The Rev. Noah Van Niel
May 26th, 2019
The Chapel of the Cross
Easter 6 (C): Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, John 5:1-9
What are we going to do about Memorial Day? 
Every year, as we mark the most solemn of our national holidays, I am equal parts grateful and enraged. I am grateful for the over 1 million men and women since the civil war who were selfless enough to give of their lives in protection of the freedoms I enjoy or so that others may enjoy similar ones. And yet I am also enraged that for some reason, the human species just can’t seem to stop killing each other. If we look back across human history it is littered with bodies, millions and millions of bodies; lives cut short because we just can’t figure out how to live together on a grand scale.
Obviously every war, every global conflict is the product of a particular socio-historical context. But the best answer I’ve ever come across as to why we can’t seem to all just get along, is not a sociological or political one, it’s a spiritual one, and it comes from 20th century American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. In 1932, right at the outset of his legendary career, Niebuhr published a book called, Moral Man and Immoral Society. And in it, he tackles the problem posed in the title: why is there such a stark distinction between the moral capabilities of individuals, and the immoral behavior of larger groups, such as nations waging war against one another? Niebuhr’s answer to this question owes a lot to his strong conception of sin, which he defines as “self-centered egoism.” It is possible, he posits, through much effort and diligence, for individuals to overcome our predilection to selfishness when dealing with other individuals, or small groups of people, like our family, because of our emotional attachments to them. But as you collect more and more people into larger groups, those emotional attachments wane, and that self-centered egoism, compounds and soon the group can see only its own self-interest. And where we can only see our own self-interest conflict is bound to follow. Rather than our capacity for morality, Niebuhr argues, it is our egoistic impulses that increase exponentially as human beings gather together and ultimately that is what governs our groups. This is how you moral people can still give us immoral societies—the compounding sin of selfishness.[1]
If you’re unconvinced of Niebuhr’s starting point—that the heroic flaw of human beings is our difficulty considering other interests over and above our own, I submit to you as evidence, our Gospel passage for this morning. If you go to Jerusalem, you can visit what was probably the pool of Beth-zatha (or Bethsaida). Archaeologists have unearthed it with its five porticoes fed by an underground water source. The underground current responsible for the pools would sometimes become agitated, and it was thought that when the water bubbled up it possessed healing powers for the first ones in.[2] So this became a gathering place, the passage tells us, for the blind, lame, and paralyzed. Among them was an unnamed man, who, had been sitting by the pool for 38 years. 38 years. And whenever that blessed moment happens, and the water is stirred up, for 38 years he has dragged himself across the stone ground only to be stepped over and on by those rushing to get in ahead of him. It may be easy to feel pity for this man, to feel sorry for him. But whenever I hear this story, I also feel sick with disgust at the hundreds of people over 38 years who literally stepped all over this man in service of their own needs and desires. I understand they may have had ailments of their own that they desired healing from but you would have thought one person, in 38 years would have stopped and helped this man down into the pool first. If I was him I would have given up and stopped trying to even make it into the water because by then my faith in humanity would have been totally obliterated. A casualty of the sin of selfishness.
But we’d never do something like that, right? Right? A couple months ago a homeless man died on Franklin St. He was on a bench, slumped over. And he was like that for a long time before someone finally checked to see if he was okay. The only reason I know this story is because it was one of our college students who was in the group who finally stopped and called for help. But by that time it was far too late. It’s impossible to know exactly how long that man was like that but given the foot traffic at Franklin and Columbia St. it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say hundreds of people probably walked by him and could have helped, but didn’t.
The sin of selfishness. We just can’t shake it. It’s part of who we are. And for Niebuhr, war is, at its core, an amplification of that private struggle we wage daily against the sin of self-centered egoism. Individuals may be able, on occasion, to win that battle, he says, but as larger groups, we can’t. And this explains why war has been a part of every human society regardless of the particulars of time and place. War is pervasive because sin is pervasive.
So, is this our fate? Are we doomed to destroy one another? Is war inevitable? Is world peace just a pipe dream? Maybe. But there’s a fine line between a pipe dream and a prophecy. The first we dismiss as fantasy, but the other puts forth a vision of what could be that is inspiring enough for those who hear it to strive to make it so.
The book of Revelation is, admittedly, a bizarre book. It reads at times more like sci-fi than scripture. But ultimately I believe it to be more prophecy than pipe dream. For in its last few chapters, all the horrors melt away and what is left is one of the most powerful, hopeful visions of what God wants for this world. And what is recounted is nothing less than the comingling of heaven and earth. The picture it paints is of a land so resplendent with the presence of God that it needs no outside light source, it simply emanates glory; a kingdom so peaceful not even night can violate the day with its darkness; where gates are left open because there is no enemy to storm them. The river of life flows freely through the heart of this world, and on either side, the trees of life line its banks, and “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” This is God’s goal, this is God’s vision for us. This world is meant for peace, not violence.
I’m a big fan of Niebuhr’s work, but I’m with John the Divine on this one. I refuse to accept that death and destruction are inevitable because, while groups of people are the cause for much of the conflict in our world, they also hold the seeds of its salvation. I have seen moments where self-centered egoism is indeed conquered collectively; glimpses of cooperation and acts of selfless love that make me believe another way to be together is possible; that peace isn’t just a pipe dream. The Church can often be a place for those hopeful revelations of what our life together could be. When a group of parishioners organize themselves to cook and deliver meals to someone who just had surgery. When a crew spends a winter morning chopping and delivering wood to strangers who rely on fireplaces to heat their homes. It is in those moments and others like it, that I am convinced our common life together does not have to be governed by conflict.
The Church, all churches, are a long way from perfect, but we are called by Jesus to be a laboratory searching for the cure for conflict that has ailed human beings since the dawn of time. Jesus gave his followers that new commandment, to love one another as I have loved you, because he knew that the antidote to the compounding sin of self-centered egoism was to establish communities grounded in mutual love and service– so that we would have a place to practice what it meant to really be governed by selflessness, and then bring forth those lessons into the world, into the larger groups of which we are a part, to see if they can’t help them be better as well.
I can hear you asking, “Is he really saying that if I’m nicer at church we can stop all wars?” I won’t go that far. But I will go so far to say that that if we can’t do it here, then we don’t stand a chance out there. And that if it can happen here, by the grace of God, it could happen anywhere. For nothing shall be impossible with God. How we live together as a church family could help unlock the key to how we live together as a human family. We can build the kind of community that radiates the presence and love of God so brightly, that it shows the way for all people to live in peace and harmony. And rather than watch the list of people we honor on Memorial Day get longer and longer in perpetuity, we can start to put an end to it. Because if we really want to honor those whose lives were cut short by war, if we really want to pay them tribute, then we will work just as selflessly for a world where such sacrifices were no longer necessary.
[1] Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society, Scribner, New York, NY, 1932
[2] Martin, James. Jesus: A Pilgrimage. HarperOne, New York, NY 2014