VOL. 149, NO. 44 of the Biblical Recorder dated December 3, 1983
Beirut and Grenada: God’s
Question
By: S. Bryant
Kendrick, Jr.
Chaplain to Students, Bowman Gray School of Medicine
(The following message
was delivered at an ecumenical service in Winston-Salem called to express
concern over the bombing of the Marine Corps Headquarters in Beirut and the
invasion of Grenada. For his text,
Kendrick selected Isaiah 65:17-25.)
We are here
in this service of worship because of the recent events which have happened in
Beirut and in Grenada. The explosion at
the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut has sent shock waves of grief and concern
into our hearts. We mourn our countrymen
who have died and share the sufferings of those who were wounded. And now many questions are emerging –
questions concerning why we are in Lebanon, questions about what we can hope to
accomplish there, questions about the adequacy of the defense of our personnel,
questions about who is responsible for this act of terrorism, questions about
how we retaliate. All of these questions
have mushroomed in the halls of Congress and in the media and they are being
asked in the hearts of the relatives of those who have died and who were
wounded.
As these
events were pouring forth from Beirut, as we watched the body count grow day by
day, the news of the United States’ invasion of Grenada splashed across the
headlines of our consciousness. More
Americans dead and wounded, more and more families who have lost a father, a
brother, a son, and the chorus of questions grew louder. Were the American medical students in Grenada
in real danger? What was the purpose of
this act of aggression? What is the meaning
of the Cuban presence there: Is their
presence connected to arms shipments to Nicaragua? Were they hoping to be able to invade other
nations in the Caribbean?
I am not
here to discuss these questions or to debate the issue of whether we should or
should not have troops in Lebanon or whether we should or should not have
invaded Grenada. I am here to pose the
question of what these events might be saying to us in the light of our
faith. The question which we who are the
people of God must raise is “What would God have us to see in the midst of this
grief? What would God try to reveal to
us and require of us when we experience these deaths, and what does God try to
say to us in the political questions which these events have forced to the
forefront of our attention?
You have
heard the scripture from the book of Isaiah (65:17-25) – a word from the hand
of one who knew the impact of war and destruction on his own people, and yet
one who could look into the cruel face of history and see beyond to a new
day. This reading from Isaiah envisions
a world that is wiser and better than ours.
The inhabitants of the world of Isaiah’s vision have learned how to live
at peace. Their world is not hobbled in
its development by old hatreds. It has
broken free of the control which the desire for revenge and power exercise over
the events of our world and time. Isaiah
envisions a new day in which there is happiness and joy, no longer weeping at
the cries of grief. Here is a timeless
pattern where people live and work without fear of oppression or fear of losing
to another what they have produced. In
Isaiah’s world there is fellowship with God which is immediate and
internal. And the values of fellowship
and interdependency rather than dominance and submission characterize the
community’s existence. In comparison to
the realities of our world so clearly focused in the events in Beirut and
Grenada, Isaiah’s world seems light years away from us. And yet, if we value such a vision, if we
know in our hearts that it is true and whole in comparison to our world which
is false and broken, we must question ourselves concerning what we are called
to do to move our world closer to that which Isaiah saw. What must we change? What must we repent of? What must we put to death in ourselves so
that God can be freer to work the wonders of His creating Spirit?
In order to
answer these questions we must begin at the most basic level of self-knowledge
and self-identity. For in Christ we have
the possibility of participating in a new identity, a new identity which all of
God’s creatures shall know in the final days.
Hear these words from Galatians, 3rd chapter, 28-29th
verses: “There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are
all one in Christ Jesus and if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s
offspring, heirs according to the promise.”
From the
point of view of God as expressed in this portion of Scripture, our division of
the world into various nations, groups, types and classes which we think are so
important is seen to be really quite irrelevant, for from the point of view of
scripture all of these groups are only parts of the larger whole whose goal is
an experience of living in which God will be all in all. But when that which is only a partial truth
is treated as though it were the whole truth, we lose the capacity to see the
unity of human community which is God’s intended future. The signs of our failure to apprehend this
truth are everywhere. We don’t have to
look to Beirut or Grenada to see it.
It’s embedded in the very language we use to refer to people as them as
opposed to us.
Hear these
words: Wop, wetback, dago, nigger,
honky, gook – these are the words of sin because they deny what God has said
about our essential unity, and it is the depersonalizing attitude contained in
these words which makes it possible for us so easily to go to war and enables
us to so easily keep aggression and hostility directed to those that we no
longer even identify as our brothers and sisters.
I was
involved in a war – the Vietnam War. I
was not involved in combat in Southeast Asia; my job as a Navy medic was to
treat wounded marines in a Navy hospital.
One of my patients was a young man from Florida who had been severely
wounded in his legs by machine gun fire.
After treating his wounds one night, he and I started talking and he
took out a picture from his wallet and showed it to me. He had taken it off the body of a North
Vietnamese soldier whom he had killed.
The photograph was one like each of us would have in our wallets or
pocketbook, or in an album at home. It
was a family portrait, a young Vietnamese man, his wife, and two children
dressed up in their holiday best, smiling.
What broke through to my mind and what I can never forget is that this
man who had been the enemy of my country was a human being like myself, whose
life was intimately connected to a family just like mine, and who now was
connected to me.
It is only
when we find ways to rediscover our primal connection one to another that we
can begin to take the first step in moving toward that world envisioned by
Isaiah. God has created us to live as
persons in community, not as individuals in isolation and alienation from
others, not as members of little groups who are able to point fingers of blame
and hostility at others. The church is
the leading edge of the recognition of this truth and the reality of this unity
of all persons founded in the love and mercy of God.
We are, all
of us, part of a worldwide event, a continuing historical revelation the coming
into being of the humanity manifested in Jesus Christ. We have a responsibility to further the
humanizing process wherever we can, and we retard this divine purpose whenever
we continue to insist that we act in the world from narrowly defined spheres of
self-interest.
These are the
questions which I ask you to ponder as we explore the issues raised by Beirut
and Grenada. How can we move forward
from Beirut and Grenada so that we might help reduce the need for violent
solutions to human problems? How can we
move forward from Beirut and Grenada toward that kind of world envisioned by
Isaiah which is wiser and better than ours?
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