Another difficult day getting out the door for Kelsey… not only did I burn the oatmeal again this morning, but I lost my keys, only to discover that I had left them in the outside lock all night long. Since I already get up, on average, every other night with my pointy umbrella in hand to check for burglars before I go to bed, you can imagine my horror at such a discovery. I’ll have to be more conscientious coming back from the gym.

Guess who’s coming to Louisville today? Apparently, President Bush himself will grace us with his presence this afternoon. According to the news reports I heard on the radio this morning, he will make a major speech on global terror to a sold out crowd at the Kentucky International Convention Center. As always, there will also be a large crowd outside protesting. This, of course, I did not hear on the news. I heard it through various folks on the Louisville Peace Action Committee.

Like Vietnam before it, the war in Iraq is becoming increasingly murky territory for most of us. A recent USA Today poll said that about half of Americans consider the war a mistake. More than 2200 soldiers have died there, in addition to the thousands of Iraqis who have also lost their lives. Millions more Iraqis live with the result of violence every day, even as our troops tow the line between humanitarian efforts and military operations. We are in a conflict of grey, not black and white, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what the best solution should be.

I remember once, after the initial burst of military operations ended, a friend telling me, “I didn’t want us to go in, but now that we’ve done it, we’d better make it right.” By this she meant that since American actions had overthrown the reigning government, we had a moral responsibility to reconstruct the country. People on all sides, in fact, have evoked the idea of moral responsibility to justify their responses to the war. Many believe that we had a moral obligation to overthrow a cruel dictator oppressing his people. Others morally believe that violence is never the answer, and that if we seek to bring peace to the world we must first model it ourselves.

What we have here, then, is basically a legitimate moral argument for every possible trajectory in this conflict, each wholeheartedly adopted by Christians in good faith. So what is the answer? I think of Presbyterian chaplains in Iraq, faithfully praying with and ministering to the needs of soldiers before they go into combat. I think of members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, so committed to their peace witness that they are willing to give their very lives for it. Is Christ present in both?

Perhaps the only answer I can think of this morning comes from the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” God’s redemptive love is at work in all these places and scenarios, transcending us and our flawed, limited understanding of the world. God’s light will shine in the darkness—the darkness known to an Iraqi mother awakened in the night by an American raid on her home, the darkness for an American soldier staggering out of the bloody chaos of another suicide bomb. Today we see through the glass dimly. But one day, we shall see face to face.

And two things I think we can all agree on, as we Christians discern how we’re called to respond to this war—love and prayer. David and I have been talking about how sometimes Jesus’ call is so counterintuitive to common sense. Perhaps the most counterintuitive command of all is Matthew 5:44—“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” We are called to love the people of Iraq as our sisters and brothers in the human family, even those who perpetrate violence we find abhorrent. Even if we don’t agree with the American military presence in Iraq, we’re called to love the young women and men who are serving there on our behalf.

And we’re called to pray for all of them, because prayer can be a powerful and transforming witness. I think of East German churches I visited in college. During the communist years, small congregations would meet together to pray for peace. They would then go out and witness to it. One pastor I met told a story about how a group of pastors had prevented the East German military from opening fire on an entire crowd of protesters in Berlin. And all I could think was, “Wow-- that's the Holy Spirit at work”

So love, pray, and be watching for God’s redemptive work of peace in the world. Regardless of our own human flaws and failings, our own incomplete answers, it is there.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” --Matthew 5:9

Kelsey

Kelsey,
I promised I would respond to this because I was the one who requested it. I'm devastated by the casualty counts coming out of Iraq, maybe mostly because my boyfriend and some of our best friends are stationed there right now. In the Episcopal Church every form of the Prayers of the People has a section devoted to the leaders of the church, the city, the country, etc., and sometimes it takes everything in me not to take it personally while I'm praying for our president that someone I've never met has sent people I love to some desert where they could die. So, I grit my teeth when we pray for George [and Ernie (Fletcher) and our bishops and St. so-and-so of the blue blue ocean church in Madagascar] and I really do hope he makes good decisions and I hope that when this is written about in history books the men and women who died are properly honored, not just glossed over. They're just doing their jobs. And I guess our job is to make sure that in this fuzzy grey area where war is just or unjust or somewhere in between, we don't lose sight that people are not just numbers, that in a war that may very well be a mistake, there are soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen and women who make a living and a life for their families spending months and even years away from their families and people that they love, and they do it because they want us to live free.

-Mary Rose Linker, Maryville College (alumna)