Niebuhr, etc. , "On binding up wounds and resisting the powers"

[Doug Millison]

http://www.ucc.org/911/100501a.htm

On binding up wounds and resisting the powers

By Gabriel Fackre
Oct. 5, 2001

Jesus wept (Luke 19:41). Tears rolled down the face of God for Jerusalem,
and today God weeps for New York. Deity was there at Ground Zero. And we
too are called to that place to participate in the sufferings of God
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Where there is the slaughter of innocents and hurt
of such magnitude, our first ministry is to bind up wounds and thereby keep
company with Christ. And to reach out in compassion as well to Arabs-Arabs
who are Muslims, Christians and followers of other faiths. They and the
other peoples of the Middle East and South Asia had no part in this
atrocity and also suffer from unreasoning hate.

The response of the United Church of Christ so far has shown that it
understands the call to minister to the neighbor in need. The outpouring of
prayer and care has been overwhelming, moved by the love of God. But do we
also know what to do with the wrath of God? One of our great UCC
theologians of an earlier era was not so sure. H. Richard Niebuhr indicted
liberal Protestantism for teaching "a God without wrath who brings humans
without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a
cross."

"Judgment" here has to do with holding the perpetrators responsible for
this atrocity. Their suicide bombing was not a passport to Paradise but a
passage to the Great Judgment where they will answer for their sin before a
righteous God. And their sponsors will give an account as well to the
world's community of conscience gathering now to bring terrorism to
justice. And what of our own share in the judgment of God for an American
hubris so graphically symbolized by the Babel-like proportions of our
towers? Are we free of all guilt of the horror that happened? What is it
about us that evokes the hate of so many of the world's poor? Dare we
listen to Jeremiah's thunderbolts as well as Jesus' weeping?

We must learn to put together both the tough and the tender love of God. We
get some help from yet other forebears who had to work out a Christian
response to the terrorists of their day. In 1941 the Reformed theologian
Karl Barth wrote a letter to Christians in Great Britain as bombs were
falling on their cities. He reminded them of Good Friday, but also of
Easter morning when God's definitive answer to the world's crucifiers was
Resurrection (Col. 2:15). That victory assures the coming of the final
reign of God where every flaw shall be mended and absolute justice done.
Because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, Barth wrote, "the world in
which we live is no sinister wilderness where fate or chance hold sway, or
where all sorts of 'principalities and powers' run riot unrestrained...."
That resurrection faith empowers us to "come to grips spiritedly and
resolutely with these evil spirits." And he added that "we shall not regard
this war ... either as a crusade or as a war of religion ... [but] as a
large-scale police measure which has become absolutely necessary in order
to repulse an active anarchism...."*

Much to ponder here.

Reinhold Niebuhr, another UCC giant of that earlier day, also has some
counsel for us. Like Jeremiah, he was unsparing in his criticism of his
nation's arrogance. He called for penitence for our sins and urged the
making of peace as our controlling vision. But he pressed home, as well,
the distinction that had to be made between tyranny and democracy, and the
need to defend the legacy of freedom and justice for all from the perils of
the hour.

Our challenge in a UCC that prides itself on being a "Just Peace Church"
(and rightly so) is to deepen the meaning of that self-definition. No peace
is worth having which does not bring the guilty to justice and thus our
mandate to "resist the powers of evil." We do so with penitence and a
passion for peace, confident of God's presence in both trial and rejoicing
and the coming of that Realm which has no end. And with the reminder to
ourselves that what counts most is the Word about who God is and what God
does, more than preoccupation with who we are in our justice-doing and
peace-making. "Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in
vain. Unless the Lord guards the city the guard keeps watch in vain" (Psalm
127:1).

* Quotations from Karl Barth, A Letter to Great Britain from Switzerland
(London: The Sheldon Press, 1941).