"The Cost of Saying, 'No'
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Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Text: John 2:13-22
It was March 16, 1945 when a young Canadian man, a member of the Essex Scottish Regiment, wrote a letter home to his parents in Toronto. The letter confirmed what they had feared: That Bob Sanderson was a prisoner-of-war. Not only that, he was in Stalag 11B. His parents did not receive the letter at the time it was mailed - they only received it after the war was over and, thankfully, Bob returned home safely. Had they realized where he was, they would have been terrified, for Stalag 11B was one of the most ignominious, dangerous and awful prison camps in the whole of the Second World War.
It was so bad that later on a movie was made about it: The Little Red Hen of Stalag 11B. In his book, Forgotten Heroes, Canadian writer John Mellor recounts stories about many of those who were prisoners-of-war from Dieppe living in Stalag 11B. This is how he described it:
It was a nightmare - wet, muddy and filthy. Food was practically non-existent and the life-saving Red Cross parcels had not been issued for a long time. As winter closed its grip around the compound, conditions deteriorated. There was little fuel; the huts were miserably cold. Gradually, under the starvation diet, the flesh began to wither and shrink on their bones so the prisoners had little or no resistance to the intense cold. Tuberculosis, bronchitis and rheumatism became rampant throughout the camp, and although the small British medical
Staff fought desperately to save the men, the mortality rate climbed rapidly. In mid-winter they were informed that their single blankets and mattresses would be taken away. If conditions had previously been miserable, now they became intolerable! At night they were forbidden to leave the hut to relieve themselves, and to ensure they didn't, savage Doberman Pinscher dogs freely roamed the compound each night. How long could the Canadians at Fällingbostel be expected to hold out before dying of starvation and illness?
Terrible! What cost some people bore! What scars have remained for those who returned! It is not just those who were victims by death; so many were touched, influenced and troubled by war.
Six hundred-and-thirty-thousand members of the Canadian Army were in the Second World War: 74,000 of them were casualties; 23,000 of them died. Yet, as the mists of time descend and each successive generation passes, it is so easy to forget: To forget those who stood against tyranny; to forget those who fought for freedom; to forget those who gave their lives, both their todays and tomorrows, for us. It is hard for us to comprehend the cost of saying, “No.” I realize that no liturgy, no movies, no poems, no sentiments, no music, no anthems, no sermons of mine, will be able to do justice to those who bore that cost. Still, we ought to speak and remember the cost of saying, “No.”
Just a few days ago in this very sanctuary, we buried one of our own who had led tanks into southern Sicily. He rarely, if ever, talked of his experiences. He came to Remembrance Day services here over the last 10 years and never told me what he had endured or seen: So many memories, so few words to express them, so incapable of conveying the cost of saying, “No.” I realize the world has changed a great deal since World War II. This is not the time for us to go through old animosities; it is not the time to revisit former hatreds. Indeed, it is fair to say that those who were previously enemies are now friends. Those who we remember committing atrocities are now brothers and sisters who stand with us. How wrong it would be to forget, just because times have changed. Indeed, the cost of saying, “No,” is not just something that is in the past. It is afternoon in Kandahar, 21 degrees and the hot sun is beating down on the heads of Canadian men and women as they face whatever danger they may have to bear today. And who knows the cost of saying no?
It is so hard to remember, but it is more dangerous to forget. Today we are gathered in a church; we are here to worship Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Life. We are here to celebrate the gospel. Is there anything in the life and teachings of Jesus that might help us understand the cost of saying, “No”?
This passage from John's Gospel tells a very, very difficult story. It is the story of how Jesus made a whip out of leather - a scourge. We are told in John's Gospel that he actually made it himself. As Canadian preacher and theologian, Dr. Victor Shepherd, rightly said in a sermon, when Jesus picked up this particular scourge, he did it in a premeditated manner. It wasn't borne out of anger; it wasn't a momentary lapse of ideals or faithfulness: He knew exactly what he was doing when he made that scourge. Very carefully, he went into the temple and began to use it.
It is significant that this passage appears in all four gospels, although in John it occurs at the beginning of Jesus' ministry while in Matthew, Mark and Luke, it is at the climax of his ministry. But clearly, for the early Church, it was a seminal moment when Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple.
Why did he do this? Why did this Prince of Peace, the Messiah, pick up a whip and drive people out of the temple in Jerusalem? Scholars have given a number of theories as to why he did this. There are basically two camps and, in a sense, both of them are right.
First, Jesus wanted to show the imminent destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. He knew that the day of wrath and reckoning was coming to the city and to the nation. Just like the prophet Jeremiah, he wanted to do something dramatic to let the people know what was coming and to prepare them for that day.
Secondly, Jesus was condemning the practices of inequity, exploitation and materialism in the temple. He wanted to purify it. Like many of the great prophets before, from Ezra to Nehemiah, he wanted to cleanse the temple; he wanted it to be a holy place. Jesus said, “You have made the House of God into a den of thieves!” and with the whip, he drove them out and overturned the tables.
Jesus was acting out of righteous indignation, out of a prophetic sense that what was happening was wrong. It wasn't a wrong to him; it wasn't something he was reacting to personally. He saw the potential destruction of his people and he wanted to show in a dramatic, forceful way that there comes a time to say, “No!”
Be under no misapprehension: Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew it would cost him his life. He knew that by going into the temple with a whip and overturning the tables, the religious elite would reject him. He knew that the city he had wept and prayed over would reject and denounce him and, most of all, that the powers of Rome would see him as the potential source of insurrection and crucify him. Be under no illusion. Jesus knew the cost of saying “No.”
I realize that there are people in this world who look to Jesus as a source of peace. I have always had a great affinity for pacifists and I've always believed that what they have to say must be heard. Indeed, I had friends, one in particular, who in prison in South Africa for two years stayed during the apartheid era because he refused to join the Defence Force and suppress the black majority. He did it because he felt the war was unjust, not because, as some people said, he was frightened or weak. There are others who believe that peaceful resistance is the way to overturn those who are violent. But even the Ghandis and Martin Luther Kings of this world still used peaceful resistance as a force and a technique against terror and violence. They understood the need for and efficacy of taking it on in such a way.
There are times when force is needed of a different kind. After all, do we not have within our own society officers of the law that we call the police force, who use force to protect the weak, to protect the innocent, to preserve freedom? Is that not why we had a member of the police force read the scripture this morning? They often put themselves in harm's way between an aggressor and an innocent person for the sake of good and right, and there are times when they use force.
Force is sometimes required. Indeed, it is sometimes out of fear of the cost of saying, “No,” the cost of putting oneself in harm's way, that people step back from doing the good that they should do and fail to promote the peace they desire and will. Is that not the lesson of Auschwitz? Is that not the lesson of Kosovo? Is that not the lesson of Darfur? Is that not possibly the lesson in the Congo, today?
There are times when there is a need to stand between the aggressor and the innocent, like Jesus, to show that inequity, sin and inhumanity can destroy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, there comes a time when you have to put “the spoke in the wheel” - the wheel that turns injustice and violence.”
This all raises the question: Is there not something that we, as Christians, should do? In May 1944, the Bishop of York, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Cyril Foster Garbett, addressed the Empire Club here in Toronto. This is what he said:
I am quite certain, though I am a lover of peace by my profession as a clergyperson and by conviction as a Christian, that in an imperfect world you cannot have peace unless force is used or force is ready to repress the aggressor. Within the nations, behind the laws, there is force to be used if necessary. Our police forces exist for that purpose and the more certain the action of that force, the less likely it is that the law will be broken. And the same is true of the international world.
I think he is right, but there remains a question: Are there not dangers in the use of force? What constraints should be placed on it? As Christians, what do we give to the discourse about the appropriateness of using force?
The Apostle Paul made it abundantly clear. He said that we are not to return evil for evil. In other words, we are not to react and return force in a way that matches the evil that is being used. There is a need to examine one's heart, soul, mind and intention and, if at all possible, to be at peace with the world; to strive for peace first, not as a last resort. Jesus said to forgive our enemies and love those who persecute us and indeed, that is right.
When one sees the innocent suffer, when one is not reacting out of a sense of evil or aggression, when one has exhausted all means of peace, when one has sought to do everything in one's power to forgive, when it is not about us, but it is about someone else, there is a need to step in and bear the cost of saying, “No.” How else do we protect the children of the world? How else do we protect the innocent? How else do we support the vulnerable? How else do we protect the starving, exploited and weak? Believe-you-me, in doing so, a cost is borne.
In this church, we have read the names of our members who died saying, “No.” We've heard the letter of a man who suffered for saying, “No.” Canadians have recounted for years the price of saying, “No.” Nowhere is the cost of saying, “No” put so clearly as this:
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The cost of saying, “No!” Amen.