Sermons

 Sermon Dialogue, “Reflections”

Reverend John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
Rabbi Laurence Kotok
February 8, 2009	Psalm 67

Reverend Wilkinson: How this works is, sometimes, usually earlier in the wintertime, oftentimes over lunch at Jine’s if I remember correctly, we begin to discuss what we might want to talk about. The topics have ranged all over the map, from what Jews believe and what Christians believe, to how we think about living in America in this interesting time, to issues around war and peace in the Middle East. And given the headlines of the past few weeks, that’s where we decided to land this morning, to talk about peace and war, how our different traditions might understand it, and how we might begin to apply those understandings and perspectives to current situations, not simply what’s happening in Gaza (although certainly that’s an important topic), but how we as people of faith, with shared commitments to peace, and justice, and reconciliation, might think about this topic as we seek to live faithfully in God’s world.

So, Rabbi Kotok, we welcome you this morning, and I’d ask you to begin our conversation with sharing with us what might be on your mind. Welcome.

Rabbi Kotok: Thank you and good morning again. It’s remarkable for me to think back that this is the thirteenth year that we have been able to share these opportunities for learning and for growth, and to bring our congregations together. This is an historic year within the life of Temple B’rith Kodesh. We are celebrating our 160th year since our founding in 1848. And, if I may, in the midst of your opportunities – your bake sale and whatever – let me also reflect out an invitation that on May 2 we are going to be having a community-wide event to celebrate the 160th anniversary, and we’re bring to town the Capitol Steps. They’re always fun. So hopefully you’ll come and join us. It’ll be great! We can continue our friendship in social space as well.

I’m thankful to John for the opportunity to be here, and to kind of think over in our own minds when we think of words like peace and reconciliation and words like war, what we are using as the context for how we understand. The circumstance currently in the Middle East, which has just run through its latest iteration in the midst of what has been going on for quite a long period of time, brings to mind our own perceptions, definitions, and in some cases prejudices about how we bring these words to be.

In the earlier session that we had this morning, one of the points that I tried to bring was the incredible complexity and diversity of these circumstances, and how it is fairly common among all of us that we look for answers that in many cases are totally unsatisfactory. But they suit us because they are simple, they’re quick, and they seem to resolve all of the outstanding ethical, moral dilemmas in a kind of cohort of an answer.

That’s the reason why I felt it important for us today to kind of look a little bit closer about words like peace, and even peacemaking. I was taken in the midst of your – excuse me for a second…. In the handout which you present each Sunday morning, on the back page of it where it says a word about this church, it says, “Third Church participates in the Presbyterian Church’s commitment to peacemaking. Our intention is to pursue avenues of peace and justice for ourselves, our families, and communities for all peoples in the world in which we live. We seek to be agents of reconciliation.” I would believe that most religious communities would believe the same message. What makes that message real has to do with what we mean by those words. And what frames those words? Whether in fact those are words that understand the necessity for peace to be universal, for peacemaking to be balanced and not reflective of one particular community or another. And we don’t know the answers to that.

Where do you want to go now? [to Rev. Wilkinson] I’m not ready to leave yet, but, I’m not quite sure ----

Let me give you a little background of Jewish perceptions historically about the idea of war. Judaism as a faith was never really comfortable with the concept of pacifism, especially in relationship to its own national defense. Jewish tradition had enough awareness and enough complexity to understand that there are different types of war. The rabbis talked about two specifically. The one which is known as milchamah – the word milchamah means “war” in Hebrew – and that was milchemet hovav, a war of obligation. The other, milchemet he’reshut, a war of option. And they reflected on the distinctions between defensive behavior and war which was by choice for other purpose. And what Judaism has taught, and continues to teach, is that all levels of defensive war are morally just. The idea of the national defense as well as the civil defense was to be absolutely without question. The challenge is how that gets reflected in the contemporary political scene, and who sets the definitions.

Reverend Wilkinson: Well, let me respond to that, I think with a parallel conversation. I think we would all know the well known passages in scripture that talk about God’s intention for peace and how God’s people would live together, and realize any time violence or conflict break out it’s a sin – to use the old word – and it’s a breaking of God’s hopefulness for us. And nonetheless, in the real world of human life, we’ve had similar conversations. I’ll never forget the time when the US was preparing to engage in the Iraqi war. We gathered – about a hundred of us – downstairs in the Celebration Center to have this conversation. And in our tradition the phrase is “just war,” not that fighting a war is a just thing to do, but the right to go to war and then the right to conduct a war properly once it’s been established.

These principles have been articulated now since the Middle Ages: just cause, comparative justice, legitimate authority, right intention, the probability of success, war as a last resort, and proportionality. And as important as a just war perspective is – and we Presbyterians, not unlike the Jewish tradition have not embraced pacifism in our history (although we’ve respected and tried to honor those who have been pacifists), we’ve said all along that the just war theory is what we embrace. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the 21st century, when it’s hard to know who the entity or group you’re fighting is, how can you talk about a legitimate authority when the world’s populations are kind of reconstituting themselves in many, many different ways? How does the just war theory apply itself in the current time? Enough people said it does, but we need to think about it again.

So, what is really an interesting prospect to me is how we would – and perhaps do it together as some kind of ongoing dialogue much more than we are able to do this morning – look at these two traditions and what they’ve thought about, and perhaps throw our scriptural perspective into the mix as well and see at what times is war the appropriate response in a broken and fallen world and when is it not a proper response? And how do we who are committed to peace, justice, and reconciliation -- realizing that those are complex and many varied terms – how do we respond and try to work many different perspectives at the same time? So, it’s interesting that, though we come out of different conversations, we have a overarching principle that considers these quite seriously, and doesn’t say we can just take a step back or put our head in the sand and hope that things work out, that we really engaged the world around us. So, I’m interested to hear that perspective.

Rabbi Kotok: Well, it’s clear from John’s response that the Jews are not the only people in the world that believe they are entitled to self defense. Every nation has the right to take up arms that are necessary to protect itself and its citizens against military attack. And it’s important to understand that though the Torah as a document permits government, the state, to resort to arms, it does not glorify war. Peace, not war, is a primary aspiration. As John pointed out, and I would point out, our texts are full of references from Psalm 34, which says shalom, peace, is in fact, an incredible and important goal. We know about King David, who was a military person in the history of the Jewish people. Though he was involved in war, he was not permitted to build the temple in Jerusalem. In the book of Chronicles we read, “You have shed much blood and fought great battles. You shall not build a house for my name for you have shed much blood on the earth.”

What this kind of brings to us is both the idea of self-defense, the concept of peace, and I believe the challenge that we are caught in as we try to understand what is taking place around the globe, not just in the Middle East.

Whose peace do we like? Who do we believe is at fault? Who do we, in some ways, simplistically, define as the aggressor and the victim? And it’s very clear that as you try to look closely at some of the conflicts around the world – and perhaps especially in what has transpired in Gaza in the past months – there is a presumption that somehow Israel has overstepped itself, that it has been overarching in its response. There are even those who said, “You know, this should be done proportionally.”

So, as I said earlier this morning, does that mean when Hamas launches one Qassam missile at the citizens who live in southern Israel, that Israel in response should just send one missile, and that’s the way it’s going to work out? That would make it all more ethical and more acceptable and better. Well, understand that there have been 8,000 of these Qassam rockets that have been launched in the past years into southern Israel. Now, one of the things that we’ve pointed out in our conversation earlier this morning (and I would publically say this in any venue) – Israel hasn’t done a very good job of telling its story. Israel hasn’t done a very good job at its own public relations campaign in regard to what has been going on in the southern part of the country. Nonetheless, nonetheless, there is this imbalance or perhaps a jaundiced view of what it would mean for there to be peace. And in some way it reflects an overindulgence, an over-embrace of Hamas as being somehow reflective of right, as opposed to being viewed as a terrorist organization, which they are.

Reverend Wilkinson: Well, I think it’s interesting, as I’ve thought about this a great deal – and we know the more we think about things the more complex the issues become and the less clear the solutions are, which I think is what real life is all about. I keep trying to think of the complex matrix of relationships and identities that we all embrace.

For example, if I were to go to another country, somebody might ask me about life in America. But very rarely will they ask me about what it’s like to be a Christian, or a Presbyterian. If I’m Jewish and traveled to another place, I might be asked about both of those situations: what it’s like to be coming from the Israeli perspective and the Jewish perspective. So, I think as we talked in the last hour about identities, I think that even makes it a more complex conversation about which we all need to think.

I’m also struck by the complex matrix of the religious perspective versus an American foreign policy perspective and the global foreign policy perspectives, and how we’ve done a very good job of confusing and muddying up and not being very clear about all that. Different American Christian groups feel very differently about the state of Israel, and some for reasons I don’t even begin to understand. And so for them to argue one thing when their contentions are another and for us to argue one thing.

I read this morning a great piece of Presbyterian news -- if not great at least consistent piece of Presbyterian news – that given the complexity of these issues, for us in our own world, (and that is to say, give ten Presbyterians a chance to opine on this and you’ll get about 25 different perspectives) given that reality, that we are launching a new task force to try to find some balance and perspective in how we think about Judaism and Islam and its perspective on the Middle East. So, I don’t have much to say except that we need to think as we try to drill deeper in this conversation about all the different strands that come together to make this very complex conversation, religion and politics and where we live nationally, and how we function in the world, and where our place in the religious spectrum falls, even within our own communities.

If the word for the weekend is one to take home, it’s complexity. And I appreciate you’ve said that many times in the last couple days in how we think about this. What I realize is that – I think my grandfather or somebody said – “What I don’t know could fill a book.” I think what we don’t know about much of the conversation that you’re leading us into reminds us how much more we need to be informed.

Rabbi Kotok: I think you raise some very critical pieces, and that has to do with Jews don’t necessarily see Israel as a separate entity like Columbia or South Africa. Jews see Israel as part of their self-identity and perception, so that there is not necessarily a dichotomy between politics and ethnicity and religious view.

One of the thoughts that I just had as we were kind of struggling with all of this is that perhaps the primary question must be when you think of words like peace or peacemaking – that is, what does that peace look like? What does it come out to be? And part of the challenge of the ongoing dilemma of the Middle East is that not only are there conflicting images of self, there are profoundly different perceptions of what the word peace means. And it’s not even subtle! Israel’s perception of what peace would look like in the Middle East has evolved, certainly since 1967, when Israel seemed to be unwilling to accept a concept of land for peace. Even though on the other side of the equation, there was an assumption that one could negotiate it. It’s pretty clear now that that is not going to come to a resolution through whatever land you give back.

On the other side of it, Hamas is not bashful or embarrassed about its perception that it will never, ever recognize the existence of the state of Israel or that the state of Israel has any right to exist. Well, they have their own imagery of what peace would mean. And there peace is: there is no Israel.

Well, unfortunately, that is not the image that the state of Israel carries of itself, or that other countries in the world cover about what should be taking place in the Middle East. And what that kind of leaves us with is anxiety and uncertainty, because how do you have any kind of significant conversation with people who deny your existence?! In a way, this morning is a triumph of that transition, because the Presbyterian community and the Jewish community have in the modern world come to a place where we are not in conflict with each other over our faith. The Presbyterian community is not approaching Judaism as a false and invalid religious community. It is not approaching Jews as if their only purpose in life is to become Christians. Well, if that were the case, how could we possibly have a conversation that is anything other than disagreeable or without any substance?

Now, that evolution has taken a period of time. But we’re here now. And that’s why we are able to come together, and that’s why each of you should be so thankful as I am for the opportunity that we have given each other to be honest, to be direct, to be clear about where our faiths share experience, and where we are very different from each other, but without hatred, without repercussion, without claims that somehow we have abandoned the other because we are not the other.

Reverend Wilkinson: Thank you. I’ll take a stab at a last word, not to answer the question “What does peace look like?” Although I think some of us might have the Edward Hicks Peaceable Kingdom pictures in our mind, and realize it’s something like that, but not like that in the real world where people are living agreeably together. I also know we Christians have over the last couple decades kind of awkwardly tried to claim a Hebrew word, shalom, and have realized it’s more than just the absence of conflict. It’s a broader presence of kind of the absence of anxiety, the presence of a comity and concord.

I also was struck by your earliest reference about the commitment to peacemaking, which came from the Presbyterian Church in the 1980s, in the period when we were all watching the film The Day After and thinking the world was about to end, and what would it be like for us now in 2009 and beyond to rephrase that commitment to peacemaking and unpack it if nowhere else in these two congregations to answer that question? What might that look like?

So I think, as always, we are left with more questions than answers. But I think we are left with a deepened sense of relationship. And I’m grateful for your acknowledgement of the possibilities that this conversation has. Thank you.

Let us pray, friends.

Gracious God, what we say we offer to you. And who we are we place at your throne. And we ask you now to use us, to mold us, and shape us as agents of our traditions and as those who would seek the peace of Jerusalem and Rochester and everywhere your children are. AMEN.