God of mercy,

you promised never to break your covenant with us.

Amid all the changing words of our generation,

speak your eternal Word that does not change.

Then may we respond to your gracious promises

with faithful and obedient lives;

through our Lord Jesus Christ.   Amen.

            I can’t claim that the title of my sermon this morning is cleverly subtle.  In fact, it’s right out there.  And I’m sure many of you are hearing in your head the song, “Down by the River Side”, from which the title comes—“Ain’t Gonna Study War No More”.  But, in fact, all of us have been studying war, and not just the Iraq war. I think it’s safe to say that those of us here today have been personally involved in war one way or another since the beginning of our participation in World War II.  In human history that’s a little snippet of time, but it has loomed large in our society. In just the past 66 years we have been involved in a tremendous amount of armed conflict.

            Of all the wars we’ve engaged in, the current war in Iraq is strange because despite its intensity and length, as a nation we are strangely detached.  I read that if you add up all the military people involved in the conduct of the war it amounts to 3 million people which is 1% of our population.  I don’t know how many of you have family members involved in Iraq, but I haven’t heard much discussion here.  I thought I wouldn’t be personally involved at all in the Iraq War except that my great nephew joined the Marines two years ago. Still he hasn’t been sent to Iraq.  It’s truly a unique feature of this war that so few people are directly affected.  That doesn’t mean we haven’t been confronted with it day and night for four-and-a-half years or that we don’t care deeply about the well being of our military personnel.  It’s simply that we have never been, as a nation, quite as engaged at a very personal level as we were in World War II.   Even during the Vietnam War many people remained spectators to the violent protests against that war. Since World War II we’ve had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the action in Somalia and the action in the former Yugoslavia which was largely aerial bombardment—there too we were quite detached.  And there is the ongoing war in Afghanistan which is our response to being attacked on our own soil by foreign elements. 

            It’s kind of disheartening to hear that list, isn’t it?  And chances are I’ve forgotten something. And still we think of ourselves as peaceful people.  As it happens tomorrow is Hiroshima Day.  It memorializes the day 62 years ago when the United States dropped the first atom bomb on Japan at Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.  In Hiroshima there is a building called the Genbaku Dome also called The Hiroshima Peace Memorial. (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775/gallery/  )   It was the only structure left standing in the area where the first atomic bomb exploded.  Through the efforts of many people, including those of the city of Hiroshima, it has been preserved in the same state as immediately after the bombing. Not only is it a stark and powerful symbol of the most destructive force ever created by humankind; it also expresses the hope for world peace and the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons. One would think that the horror of the atom bomb would end war forever.  It did make governments agree not to use that weapon again, but even that agreement is on shaky ground.  I hope that you will take some time tomorrow to remember the victims of the Atom Bomb and all war victims everywhere.

            I repeat, we want to talk of peace—we want to be seen as a peace loving people, but we can’t seem to get away from war.  We certainly can’t seem to get away from the war in Iraq. Of all the wars in which we’ve been involved the current war seems to have the least justification.  No matter that upwards of 70% of the people in the U.S. want the war to end.  No matter that the rationale for our entering the war was changed repeatedly when facts on the ground didn’t fit the administration’s plan. No matter that the dream of instituting democracy in Iraq and throughout the Middle East was conceived without fully understanding the reality of life in those countries and the difficulty of imposing Democracy. No matter, the war drags on.  

            And for the last four-and-a-half years of the Iraq War we have been endlessly inundated in news, opinion, nuances of that opinion, talk shows, books, columns, protests, and wildly differing points of view. Despite this wealth of analysis, we have a paucity of solutions. And we can never forget that week after week the honor roll of those who have died or been wounded in the war scrolls by.

            How could this have happened?  Are we so terrified of a strike on our soil that we immediately throw away our good judgment and our critical faculty and allow ourselves to be manipulated into an unwarranted war (and my word processor program lists several words as synonyms of “unwarranted”: unprovoked, unnecessary, gratuitous, needless, uncalled-for, superfluous, and unjustifiable)?

            It’s almost hard to remember that our initial response to the attack of 9/11 was to immediately send troops to Afghanistan to engage the Taliban who sheltered and protected those who planned the attack. There was near universal support for that response. It seemed reasonable and proportional.  Progress was made there. But before that action was fully complete, it was neglected in favor of attacking Iraq.  Now the Taliban are gaining strength once again and we are re-fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.             

            I find I can only make sense of this when I turn to my identity as a follower of Christ who has a special calling to seek peace over war.  I believe I must say no, no, no until I am utterly convinced that it can be no other way than conflict.

            There is no American flag in this sanctuary because to be a Christian is to be by definition an internationalist.  We, together with Christians all over the world, are the body of Christ.  No political or geographic boundaries are acknowledged.  We are one in the spirit.

            Precisely because of that unity our faith can steady us (and we pray and hope others around us) as we deal with the disunity, hate, terror, atrocities, and evil with which the war in Iraq has presented us. 

            So let us turn to the Bible as we always do in times of anxiety to embrace that wonderful book of love and peace and joy.  Right?  Well not exactly.  Love, joy, peace will be found there, but so will terrible images of war as in these verses from Joshua, Chapter 8: 

“Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not fear or be dismayed; take all the fighting men with you, and go up now to Ai. See, I have handed over to you the king of Ai with his people, his city, and his land.” (8:1), and “When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. (8:24-25)

            There are more such images in the Old Testament which have caused the faithful much consternation throughout the ages.  At the same time, however, the prophets were continually calling the people of Israel to account.  The prophet Micah,, in a passage just prior to the one we read this morning, offers this judgment from God:

9 Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood

and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, “Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.”

Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

                                                                                         --Micah 3:9-12 

Immediately following this passage however, Micah offers the alternate vision we read this morning.  Let me read it one more time.

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say:
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

                                                                                         --Micah 4:1-4

           Albert Winn, a pastor and past president of Louisville Seminary says of this scripture:

            “In this passage, actions of God and actions of the world’s peoples alternate. The first action of God is the exaltation of the Temple Mount. Physically speaking, Mount Zion is far from the highest mountain in the world, [but Micah is signifying its spiritual importance.]

            Now the peoples and nations of the world act. They come streaming to Zion, not bringing tribute or bringing back captives, as in so many prophetic oracles, but seeking instruction from God, the God of Jacob.

            [God’s] second action is to judge and arbitrate between the nations. This does not seem to be "the final judgment," but a settling of the conflicting interests and disputes that lead to war.

            The peoples and nations act again. The weapons of war are converted into the instruments of peace. The practice of war is abolished and the study of war comes to an end.”

            Is war an [indelible] part of human nature, as some recent anthropologists maintain? Or is it a learned activity, as our passage suggests? Do we "have to be taught to hate"? And can war be unlearned?  Micah has no direct answer to these modern questions.

            “But the vision of peace Micah presents is breathtaking,” Winn says, not in Israel alone, but in all nations, the [peace] envisioned in the Torah (or first five books of the Bible) becomes a reality. People sit under their own vines and fig trees.  No one loses land or houses or crops by the military invasion of enemy nations, or by the draft and taxation demanded by their own nation for its military defense. Every family possesses a stake in the commonwealth and access to the means of production. The familiar agricultural description of shalom makes this vision earthy, material, far removed from "pie in the sky by and by." And the terrible fear, dread, and insecurity in which so many of earth’s people live and die, is gone. “‘No one shall make them afraid.’”

            “Is this promise of universal peace a deliberate refutation of Joel’s call to universal war, where Joel actually says "Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears" (Joel 3:10)? Or was Joel intentionally refuting this as an unrealistic dream? We have no way of knowing, but we could not find a better illustration of the ambiguity that marks the Hebrew Bible. Not only in its litanies of worship, not only in its understanding of the nature and character of God, but in its vision of the future, the Old Testament is ambiguous. Its pages, over which Jesus pored as a boy, drip with the blood of battle, but also with the sweet wine of peace.” (Winn)

            And it is that sweet wine of peace to which we must cling, but more than that we cling to Jesus Christ, to the One who is known as the Prince of Peace.  As Paul says, “[Christ] is our peace..”(Eph 2:14a).  “He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near;” (Eph 2:17).  

            In the New Testament peace is still well-being and security, but the physical characteristics disappear. The Kingdom of God consists not in food and drink but in righteousness and peace.  The recovery of Eden is not a return to toilless bliss, but the restoration of the image of God in fallen [humans]. Peace is victory,…but it is victory over the powers of darkness. Christians are exhorted to display lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, and forbearance, “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” ..Ephesians 4:1-3 (Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, pp. 54-55)

            We are one as the body of Christ.  We will be driven not by fear, but by an unshakeable vision of peace.  We ain’t gonna study war no more.  Amen.