Rachel Weeping

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day: a day to remember, grieve and decorate the graves of soldiers, North and South, who died in the Civil War. 

Was that war inevitable? Could it have been avoided? 

Historian David Goldfield has written several studies probing that question. In a 2013 article, Give Peace a Chance, Avoid the Carnage of War, he wrote: 

In commemorating the Civil War, we should remember that wars are easily made, difficult to end, and burdened with unintended consequences and unforeseen human casualties.

Was the Civil War a just war? He answers "No". 

More than 750,000 men died in the Civil War. Extrapolated to today’s population, the death toll would be close to 10 million. Consider also the millions who mourned the loss of their husbands, brothers and sons, and consider those soldiers who survived yet who returned home maimed in mind or body. Most historians today would lament the casualties, but commend the outcome: the liberation of 4 million slaves.

I disagree. The Civil War was not a just war. It was a war of choice brought on by the insidious mixture of politics and religion that caused our political process and, ultimately, the nation to disintegrate.

Would our bitter national dialogue about race have taken a different course if the conflict over slavery had been addressed in a different way?

Burning of Richmond, Virginia

Would our national politics be less divided if abolition had been achieved through moral persuasion, as happened in England and other countries, rather than through bloody conflict? 

The question of just wars presses in today as the world watches and grieves the carnage of Rafa. The people of Gaza, frightened and hungry, were told to take refuge in Rafa, a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip. Last night Israeli forces dropped dozens of bombs on a designated safe space, in direct defiance of international law. 

Every conflict is born of small decisions, accumulated grievance, escalation or de-escalation, wisdom or folly. 

In his challenging, thoughtful graduation speech at Brandeis University, filmmaker Ken Burns reminded his audience that history is complicated and choices are rarely as simple as we would wish:

it's clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature. That, for example, three great religions, their believers, all children of Abraham, each professing at the heart of their teaching, a respect for all human life, each with a central connection to and legitimate claim to the same holy ground, violate their own dictates of conduct and make this perpetually contested land a shameful graveyard. . .

 A very wise person I know with years of experience with the Middle East recently challenged me, "Could you hold the idea that there could be two wrongs and two rights?"

In Israel and Gaza, there are millennia of wrongs. Countless just claims. Many self-motivated decisions by leaders who now look away as innocents suffer. 

In our own national response, there are wrongs and rights: political posturing. Economic interests. Anxious fears for family and friends in Israel, Palestine, neighboring countries.

For our leaders there are legitimate fears about geopolitical alliances, balances of power, unintended consequences. 

In his speech, Burns spoke of our habit of argument, the need to choose sides, "our preoccupation with always making the other wrong at an individual as well as a global level. "

I am reminded of what the journalist I.F. Stone once said to a young acolyte who was profoundly disappointed in his mentor's admiration for Thomas Jefferson. "It's because history is tragedy," Stone admonished him, "Not melodrama." It's the perfect response. In melodrama all villains are perfectly villainous and all heroes are perfectly virtuous, but life is not like that. 

There is no shortage of villains in the story unfolding in Israel and Gaza. And no shortage of heroes. 

Answers, solutions, are in short supply. 

I've been carrying the words from Jeremiah 31:15: 

“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Always the innocent are casualties. 

Harm on the scale now taking place doesn't just vanish when the conflict ends. It shapes the lives of all who take part. Every inhabitant of those refugee camp. Every aide or health worker who witnesses the carnage. Every Israeli soldier who participates.

The pain, trauma and grief will shape the region, and global politics, for decades to come. Just as the Civil War has shaped, and still shapes, our own nation.

Lord have mercy. 

You can watch the full Ken Burns speech (21 minutes) here.

An earlier Memorial Day post: Picturing Peace, May 29, 2016

God Speaks My Language

Argentinian empanadas are a comfort food from my childhood. I was sometimes invited to spend the weekend with my sister at her friend Violet Alejandro's home. My sister was three years older than me. Violet was even older. Neither had much interest in including me, so the real invitation was from Violet's mother, a lovely woman who made me empanadas, told me stories of Argentina, and included me in her weekend activities. Her English was not strong and my Spanish was non-existent, but those were fun weekends away from my often stressful childhood home, cooking and singing and laughing and eating. 

Most of the churches I've attended have been rich with friends from other nations. And I'm thankful for the decades my husband Whitney spent in ministries that bridged national boundaries and invited us both into friendships with Christians from multiple nations. He's traveled to every continent except Africa, visiting prisons in some places, speaking in churches in others. We've hosted people from multiple countries for dinner, weekends, sometimes weeks at a time. And we've traveled together to regional or national meetings in Jamaica, France, twice to Greece. 

My understanding of mission and faith have been shaped since childhood by interactions with Christians from other nations and languages. I've written about some in earlier blog posts:

• Gene Denham from Jamaica: Voice in the Wilderness
• A visit to France:  An Altogether Different Language
• Time with refugee friends from Uganda, Vietnam, Laos: Welcome the Stranger

This morning's Encounter with God reading was in Acts 2:1-11, an expected reading for Pentecost Sunday. One of the reasons I return again and again to that Scripture Union publication is that the notes with each reading are written by Christians from all across the globe, all with decades of ministry experience in a wide mix of cultures. Whitney is one of their regular writers and loves occasional Zoom meetings with the other SU authors. 

The writer for today, and for two weeks in Acts, is David Smith, engaged in international ministry in Africa and Asia and author of some books I'm adding to my reading list: Liberating the Gospel and Voices from the Margins: Wisdom of Primal People in the Era of World Christianity. 

I've read Acts 2 at least 60 times, given how many Pentecost Sundays I've celebrated. It's the story of the Holy Spirit empowering the disciples to share the story of Jesus and his resurrection in multiple languages. But Smith's reflections remind me: there's always more to see. 

The miracle of Pentecost prompts two questions from those who felt its impact: how could they hear ‘the wonders of God’ declared in their own languages (vv. 5–11)? And ‘What does this mean?’ (v. 12)....

Pentecost did not reverse the linguistic diversity which resulted from human arrogance at Babel. By enabling the members of the audience to hear the message in their own native language it affirmed local cultures and vernacular languages as vehicles for the global spread of the gospel. As to the second question, concerning the meaning of this event, it is that all peoples on earth may now be able to say, ‘God speaks my language.’ Justo Gonzalez observes that the Holy Spirit might have enabled the crowd to understand the Aramaic spoken by the disciples, but instead gave them the gift of hearing about Jesus in their mother tongues.(Justo Gonzalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit, Orbis Books, 2001, p 392)

As American Christians, we sometimes think the whole world should speak English. 

We also sometimes think our interpretations are the correct ones. We resist learning from other perspectives, or listening to other points of view. 

We think our own form of Christianity is the most accurate representation of God, his word, his work, his intent. 

But God speaks in many languages. All imperfect. All colored by local context. All incapable of capturing the full mysteries of God's love, grace and grandeur. 

We see in part, and we know in part. 

God, forgive us for our arrogance, and teach us to listen better as you speak in languages other than our own.

 Pentecost, Rebecca Brogan
 JBTArts.com, John the Baptist Artworks

Previous posts on Pentecost:

• Waiting for Pentecost June 5, 2011
• An Altogether Different Language June 26, 2011
• Resurrection Power: A Prayer for Pentecost, May 27, 2012
• Pentecost People of Blessing, May 19, 2013
• Pentecostal Prayer, May 15, 2016
• Pentecostal Fire, Power, Prayer, May 31, 2020