HomeNOTE: What appears below is the full version of this sermon as written and modified. The versions actually delivered in our two morning services differed somewhat from each other and from what is printed here.--DB
Good morning!
Before I preach this sermon this morning, I must tell you that things in my personal life are good. It is important for you to have that as background to what I have to say today.
My topic this morning is winter, and that is appropriate as my spirits this morning are as bleak and drear as a chill, muddy winter’s day.
A few weeks ago I posted a note on a Minister’s chat group saying my belief that human beings were born inherently good. Another minister challenged that belief and asked me what I meant. Because of the holiday season I did not respond right away, and it was only this past Monday that I did so. I wrote out the reasons for my belief, but everything I wrote felt empty and false. I have lost my faith in humanity and in our future.
I should not need to say but shall, that Saddam Hussein was someone who did terrible things, and who I did not admire.
I also must say that his execution was merely the final straw for me, not the reason for my feelings; it was the precipitating incident, not the cause. Had he not been executed, some other action would have tipped me into despair. Like the sudden shifting of a kaleidoscope, like the metaphorical camel’s back, or like a bridge under stress, it sometimes only take one small iota of mass or energy to cause something that seems solid to crumble down. This morning I stand before my optimistic view of human nature and look upon a collapsed structure. It would have been, I suspect, whatever the next event was and it just happened to be this execution.
But it was his killing that was the actual event that did it, so I begin there.
Saddam Hussein was killed for the crime of killing people for the crime of the attempted killing of the President of Iraq—Saddam Hussein. And that very verbal sequence should show the absurdity of the whole thing. Those people he killed in 1982 were all given trials, and then executed. Ah, some will say, but their trials were not fair trials. That is true. Neither was Saddam Hussein’s. Judges resigned during his trial; his defense lawyers resigned mid-trial and at least one was killed; his new lawyers took over mid trial with no ability to recast or review what had already occurred; none of this was acceptable under any international norms of justice. And really, the conclusion was known before the trial began; the essence of a fair trial is that you may be found not guilty. That was not the case here.
The crimes for which Saddam Hussein was executed took place in 1982 when he was our ally in the Middle East. We liked him. It didn’t matter to us then that he did such monstrous things. To now proclaim that the crimes we then knew about justify his execution is hypocrisy of the sleaziest kind.
His execution, it turns out, was riddled with sadistic mockery, with chants and insults and dancing. The government of Iraq has promised an investigation into these events and has made some arrests. But that too is hypocrisy. They knew what happened in that death chamber; they knew about the sadism and were doing nothing about it. What bothers them is not that the sadism took place, but that it was revealed. And that is part of the all-too human reaction that lives in the heart of so many of us, the reaction that says that the commission of a crime is just fine, that it is the revelation of the crime that is the terrible thing. The man who revealed the abuses by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib is now shunned and despised by many of his fellow soldiers, by their families, and even by people in his home town, and many of those who committed the crimes have the support of the very same people. What absurd insanity. What kind of topsy-turvy system of morality is that? We live in a bizarre world where the code of the criminal is the code most of us accept.
The fact that the video was released was much less of a violation than the fact that the mockery took place. And that was much less of a violation than the fact that the execution took place. Yet the concern is that the video was released.
I ask which is worse: the obscenity of an execution in which the sadism and barbarity are openly and clearly expressed, or the obscenity of an execution in which the sadism and barbarity are covered over with the perversity of a false sense of dignity.
In many death chambers here in the United States, where lethal injection is used, the pretense is put forth of a clinical, almost medical procedure. It doesn’t matter that one of the injected drugs causes excruciating pain and is banned by veterinarians from use for killing animals, and it does not matter that the third drug used causes a heart attack in the prisoner; all that matters is that we should have the veneer of dignity given to our blood lust, the lie of medical cleanliness over what is a filthy and disgusting practice.
One minor irrelevant aside: the guards taunted Saddam Hussein by chanting the name of a radical cleric who runs the militia that fought US troops to a standstill in Sadr city. Who are the good guys here? Will some future United States President praise the killing of those who killed Saddam Hussein for ordering the killing of those who attempted to kill Saddam Hussein? Where does the insanity stop?
I have always been an optimist about life, about human beings and about the future. I no longer am, at least, not at the moment. I don’t know how long this may last, whether it will end today or last the rest of my life, but for me today it is not a matter of seeing the glass as either half full or half empty, for me today the glass is empty and is shattered.
What causes me now to despair for our species and for the future is the fact that so many good, kind, thoughtful and intelligent people can believe that it is good to kill a human being who in the moment is harmless and helpless, who is shackled hand and foot or who is strapped to a gurney. Whatever Saddam Hussein did in his life, and he did many evil things, in the time leading up to his death he was harmless and helpless.
If good, kind thoughtful people can judge that act to be acceptable, then I despair of humanity’s ability to ever reach a time of peace and justice.
We human beings can always find reasons to kill, and the process of arriving at that decision—the decision to kill—is the same whether one is speaking of killing an individual or of killing an entire group. Except for a few people who kill simply for the joy of killing, we find ways to say that “he”, “she” or “they” “deserve to die”, and then we kill with impunity.
Whether we are talking about a prisoner taken to the death chamber; or a doctor killed for providing abortion services; or civil rights workers killed for their good works; or the people of another race, ethnic group, religion or nation killed for “being them”; the mental process of dehumanization and justification is the same. The particular people are different, the particular events leading to the killings are different, but the process of arriving at the decision to kill is the same.
Ask a death penalty supporter why it is acceptable to kill another human being and they will tell you that the person does not deserve to live. Ask a bigoted Serb why it is acceptable to kill Croats and they will tell you that those people do not deserve to live. Ask a bigoted Hutu why it is acceptable to kill Tutsis and they will tell you that those people do not deserve to live. Ask a member of a street gang why it is acceptable to kill members of another street gang and they will tell you that those people do not deserve to live.
They each can give you a long list of reasons why their target should die. And all of their reasons sound the same to me; they are empty justifications for simple blood lust.
How often do the executioners say, “See this blood on our hands; that is not our doing. No, no, no: blame the victim; he, she or they brought this upon themselves.” As if we have no personal responsibility for our own actions in such killings; as if we are not moral agents in the process of ending human life; as if we had no choice in the decision leading to death.
As long as we can and do engage in that continual justification process of dehumanizing and killing there is no hope for peace or kindness or decency in our future.
It has been said that a cynic is an idealist turned inside out by pain. I am an idealist who today is feeling quite cynical about my race, our human family.
That makes a place like this, this congregation, all the more precious in my mind. It is an island of decency, kindness and goodness in a world lacking all of those qualities. Whenever we find such a place, we should embrace it, nurture it and protect it. It is very rare.
I have reached the point, as I said, where “my spirits are as bleak and drear as a chill, muddy winter’s day”.
A special problem for me is that a minister’s role is to preach the “good news”, whatever that may mean in a given circumstance. A minister’s role is to give people hope or, at the very least, hope for the possibility of hope. Today I haven’t either to give. Today I am disgusted and full of revulsion for my species, and see no reason to believe in the possibility for change. This is not just about capital punishment: it is about war and hatred and the human ability to engage in the justification of any evil act we choose to engage in.
What then, am I to preach to you?
I had intended in my sermon today to speak to taking comfort from the message of winter; that in the visible emptiness of winter there is unseen growth beneath the snow and the earth. I know it is taking place though I do not and cannot witness it. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is hope for us that is unseen; hope that lies hidden beneath the snow and mud of our current inhuman actions. Perhaps my very despair is part of the emptiness in which new things can grow. But I do not believe that to be true.
I cannot today preach to you the Humanist message that if we work hard and long we can change human hearts and minds, if not in our lifetime then perhaps in our children’s or grandchildren’s. Today I don’t believe that. Today I believe that we are doomed to continual self justification and rationalization, to continued centuries and millennia of killing and destruction.
Were I a theist, I could state that while peace is not possible through the efforts of humanity, still through God “all things are possible”. But I do not believe in God. If you take comfort in that message that is wonderful. But it is not my message and I cannot preach it to you.
These messages, the message of the Humanist and the message of the Theist are messages of hope and optimism that I simply do not have.
In the Bible when God despairs of humanity he sends a great flood that destroys it so that he may begin again with a few survivors. We now know from the geological and fossil record that in the great cycle of life on earth there have been mass destructions--at least six--that have destroyed most then extant forms of life and that resulted in new forms of life and of existence arising from the destruction, that sometimes nature tears down all that is in order to start afresh. Just as the dinosaurs yielded to the mammals, so one day the mammals will yield to something else. Today we are in the midst of another such cycle of destruction, this one the result largely of human activity. Perhaps it is time for our species to yield the stage for something else, something other. Perhaps we have run our course, have achieved what we could and have nothing new to offer. Perhaps, since we cannot seem to evolve to a higher level of perception, morality and existence, it is time for a great cleansing.
While I do not wish for that, today my message is the message of winter bleakness.
As I stare upon the cold, dead world that lives in my vision; as I look at my vision of a world of unchanging and unchangeable darkness; what can I possibly hope for?
Though I have always been an optimist in life, though I have always believed that life is difficult but that it turns out well in the end, though I have always believed that human beings may do acts of evil but are still inherently good, I cannot speak to that hope today. And so I leave you this morning with a sermon that speaks only from my sense of despondency.
So what do I, as a minister, have to offer?
Where once I would have felt and could have said that there is hope even in the dead of winter, and that we need only hold on until spring inevitably arrives in full verdant glory, today I can only say to those in pain or despair, “Yes, I understand”. Maybe that is sufficient. Maybe that is all a minister need say.
In the end, perhaps this is the most we can reasonably hope for: that in the midst of pain and sorrow, in the midst of bleakness and despair, a quiet voice will speak in the darkness and say, “Yes, I understand”.
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