April 26, 2009
It’s the second Sunday after Easter. On Easter morning Fred Taylor asked us the question: “what difference does Jesus’ resurrection make for us today?” Fred then set out to demonstrate to us that the resurrection means that Jesus is massively, or powerfully, present in the church today, whether we believe it or not. “This means that Jesus somehow, someway takes up space in the midst of us ordinary people, and that he is a force to be reckoned with ...” Fred described the resurrection story as “a convergence of hard violent, sinful, overwhelming worldly power confronting what appeared to be abysmal weakness, culminating in Jesus’ death. In this situation, only Jesus holds steady, only Jesus keeps faith, standing alone before and with God.” Fred described the community that first experienced Jesus’ resurrection (depicted in the gospel of Mark) as suffering from cultural amnesia -- the forgetting of one’s own history and stories. This cultural amnesia was a survivalist response to the shocking crucifixion of Jesus – it was a way of dealing with the trauma of violence and the threat of death, which, Fred notes, is always used to enslave us. Freedom, on the other hand, is found in what followed three days later in the resurrection, in becoming so acutely aware of Christ in our midst, that the fear of death becomes irrelevant and we remember our true identity – we are sons and daughters of God. How did this early community recover its true identity? Fred argued that they were “taken deeper than their fear and their pain, to break through their amnesia.” In other words, it’s only by staring our fears in the face that we learn that these fears are only an illusion – beyond death is resurrection.
David Hilfiker took up the conversation last week, based the story of Christ’s resurrection from the book of John. David said “Our Biblical accounts make it very clear that something quite amazing happened on that first Easter Sunday. The disciples felt the “powerful presence” of Jesus among them …. in a way that utterly transformed them from a bunch of sniveling whiners into healers, preachers, organizers and powerful advocates for justice and compassion. They stood up to their culture—some at the cost of their lives—welcoming and equalizing slave and free, Jew and Gentile, poor and rich. The disciples experienced God as massively present in Jesus. In Jesus they experienced absolute nonviolence, unconditional forgiveness, pure love, passion for justice, and deep compassion for the suffering of the world – in the context of a culture replete with violence, slavery and oppression. It wasn’t just that Jesus believed in these values or had decided that life was to be lived according to them. Nor was Jesus simply recommending them as effective ways of being in the world. He’d experienced them in the bedrock of his being. When the disciples were with Jesus, they experienced love, forgiveness, nonviolence, justice and compassion as the most fundamental realities of human life. Jesus was those things.
And, as I understand it, as followers of Christ, we are called to be those things too – through Christ’s obedience we receive the promise of resurrection – and the call to be his disciples. As we enter into discipleship, we take in the resurrection experience, making it our own. In turn, our resurrected selves and our resurrection communities become expressions of love, forgiveness, nonviolence, justice and compassion as the most fundamental realities of human life in the midst of a culture that feeds itself upon anger, hatred, fear and violence.
On Easter Sunday Fred reminded us that, like the early Christian church, our own church was founded on the ruins of an age defined by war, violence and crimes against humanity. “Our founder, Gordon Cosby’s faith was profoundly shaped by life in a war zone. As a chaplain he saw that he was up against a cultural amnesia that deprived men and women of faith when they most needed it. Gordon came home from that experience determined to find a way to break through the cultural amnesia of the church in our time, an amnesia which causes people to lose the power of real connection with the Bible and experience as church.“
I think that it comes as no surprise to probably all of us that our work to stand firm against a dominant culture rooted in fear and violence is not over. But, as I began to write this teaching, I was struck by the similarity in the socio-political context in which Fred described the founding of both the early church and the Church of the Savior – and today. In short, there is no time in which a clear sense of the powerful presence of the resurrected Christ is needed more than today, to help us break through the cultural amnesia that threatens to overcome us with violence and oppression.
We live in a post 9-11 world, and I don’t really have to explain that phrase at all. Although we could have responded to the events of 9-11 in many ways, the terrible events of that day were used as an opportunity to create and promote a ‘global war on terror’ which had no clear battlefront and no well-defined enemy. (When that phrase was first rolled out I used to ask myself the question, How can you have a war against terror, which is an emotion?) I got chills when I first understood what they really meant – as a student of Latin American history, the early rhetoric of the Bush Administration was frightenly similar to that used by the military junta in Argentina when it took power in 1976: “The enemy has no flag nor uniform .. nor even a face. Only he knows that he is the enemy.” … And sometimes, I would say, not even the enemy knew that he was the enemy.
One of the tools that we know was deemed useful in that undefined war against illusive enemies was torture -- a practice that had been outlawed internationally at the end of our last global war – World War II – by means of the Geneva Conventions as well as other international treaties, conventions or protocols which the United States government has signed, making it against the law to torture people in our country. Because torture is so unacceptable in society today, those who have advocated for its use have also worked diligently to torture people under the cloak of secrecy while using deception and confusion to confound the American people into complacency.
For example, the Bush Administration created its own definition of what torture is. This is also reminiscent of the Argentine dictatorship which put a lot of effort into creating its own definitions of words: Admiral Massera, one of the three original junta members is quotes as saying “The only safe words are our words.”
But let’s be clear: Torture, according to the UN Convention Against Torture, is: "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act that he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Then, throughout 2002 and 2003, the Bush Administration set about creating a secret legal and policy framework that would govern the use of torture against those it detaineed in its Global War on Terror. If you have been following the press lately, you’ll have read of a growing battle in this country between those who would have us sink further into the social pathology that accompanies cultural amnesia and those who are calling us to face the ugly truth of the violence that was done in the name of the American people. In other words, the truth about torture under the Bush Administration is coming to light – and the power of that truth is making a lot of people who do not want to be held accountable for what was done, nervous.
On April 1, 2009 the American Civil Liberties Union announced that a secret memo authored by the Department of Justice and sent to the Defense Department in March 2003, “asserting that President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations to extract information from detainees was declassified as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit they had filed. … A similar memo asserting the same kind of unchecked executive authority was sent to the CIA in August 2002. In that document, torture was defined so narrowly that it encompassed only those methods that result in pain akin to that associated with "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function." Further, "The memo takes an extremely broad view of the president's power as Commander-in-Chief. If you believe this memo, there is no limit at all to the kinds of interrogation methods the President can authorize."
Other secret memos that document the “harsh interrogation methods” that the Bush Administration had authorized were also released after, as the Washington Post reports, President Obama convened a high-level, contentious debate in the White House on April 15th, over whether to release more torture memos or not. Those that favored release of the memos included were Attorney General Holder, Director of National Intelligence Blair and White House counsel Craig. Defense Secretary Gates had said he supported the disclosures because he saw the information's release as inevitable and because the White House was willing to promise that CIA officers would not be prosecuted for any abuse.
In other words, we could know what happened, but no one would be held accountable for their actions – we were being told to look forward, not backward, to paraphrase the words of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Reading this made me smile – as each of the dictatorships that ruled Latin America in the 1970s fell, they all enacted amnesty laws – which have, one by one, been overturned by legal challenges. Just so you know, three days after the announcement was made that CIA officers who tortured would not be prosecuted, The UN rapporteur on torture made a public statement that granting amnesty to those who had engaged in torture violated U.S. treaty obligations, and was therefore illegal.
In part, the decision to release the documents was made in the hopes that it would calm down those who are calling for a complete investigation of US-government sponsored torture under the Bush Administration. This would allow the Obama Administration to continue to look forward and implement its own policy agenda. But instead of calming the matter down, demands are now swelling for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the originators of the interrogation tactics. … The Obama Administration’s response was another attempt at containment -- the investigation will be conducted by the Senate, not by an investigator and certainly not by a Truth Commission. But I doubt that the investigation will stop there – like nations in Africa and Latin America, the US government will eventually have to acquiesce to calls for an independent Truth Commission to bring out in the open what really happened. Breaking out of cultural amnesia requires that we face the pain and shame of our collective sin. This is the only path that leads us to a resurrection experience.
And we should prepare ourselves, because there’s more to come. Two days ago, on Friday, April 24th, the Washington Post informed us that “The Pentagon has agreed to release dozens of previously undisclosed photographs depicting the abuse by American military personnel of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan. “These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” Disclosure of the latest pictures “is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse and the release of more pictures will make clearer than ever the need for an independent investigation into abuse of prisoners so the public can see for itself the offenses committed in its name,” and punishment of those responsible, including military officers and civilian officials.”
As information becomes available that makes it painfully, undeniably clear to us the extent to which our nation has embraced a culture of fear and violence, we will begin to hear more and more arguments from those who wish to remain in denial about this truth as well as those who embrace the use of fear and violence as a tool for governance. Predictably, these arguments will use fear, deception and maybe even guilt to try to goad us into acquiescence:
1. It wasn’t torture, it was justified by legal arguments.
2. It wasn’t torture, the techniques used were ‘borrowed’ from "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape" (SERE) training used on US special forces to help them resist interrogation, in case they were captured.
3. It wasn’t torture because the methods used left no lasting physical or psychological effects.
4. It wasn’t torture because Bush said unequivocally "the U.S. does not torture."
5. Even if it was torture, it was not unlawful because the Commander-in-Chief ordered it in a "time of war."
6. And, even if it was torture, it got results, and therefore is justified.
As a Christian community living in the powerful presence of the risen Christ, we must not be fooled by arguments based on fear and violence. Christ is risen and so are we. And fear and violence are not values embraced by a resurrection community.
Today’s passage in Luke once again shows us a group of disciples who are frightened and hidden away – unsure of what they are seeing, and yet untransformed into their resurrected selves. In the passage Jesus eats with them, talks with them, an “opens their minds to understand the scriptures.” That miraculous encounter created the impetus for a stepping out of the enslaving fear of the dominant culture. As David shared last week, The disciples felt the “powerful presence” of Jesus among them …. in a way that utterly transformed them from a bunch of sniveling whiners into healers, preachers, organizers and powerful advocates for justice and compassion. A clear sense about the resurrection of Jesus had allowed for resurrection among his followers – who became visible witnesses to Christ’s message of love and peace – and resistors against a culture of hate and violence.
Let’s go back to the book of Luke, starting with the last verse for today, but reading on after that:
46 Jesus told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,
47 and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
48 You are witnesses of these things.
49 I am going to send you what God has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." [which culminated in Pentecost] Using Fred word’s: “stay here until you have a clear sense of the massive, powerful presence of the resurrected Christ, and then go out and be a witness to a violent, hate-filled world.”
We live in a very dark moment in our own society, one in which fear has been cultivated as a means to justify the promotion of violence and the justification of torture. As information regarding just how pathological our official, national policy had become – supposedly in defense of our freedom – more and more arguments will be made to confuse us and to try to enfold – and entrap – us in a cultural amnesia that justifies the use of violence and denies the pathology of that behavior. But let us stand strong in our own identity with the risen Christ – Christ is risen and we live in his powerful presence as a living testimonies of resurrection culture, expressed through love, forgiveness, nonviolence, justice and compassion as the most fundamental realities of human life.