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by Ken Sehested
10 October 2019

“The Amazon is not burning—it is being burned.”

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        Years ago, on a speaking assignment in Brazil, I flew to Rio de Janeiro, where I was met by several new acquaintances. After introductions and handshakes, we drove into the city to where I would be staying for the week.

        On our way, we drove along a highway below Corcovado Mountain, on whose perch sits the famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue, for many years the tallest in the world.

        I craned my neck to get a view; and then quietly mumbled, “Don’t jump! Don’t jump!” It was just loud enough to be overheard. At which point the car erupted in laughter.

        I knew then that my new friends shared my streak of irreverence, particularly over frivolous escapades of public piety, with which the powerful almost always disguise their intrigues.

        Brazil (spelled Brasil by its citizens) is getting more attention in recent months, primarily because of the massive fires raging in the Amazon rainforest, most of which is within Brazil’s boundary, but also stretches into eight neighboring countries. This year nearly over 72,00 fires have broken out, an increase of 80% over the same period in 2018.

        Sometimes referred to as the earth’s lungs, the forest supplies some 20% of the world’s oxygen and sequesters a quarter of the carbon dioxide absorbed by the world’s forests. But the forest is also home to an estimated 300,000 indigenous people belonging to hundreds of distinct tribes. Brazil’s 1988 Constitution explicitly stipulates that population’s claim to the land.

        Here in North America we’ve come to learn that wildfires are part of our forests’ ecosystem. But not so with rainforests. The Amazon, as has been said, is not burning—it is being burned. And this is bad news, not just for those living in the region, but for the entire planet.

        The reasons for the forest’s scorching, along with the displacement of its indigenous residents, are as old as its geologic formation: the seemingly inexhaustible demands for “development.” Meaning, more stuff. Growth as a measure of girth. The extractive impulse, where calculations of progress are left in the hands of corporations and financiers and those doing their bidding.

        Cattle farmers and plantations want to squeeze more “productivity” from the land. Loggers want its timber. Miners want its metals, minerals, and gemstones. The quickest way to gain access is to torch it.

        Adding to these damages are droughts compounded by climate change. Normally “fire-proof” rainforests are more susceptible to burning.

        Environmental activists and advocates for the health of local communities face growing peril. In 2018, in Brazil alone, 70 were murdered. Few assailants are brought to justice.

        Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro—referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics” for his right-wing proclivities—made accelerated economic development of the rainforest a key pledge in his 2018 presidential campaign, and existing environmental laws are routinely ignored.

§  §  §

Life in Amazonia has perhaps never before been so threatened “by environmental destruction and
exploitation and by the systematic violation of the basic human rights of the Amazon population. . . .”
—Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal Claudio Hummes, in his opening remarks to the
“Synod of Bishops on the Amazon,” currently (6-27 October 2019) meeting in Rome

§  §  §

        Prior to the Western media’s coverage of the Amazon fires, North Americans knew little of Brazil. Some recall coverage of the 2016 Olympic games there. Some know about the extravagant Carnival parades, overshadowing the Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans just prior to Lent; or the famed soccer player Pelé; or the country’s renowned Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. I didn’t know prior to my trip that more African slaves disembarked in Brazil than in any other country during the 16th-18th century Atlantic slave trade.

Right: Tanks on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 31 May 1964, start of the US-backed military coup

        I would venture that even fewer of my fellow citizens know that the US encouraged, organized, and supplied a 1964 coup d’état creating a military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for 21 years.

        Declassified documents released in 1974 revealed that the US government actively plotted to overthrow the democratically elected government of President João Goulart, including orchestration with key Brazilian military leaders and the resources of a US naval carrier group, which transported ammunition, oil, gasoline and other war materiel.

        “I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the [Brazilian] military," US Ambassador Lincoln Gordon told the President [Kennedy] and his advisor, Richard Goodwin, according to a secretly taped meeting in the Oval Office with Kennedy on 30 July 1962. Kennedy would be assassinated before the coup commenced on 31 March 1964; President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the actual go-ahead.

        Paramount among US fears of the Goulart government was its relative independence, a risky stance in the geopolitics of the Cold War; Goulart’s promise to remove Western companies’ control of Brazilian oil production, along with other social and economic reforms; and the ever-present US fear of communism.

        Latin America “has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power,” said Under-Secretary of State Robert Olds in 1927 testimony to Congress, “while those we do not recognize and support fail.”

§  §  §

“When I give people food, they call me a saint. When I ask why there is no food, they call me a communist.”
—Brazilian Archbishop (1964-1985) Hélder Câmara

§  §  §

        Of special note is the way religious piety is manipulated during this history. In the months leading up to the coup, a coalition of right-wing sectors in Brazil organized a march to protest Goulart’s rule, under the banner of “Marches of the Family with God for Freedom.” Then, during Bolsonaro’s campaign, his party’s popular motto was “Brasil above everything, God above everyone” (eerily parallel to Trump’s “America First” slogan).

        During a 2016 trip to Israel, Bolsonaro, a professed Catholic, asked prominent Pentecostal pastor (and head of Brazil’s Christian Social Party) Everaldo Pereira to baptize him in the Jordan River in a flagrant attempt to cement his political ties to Brazil’s sizeable, deeply conservative evangelical Christian community.

        In his book, “The Future Church,” journalist John L. Allen Jr. noted that in 1969, then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller predicted that “The Catholic Church has stopped being a trusted ally of the US, and on the contrary is transforming itself into a danger because it raises the consciousness of the people.” The governor went on to recommend that the US support fundamentalist Protestant groups in Latin America.

        A few years later, in 1982, a group of President Ronald Reagan’s advisors, meeting in Santa Fe shortly before Reagan’s trip to Rome for a meeting with the Pope, openly discussed how to deal with theological trends in Latin America. In their “Santa Fe Document” they wrote that “American foreign policy must begin to counterattack liberation theology.” It accused liberation theologians of using the church “as a political weapons against private property and productive capitalism by infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are less Christian than Communist.”

        Clearly, the mantle of authority granted to “Christ the Redeemer” is contested by conflicting loyalties and incompatible claims. The stakes are high, and the spirits must be tested (cf. 1 John 4:1).

        The desolation caused by the fires could be a mirror into which not just Brazilians but all of us, particularly those of us in the US, can peer to get a more accurate picture of who we have become. And, maybe, of whom, for whom, and by Whom we wish to be.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
12 September 2018

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation
and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”
—2 Corinthians 7:10

        We are in a maelstrom of historical markers and liturgical import. For people of faith, it points to a significant fork in the road.

        On the one hand, we may choose an escalation of conceited policies, gluttonous consumption, and imperial threats, on and on—not world without end, for it will surely end if, by no other cause, choking to death on our own excretion.

        On the other hand, we might acknowledge our rancorous ways, reweave the tears in our social fabric, choose the public good over private gain, harness our public polity and economic productivity to the governance of sustainable development, shared bounty, and international cooperation.

        I’m not optimistic that we have learned that indignity and violence beget more of the same; that, as Admiral Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We cannot kill our way to victory.” But let’s assess where we are.

§  §  §

“When Solomon depicts the love G‑d harbors for His nation,
he writes (Song of Songs 8:5): “Beneath the apple tree I
aroused you[r love].” Eating an apple on Rosh Hashanah
is an attempt to remind G‑d of our age-old love.
—Rabbi Baruch S. Davidson[1]

§  §  §

        We stand in the middle of the “Days of Awe,” the 10-day period linking Judaism’s two High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; between “happy new year” (by Jewish reckoning, year 5779), where the haunting of old failures gives way to new possibilities, to the confirmation of the Day of Atonement’s embrace accompanied by earth’s renewal. The journey entails the resolve of acknowledging the ways we ourselves, and our body politic, have fallen short and jumped the tracks. This is the aim of penitential living.

        By what capacity might this happen? It is the prospect of mercy abetting wrath, the removal of shame, the possibility of a new beginning that enables our turning around, embracing the strenuous labor of repairing broken relations and enacting just policies.

        Reflected in Rosh Hashanah’s wake, in the delight of the world begun anew, our lives are thereby inscribed in the Book of Life, then sealed on Yom Kippur. Jews greet each other on Rosh Hashanah with the Hebrew phrase L’shana tovah, the abbreviated rendition of L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem (“May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year”).

        At-one-ment. On earth, as in heaven. Able again to go out in joy, be led back in peace, the hills bursting in song, the trees in applause (Isaiah 55:12).

§  §  §

“The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said: When God created
the creation, he inscribed upon the Throne, “My Mercy overpowers My wrath.”[2]

§  §  §

        Today is also first day of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic Hijri calendar, marking Muhammad’s forced migration from Mecca to Medina, this now being year 1440 for Muslims. The Hebrew Rosh HaShanah is etymologically related to the Arabic Ras as-Sanah, the name Muslims give for the Islamic New Year. [Note: Jewish, Islamic, and Christian calendars are calibrated differently—special observances do not always overlap across traditions.]

        As it happens[3], we are also marking the anniversary of 9/11, the date in 2001 when foreign terrorists, using rudimentary weapons, employed our own technology to strike both World Trade Center towers in New York City, the twin symbols of global financial dominance, and the Pentagon, symbol of global military might. A fourth plane, crashed in Pennsylvania, may have been headed for the White House.

        As it also happens, we are near the 15 September anniversary of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and traumatizing a city—Birmingham—nicknamed “Bombingham” for the sheer number of terrorist bombings it endured. The strike on 16th Street came less than three weeks after the soaring inspiration of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 28 August March on Washington, where a quarter of a million people were ecstatically immersed in the vision and promise of the Dream for which that occasion is remembered.

Right: The bomb blast of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham blew Jesus' head out of a stained glass window.

        The 16th Street conquest, carried out by home grown terrorists that our nation has long sheltered, knocked the Dream out of its orbit, where it wobbles, still, today. And our electorate has installed as president a man who dares say aloud what most, if not all, others have silently affirmed:

        “Real power is (I hate to use the word) fear.”[4]

        Add to this the US military doctrine known as “Shock and Awe,” first used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which calls for using massive military force to degrade a population’s infrastructure (water, sanitation, power, etc., all of which violates international law) sufficient to provoke trembling terror, collapsing the will to carry on.[5] This kind of awe is the polar opposite of that coming from the promised new city, whose residents “will be in awe and will tremble at the abundant prosperity and peace I provide for it” (Jeremiah 33:9).

§  §  §

“I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages,
who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living
among you of justice, for these people do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.”
—Malachi 3:5

§  §  §

        Those conversant with the language of Scripture will say, well, of course. Everywhere you turn in the Bible it’s fear of the Lord, fear of the Lord. What’s not to like in our president’s conclusion (and near-global consensus)?

        Does not this recognition alone undermine all religious appeal to confession and forgiveness, penitence and reparation, a promised atonement through which “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6)? Isn’t it all just a big mob-conspired protection racket? A pyramid of escalating overlords, beginning in the intimate relations of home and stretching to cosmic proportion?

        People of faith—and here I speak specifically to my own Christian community—have a helluva lot of work to do to even get a public hearing, not to mention bringing a coherent, convincing case. To put it precisely, what is to be said about the option of penitential living constituting the rule of faith, that distinguishes its pursuit as a trustworthy alternative to what, from all appearance, is the inevitable reign of fear and its trembling wake? Mining the depths of the Jewish tradition’s understanding of Rosh Hashanah (the prospect of beginning anew) and Yom Kippur (penitence as the key to bounty and freedom) is an urgent undertaking.

§  §  §

“Prayers of confession are usually short or long, depending on where
clergy want to focus the congregation’s attention. Usually, such
prayers are throw-aways, diversions. Everyone knows that the
congregation is going to go on as if the prayer had never been
offered. Especially for the affluent and empowered, prayers
of confession are prayed quite easily. Lunch is right
around the corner. Gated homes await them.”
—Marc Ellis, “Communal confession on Yom Kippur”[6]

§  §  §

        Our problem begins with this rather obvious fact: Our principal association with penitence and confession is self-abasement. The primary dictionary definition of penance is “voluntary self-punishment inflicted as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong.” Do a web search for images of “penance” and much of what you will get are pictures of people literally whipping themselves.

        Karl Marx was not the first, nor the last, to conclude that religion is more or less a form of crowd control, with God as the ultimate godfather with, by extension, stately powers of all sorts serving as underbosses. That the latter are often in violent conflict with each other confirms, rather than questions, this conclusion.

        Conflict mediation specialist Byron Bland writes that two truths make healthy community difficult: that the past cannot be undone, and that the future cannot be controlled. However, two counterforces are available to address these: the practice of forgiveness, which has the power to change the logic of the past; and covenant-making, which creates islands of stability and reliability in a faithless, sometimes ruthless world.[7]

§  §  §

“Repentance is the response to grace that overcomes the past and
opens onto a new future. Repentance distinguishes Christian
life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not
with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not
‘Repent’ but ‘Repent for the Kingdom of God is near.’”
—John Shea[8]

§  §  §

        Yom Kippur does not mean self-abasement. It is not a day for self-reviling and personal shame; it is not a day for groveling in the presence of the divine, as if God takes pleasure in punishing and condemning us—much less watching us punish and condemn ourselves or each other.

        God is not a sadist. And the call to confession and repentance is not a form of masochism.

        In Judaism, the focus of Yom Kippur’s call to repentance is not resignation and despair over our weakness and sin (great as they are), but renewal and hope, the chance to start again.

        The purpose of repentance is not retaliation but restoration; the focus is not on exacting revenge but on enacting repair.

        The function of repentance is summed up in the Hebrew phrase with origins in the second century CE Mishnah: “Tikkun olam,” repair of the world.

        Tikkun olam: This is the driving force behind all of Scripture.

        Tikkun olam: This is the purpose of God.

        Tikkun olam: This was the mission of Jesus.

        Tikkun olam: This is the animating power of the Holy Spirit.

        The practice of tikkun olam, played out in the Newer Testament’s terms, is the basis of Jesus’ command to love enemies.

        Tikkun olam: In the words of the Apostle Paul, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

        Tikkun olam: By its posture and practice all lording behavior is unveiled, stands under judgment, and is destined for perdition.

§  §  §

“‘Fear of God’ is not cowering, frightened intimidation. Those who fear God
are not wimps and are not preoccupied with excessive need to please God.
They are rather those who have arrived at a fundamental vision of reality
about life with God, who have enormous power, freedom, and energy
to live out that vision. ‘Fear of God’ is liberating and not restrictive,
because it gives confidence about the true shape of the world.
—Walter Brueggemann[9]

§  §  §

        The wreckage wrought by human behavior is real; but the future is not thereby fated. Mercy opens a portal to repentance, a repentance signified not so much as creedal precision, or ritual purity, or counting spiritual calories, as by the hard work of repairing the damage done by our disordered desires.

        Repentance is not about you or me. It is about a world created in delight, maintained by the prerogative of divine mercy, and destined for deliverance from its agony—though not by dread’s might, nor by fear’s fright, but by my spirit says the Blessed One (cf. Zechariah 4:6).

        The longing for vengeance, which we all feel when violated in ways large and small, is rooted in the demands of justice. But retaliation almost always escalates the cycle of violence, until it becomes self-perpetuating: an eye not just for an eye, but for a piece of scalp, too, and on and on until the whole world is not simply blinded but obliterated.

        Workers of mercy are not sheepish well-wishers but daredevils: Guided by beatific vision, steeled by fear-conquering faith, and informed by strategic calculation, intent on interrupting the cycle of enmity, sowing a culture of peace to yield a harvest of justice (cf. Hosea 10:12 and James 3:18).

        If—as people of faith are fond of saying—God is not done with us, then neither can we be done with each other. The failure to love enemies is a hedge on Jesus. The only toll on the road to Heaven is a broken neighbor as a companion.

§  §  §

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;
for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever
fears has not reached perfection in love.”
—1 John 4:18

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

[1]Chabad.org

[2] Imam Bukhari and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj ahadith (official collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad).

[3] Both Jewish and Islamic calendars are lunar and do not sync with the modern Gregorian solar calendar. Thus, dates for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and other special Jewish holidays occur at different times of the commonplace year. For more see “A Gentile’s Guide to the Jewish Holidays,” Judaism 101.

[4] Presidential candidate Donald Trump in a 31 March 2016 interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Washington Post

[5] For more see Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock And Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (National Defense University, 1996), XXIV

[6] Mondoweiss, quoting Rabbi Brant Rosen’s confession to be read during his congregation’s Yom Kippur service

[7] Stanford Report https://news.stanford.edu/news/2001/february14/byron-214.html

[8] The Challenge of Jesus, p. 4.

[9] Remember You Are Dust, p. 17

by Ken Sehested, with Kyle Childress
Written in the days following 11 September 2001

"How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become,
she that was great among the nations! . . . She weeps bitterly in the night. . . ."
Lamentations 1:1

Late yesterday morning—midway through a long car trip to visit my Mom and several mentors—I awoke in the home of a good friend, in the Nacogdoches, Texas, to the news repeatedly described in media accounts as the "horrific" events in New York City and Washington, D.C. Parties yet unnamed and unknown (though suspected) hijacked our own agents of affluence to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, twin symbols of global economic and military dominance.

As the details and graphic visual images flood our ears and eyes, "horrific" seems an understated refrain, and we are left repeating it, over and again, to underscore that which is too terrible for words. Knowing that my first-born and my beloved sister-in-law lived less than a mile from Manhattan's southern shore made the shock all the more poignant.

Here I sit, in the oldest city in Texas, reflecting via ancient Scripture on the archetypal drama of human savagery. The shedding of blood begun by Cain—against his brother Abel, early in Genesis 4—was geometrically escalated, by chapter's end, in Lamech's threat to avenge his personal honor seventy-times-seven. God's refusal of revenge—indeed, the Divine prohibition again human vengeance—was ignored with impunity then no less than now. It is an old story. But there is another story, indeed a counter-story, which can and must be told by the believing community.

What may we say, dare we say, in the face of such horror? Is there any hope, any healing, any harvest of mercy to be had?

There are, of course, reminders both of pastoral insight and prophetic challenge demanding our attention.

Pastoral insight

At a moment like this, the first engagement of the Body of Christ is to engage in the ministry of grieving—grieving for the yet-uncounted individuals and families whose lives have been crushed or crumbled by this catastrophe. We weep with those who weep.

Holy grief, the practice of lament, is not a form of self-centered pity but the willingness to crouch with those forced to their knees in the face of devastation. The billowing grief rising from this trauma is very real and will not be disposed of with the power of positive thinking. We have no quick answers or explanations—or even plans of action.

Among other things, the ministry of grieving is important because it implies that the community of faith has not lost touch with the pulse of God's intent in creation, an intent confirmed in the rainbow promise of Genesis 6 (following the flood), ratified in cruciform career of Jesus and dramatically broadcast in John's concluding Revelation promising the new heaven and the new earth, when all tears will be dried and death itself shall be defeated (21:1-4).

Furthermore, the ministry of grieving reminds us that we are not engineers of the coming Reign of Peace, but witnesses, pointing to where this Promise is breaking out even in our midst (and, conversely, where it is being opposed). Grieving is also a powerful antidote to the arrogance of self-sufficiency, to confidence in wishful thinking and human control. There is a sustaining force in the universe that we can trust, which is available but not manageable.

The second engagement for the Body of Christ is to intercede in prayer for the casualties of this catastrophe. Intercessory prayer is not a form of spiritual hocus-pocus; we have no magical wand to wave, to make the hurt go away. "The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much," according to the King James rendering (James 5:16). We may debate exactly how this is so, but this much is clear: intercessory prayer keeps us in a heightened state of readiness to intervene with compassion when the moment arises, which is the third call to the Body of Christ.

The third engagement for the church in the face of this catastrophe—and surely this moment feels like an apocalypse to those of us in the U.S.—is to remind our congregations that the root meaning of "apocalypse" is not the advent of destruction but the occasion for uncovering. While God is certainly not the author of this pain, there is the possibility that, out of the grief, an unveiling may occur; and we must prepare to ask and respond to the question, "What is God saying to us?"

Left: "Tribute in Light" is an ephemeral light sculpture comprised of 88 searchlights placed at near the World Trade Center, projecting two beams of light that echo what was once the twin towers. Photo by Vivalapenler, Getty Images

Prophetic challenge

Grieving and intercession make us available for the ministry of mercy and comfort. This, of course, is what U.S. President George W. Bush attempted in his speech to the nation Tuesday evening when he referenced the psalmist's affirmation of hard-won hope: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (Psalm 23:4). It is very appropriate for the nation's leader to speak words of succor to the people. And the believing community should stand ready and willing to echo and amplify those words whenever possible.

Nevertheless, the Body of Christ must remain alert when Caesar quotes Scripture. The text of Holy Writ is forever threatened with being co-opted, is always in danger of being robed in the garments of empire, of being mobilized to endorse injustice, of being segregated from intended conclusion. And in Tuesday night's episode, President Bush neglected to note that the text he quoted pushes forward to the point of table fellowship with enemies.

Which brings me to the parallel, if less comfortable, work of prophetic challenge to which the Body of Christ has been ordained. An essential work of Gospel proclamation is theological interrogation of political propaganda. In short, the Body of Christ is called to ask the questions currently being disguised by newspaper headlines.

For instance: Not so long ago, following the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, state authorities, news media and common mobs alike began harassing people of Arab descent living in the U.S., only to discover that responsibility actually lay with one of our own decorated war veterans of European lineage.

Even if someone the caliber of Osama bin Laden, whose name has frequently been mentioned as a suspect behind the simultaneous, bloody attacks on the market-military monuments, is found to be responsible, the believing community needs to recall an embarrassing bit of history. It was the U.S. who originally recruited, trained and supplied bin Laden and his colleagues for guerilla warfare. Back then, his services were as a "hot" proxy agent in our "cold" war with the Soviet Union. He has since found a more lucrative offer on the "free market" of global political violence.

And of course there's the recent demonization of Saddam Hussein, whose original chemical weapons arsenal was supplied by the U.S. back when he was still our ally against the Iranian Ayatollah.

To our shame, and our peril, we have little knowledge of a millennium of Western meddling in Arab affairs, deposing this ruler, propping up that one, with no criteria other than cost/benefit calculations. Few in the U.S. realize that our nation, aided by Great Britain, has waged the longest bombing campaign in human history against Iraq. Since the formal end of the Gulf War—and without even the semblance of United Nations' authority—we have over the past decade, on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, continued to rain death from the skies.

UNICEF, the U.N.'s own child-welfare agency, has indicated that at least a half-million Iraqi children have died since the end of Desert Storm from causes directly related to the international economic sanctions. When former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright was asked point-blank on national television if the death of half a million children was worth the price of opposing Hussein, she said yes. We say no. The competition of loyalty is that stark. Choose this day whom you will serve.

Elisha's transforming initiative

There is another way, an option other than flight (in the face of genuine evil) or fight (violent resistance to injustice). It is a common, though grossly unattended, melody in Gospels—repeatedly echoed by Paul—the most insistent note of which is the stress on loving enemies. For the Body of Christ, the failure to love enemies is to hedge on Jesus.

Yet this theme is woven into the fabric of Scripture. Take for example the story of the Prophet Elisha's transforming initiative recorded in 2 Kings (6:11-23).

In the sixth chapter we are told that the King of Aram (Syria) is menacing Israel, sending raiding parties across the border to steal crops, livestock, even young people for sale as slaves. It was a conscious policy designed to effect Israel's submission to Aramean political, economic and military control, to make it a "client" state.

Political intrigue enters the story when the King of Aram notices that Israel seems to know in advance of all the King's military strategies. He suspects a "mole" in his security and intelligence apparatus. After extensive investigation, his trusted aides return with this shocking news: No, there's no spy in our camp. The problem is that Israelite prophet, Elisha, who somehow divines the King's most highly-guarded orders.

Left: Grieving at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Photo by Mark Kauzlarich for The Wall Street Journal

So the King of Aram orders that Elisha be "neutralized." Troops are assembled; they undertake a cross-border raid on the prophet's home; and under the stealth of night, surround Elisha's headquarters.

As dawn breaks, the prophet's student intern arises to fetch the newspaper. When he steps outside in the cool morning air, the sight of an Aramean army startles the residual slumber from his eyes. Panicked, he rouses his mentor.

When Elisha finally calms his protégé enough to get a coherent story, the prophet seems curiously unimpressed. "But we're surrounded by an army!" the intern exclaims. Elisha then initiates a prayer meeting. "Oh, Lord, please open his eyes that he may see." After the "amen," Elisha urges the young man to take another peak out the window. And he was dumbfounded by what he saw. The Aramean army was still there, armed and eager; yet surrounding their ranks was an even larger, encircling army of angels astride flaming chariots and horses.

At that moment the Aramean army advanced on the prophet. Elisha prayed again: "Close their eyes so they cannot see." And the entire army of Aram is struck blind. As the chaos ensues, Elisha steps out of the house, calls to the commanding general, saying, "I hear you're looking for the Prophet Elisha?" "Yes," comes the stuttered response from a confused and frightened voice.

"Well, he's not here," Elisha nonchalantly responds. "But I can take you to where he is." So this massive army, in comical, stumbling formation, meekly fall in line behind Elisha. Whereupon they are led straight to Israel's capital, to the king of Israel, inside the walled city—delivered into the waiting hands of their enemies!

The Israelite king is overjoyed and immediately sets about to order a slaughter. But Elisha has something else in mind. He prays again, this time to have the Aramean soldiers' eyesight restored. All present are then further confounded by Elisha's next directive. "There will be no killing here today. Put away your weapons; gather food and drink. Today we feast!"

And the mortal enemies sit down at common tables for a grand meal. When everyone is satisfied, Elisha instructs the Arameans to return to their home. And the story ends with these brief words, "And the Arameans no longer troubled the land of Israel" (6:8-23).

Part of our prophetic calling is to insist that there are rival, realistic and spiritually-informed political strategies which suggest an alternative to those policies which depend on superior fire-power and assume the need for political domination. We lift them up and, together with all who share this common vision, recommend them to our nation's leaders.

The Lamb of God

For the Body of Christ, the pivot point of the vision sustaining such political alternatives is portrayed in the symbolically-elaborate narrative of John's Revelation. In the fifth chapter, there is a picture of the end of history, the ultimate horizon. As the sacred book of life is revealed, an angel asks, "Who is worthy to open the scroll?" The text concludes that none is able, no one in heaven or on earth. Neither kings nor presidents, generals nor multinational magnates is able. And the narrator weeps at this admission.

Yet a member of the heavenly hosts exclaims that there is one and only one capable of opening the scroll: the conquering Lion of Judah.

But suddenly, without warning, explanation or transition, the image shifts and the text turns. Instead of a lion standing ready between the throne and heavenly hosts, the narrator identifies a lamb: "I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. . . ." Indeed, the Lion of Judah has been transposed as the Lamb of God. The Lion of Judah has conquered by being the Lamb slain. And as the Lamb opens the book, countless creatures and angels sing hymns of praise. "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing . . . for ever and ever!"

Overcoming the world's enmity will indeed come at the cost of much blood. But in the end only the power to relinquish life, rather than require it or remand it, results in a reconciled, restored community.

It is possible to fearlessly traverse the valley of the shadow of death; but not because we are the meanest S.O.B. in sight. No, because we have learned, as Jesus taught, that only those willing to lose life, for his sake—that is to say, for the sake of the promised Peaceable Reign of God—will find it.

P.S. (especially to pastoral leaders): Facing this tragedy will obviously require a season rather than a Sunday. There are multiple layers to this trauma, including the festering question, "Why do these people hate us so much?" When the time comes for this latter question, I urge you to have this dialogue, at least in part, in conversation with those who will likely become targets for racial/religious violence. They may very well need us to help fend off sporadic or calculated acts of vengeance. We also need them to help us comprehend the history that has prompted such hatred.

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Kyle Childress is pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, Texas.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org