On February 19, 1945, twenty-six year old Bill Curry landed with the U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima and for thirty-six days fought in one of bloodiest battles of World War II.  Iwo Jima is a South Pacific island so tiny that its land mass could fit between here and downtown Dallas north and Fair Park east.  On that eight square miles of volcanic ash, 6,825 Americans and 22,000 Japanese died in fighting so ferocious that more Marines were awarded the Congressional Medal honor for bravery in that battle than for any other battle in American history.  Bill was there, saw it all and did his duty. 

One Sunday, fifty-five years later, Bill came through that door leading to the atrium, leaned his eighty-two year old body on his cane with one hand and took mine with the other.  He squeezed hard and, peering through tears just about to brim over, he asked me, “Pastor, do you think God will forgive me for all those people I killed?”  His question broke my heart and left me standing there speechless.  Bill and I met later that week.  We talked, read scripture and prayed.  I genuinely believe he found the peace that had illuded him for over five decades.  Not many weeks later, on February 17, 2001, exactly two days shy of fifty-six years since he went ashore at Iwo Jima, we laid Bill to rest at Laureland.  Bill Curry is one of the few true heroes I’ve ever known.  And, his question still haunts me, especially as we prepare to go to war with Iraq.  “Do you think God will forgive me for all those people I killed?”

Not many would question that WWII was America’s just war.  When Bill went off to war, he was serving a nation that was deeply unified in purpose and working with unprecedented international consensus.  All the more, then, Bill’s question reminded me that war, even when it is for the best possible reasons, exacts a heavy toll in the lives of those we ask to fight it for us.  Yet, until nearly the day he died, Bill lived with the unresolved guilt of the blood he carried on his hands for you and me.  It also makes me ask, as we prepare to go to war with Iraq, what will we do these hands of ours now? 

That is specifically the question Jesus posed to his disciples and to all who would ever claim to want to follow him.  Jesus told us what he intended to do with his hands.  He would let them be nailed to a cross and “undergo great suffering.”  The blood and the shame of our sin would be on his hands, for our sake.  Jesus spoke so openly of his impending death that it must have embarrassed Peter.  Even then, honor went to those who rose through the ranks, not who got demoted.  Still today, we honor those who achieve higher and higher positions of authority and power.  Our folklore is weaved throughout with stories of those who found a way of rising from log cabin beginnings to White House endings.  Here, Jesus is talking about moving back the other direction.  The way Peter heard it, the headlines of the Jerusalem Post would soon read, “God loses (Thanks to Kenny Wood).”  Jesus would face a very shameful end.  Peter must have been embarrassed so he pulled Jesus aside and asked him to tone it down a bit, all this talk about losing.

Jesus saw right through Peter’s words to his embarrassment.  Then, after scolding Peter severely, Jesus told Peter and everyone else gathered around what they’d have to do with their hands if they wanted to be his followers.  They would have to “take up their cross and follow” the loser.  They’d have to follow him into the shame and humiliation of enduring the suffering of others so that they might live.   Every attempt, Jesus said, to save our own life, to protect ourselves, our power and authority, at all costs, will only have the reverse affect.  “‘For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,’” Jesus said. 

So, whether or not we want to experience God’s eternal purpose in our lives has everything to do with how seriously we will take Jesus at his word and whether we will join him in his shame, which means being willing to suffer, with Jesus, the humiliation of losing so that others might live.  I’ve never understood verse thirty-eight in this text, the part about Jesus being ashamed of those who are ashamed of him except to say this.  “We will be judged by our response to God’s shame, his losing face, on the cross.  We will be judged for our belief that glory is possible without crucifixion (Thanks to Kenny Wood).”  So, if we would take Jesus seriously, what will we do with these hands of ours now? 

Taking on a subject like this is like trying to preach on the history of the world in twenty-three minutes.  It’s also like finding yourself standing in the middle of a feedlot and hoping to get to the gate without stepping in anything.  When you’re having roast preacher for lunch today, at least give him the benefit of the doubt at the point of his sincerity and conviction.  Feelings, opinions and convictions about this war run the gamut, even in this congregation.  You should have seen my email box this week.  Many of us, Nancy and me included, have loved ones who serve in the military.  Before we leave here today, we will pray for them, for our President and for our enemies, as our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us to.  We thank God for those who serve in our military and who, by their strength, serve notice in a dangerous world that those who have no respect for human life cannot operate with impunity.  But, my job is not to argue in the political arena here today.  My job is to engage us in asking the question Jesus posed by his words.  What will we do with these hands?

With these hands, will we wage war?  A dear friend of mine, Randall Parks, has lived in Cairo, Egypt for some twenty years now.  He tells me that we Americans have absolutely no idea how much we are hated in much of the Arab world.  We’re hated for our wealth and especially the way we use it to support Israel without regard to the impact of that support on Israel’s Arab neighbors.  Our American news is often slanted in reporting what happens in that part of the world.  A recently published survey found that most television viewers believe that more Israelis have been killed by suicide bombers than Palestinians have been killed by Israelis.  In fact, since September 2000, 559 Israelis have died but 1626 Palestinians have been killed in reprisal (Glasgow University Media Group as quoted in “EthixBytes,” Christian Ethics Today, Volume 9, No. 1, February, 2003, p. 3).  Did you know that?

This, however, is especially troubling.  With the fervent, heated and well-funded backing of many in the Christian community whose worldview is largely shaped by a rigidly Old Testament dispensational interpretation of scripture and who believe that Christians are duty bound to protect the Jewish state at all costs no matter what that might cost anyone else created in God’s image including Israel’s Arab neighbors, the United States supports the Israeli government to the tune of $3 billion dollars a year.  They fly American made warplanes and drive American made tanks into the refugee camps.  Any wonder why we are hated in much of the Arab world?  Should 9/11 really surprise us?  Every time an F-16 rockets a refugee camp, the Palestinians, and their Arab and Muslim brothers throughout the Middle East, see the hand of America raised against them.  How can we ever hope to understand, or be understood by, those whose children keep getting slaughtered by guns and bullets our tax dollars provide, often in the name of Jesus? 

God has instituted government for our protection and security.  And, regretfully, there are times when war is necessary, when our hand is forced.  And, we should thank God that our President speaks freely of his personal relationship with Jesus and that he reads his Bible and prays daily.  But, we should be careful not to assume that simply because our President reads his Bible and prays and has a personal relationship with Jesus that all the actions of the nation he leads are synonymous with the purposes of the Kingdom of God.  Tony Campolo is even more caustic.  “If we are going to win the Muslim world to Christ, we cannot make stupid statements about their religion and we cannot, in fact, engage in a holy war against them.  American Christians,” Campolo says, “have taken off their What Would Jesus Do? bracelets and replaced them with American flags (Tony Campolo, “EthixBytes,” Christian Ethics Today, Vol. 9, No. 1, February, 2003, p. 3).”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand all the wars recorded in the Old Testament as the acts of God.  What I do know is that by the time we get to the New Testament, the God that Jesus reveals is not interested in taking life but giving life, not killing but redeeming.  Aren’t we all glad?

So, we may have to go to war because we live in a fallen world.  But, “When we go to war we go as people who have fallen short.  Where we go to war we aren’t doing God’s work.  We are doing our work in God’s world (Thanks to Dr. Jim Somerville, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.).”  We should never confuse nationalism and patriotism with the will of God.  Churches in Germany that draped their altars with Nazi flags during WWII did more than lose their prophetic voice.  They became partners with the kingdom of darkness.  Our Baptist forefathers fought and died for the principle of the separation of church and state for good reason.  This would not be a very good time for us to forget history.  And, if war must come, at least may the church not be heard applauding, with these hands.  I was raised a Republican.  There, I said it.  And, no too few of you have worked hard on trying to correct that part of my upbringing.  But, I have come to learn that, if we claim to be followers of Jesus, we are not first Republican or Democrat.  We are first and foremost disciples of our crucified and risen Lord!

There is no question that we must deal with Sadaam Hussein.  I am told that today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the day he gassed 5,000 Kurds, his own people.  No one seriously doubts what would eventually happen if Sadaam had access to a means of delivering weapons of mass destruction.  His presence not only threatens the lives of millions of innocents but also puts world peace at risk.  But, every time we raise our hand to wage war in that part of the world, no matter what the reason, we swat a hornet’s nest of anger and resentment because we shame a very proud people, just as we were shamed on 9/11.  Is there not another way? 

Maybe we have to go get Sadaam.  But, many brilliant, patriotic Americans have suggested we try at least one more thing before we pull the trigger.  If we go to war this week, do we really believe this world will be a safer place next week?  And, what about the next?  Even the fighting, rape and murder going on today in what was once Yugoslavia is the unfinished revenge work of a war that supposedly ended in 1945.  Where does it stop?  And, if it doesn’t, then our children and grandchildren will pay the price for this war long after we’re gone as those we’ve shamed with our hands, in order to get to Sadaam, seek revenge with their own.  War never ends the shame and the revenge it fuels.  It only transfers it to the shoulders of the next generation.  “The source of evil can be broken only by one who is willing to sacrifice himself in Christlike fashion, to absorb evil and suffering into himself, without yielding to the temptation of causing others to suffer (Simone Weil).”

With these hands, will we break the cycle of evil and suffering?  On April 16, 1947, a transport ship loaded with tons of ammonium nitrate was docked at Texas City just south of Houston on Galveston Bay.  A mysterious fire broke out and it blew up.  The blast was 400 times more powerful than the one that took down the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995; Texas City was all but wiped off the map.  As always happens in those kinds of disasters, there are stories of events so bizarre they are impossible to explain.

At the time of the blast, a young mother was standing over her baby.  She heard the explosion and instinctively reached into her infant’s son’s crib and put her hand, palm up, over his head.  At that moment, the walls trembled, glass came flying through the room and a shard pierced her palm all the way through.  Only the needle-sharp tip of the broken glass hit the baby and left a small wound on his forehead (Bill Minutaglio, City on Fire, Harper Collins Publishers, 2003, p. 130).  Had her hand not been there, in that instant, the baby would have died.  It’s difficult to miss the imagery here.  A baby’s life was spared because his mother used her hand to intervene and took the instrument of death into herself.  Just like Jesus.  Just like Jesus now calls on us to do. 

With these hands we can wage war.  Maybe we will have to.  But, at a bare minimum, we can start following Jesus where we live, in our closest relationships, and use our hands by absorbing into ourselves the suffering of others and, by so doing, break the cycle of evil.  What if, just what if, we took the money that will be spent to rebuild the World Trade Center and invested it instead in helping to rebuild the infrastructure of the Palestinian refugee camps.  Or, at least, took it and invested in discovering alternative sources of fuel so that we would not be so dependent elsewhere.  What if?  Would that help break the cycle of evil?  We’d have to eat our pride to do it.  But, what might happen if we did? 

Jesus has made it clear.  The only way we could be ashamed of him is because of the humiliation of identifying with the way he handled his own rejection and humiliation.  We only get to share his glory if we share his shame.  It may have been true that, when Jesus died, the headlines in Jerusalem would shout, "God Loses!"  But for those who have eyes to see, the moment of the cross is the coming of the power of God in Glory.  It is coronation.  So we either deny ourselves and lose our life too, or we go AWOL in shame (Thanks to Kenny Wood).”

As one Jew once wrote twenty centuries ago, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16),” and to the Palestinians and to the Iraqis and to Sadaam Hussein and to Osama Bin Laden and me and you, too.

We know how Bill Curry used his hands and how they carried his shame for us.  We know how Jesus used his hands. 

The only question for you and me is, what we will do, with these hands.