I would like to begin by welcoming our special guests from the Confirmation Class at Contryside Community Church. Thank you for coming and thank you for bringing down the average age considerably. I want to point out that our two churches are in some ways related. One of the denominations that make up the United Church of Christ of which your church is a member is the Congregational Church. The Unitarian church in America developed out of the Congregational Church in New England in the early 1800s, and we, like you, have antecedents in England, but our longest roots stretch back to Eastern Europe in a region that used to be a part of the kingdom of Hungary until after World War I, and its name literally means “beyond the forest”: “Trans”—“beyond” and “Sylvania”—“the forest,” or Transylvania [in Count Dracula voice]. That is absolutely true. I am not making this up, and, of course, the question always arises: “Was Count Dracula a Unitarian?” Well, the answer is “Yes.” That’s my answer today, and that’s the bad news. The good news is we only let him out of his coffin during our annual pledge drive. Sherlock Holmes is not the only one wearing a cape around here.

As far as the tea bags are concerned, I want to make two associations with tea, and I want to thank Cheryll Wallace for researching the Benner tea and making it available to me. It is said that on the day Buddha was born it rained tea from heaven. The heart of Buddhism is compassion, and the very first thing that we in the world need to do is to feel compassion for the millions upon millions of innocent children, women and men in the country of Iraq.

Did you know that half the population of Iraq is under 15 years of age? We cannot begin to imagine what they have been through, what they have had to endure, not only the hell of war but the hell of a vicious and brutal dictatorship for many years. And we need to do more than feel compassion. We need to put our compassion into action as soon as this is over, and we all hope that it will be over soon with the very least amount of death and destruction possible, and we hope also for the safe return of our citizen soldiers’ compassion, may they soon be reunited with their families and loved ones.

Before I make my second association with tea; I want to explain to our young friends here that in our tradition ministers are granted freedom of the pulpit, which means that we are called upon to speak the truth in any and all matters, theological or political, as we see it. That’s my job, and it’s a great privilege to be entrusted with, to be granted. But we also espouse freedom of the pew, which means no one out here has to agree with what I say or see things the way I do or has to accept my version of the truth. My truth may not be your truth. We agree to disagree agreeably. And I think who said it best is 15th century Unitarian martyr Frances David: “You need not think alike to love alike,” and this we try very hard to follow.
Well, with that said, let me confess that, since hostility has begun, I have felt many different feelings, at times confused, numb, frustrated, fearful, bewildered, angry. And I trace my upsettedness back to last September when Congress, in my opinion, rolled over and abrogated their constitutional responsibility and gave the president in effect a blank check. And, I have not been feeling any better about the turn of events since then. Now, when I was not feeling well, as a youngster, when I was in bed sick and not able to go to school, my mother would call the doctor, and those were the days when doctors still made house calls, and also those were the days before the invention of modern drugs such as penicillin. So after Dr. Bauman, kindly old Dr. Bauman, examined me, he would usually say to my mother, “Give Richard some weak tea.” That was the prescription. And, today, weak tea helps. When the going gets tough for the Brits, there is always time for a cuppa—a cuppa tea. In the words of that old radio commercial, “Take tea and see.” Thank you [to the few laughs of recognition].

So, warmed and fortified by our cuppa, looking out there on the political landscape and the world landscape, what do we see, over there, over here? Well, we see our troops being victorious, but we also see the reputation of the United States taking a tremendous beating, not only in the Arab and Moslem world but elsewhere as well. There was a question on the European edition of Time magazine Web site posed not long before the outbreak of hostilities: “Which country poses the greater danger to world peace in 2003?” And of the 318,000 responses, 7% of the Europeans said North Korea, 8% said Iraq, 84% said the United States. And what word comes up again and again around the world in discussions of American power? Arrogance.

Arrogance. We are the only world superpower at this point in time. And to the Russians we have become arrogant breakers of promises. You may not recall, but it is true that at various points we promised not to hasten the unification of Germany. We promised not to expand NATO. We promised not to dispense with ABM treaty. And we broke all three promises.

David Remnick, writing in the New Yorker remarked, “In each case we did what we wanted simply because we felt it was in our interest and because we could.” What child can stand up to a large parent? If the child asks, “Why,” the parent says, “Because I said so.”

Remnick continues, “The new conservative theology too often seems to combine power with a preening delight in brandishing it. The very notion of cooperation is suspect.”

Well, a month after VE Day, Victory in Europe Day at the end of World War II, June 12, 1945, the supreme commander of all allied forces in Europe, Dwight David Eisenhower, gave a speech in London. He was being given a reward. And, in response, he began his remarks this way: “Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives a claim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.”

Now, when President Bush was campaigning, he promised humility. These were some of his words: “If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us.” While humility was what Eisenhower mentioned first, before all else, Remnick writes that it is a quality absent from the diplomacy of George W. Bush.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon. We have crossed the Euphrates. The Rubicon, in case you don’t remember, or never knew, is a small river between Gaul and Italy. Caesar led his army across the Rubicon against government orders precipitating a civil war that made him supreme. And, today, “crossing the Rubicon,” that phrase, has come to mean taking an irrevocable decisive step, and we have done that. We have crossed our Rubicon.

Former CIA Director James Woosley says that we have begun World War IV, and it will last a long, long time, World War III being the Cold War.

Now, to balance the record just a bit, let me quote from a journal whose editor-in-chief is that old lefty, Pat Buchanan. This from The American Conservative. (I didn’t get a chance to enlarge this, so I’m going to have to back away from the pulpit.)

“Consider America’s international situation. A country rich and technologically advanced blessed with an unusually stable political system separated from hostile countries by huge oceans and still retaining durable long-term friendships with the world’s most powerful and successful democratic states and requiring serious international police- and intelligence-cooperation to deal with its most pressing enemy, Al Quaida. For such a nation to suddenly decide that its best and only option to save itself is to embark on a course of imperial expansion, one that will be opposed vigorously by the rest of the world seems almost a form of madness.” That is from The American Conservative, written by Scott McConnell, executive editor, editor-in-chief Pat Buchanan.

Well, I think that arrogance is probably too small a word for what is going on. The ancient Greeks had a better antithetical term: Hubris. Hubris goes way beyond arrogance, and it is defined this way: In classical Greek ethical and religious thought, it is an overweening presumption suggesting impious disregard for the limits governing human action in an orderly universe; it is the sin to which the great and gifted are most susceptible. In a Greek tragedy it is usually the hero’s tragic flaw: Hubris.

Now, the administration has come up with at least four different reasons for invading Iraq, but I don’t see imperial expansion listed among them. But, even if that is not the reality, reality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And if that is the perception, perception can become reality. Feelings are facts. And if that’s the case, we are beginning World War IV, and it will last a long time. We could be breeding new generations of terrorists. And instead of making the world safer, it may become more dangerous.

A recent news story by Neal King Jr. in the Wall Street Journal described how the United States government, our government, is already taking bids in hundreds of millions of dollars from American corporations for the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. King reports that the inside track has already been seized by Haliburton, the former employer of our vice president. Other companies involved are those who have donated a fortune to the party in power. And “If,” writes Remnick, “those companies suddenly get privileged access to Iraqi oil wells, every blood-for-oil suspicion of conspiracy will be vindicated.”

Now the plan of neoconservatives in the administration, including our secretary of defense, is for a longer occupation of Iraq directed entirely by the Pentagon with only minimal participation of other countries and the United Nations. The scheme is one of the many for setting up a provisional government in which Americans head up each of the 23 Iraqi ministries.

And, our secretary of state in Brussels the other day tried to smooth things over a bit by saying, “Of course, we will have other countries and the United Nations.” But if you read what he said closely, the only positive statement was that the military coalition would have to play a leading role in determining the way forward. The rest of it was couched in negatives: This is not to say this, and this is not to say that.

It is to the credit of our Nebraska congressman, Rep. Doug Bereuter, and 41 other members of Congress, which is less than 10 percent of that body, that they signed a bipartisan letter urging the Administration to seek United Nations involvement in the rebuilding of the Iraqi economy. There is a raging debate in Washington about how the aftermath and the rebuilding are going to be handled, and we, as citizens of this great democracy, need to make our voices heard in every way that we can, because the poet Maya Angelou had it absolutely correct when she said, “Nobody but nobody can make it out there all alone.” I hope we don’t have to learn that the hard way.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are not too great here either. Did you see that recent editorial in that pinko commie rag, the Omaha World-Herald, which said, in essence, if you liked Patriot Act I, you’re going to love Patriot Act II? Not that we really know what’s going on much with Patriot Act I, because the details are not released. We do know that library patrons’ records are open to federal investigators, and they may come into your home when no one is there for a look around. Patriot Act II promises to give federal investigators more liberties and American citizens fewer. A draft copy of the Domestic Security Act of 2003 was leaked to the public in February, and Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee that no specifics have been decided upon, but, and these are his words, “It is in the country’s interests that we think expansively.”

Well, the op-ed piece in the World-Herald concludes, “America’s liberties shouldn’t be breached lightly and shouldn’t be taken on faith. The war on terrorists should not dim the spotlight of public inquiry that holds government officials accountable.”

And I would add, can we really trust a man, our Attorney General John Ashcroft, who before taking office as governor, senator and attorney general, has anointed himself with holy oil in imitation of the ancient kings of Israel, Saul and David, who (direct quote) “were anointed as they undertook their administrative duties”?

You know, Ashcroft is the son of an Assemblies of God Pentecostal preacher, and he takes his faith very seriously. He has prayer meetings in his office to start each day and invites any of his staff who wish to participate to do so. Now, before he took office as governor of Missouri, he anointed himself with oil, much as Napoleon put the crown on his own head. But there is a bit of biblical revisionism going on here because Saul and David were anointed by Samuel, a prophet, and prophets do not tell rulers what they want to hear. Generally they are not popular figures; they do not walk in the corridors of power. They speak for God, for their god, or their god speaks through them, and theirs is a difficult mission to preach harsh words in a smooth season.

Now, during the long and peaceful reign of Jeroboam II in Israel—if you have forgotten the dates, they are 786 to 746 BCE—Israel attained a height of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached, and they took these to be signs of the Lord’s special favor which they deserved because of their extravagant support of official shrines. But, then along comes a prophet, Amos, a humble shepherd, from a small Judean village named Tekoa, and he denounced Israel and their neighbors for the policy that might makes right, for depending too much upon military superiority, for the grave injustices in social dealings, abhorrent immorality and shallow, meaningless piety. And, speaking through him, Amos’s God said, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them. Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your harp. I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

Now, that’s a prophet, in my book.

Before he began his senate duties, a friend anointed Ashcroft, and, since they didn’t have any sacred oil—the recipe is in Exodus—they used a bowl of Crisco oil. Commented someone considering how beholden Ashcroft is to corporate interests, “that was most fitting.” And, the piece de resistance, before Ashcroft assumed his duties as attorney general, he was anointed by none other than that modern-day prophet, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. That is a scene which beggars description.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Norman Mailer, writing in the New York Review said, “Because democracy is noble, it is always endangered. Democracy is perishable. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.”

Let us all do our part in that heavy labor of maintaining our freedom and our reputation.

“I am only one,” said Edward Everett Hale, “but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something, and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

Let us all do something.