Courage to Seek the Truth
John 8:31-36

I would like to extend my gratitude to so many of you for your kindness and hospitality to me during the weeks that I have been living at Christ the King as “theologian in residence” at the Melanchthon Institute, particularly Pastor Kathy Haueisen, Pastor Robert and Kathy Moore and Ann Gebuhr. The Bonhoeffer conference they put together last weekend was a truly significant event: in the Jewish-Christian cooperation it inspired, the splendid performance of Ann’s profound Bonhoeffer opera, and the insights we discerned together from Bonhoeffer’s life and witness directly pertinent to our times. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with you, learned a lot and even decompressed a bit, and I am grateful.

I also want to thank you for sharing this festival commemorating the beginning of Luther’s Reformation with a lowly Presbyterian, who is supposed to view the event from the Calvinist side of the fence. Of course, in the 1998 Formula of Agreement, you in the ELCA entered into full communion with the Presbyterian Church to which I belong, the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ in one package deal. So the Lutheran/Calvinist fence itself has been torn down, in this country with the Formula of Agreement, and in Europe with a similar and older agreement called the Leuenberg Concordia. Thanks be to God.

Nonetheless, I have probably a good deal more fire in the belly over Luther’s life and work than most Presbyterians I know. During the depths of the Cold War during the late 1970s and early 1980s I worked for the East German churches for five years. That assignment took me several times to Wittenberg, before it was open to Western travelers, as well as to the Wartburg where Luther translated the Bible and the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt where he lived before moving to Wittenberg. I learned to love Luther’s pungent prose and his crushing grief at the death of his young daughter, Melanchthon’s intelligent restraint, Katharine von Bora’s brilliant management, Cranach’s vivid oil portraits, and the whole cast of characters who came to life so vividly on their home turf. They made horrendous mistakes in their anti-Jewishness and their support for the suppression of the Peasants’ Revolt. But they stepped out into the storm of life, demanding and building a better truth than the one they inherited.

This is the piece of celebrating the Reformation that our Gospel reading calls us to consider this morning. Continuing in the Word of Jesus, in the path and discipline of Jesus, will lead us out into the truth, and Jesus promises that the truth will make us free.

Back home in DC, I direct a small-ish ecumenical study center for theology and public policy. Its mission is “to discern and study the relationship between Christian faith and critical issues of public policy, and to enable the churches to contribute more fruitfully to public dialogue and action.”

At the moment our center’s work is focused on three particularly grim battlegrounds for truth in our public life: global warming, nuclear weapons, and the use of torture by the United States. Global warming and the nuclear weapons danger represent assaults on Creation itself. Both have been around for a long time, although each is taking on new manifestations. The measurable environmental changes from global warming are accelerating faster than theoretical models predicted, and the time available to dither without decisive action on a global scale is running out fast. Since the end of the Cold War the nature of the nuclear weapons threat has changed to development of a new generation of nuclear weapons technology, unaccounted fissionable nuclear fuel from Russia, possibly in the possession of non-state actors, and proliferation into states which are newly developing nuclear weapons programs and are not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

One of the sharpest recent changes in policy in our national life is on the use of torture, and I want to ask your lenience to focus on that for a minute. Our center is staffing a new National Religious Campaign against Torture. It was founded in January of this year in response to the growing and widespread documentation of the use of torture by U.S. military personnel, the CIA and private contractors, gathered mostly through first-hand accounts by persons who either participated in or witnessed the procedures. The ELCA is a member of the campaign, and your presiding bishop, Mark Hansen, has signed its basic statement on your behalf.

The procedures which have emerged include: Long Time Standing, where prisoners are forced to stand handcuffed and with their feet shackled to the floor for long periods, inducing exhaustion and sleep deprivation; The Cold Cell, in which prisoners are left to stand naked in a chilled cell and are doused with cold water to induce hypothermia; and Water Boarding, during which prisoners are bound to an inclined board, feet raised above the head, and water is poured over their faces to induce the sensation of drowning. Forced nudity, sexual exploitation, sleep deprivation and denial of food and water have also been used. None of these procedures leave physical scars like whips or cigarette burns, but for those of us who confess Jesus as Lord it is crystal clear that they are cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as is prohibited by international law and the Geneva Conventions. They have been rendered legal by the United States, since 2002 by executive order and most recently by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was signed into law on October 17.

As Christians, we believe that all human beings are created in the image of God. We affirm the inalienable sanctity and dignity of every human being. No matter how we understand that image, we believe that everyone, everyone has a spark inside them which is created in the image of God, even criminals, even terrorists, and especially even those defined as our enemies. Even when violent or criminal behavior has to be restrained or punished, as it must be, that image of God requires that we respect the basic human rights of all persons, including the right not to be tortured.

Again just this week came protestations from the White House that “we do not torture.” But beware the pitfalls of mutating definitions of torture. The administration uses a very different definition of torture than the commonly accepted international definition, as it is expressed in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The administration=s first definition stated that only “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” constituted torture punishable by law. Everything just listed was permitted under that definition. It has since been expanded somewhat, but still leaves open a long list of inhumane procedures in conflict with the Geneva Conventions. On September 12, 31 retired generals and admirals issued a strong statement calling for strict adherence to the Geneva Conventions.

This is one of those places where the Reformers’ passion for truth becomes urgent for our time. Smooth denials at the top disregard hard evidence and international consensus. We need to shout the truth from the bell towers and roof tops and, as Martin Luther did in his day, nail it to the doors of our churches.

His namesake, Martin Luther King, wrote, “A time comes when silence is betrayal. [People] do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. . . We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us. . . . We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.”

As Christians we are called to step out into the storm of life and seek the truth, and act on it as best we can. Martin Luther King – and Martin Luther – and Jesus – expect nothing less.
Amen.

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The Rev. Barbara G. Green is Executive Director of the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy in Washington, DC and a pastor of the Presbyterian Church (USA).