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“Soul Force” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…bless and pray for your enemies.” Well, we don’t think so. Those are wonderful words you spoke back then, Jesus, and they may have worked well back there in Galilee, but we live in the real world in a very dangerous 21st century. Love your enemies? No, we must fight our enemies, outwit and outmaneuver our enemies, destroy and kill our enemies before they destroy and kill us. What you said 2,000 years ago will just have to put into our “Long Term Goals” file. Jesus, you said in the gospel lesson what we call the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Well, we’ve had to update that rule, to “Do unto others before they do unto you.” Security is our basic need now, so “love” will have to come much later in our hierarchy of needs. And yet, Martin Luther King Jr., whom we commemorate today, had this to say about these words of Jesus: Jesus has become the practical realist…Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, the command [to love others] is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies. – November 17, 1957 Gerald May, the Christian psychotherapist and spiritual guide at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation here in the Washington area, once recounted this story: “It was in 1976, and I had just received my first-level belt in the gentle Japanese martial art of Aikido: the practice (do) of the harmony (ai) of the universal energy (ki). A visiting master called me to the front of the room and asked me to attack him. He stood quietly as I charged at him, then turned his head slightly away. My speed increased as I felt powerfully drawn toward him. Then he bowed his head slightly and looked back at me, and I found myself lying comfortably on the floor. We had not even touched… “He explained that he had aligned himself with my attacking energy, joined it from his own centered stillness, and gently guided it back around me to towards the ground. From my perspective, it seemed I had inexplicably decided to lie down and rest.” What was that force, that power? Power, in human terms, is the ability and use of force to accomplish one’s will over persons and situations. But dunamis, the word for “power” which occurs over 120 times in the New Testament, is a creative, dynamic power that is very different from the “power over” aspects of human force or control. It is spiritual power; the power that can only come from God. As for human, or worldly, power, the United States is unquestionably the most powerful nation the world has ever known. We have unparalleled economic power, so much so that it is said when the US economy sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. We have immense technological power that enables American influence and culture to be felt to the farthest reaches of the earth – even into the universe. We have unmatched military power, with capabilities of destroying targets with pinpoint accuracy from thousands of miles away. And yet, with all the power that is possible to acquire on this earth, still the United States of America is not able to force the rest of the world to act in accordance with our will, or to further our own national goals wherever and whenever we desire. Despite our massive power in human terms, we frequently find ourselves powerless to get persons or situations under our control. We find that we cannot force others to do what they do not want to do. The ability to do that has little to do with power per se, but everything to do with what we might call authority. Hear how one military reservist describes the difference between power and authority in Navy officers: The difference can be subtle, almost indistinguishable. You have to sit with a group of officers for a while before you realize that rank tells only part of the story. Rank confers power. But some who have rank also have authority, and some don’t. Authority has to do with being listened to, being respected as a person, not as a source of pain or gain. Authority has to do with both knowledge and wisdom, being able to see inside situations, being able to vision, to see the whole, to look beyond the moment’s agenda. Authority has to do with knowing when to listen. Authority has to do with leadership in its finest sense, not martinets demanding obedience, small people making loud noises, pretentious people scheming to get perks, privileges, pomp and big desks. Authority, unlike human power, is never grabbed for or assumed. It can only be given. Your authority is granted by others whom you serve, to the extent that you are deemed trustworthy and deserving of it. We can readily see the difference between power and authority in the Scriptures. In Jesus’ day, his detractors—the scribes and the Pharisees—had all the power that the theocracy of Israel could bestow upon individuals: ecclesiastical, financial and political power. Yet they had little authority! The more they used the power of their office to coerce others to conform to their practice of the faith, the more the ordinary people dismissed these so-called leaders from exercising their so-called power over them. Jesus, on the other hand, had little power in the world’s terms. He had no money, no social status, no armies and no political parties behind him, and yet he apparently enjoyed tremendous authority that the masses of people gave him. In Matthew 7:29, we read that the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them not as the scribes and Pharisees did, but “as one having authority.” This authority of Jesus extends to today, all over the world, even among those who do not call themselves Christians, for this carpenter from Nazareth is universally perceived to be a person who is from God and for the people, not as one who uses the name of God to feed his own needs for power. Jesus, in the words of an ancient hymn describing his humility that we find in the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death…therefore God also highly exalted him…” (Phil. 2:6-9), to the end that “all authority in heaven and earth will be given [him].” (Matthew 28:18) Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we commemorate today, called this kind of power “soul force,” which is the title of the Cathedral’s day of reflections tomorrow on youth nonviolence, peace, and the human cost of the current war in Iraq. King learned the principles of soul force from his reading of the ethics of Jesus, and from Gandhi’s use of the phrase to describe his methods of nonviolent resistance. Soul Force is the power of an idea: freedom. If our great nation has any real power at all, it is in the abundance of freedom that we enjoy here and our willingness to share this power with the world. It is the only export we have that has power over others – not money, not bombs, not self-interest, but freedom. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa once said, “When a people decide they want to be free, then nothing can stop them.” They can even stare down the barrel of a gun – and they will prevail. This soul force is not only the power to change human lives, but it is the most effective force that is available to humans to change whole societies toward the vision of God for the world. In the book “A Force More Powerful,” written by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall in 2000, the authors carefully document over 15 movements of mass social change that have resisted systems of injustice on every continent of the world. They have concluded that the 20th century should known as the century that has demonstrated the triumph of nonviolent action as the most powerful force toward freedom in the world. This massive and well-documented book (also turned into a film by PBS), reminds us that… …it wasn’t physical force that drove the mighty British empire from colonial India in 1947, it was soul force. …it wasn’t physical force that successfully resisted the Nazis in Denmark and saved many Jews… …it wasn’t physical force that brought down the dictator General Martinez in El Salvador in 1944… …it wasn’t physical force that brought down segregation in the American South in 50’s & 60’s… …it wasn’t physical force that restored democracy to the Philippines in 1986… …it wasn’t physical force that moved Lech Walesa and Solidarity into power in Poland… …it wasn’t physical force that brought down totalitarian regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe… …it wasn’t physical force that dismantled apartheid and racist government in South Africa... In each case, it was soul force. If the above representative list seems new or shocking to you, it is because we have done a poor job in this country of teaching any of the principles of nonviolent action as a way of solving conflicts. Many fear that our culture will never do this, because we have become intoxicated with violence as the only effective means to achieve our personal and national aspirations. We have worshiped for too long at the altar of the gun to solve our problems. This has lead to what can be called The Mythology of Violence; namely, the widely held myth that violence works, and that nonviolence is a pipe dream for idealists who do not know how the world really operates. I want to emphasize here that there is a time-honored tradition in Christianity of sometimes having to resort to a “just war” in certain extraordinary circumstances, and we are very dependent upon our brave men and women in the armed forces who are sometimes called upon to fight and put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf. We are grateful for their service; we pray for them and for our leaders to make wise decisions before sending them into armed conflict. But one need not be a pacifist like Jesus, Gandhi or King in order to learn any of the almost 200 methods of nonviolent action that have been proven to be effective in removing unjust institutions and governments, and in restoring peace and freedom. As Christians, as followers of Christ, we are called upon to teach peace as well as to practice peace, which means we have to continually re-learn the ways of peace in a culture that’s awash in violence. We must repent, both individually and collectively, for believing that violence and killing is the only way towards peace. Perhaps Martin Luther King can teach us once again how to “live together as [family] or die together as fools.” In a sermon given at the height of the civil rights struggle, he said: To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and. we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory." That is the power of love, even for one’s enemies. That is soul force…the way of Jesus. Amen. |