St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

February 28, 2010

The curtains close on the first act of the Bible…. Creation, Eden, Adam and Eve, the serpent, the apple and … oh no; we blew it and were tossed out of the garden, kicked out of paradise. The curtains open on the second act… a couple of bouncing baby boys, Cain and Abel, who grow up with a good case of sibling rivalry, competing careers – farmer versus shepherd; a dash of jealousy; a fit of rage – “I saw red”; maybe there was some booze in the story, who knows or cares… the upshot is murder. Cain kills Abel… and true to this myth, we humans have continued to do this on a regular alarming rate. We are fascinated by violence and the destruction that it brings; with each new technological innovation, we just get better and better at killing each other.

Who knows why… the Bible doesn’t spend a lot of time exploring that question; it merely presents our human reality. Murderous. Is it just part of who we are, a flaw in the design? Deep dark urges of the id? I remember a story from our former Moderator, David Guiliano, who raised his son and daughter in household that was rigourously feminist, a war free zone, no guns or toy soldiers for toys, no violent cartoons or videos. But one day he discovered his young son with a friend, playing in the living room with sticks that were clearly stand-ins for guns. “What are you doing?” he asked, somewhat aghast; his son, blessed with the quick thinking of the desperate, blurted, “They’re hair driers!”

Who knows why human beings kill each other with such abandon. Maybe it could be called giving in to the dark side; the Cain and Abel story suggests that it is a choice; the problem is that we make the wrong choice – for violence, for sin. And so we pass laws, and employ police, and muster armies. We’re good at sublimating too – and that’s not a bad thing, at all. I sometimes wonder if what we’ve been experiencing here at the Olympics is one of the best forms of rechanneling that energy into life-giving actions. Mind you, having to spend a billion dollars on security measures to safeguard these two weeks of Winter Games is a clear reminder that potential violence lurks beneath the surface.

And erupts in a flash … war abounds, no? Although the media no longer consider it a headline story, I wonder what is happening these days in Sudan, or Somalia, or the Congo. I hear stories of Johannesburg being the most violent city on earth, although Guatemala City gives it a run for the money. Which reminds of the report noted in today’s Announcements about the threats and violence being directed towards those who are supplying the Fair Trade Guatemalan Coffee that we sell here in the church. And who knows how many wars it’s going to take to settle the mess in Israel, Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon. Or going further north, any news on what’s happening in Georgia, or Chechnya? And what you hear emerging from post-civil-war Sri Lanka isn’t exactly encouraging. In Afghanistan it feels as if Cain and Abel have been going at it for decades. And then of course, there’s Iraq.

And a movie called “The Hurt Locker.” Baghdad, 2004; with a tight focus on a three-man bomb squad, whose job it is to disarm, defuse or safely detonate IED’s… Improvised, explosive devices… meaning, homemade but very lethal bombs; which are everywhere in Baghdad, 2004. The movie doesn’t really address the history of the war, nor its politics or even its morality. Instead, to succeeds in taking you “right there”, feeling the tension and the adrenalin; moving from street bomb, to car bomb, to kid bomb, to a shoot-out in the desert. Only thirty-eight days before this bomb team heads home; the question – will they survive that long?

The film was scripted by Mark Bahl, who had spent several weeks embedded with a similar bomb squad in Baghdad, and you can feel that first-hand experience. Then there’s the camera work… four hand-held cameras – I know a couple of people who got motion sick just watching the film. The point of view keeps shifting… sometimes you’re watching the guy actually working on the bomb; sometimes you’re looking out from inside his protective gear; then suddenly you’re looking down at the whole scene from up above, perhaps from the local minaret – perhaps someone who is just waiting to set the bomb off with a phone call. It’s intense.

A friend of mine, though, wasn’t all that thrilled with the movie – “Sure, there’s a rush, but what’s the point?” And he’s right… this isn’t a “message” movie, not really an “idea” film. The director, Kathryn Bigelow, simply wants you to “get it” – to viscerally experience the tension, the fear, the high, the panic of war, specifically those moments where a human being sits right on the edge of life-death, life-death, life-death, over and over. I call it exploring the Cain and Abel fallout; sure we kill each other, but what happens to us in the process?

Well first, and obviously, there is the carnage of it all – the kill zone filled with bone, blood and flesh; death everywhere. And the grief; and the fear. Which means, of course, that there are social consequences – when a people, a society live with the omnipresence of violence and death, then all your social norms begin to unravel. There is a high strung anxiety; tension; things fall apart. And people become more and more distrustful, angry, hostile, ready for confrontation. Who can you trust – who is friend, who is foe?

And then there’s the psychic damage – which we get to watch as the three men of the bomb squad count down the days before their return home. Now, the French writer Rochefoucault has said that “As with the sun, humans can only stare at death for a short time before going blind.” With Eldridge, the youngest member of the trio, we can see the unraveling, the panic attacks, the growing fear of dying -- “Be all you can be; but what if all I can be is dead.” Sandborn, the organizer of the squad, he has tried to use procedures and protocol as a way of staying alive; he does good work, but he also cares about staying alive. But by the end, it gets to him – too many close calls; too much suffering. “Every time you go out, it’s life or death. You roll the dice.” Sandborn knows this… all the time. “I hate this place,” he says. “I’m not ready to die. I could get shot and bleed out like a pig in the sand, and nobody would care…Maybe my parents, they don’t count…. I want a son; I want a little boy.” You can feel his anguish; you know it. It’s that age-old hunger for the future, for the next generation, when maybe we can do it differently, we’ll get it right; when the kids will play, and dads will carry them on their backs… for fun. When no one has to go off to war. And we are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

Then there’s James, the guy who actually handles the bombs. Ice water in his veins when defusing an IED. He’s brilliant, focussed, intuitive; he’s an expert at what he does. But he’s also reckless, willing to take chances, regardless of the safety of those around him. A senior officer calls him “a wild man” – with much approval and almost crazy excitement. “How many bombs have you dismantled?” “Eight hundred and seventy-three” – that’s James’ answer. Can you imagine holding 837 bombs in your arms, knowing that one misstep, and it’s over? A wild man, indeed, hooked on the sheer intensity of it all, the adrenalin fix.

“The Hurt Locker” actually begins with a screen-flashed quotation: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” And perhaps that is the director’s guide to interpretation – this movie is a recognition of our addiction to violence. And what the film also shows is that like all addictions, war leads to a narrowing of life; all other activities, engagements, people and purpose fall by the wayside in order to assuage the craving. Survival; and the rush; and sometimes the rush trumps survival.

This becomes very clear near the end of the film, when James returns home to wife and child. The opening scene of that segment has the family in the local supermarket, and James’ orders are to choose a box of cereal. An aisle length of choice… and you understand immediately that the flatness of everyday ordinary life is no match for the addictive intensity of Baghdad bombs.

Later, James is playing with his son, and says quietly,

As you get older, some of the things you love aren’t special anymore…

The older you get the fewer things you really love… By the time you get

to my age, there’s only one or two. Or maybe one.

In the next scene, we see James arriving in Iraq, 365 days to go.

Cain and Abel, violence, war, addiction, the narrowing of life; all this in contrast to what I understand as the essential religious enterprise… a broadening of life, so that as you grow older you discover how to love more and more things. You vision does not focus in on only one or two… and then, perhaps, just one. No… to follow the Jesus way, to speak of the Christian enterprise, is to be opened up, for what Jesus is modeling is a life of love, open, and vulnerable, rich and affirming.

We must learn to love. Perhaps each of us starts with family; then partner, then children; learning to love extended family, now that can take some work; and friends and neighbours – what does it mean to love your neighbour? And what about strangers – instead of fearing the other, the unknown, and reacting with hostility, what if we acted with openness, and a willingness to understand, to love? And then, says Jesus, we need to learn to love our enemies… not shoot them dead. It’s a different way of life; it’s a different vision of what matters. The purpose of living is to become a lover of the world; and in Jesus we have an example of what that might look like; and what it might cost.

Jesus is not a wimp, far from it … rather, words like integrity, courage, strength, kindness…. those are the ones that come first to mind. But he wasn’t willing to use violence. Remember that we story we heard during children’s time, of Jesus’ arrest in the garden, and Peter’s attempt to defend Jesus with the sword – off went the ear of a servant of the high priest. Jesus was clear: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Very clear. And then to emphasize that this is a conscious and intentional choice he continues, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father , and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” Now that would be a war to see; and indeed, many Christian writers, including whoever penned the Book of Revelation, they’re eager to have such a holy war. But it’s not what Jesus chose; nor what he invited his followers to do. You can do better that Cain and Abel, says Jesus; you are your brother’s keeper, and your sister’s; and they’re yours. You can say no to the rush, the narrowing of life to an addictive thrill. Jesus invites; “The Hurt Locker” shows you what happens when you say no.

Now I know that today the sermon needs to be short… the hockey game begins at 12:30; I know; I, too, want to be in front of the TV. So I leave you with some words from Gandhi, someone who knew what happens when brothers fight. Maybe he wouldn’t have called them Cain and Abel, perhaps he would have named them Indian and British, or Muslim and Hindu. And because he knew this, Gandhi, I think, chose the Jesus way – put up your sword; stretch your heart; learn to love more:

To recognize evil and not to oppose it,

is to surrender your humanity;

to recognize evil and to oppose it

with the weapons of the evil-doer,

is to enter into your humanity (read Cain and Abel);

to recognize evil and to oppose it

with the weapons of God

is to enter into your divinity.

Just so.