A Higher Standard of Behavior

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday September 30, 2001

***
I was beginning to think that maybe I’d imagined it, until I heard it again this morning in NPR, but did anyone else happen to see or hear the President this past Thursday tell a national news conference at O’Hare airport that one thing Americans should do in order to help our nation meet the challenge of these difficult times is to buy airline tickets and take a vacation to Disneyland? The exact quotation, according to a St. Petersburg, Florida newspaper (where it was probably front page news above the fold), went like this: "Get on board. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life."

Maybe I’m just over-reacting, especially since I tend to agree with the “take your families and enjoy life” part of this message, but I’ve been having some real trouble this past week with a lot of the things I’ve heard come out of the President’s mouth. And don’t get me wrong, because like a lot of Americans these days, I really WANT to support our President, and I’m trying as hard as I can not to “misunderestimate” his abilities, but rather to feel hopeful and optimistic and encouraged by his leadership. But even so, I find myself fantasizing at times that Martin Sheen is really the 24/7 occupant of the West Wing, and Dubya merely an hour’s worth of light entertainment on Wednesday evenings. Or maybe I’m just wishing for a better scriptwriter. Or maybe, at the very least, simply someone who will stick a little closer to the script, rather than ad libbing impromptu product placement plugs for the people who placed him in the Presidency.

I expect a certain amount of saber-rattling. It’s only natural; our nation possesses the best-trained, best-equipped, most powerful military force in the history of the world, and we have been brutally (some might even say treacherously) attacked, and so I expect our leaders to threaten to retaliate in kind: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I’m CONCERNED about it, but I’m not particularly surprised by it. I am a little surprised though (maybe stunned is a better word) by the extent of the economic aftershocks of this event: the precipitous decline in the stock market, thousands upon thousands of people laid-off from their jobs (100,000 people in the airline industry alone, I’ve read), yet no real sense of a plan that can steer us away from global recession, other than to borrow more money (albeit at historically low interest rates) and use it to take a vacation.

Mostly though, I’m surprised by the lingering intensity of my own emotional reaction to all of this. I had really hoped to be ready this week to move on to a different topic -- maybe even dig into my files and drag out an old, proven sermon and preach that this Sunday. But instead I’ve found myself lying awake in bed at two or three in the morning, listening to the news from around the world on NPR, and wondering what in the world I was going to say this morning to inspire and encourage those of you who have come here today because you’ve been experiencing reactions this past week similar to mine. Sleeplessness, irritability, distractedness and lack of concentration: these are typical reactions to life-changing, life-challenging events, and if they persist for several weeks, or are accompanied by more serious feelings of depression or even thoughts of suicide, its probably a good idea to find someone you can talk to. Maybe even some of the folks you see sitting all around you right here in this room. A colleague of mine recently posted an e-mail to our internet newsgroup citing the results of a survey which suggested that one in four Americans has experienced suicidal thinking at some point since September 11th, and 70% report that they were feeling, not just sad, but depressed. So maybe we all really DO need a vacation. It’s not that I’m afraid to get back on an airplane. It’s just that I have a hard time imagining anyplace else that I would really like to go.

I think the one saving grace for me has been discovering the regular Tuesday/Thursday evening pick-up basketball game over at the elementary school gymnasium. The first night I showed up we were hard pressed to find enough guys to play half-court, but last week the gym was packed, and folks actually had to wait to play. The games are a little ratty, and can get a little rough, which is kind of tough for a fat, old guy like me who can hardly jump any more much less drive hard to the basket in traffic, but afterwards...after a nice hot shower and a couple of Advil, an ice cold beer and a couple of bags of ice for my knees, all seems right again in the world, at least for awhile, and it is easy to sleep the sleep of the just.

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about a lot this past week, and that’s a conversation I had, a little over a year ago now, with the only Afghan national I’ve ever met. I met him on the train from Aalborg to Frankfort at the end of my academic exchange in Denmark, and the beginning of a much-anticipated, month-long whirlwind tour of France, Italy and Germany. His name was Oriya (or something like that -- he only said it once, although he did write it down for me, along with his telephone number, in the flyleaf of my diary), and he had been traveling to visit his uncle in Odense, but was turned back at the Danish border because he didn’t have the proper visa. At the time this seemed really outrageous to me, especially considering the ease with which I had been allowed in and out of Denmark during my stay there, so I invited him to sit with me in my compartment, and when the conductor came through collecting tickets, I even ponied up the cost of a First Class fare so that he could remain there with me.

His English wasn’t that great, but it was better than my German, and somehow between these two languages we managed to converse pretty well, drinking bitter railroad coffee and smoking his Marlboros all the way to Cologne, where I got out to see the cathedral and he continued on to Munich. He’d been living in Munich as a guest worker for ten years, working as a fry cook in a McDonalds, despite having been educated as an electrical engineer. A college educated electrical engineer who smoked American cigarettes and considered himself fortunate to be flipping burgers at a German McDonalds, but who wasn’t allowed to cross over the border into Denmark to visit his uncle (who had been living in that country for twenty years) because the name on his passport wasn’t “Jensen,” and he happened to have been born in Afghanistan rather than America. And I remember him also telling me about the Afghan people, and what fierce fighters they were; how they had beaten the British, and beaten the Russians, but how now they were simply fighting among themselves, and destroying their country in the process.

So I’ve been thinking about this conversation a lot this past week, and also about what happened (or didn’t happen) when I finally got to Munich myself a month later. I mentioned that he’d written his name and phone number in the flyleaf of my diary, and as we were parting in Cologne he encouraged me to call him when I got to town, but I didn’t call, and now I’ve been asking myself why. Part of the reason, I know, was simply because I was tired; I’d been living out of a backpack for quite a while by that point; I’d been a lot of different places and met quite a few new people, more than I could keep track of really, and at the same time grown comfortable keeping my own company as well, and I just didn’t feel like making the effort of trying to coordinate plans with another person. But I think I was also a little nervous about entering into his world; it was one thing to strike up a new acquaintance on a train, and quite another to meet him on his own terms, on his own turf.

I arrived in Munich early in the morning after having taken the overnight train over the Brenner Pass from Italy; I checked into a cheap hotel near the station (one of those classic European hotels with the bathroom up the hall, and the nearest shower down three flights of stairs), and then (instead of trying to call Oriya), I caught the S-Tog out to Dachau, which was the one “must-do” thing on my list of things to do in Munich. It’s a rather strange experience to be standing on a subway platform at 10 AM on a weekday morning, with a cup of McDonald’s coffee in your hand (because I had stopped in just to see if he might be there), waiting to catch the commuter train to Dachau.

The most disturbing thing about the camp, at least for me, was not the ovens or the gas chamber disguised as a shower (both which were built at Dachau but never used), nor even the wrought iron “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate leading into the place, but rather simply the ruthless, bureaucratic efficiency of the entire system. Dachau was basically an administrative center; prisoners arrived there, and then were processed through to other camps: some designated for forced labor, others for extermination, still others (like clergymen) who remained concentrated there, so as not to be a source of disturbance among the rest of the incarcerated population -- all strictly legal, with all the proper paperwork properly stamped and certified and filed away. And there’s a pretty amazing museum there as well, which contains a campaign poster from the election that first brought Hitler to power as part of Hindenburg’s short-lived government in the early 1930’s. It’s a picture of their two faces, side by side in profile, with a slogan underneath: “The Field Marshall and the Corporal are fighting for our freedom.” It’s a frightening poster, because it seems so innocent in its rhetorical appeal -- two former war heroes, patriots and proven leaders, fighting hard to defend the German way of life. If you didn’t already know how the story ended, you might even be tempted to vote for these guys yourself.

I had lunch that afternoon in a traditional Bavarian outdoor Biergarten, and then pretty much slept away the rest of the day, having foolishly made the mistake of responding “Ja, bitte” when the waiter asked if I would like another liter of Lowenbrau. So again, no call to Oriya that night. The next morning I got up early and bought a ticket for a day-long bus tour out to Neuschwanstein Castle, the home of the infamous “Mad King Ludwig,” who nearly bankrupt his country pursuing his extravagant Wagnarian fantasies, until eventually drowning under mysterious circumstances, his castle still unfinished. I’m sure many of you have seen pictures of this place, high on a mountain, with its tall, spired turrets; it was the inspiration for Disney’s famous trademark castle which, as a kid, I used to see on television every Sunday night while watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” with my family: the beautiful, color fireworks exploding all around it (back in the days when color television was still something special), and Tinkerbell flying in to deliver the final flourish with her wand.

My companions on this bus tour were an inner-city High School math teacher from Cleveland, whom I was ready to nominate for Sainthood until I realized that it didn’t bother him one little bit that his high school enrolled about six hundred incoming freshmen each year, and graduated only six college-bound seniors. And then, on the other side of the aisle, a family of four from Texas -- a mother, a father, their grown-up son and his wife -- who blithely replied when I asked them whether they’d visited Dachau “If you’ve seen one death camp, you’ve seen them all,” and later boasted about how Texas (under the leadership of then-governor Bush) “lead the league” in actual death-penalty executions. So needless to say, that was kind of a day from hell. And then in the evening, I decided to visit the Hofbrauhaus, Munich’s most famous beerhall (although not the site, as I later learned, of Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch), only to discover it overrun by drunken American college students. And that was my last night in Munich; I returned to my hotel and spent the rest of the evening reflecting about what I had seen, and how little distance seemed to separate Ludwig’s mad Wagnarian dream, and the nightmare of Dachau’s murderous efficiency.

So I never did get back in touch with Oriya. And now here I am, sixteen months later, watching my country prepare to go to war against his, and wondering whether this is really such a wise thing to do, with 70% of our people feeling depressed, and 25% thinking of suicide. Because I know, both as an historian and as a professional religious leader, that violence is very rarely the best solution to a problem, but rather the solution one resorts to when you have exhausted all of your other possible solutions, and even then typically gives you less than ideal results.

I’m thinking about another million Afghan refugees, (in a country that already has two-and-a-half million displaced persons out of a population of only twenty-eight million, and where one in four children die before the age of five) -- another million refugees, fleeing to the closed borders of Pakistan and Iran, out of fear of America’s own murderously efficient military technology.

I’m thinking about the tall, spired turrets of Disney’s Fantasyland castle, and fireworks that are not really fireworks, and all the High School drop-outs who feel fortunate to have a job flipping burgers at McDonalds, because they didn’t learn enough math in school to go on to become electrical engineers.

I’m thinking about the young paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne division whom I met in Normandy, who was returning from a visit to the village of St. Mere Eglise, where his predecessors had parachuted in support of the D-Day invasion a half-century ago, and I’m wondering what obscure little village his successors will be visiting a half-century from now, and what they will be thinking and feeling when they get there.

I’m thinking about America’s new “Office of Homeland Security,” and the fifty-some changes that the Bush administration wants Congress to make to the rules under which we currently investigate and prosecute terrorism in this country: new “tools” for law enforcement officials, many of which are of dubious Constitutionality under current legal interpretations of the Bill of Rights; and I’m wondering how many of our freedoms we will be compelled to surrender, in order to protect our “Freedom” from attack.

And I’m thinking about the brand new basketball that I just ordered for myself on-line: a beautiful red, white and blue basketball with a synthetic leather cover...my small contribution to the restoration of America’s consumer confidence, charged on my Mastercard, and just the thing for firing off a few long, floating rainbow jump shots from beyond the three-point line, before returning home for a hot shower, and a cold beer, and a good night’s sleep at a time when sleep does not come easily to anyone.

***
READING: from “The Onion” September 26, 2001

© Copyright 2001 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved. http://www.theonion.com

NEW YORK—Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence."

“I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.

"I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?"

"But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody's spouting off some nonsense about, 'God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it's God's will,'" God continued. "It's not God's will, all right? News flash: 'God's will' equals 'Don't murder people.'"

Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an.

"To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?" God said. "So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it's God's will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall."

God praised the overwhelming majority of His Muslim followers as "wonderful, pious people," calling the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks rare exceptions.

“This whole medieval concept of the jihad, or holy war, had all but vanished from the Muslim world in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason," God said. "There's no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. The vast majority of Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists, just like the vast majority of Christians in America are pissed off over those two bigots on The 700 Club."

Continued God, "Read the book: 'Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.' It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some assholes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war crap just to further their own hateful agenda. So now, everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks, Taliban: 1,000 years of pan-Islamic cultural progress down the drain."

God stressed that His remarks were not directed exclusively at Islamic extremists, but rather at anyone whose ideological zealotry overrides his or her ability to comprehend the core message of all world religions.

"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!"

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.