The Winds of War
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Three young men. They would tell you that they could not remember a time when they didn’t know one another. Their families could not have been any different one poor, another affluent, and the third from a military family. On the night of their High School graduation, while others were out celebrating, these three went to bed early. The next morning they were to catch a bus and would be on their way to San Diego to begin Marine Boot Camp. They had joined under the Buddy plan. They were after all three buddies.
After they had completed Boot Camp and Advance Infantry Training they were stationed together. In November of 1965 they shipped out together for Viet Nam. They would serve together there. In the next year they each be wounded. Each would recover and rejoin his friends. When their 13 months were up, they extended their tours so that they could remain together again. In their next year they would each be wounded again and each would be decorated for bravery.
In January of 1968, they were near the end of their second tour. Literally they were days away from returning to the world. They planned to go home together. They knew that soon they would not be stationed together any longer. They had had time to talk because they were assured the worst was over. In the coming days the Vietnamese would be celebrating their new year and war took a break during the Tet celebration.
Their Recon Platoon was actually in a compound that morning when mortars started raining down. The three had been through mortars attacks before. They knew what to do. Each went to his assigned place. Each took up the battle that would ensure. On that day, and on the next they saw more North Vietnamese massed for a fight than at any time since their arrival some 25 months before. One tells the story that he actually went through four different barrels on his machine gun during those two days. Another tells of running out of ammunition but he wasn’t concerned because he could reach out and take the rifle of Vietnamese soldiers who had died within his reach.
At the end of the second day it stopped. At the end of the second day helicopters arrived and evacuated the three friends. Two of them carried their life long fried to the helicopter with them. He would tell no stories of the last two days. Others would. They told so many stories that all three were awarded the Navy Cross.
A week later the three returned home. Two of them sat with the coffin of their friend. They were met by their families and all shed tears and as you might imagine, not all the tears were of joy.
Later that week, they stood in the cemetery and one of these proud Marines tells of the strangeness of that day. He says that on that day there was stillness like none other he had ever known. After two years of the noise of battle there was a quietness that overwhelmed him. It was in that still quiet place that he felt the Winds of War.
Today, our nation is again at war. Many members of this church know what that means in the particular rather than in the abstract. They do not need CNN or any other news organization to bring them the graphic pictures of war because they have smelled the smoke of the battlefield. They know first hand what it means to bury friends. They know what it means to move forward in the face of fear because to do otherwise would cause them to be in place frozen by that fear. They understand better than anyone that the terms just war and popular war have no meaning whatsoever. It is still war. And so it is for many young men and women today. They are not concerned with whom protests or who supports. What concerns them is the welfare of those who stand beside them as the winds of war blow across the sights of their rifles.
The Lord tells us that there will be a time for war. As a matter of fact, from our scripture, we read that there is a time when both good and evil will occur in this life and the question for us is how should we respond to both? In life’s totality, what should be our Christian response?
We heard also this morning the Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mound and each of us is perplexed by the blessings that Christ offers. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek and those who hunger after righteousness, blessed are those who are merciful and blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are those who are persecuted. Those are both individually and collectively difficult but the one that weights heavy on us this morning is blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. How do we reconcile war and peacemaking? Isn’t war after all the antitheses of peace?
Well, maybe not. We can see that in order to be a peacemaker it may be necessary to be at war. All of us remember a bully from our school days. Someone whom either by size or just plain meanness imposed his or her will on others. The only effective way to stop the bullying ways was to stand up to the bully. We might have first gone to the teacher. We may have caused the bully some trouble but most bully’s made us pay the price for being a tattletale. The only effective way was to say, “No more.” And once that decision was made, we understood that we might get a bloody nose. We may not even win but the bully would almost certainly never be an effective bully again.
Today, we find ourselves as a nation, in that position. We may get a bloody nose, we will certainly not walk away unscathed. But the bullying will hopefully stop.
As Christians we can indeed pray for our enemy. We can love them. We can also tell them enough is enough. We can stand firm in our position as pacifists even in the midst of supporting war because a pacifist will want to seek every opportunity to be the peacemaker. We just need to understand that some of the time peacemaking fails, as it has this time. That is why we hear those words, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”
How desperately we need to remember that while each seems to be good or bad in themselves circumstances can invert their meaning.
There are seven paired items listed in our scripture. Each is contrary to the other yet if we look we see that each is irrevocable tied to the other and each may indeed necessary for the other.
“There is a time to be born and a time to die.” As we read those words we know that as we are born we begin the process of dying in our death we are born anew to a resurrected life. As Christians we need to embrace both.
“There is a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.” We may look at this literally but know that during the harvest we are preparing for a new planting season. We all understand the adage of the need to spend money to make money. This church better than most is going through the process of harvesting after planting.
“There is a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up.” This speaks to us so directly today because today we are in the process of killing and tearing down. But understand we are not in the process of murdering or destroying. The difference is significant. None of us would allow a poisonous snake to crawl unmolested in the nursery. It is necessary at times to lob off the head of the snake and then start rebuilding a safe place for our children.
“There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” Each time I read this passage I am reminded of an Irish Wake. In the middle of sorrow there is laughter and dancing. In the midst of laughter there are tears. This passage says more about the human condition than almost any passage in the Bible because we understand that in the midst of our misery we can find a way to laugh. How necessary it is for today that we keep a sense of humor in a time of great stress.
Each of these pairs is necessary but none as necessary as the last two.
“There is a time to love, and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace.” Can we understand that today, we need to love our enemy and hate what they have done? Can we understand that today we can hate war and love peace and reconcile that the first is necessary to achieve the second?
For those of us, gathered this morning, in this small corner of the Kingdom this is a time that we need to heed the scriptures. We need to understand that life is balanced between extremes. We also need to remember something else. In the extremes there is a constant. God is present not just in the good times, in the laughter and in the peace, but God is also present in those times of weeping and consternation and even in war.
In these times our prayers are so necessary. We need to ask God’s presence in our hearts as we struggle for the middle ground, as we struggle to find peace in our understanding of what is going on in the world and in our struggle to find more than we lose.
How should Christians respond in this time of war? By turning our face toward God. By turning our hearts over to him. By trusting that whatever God has planned is so much better than anything that we can envision that we understand how foolish our planning seems.
I hope that this is a day that you can find peace in God’s word and trust. Trust in God, trust in those who lead this country as they too are trusting in God to lead their decisions. And hope that we can feel the winds of war as they blow in peace and freedom.
God grant us peace. AMEN
