Just a few weeks ago they re-enacted, not very far from here, a small but crucial Civil War battle. The Battle of Fort Stevens did not get into a lot of the history books, but it was important in that it turned back the Confederate armies on the very edge of the capital city. Had the South taken Fort Stevens and then gone on to bum or to occupy Washington, the Confederacy might have been recognized as a legitimate power by Britain and France and might have garnered enough outside strength to do real damage to the United States or even to go on and win the war. So while few but those of us who are around 13th and Quackenbos streets know anything much about the Battle of Fort Stevens, and while it was not nearly so bloody as Vicksburg or Gettysburg or Bull Run or all the other famous places, still it had its significance.
One little incident in this battle intrigues me, though, and it becomes something of a starting point for today’ s message. It is said that the President, Abraham Lincoln, having read plenty of dispatches about the war and having made countless decisions over which he had agonized, knowing that he was sending men to their deaths, wanted to see this battle at first hand. And so Lincoln made his way out here, climbed up behind the breastworks with the men, and proceeded to watch the battle, very conspicuous in his famous stovepipe hat and six-feet-plus frame. The soldiers were naturally concerned about the president’s safety, but did nothing about it. After all, he was the president and it seemed no one could tell him what to do or not to do. But when a young soldier was shot and killed barely three feet from where the president stood, the young army captain and later Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes jumped up and shouted impatiently at his commander-in-chief, "Get down, you fool!"
Shouting, "Get down, you fool" is precisely what the prophet Hosea did to the establishment of his day. To the kings of Israel, puffed up in their delusions of grandeur, imagining themselves powerful because they had subdued a few little states and tribes, Hosea shouts, "Get down, you fool!" To the leaders of the nation, priests and elders, teachers in the shrines and holy places, leading the people to think that the way to deal with the old warlike tribes of Palestine was to join them and imitate their pagan practices instead of taking a stand for something different; to priests and teachers who would lead the people to trust something other than their relationship with Almighty God, Hosea cries out, in effect, "Get down, you fool!”
Only he put it like this: Hosea 10:12-15
“Get down, you fool" – Holmes’ warning to Lincoln that his station as president gave him no protection from hostile fire. Not too different from Hosea the prophet’s warning that the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed: Thus shall it be done to you, O house of Israel, because of your great wickedness. In the storm the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.”
Not too different, because the prophet is saying to a people who have come to enjoy war, come to honor it and hallow it, that they have forgotten how destructive it is, that they have lost sight of how corrosive war is, not only physically, but also spiritually. War is hell, said General Sherman, and rightly so; war is hell because not only is it fire and flame and destruction, but also because it marks in the most dramatic way possible the outcome of our separation from our God …which is exactly what hell is, separation from our creator.
On the Sunday nearest the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each August, Baptists are encouraged by our denomination to engage in a Day of Prayer for World Peace. That we are doing today, and I want us to let Hosea inform us about what it means to pray for world peace and how we may struggle to work for peace.
There are two great lessons I hear from the prophet Hosea on this matter. The first is that making peace in the world begins with making peace with God. And the second great truth is that making peace in the world does not mean making peace with the world.
I
Now if you and I were to ask ourselves where war and conflict come from, what answer would we give? What sociologists would we turn to, or would it be the economists or the political scientists? Maybe it would be the psychologist: Sir, as you discern the human mind, what lies in it that lies also at the cause and root of human conflict?
Whatever these disciplines might contribute, whatever these learned scholars might say, I suspect it would all boil down to something said precisely and eloquently in Scripture 2000 years ago. It was the apostle James who asked and then answered the question, "What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. " James is saying that the root of conflict lies in the flaw of the human heart, the covetousness of the human soul, the inevitable, seemingly incurable, deep-rooted desire to have what is not ours and to hold what someone else holds.
Let me not spend time this morning rehearsing the story of human greed. Let me not burn up precious moments reminding you that elsewhere the scripture says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Let me not worry you with any sort of analysis of the notion that Wall Street causes war or that racist imperialism brings on war or that maddened megalomaniacs like Hitler or Stalin or Khomeini or any of the others bring on the conflict.
Let me instead remind you that every one, of these is but a symptom of a greater and more pervasive issue, that the human heart is deceitful above all things. I didn’t invent that saying; that’s the Scripture talking: The human heart is deceitful above all things. And the human heart must be changed before peace can be achieved.
Making peace in the world begins with making peace with God. We will not finally solve the political problems until we solve the human problems. We will not correct the economic ills until we struggle with each human heart, in all its pain, in all its sickness. I believe, as profoundly and deeply as I believe anything, that no amount of political or military tinkering will save us unless we deal with the basics, with the issue of peace between our God and his people, with the issue of whether or not you and I are reconciled to God.
For I am saying that you must first be reconciled to God, then go and make peace with your neighbor. But first, be reconciled to God.
And so I, for one, will leave the political tinkering to others. I will leave the arcane questions of diplomacy to others. I do not put these down. These have their place. And I even dare to believe that a gracious God works through these means to achieve His will in human history.
But as for me, I will struggle to make peace in the world by first being certain of my peace with God, and then by working as an evangelist, helping others find their peace with God. If I want to begin where the Bible begins in making peace, working for peace, then I will begin by helping every man and woman, every boy and girl I can influence, to find their own way to peace with God, and thus to peace with others. That will not be all that is needed, but that will be a start.
Here is the way Hosea tells it: "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love; for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain salvation upon you.”
"Get down, you fool" Tell us, Hosea! Tell us, proud as we are of all our achievements, that first we’d better get down on our knees before God and pray for our own salvation. Get down you fool. Tell us, Hosea, that, like these two young men who have gone into the waters of baptism today, we need to go down, get down, and humble ourselves, and seek the Lord, that he may come and rain salvation upon us."
II
But I did say a while ago that there were two great truths in this passage, two aspects of the struggle to work for peace. It is not only that making peace in the world begins with making peace with God; it is also that making peace in the world does not mean making peace with the world. We are not to trust the world’s ways to peace, we are not to accept the patterns of the world toward resolving conflicts; we are not to make peace the way the world makes peace.
Now the prophet Hosea is very pointed about this. So pointed, in fact, that it is tough to read him, tough to take him seriously, and especially tough to take him seriously in a city like Washington. I frankly wonder whether I would have the courage to read Hosea and to preach him were I on a military base or in a post chapel … but listen:
"You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies … Because you have trusted in your chariots and in the multitude of your warriors, therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed …” The prophet is telling us that if we trust in military power to make peace, we shall reap not peace but war.
That if we trust in weaponry, however sophisticated, whether the latest chariot or the stealth bomber, and we trust in that to the exclusion of confidence in Almighty God, then we are doomed to chaos.
Someone has said that the problem with having all this military hardware is that somebody is going to want to use it. About that I would not profess to know, but this I do know: that when we decide that we must arm ourselves with weapons in order to protect life and limb, we have come a very long way from living life in peace and safety, which is what the Bible promises to those who trust our God.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not a wild-eyed pacifist. I was not a flower child at Woodstock. Here we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the yippie revolution and we seem to have replaced it with yuppiedom, from peace to price tags; but I was not and am not just a doctrinaire pacifist. Yet I cannot in good conscience support a national policy that builds ever more sophisticated weapons and pours billions into bombers, when I hear the word of Scripture that tells me that using the ways of the world leads not to peace but to conflict.
What do we do then to work and struggle for peace? I cannot and would not attempt to give you a political analysis. I shall not offer any plan for disarmament or any program of negotiations. That you and I must leave to others.
Instead what we have to give is a sign, a simple sign really, a sign of self-sacrifice, a sign of self-giving. And we dare to believe that in that sign there is the harbinger of peace, real and authentic and wide-spreading peace. What we have to give is the Table of the Lord.
For just as baptism was and is the sign of getting down to a new and heart-changing relationship to God, a peace with God, so also the Lord’ s Table is the sign of getting down to the hurts of humanity, of being more interested in healing the brokenness than in winning battles, of reaching out and paying the price and sacrificing, always sacrificing, instead of defeating somebody.
At the Lord’ s Table we have nothing more but nothing less than the picture of one who brought us who were far off from one another, brought us near by his blood. For he is our peace who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. Here, at this Table he comes and preaches peace to those who are far off … far off in the Soviet Union, far off in South Africa, far off in Iran, far off in a thousand hot spots around the world, far off in the troubled corridors of our own city … and here at this table He is working to bring us together. Peace, not as the world gives, but peace I give unto you.
"Get down you fool!" Get down indeed. Get down here in the waters of baptism and forget the foolishness of pride that keeps us convinced we do not need God.
Get down here at the Table with this broken body, this shed blood and see here the peace wrought by our God in His own way, His way, not the world’s way. For all the armies that have ever marched, all the battles ever fought, have not made so much difference as this one solitary life.
