About war

The Rev. Douglas S. Long is pastor of North Raleigh United Church of Christ.

Not to depress anyone on this Easter morning, but is there really a question about what Jesus would say about war? Is there anything to wonder about here? After all, the Gospel of Luke proclaims that upon Jesus' birth the very heavens opened up and angels sang the message of "peace on earth to all persons." In one of Jesus' first sermons, he proclaimed, "Blessed are the peacemakers!" He expounded later, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." And it's not like Jesus had a change of heart late in life, either. On the night prior to the crucifixion, he stopped one of his followers from violently attacking those who arrested him. "Put your sword back," he said. "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword."

What would Jesus say about war?

He lived in a land occupied by Imperial Rome and was forced along with all his countrymen to pay taxes to this military power. He never resisted. The Gospel accounts indicate that people constantly addressed Jesus as Son of David, transparently begging him to act as King David of long ago, set up a political power, sway the crowds against the foreign army, revolt and win their freedom ... but in the face of all this foreign force, with the soldiers at every corner, the potentates of Rome in control of the Judean landscape, Jesus chose not to revolt, not to pick up a sword or encourage others to, but instead he lived a non-violent life of grace and love, a life that led to a violent self-giving death.

We know what Jesus said about war in his day.

Remembering that Jesus taught his followers also to live as he did, what, can we assume, would Jesus say about war today?

I believe he's saying: "How dare you call yourself a Christian nation. How dare you call yourselves followers of me and bomb other children of God in my name. How dare you name missiles 'peacemakers,' name attack submarines 'Corpus Christi' and label tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians now dead in a preemptive fiasco as 'collateral damage.' "

I believe Jesus is saying, "Put down your swords. Pull out your troops. Now ... in my name."

Thanks largely to a wonderful group of women known as CodePink, a few Iraqi women are now scouring the United States, telling their eyewitness accounts of the almost unutterable pain they have witnessed. One, Faiza Al-Araji, a Baghdad water engineer, said in Santa Monica recently: "There is something strange in this country. The people who have commitment to Christianity are aggressive, while the people who have no commitment to religion speak in humanity language. We believe, as Muslims, [that the] message of Jesus was peace. I can't imagine there is a Christian who is war maker."

What would Jesus really say about war?

Actually, I'm not sure Jesus would say anything.

I think he'd just weep.

I think he's weeping now.