationships and they seem to be stronger than ever right now.

 

 

There is an old saying: “Mind your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves.” Maybe it is the little acts of kindness, generosity and respect that ultimately make the larger corporate life that we share possible. Maybe we should spend more time trying to save individual souls, and less time trying to save the institutional church. Maybe if we start paying more attention to the real person to person relationships that make our institutions possible, and that ultimately give them meaning, we wouldn’t have to be worried about trying to rescue the institutions themselves all the time.

 

Institutions do not exist. Only the relationships are real.

The Church: What It Is and What It Isn’t. A Lesson Learned from the Flying Nun.

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In an episode of “The Flying Nun” Sally Field’s character, Sister Bertrille, is put in charge of babysitting a young girl of a different faith. After spending the day helping Sister Bertrille read to the blind, help needy families and generally be a friend to everyone in the community, the young girl decided that she too wanted to become a nun. Sister Bertrille (and the Mother Superior as well) spend the rest of the episode trying to convince the young girl that she doesn’t need to become a nun in order to spend her life serving others.

 

The little girl is determined. She is prepared to give up comic books, bubble gum, even fun vacations and fancy clothes, just so that she can be like Sister Bertrille and be loved like her. Eventually Sister Bertrille manages to show the young girl that entering the convent involves a deeper sense of calling than just a desire to help people and be liked by them. Sister Bertrille didn’t give up her identity when she became a nun, she just laid claim to her truest self, and that was what drew people to her and made them admire her. It wasn’t what she did that made people love her, it was her ability to be truly who she was, and to allow others to do the same.

 

In our present day, when the church seems desperate to attract new members AND to appear relevant to modern culture, Sister Bertrille’s actions could seem a bit counter-intuitive. We so desperately want to “fit in” and to get the world to like us, that we are willing to sacrifice almost anything to make that happen…even our own identity. We as the church really want people to like us and too often we have come to the conclusion that popular approval must be linked to what we do in the world. In other words, if we just focus on social works of mercy and on peace and justice issues, then naturally the outside world is bound to realize the intrinsic value of the church and they will join us and support us. In other words: if people see us doing good things they will like us. That is, after all, what we really, really want isn’t it?

 

Well it hasn’t worked. Once upon a time there was the popular assumption that “good people go to church.” No longer. Now people are well aware that you don’t have to go to church to be a good person. You also don’t have to enter a convent or go into the ministry to serve others. Sister Bertrille clearly pointed out that there are many other professions that do that. No matter how many times we use the word “mission” and all of the (ever increasing) number of words derived from it; no matter how much we use phrases like “radical welcome” or “thinking faith”; and no matter how many times we try to appear like the church that is “hip and cool” (two words that are as dated as the concept they are often used to describe), the fact is that nothing we DO in the world is necessarily going to make people like us. Can we stop this already?

 

We need to do a better job of talking to people about what the church is, not what it does. We need to become comfortable with people not liking us and thinking that we are irrelevant, because no amount of posturing is going to change that. We need to learn that when people come to the church looking for it to DO something for them (e.g., marry them, confirm them, ordain them) that sometimes the appropriate answer is: NO. Finally, we need to become comfortable enough with our own identity that we aren’t willing to sacrifice who we are to be liked by others. As individual Christians, and as the church as a whole, our desire to be liked should never triumph over our core identity.

 

Sister Bertrille understood that being a part of the church, and having a vocation within it, involves a deeper level of belief and calling than just wanting to help others and be liked by them. I pray that we may have that same understanding too.