There is a war in America. There is a war in America, and it begins with you, and it begins with me. Upon the towers of history, we have constructed signs as pointers toward a common destiny, and we have found interpreters who have read to us these signs in plain speech. We have killed the interpreters, sought new ones, and now try to hold in collective memory what these signs once said. We catch glimpses of it from time: life, liberty, and pursuit. The dream that one may be judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. We look at the content of character of this nation, and find ourselves hoping we are not judged too harshly. We look at the content of the character of this nation, and we know we are in trouble. We look at the content of the character of this nation, and we grope for yet another criteria for which we may judge our neighbors.
We judge our neighbors based on their political affiliation, we judge our neighbors based on the color of their skin (though we know this is an old hack), we target religious minorities, and we saddle our children with debt. Of course none of us feels that we personally do any of this. All this is being done around us, toward us, and we may from time to time rationalize that this is the natural organizing principle of time: entropy and chaos. We may rationalize that the dreams of yesteryear were only idealization, pretty truths dressed in pretty language, and the world is and always will be about might, power, and war.
We look into the crystal ball to see what the future may hold, to see if we’re still here, if we will win the war, if we will finally understand what the war was all about. We wonder if our children will be there, and we wonder what kind of vision may grant them fortitude and peace. Into the crystal ball, if we look close enough, we begin to see our own reflection, a face that has seen and survived the worst, a face that is familiar with the story of Martin Luther King Jr. and the myriad who once imagined a new way. Into the crystal ball as we seek a future, we see the past, we see war: we see Vietnam, we see the Civil War, we see the founding of a nation.
We don’t live grandiose or prophetic lives, at least not in the way we imagined others once did. We go to the grocery store. We watch as much film, television, and streaming media as possible. We use our phones to connect to a world we know for certain we don’t understand, but yet seems on the brink of something scary and crucial. We feel the vague feeling we are in some kind of moment – a moment of decision, a moment of action from which we may never be able to turn back. Yet we are not completely certain what this moment it is, or what it is calling us toward. We know what the world should do, but less certain about what we should do.
We know we want love. We know that we would like to feel the secure embrace of at least another person who accepts us just the way we are, though we know we are far from ideal. We know that most of the time we don’t really even know where we are: where our minds are, where our hearts are, where to put our energy. We know that a lot of the time we feel exhausted even before the fight begins. And we’re tired of fighting. We’ve done or we watched others do it. It looks absolutely exhausting. We’ve seen ourselves make strides forward, and we’ve watched as we continually fall backwards. We’ve seen others make great strides forward, and we’ve seen them cut down in their prime, assassinated and disgraced. We are tired of feeling continually disgraced and embarrassed to be who we are. We are tired of people telling us what to do and who we should be, and so we have embraced a confidence in this time that is unconcerned with character, morality, or truth. Accept, not really. Few believe in the long arc of the universe, and its propensity toward justice, but without this we are left with a hollowness that continues to eat us from the inside out. And we are tired of being eaten out of our own house.
There is a war in America. There is a war in America, and it begins with you and me. The family has become a battleground or in some cases a bunker to shield each other from atomic and nuclear blasts. It has become a courtroom, a place to argue what is true and what is not, what is right and what is just. We have reintroduced the word evil into common language, and people with no religion say it without irony. We have lost a sense of common language, a language that once was used for prayer, for declarations, for bawdy jokes, and stories about perseverance. We are losing our language, and instead content ourselves with images, images so ghastly we no longer have words for them. A kind of irritable and combustible silence has overcome us, where we feel we are about to explode, but have no idea what we are willing to build. We are tired of being unheard, and we really wish our families could hear us. Not just the manifestos but the real stuff: I love you. I want you to be well. I wish I could believe you. I wish I could trust you. We are at a moment where we all distrust peace, and yet fear the alternative. We distrust a negative peace which is the absence of tension, and we are not certain we have the energy for a positive peace, which is not the absence of tension, but healing and reconciliation. We know now this will take our lifetime, and we are dawdling if that is how we want to spend our one, precious life.
We are still a nation of individuals who feel alone in each other’s presence. We sit alone. We eat alone. We communicate on our own personal devices. We develop contradictory and personal opinions. We all yearn as individuals for something real and satisfying, and deep down we know that this satisfaction will only come through being with each other, and that may be too much to bear. We have a habit of killing our prophets, and we have a habit of delaying our best and truest impulses. We have a habit of delaying the dream because we are all so busy fighting the war.
We look at what our parents once believed with a mix of admiration and pity. If they only knew what would happen. If they only knew all the sacrifice that it would take just to get this far, and to know deep in our bones that this is not far enough. It is not worthy of our humanity. The current day is not enough for us. The current moment is far from complete realization. We don’t want our family members to go to war. We don’t want to see our sisters and brothers on the front lines. We want to see them safe. We want to see them happy. We want to see them boundless, and no longer limited by bigotry and fear.
We can articulate what we want for our family members more easily than we can for ourselves. Our life feels like chaos, like chance mixed with equal doses of glee and heartache. But for our loved ones we have a clearer vision. We see a vision that goes beyond war, and toward something we can almost reach.
Regardless of what we think of our family, we don’t want them in harm’s way. We don’t want them hurt. We don’t want them to live small and limited lives. It hurts us to see them in pain. It hurts us to see them act out of pain they may be unaware of or feel little control over. In that moment of compassion, the language starts to come back to us. The language that is not fancy but meaningful, the most meaningful words there are: I love you. I want you to be happy. I want you to be free.
The message of the Civil RIghts movement was not a complicated message. The message can be boiled down to two lines: I love you. I want you to be free.
There is a war in America. There is a war in America and it begins with you and it begins with me. As a country we are at war on both domestic and foreign fronts. We have broken laws to kill people. We have nervously waited to see what will happen next. We see what happens each day: a plane full of civilians being shot out of the sky, statements of threat, statements of military posturing and might. The war in America we are witnessing is not just about militarism, it is not about ideology, it is not even about right and wrong. These are all just symptoms of a nation that has no real idea what it is about. We can mimic the actions of patriotism without knowing the real values that undergird this behavior. We can mimic being happy without knowing the true meaning of happiness. We can mimic loyalty and love, without realizing that loyalty and love are personal relationships not abstractions.
The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday for me is not just about the personhood of Martin Luther King Jr. Once we do that, we have lost sight of the bigger picture. This holiday is about assessing and judging the character of a nation. It is a moment of seeing where we are, and what we could be. It is an opportunity to once again imagine a life worthy of our humanity. Instead of living a complacent life, satisfying ourselves with rationalizations and feeding our resentments, we begin to see once again how our current discomfort is a gift from a higher calling.
I think we revere individuals like Martin Luther King Jr., because we would not want to live like them. We don’t want to pay the price. We want someone to save us from the war. I don’t think there will be another Martin Luther King Jr. We are in a new era, and our current war is far too big for a single individual. But where there is two people gathered, we have a movement.
King wrote a sermon titled “Beyond Vietnam” after having breakfast with a young monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Buddhist practitioner in Vietnam. Hanh who is in his 90’s now said what he remembers most vividly from that encounter is how King kept his breakfast warm for him until he arrived. They ate and spoke, and later that year King took stock of the character of a nation in the throws of warfare, killing the most vulnerable in this country and beyond.
We don’t need to wait for nuclear war to say today we have a vision beyond war with Iran. We are already embroiled in a war with ourselves. We are a nation at war, and it begins with you and me. The war within ourselves, the war within our families, the war with and within our current government. The war abroad is right to unsettle us. It should unsettle us to the point we are ready to take the ultimate risk, and live beyond it. There is a path beyond it, and this church is one place where that path is offered. It is not a path with quick or easy fixes, but it is a path with heart and it is a path with integrity. It’s a path that recognizes the preciousness of life, and walks with those who are weary and beaten down. It’s a path that gives us backbone to stand up for what we believe in. It’s a path that gives us the humility to take a knee in silent protest. It’s a path that is beyond our war with ourselves, and concerns itself with the great arch of history, an arc that includes us and everyone we love and hold dear. Barack Obama once said the long arc of history is long and bends toward justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. It doesn’t bend because of a single individual. As a nation we are a superpower in world affairs. And that power rests in you and it rests in me. It is time we use this power for something good, something beyond Iran, something beyond militarism, something beyond poverty, something beyond Islamophobia and racism, something beyond fear and greed, something beyond a nation at war, something toward the promised land. A land worthy of you and me.
