Selected Sermons

Fear Not

Ps 27

by Doug Pritchard

Sermon: February 17, 2002.


1. Introduction

This morning I would like to share with you some of my experiences from the recent Christian Peacemaker Team delegation to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was a difficult decision for me to participate in this mission but I received a very clear leading to do so which I want to describe for you.

When we finally got into Afghanistan, we saw massive destruction perpetrated first by the Soviets, then by the warlords which the West hired to fight the Soviets, then by the Taliban, and now more destruction as our nations seek revenge for the events of Sept. 11. The US, and its allies like Canada, are pursuing a policy of an "eye for an eye" and claiming God's blessing on their war. But Jesus forbids retaliation and calls us to another way.

In the midst of this destruction, we found the Afghan people to be hopeful, optimistic, energized, and enthusiastic about the opportunity to rebuild their country and a peaceful future. The Taliban are gone. The world is engaged with Afghanistan. Afghans hope that the world has now seen the folly of feeding terrorists and warlords, even in a country which seemed as remote as Afghanistan, and that we will stop doing that, so that they can now live in peace.

Their vision of a peaceful future and their determination to bring it about gives me great hope and banishes fear.

2. The Call

First, I want to share how I came to go to Afghanistan. Like many I watched the TV images of Sept. 11 in horror. It was my birthday, but I spent the day alone in my basement office watching hour after hour as the terror, violence and death came home to this continent. A few weeks later, at the Christian Peacemaker Team Congress in Indiana, as the US was already threatening to bomb Afghanistan, I and others asked if CPT would be sending a team there. The next month at CPT's Steering Committee meeting, it was decided that we would send a team to "get in the way" of the US-led bombing and to find out more of what was actually happening on the ground. The CPT Director, Gene Stoltzfus, asked if I would be a part of the team.

I was afraid - afraid of the bombing, of the landmines, of kidnapping. I wrestled with this for several days. My wife Jane was afraid too but was also convinced that CPT needed to be there. She had already been working hard at home to end the war. Our three sons were also very worried. My nights were restless and I had no clear leading. I knew I really needed to seek God's will about this. So I set aside a day to pray. As soon as I sat down to pray on that day, I was certain that someone was standing behind me, just at my right shoulder. I whipped around to look because the sensation was so immediate and so real. There was no physical person there, but I knew it was Jesus himself present with me. He said nothing but was there, dressed as an Afghan.

I started to read a book called "The Road to Peace" by Henri Nouwen, all the while conscious of Jesus' presence at my shoulder. After a couple of hours, I prepared to pray. Looking for a Bible verse to meditate on, I was about to stick my finger in the Bible for a random verse, when the words "Psalm 27" came into my head. I don't know the psalms well and certainly not by number, but as soon as I read this psalm, I knew it was for me, now. It opens:

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

It goes on to speak about enemies, armies, war, tents, high rocks, shelter, and God's salvation. It closes with the conviction:

"I know that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!"

I read the psalm a couple of times and closed my eyes to pray. Immediately I felt Jesus touch my right elbow and gently urge me forward, into the scene of this psalm, saying, "You can do this. You can do this." I can still feel that touch 4 months later! I could only respond, "Yes, LORD, I will go."

Then a familiar hymn came to my mind (#562)

"Nada te turbe, nada te_ espante.
Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta
Nada te turbe, nada te_espante.
Solo Dios basta."

I trained and worked as a chemical engineer. I dealt in steel and concrete, things that can be touched and measured - not visions and presences. Nothing quite like this has happened to me before. Maybe such things have happened to you. Maybe they will happen to you too if you earnestly seek God's guidance. It happened to me this time, and that is how I came to go to Afghanistan.

3. An Eye for an Eye

Now, I would like to describe some of what we saw in Afghanistan. The CPT delegation consisted of myself and CPT Director Gene Stoltzfus from Chicago.

Afghanistan has been totally devastated by 23 years of intense warfare. It started in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support a communist coup. They brought 200,000 troops and all the weapons they could transport. Yet they could not control a fiercely independent people spread over an incredibly rugged terrain. The Soviets could only subdue the cities and so they began to relentlessly bomb the countryside. Over their 10-year occupation they completely destroyed half of Afghanistan's 20,000 villages, and sowed millions of landmines over the rest of the land. To fight the Soviets, during the Cold War of the 1980s, the West armed and encouraged various warlords and their "mujahideen" or "freedom fighters." After years of fierce fighting, the Soviets gave up and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The Soviet Union collapsed three years later. Thus Afghanistan was the last battleground of the Cold War between east and west.

Then the warlords, who had been trained and encouraged by the West and by Afghanistan's neighbours, began fighting each other. They had been supplied with billions of dollars of sophisticated weapons like Stinger missiles and multi-barrel 122 mm rockets and so their fight was devastating. The cities, which the Soviet occupation had left intact, were now largely razed by the warlords. The southern half of Kabul, for example, is still totally destroyed-bombed out hospitals, schools, mosques and mile after mile of residential neighbourhoods.

The Taliban arose in 1994, partly in response to the atrocities of the warlords, and partly with the encouragement of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others. They too bombed and destroyed. One of the Taliban's worst atrocities was the destruction of the Shomali plain north of Kabul. In revenge for the stiff resistance which they had encountered from the people of this productive orchard area of Afghanistan, they expelled all 200,000 farmers and cut down every fruit tree and grape vine. They did not even take the wood but just cut the trees and left them where they lay. This is completely against Islam and any common sense.

As a result of these wars, out of a population of 20 million, Afghanistan has suffered 2 million deaths, 2 million injured, and 8 million people displaced internally or made refugees. Thus 60% of the population was dead, wounded or displaced. Electricity and telephones remain only in a few city centres. There are no banks, post offices, or newspapers. Roads and streets are cratered and bridges gone. The economy has been destroyed and the only contributions to Gross National Product left are smuggling and opium. God have mercy!

Now the US and its allies like Canada are bombing what is left of Afghanistan. Initially it was said to be a hunt for Osama Bin Laden in retaliation for the attacks of Sept. 11. Then it was widened to an attack on all of the Taliban, and the US allied itself with the same warlords who had destroyed the country in the 1990's. Now the bombing continues against al-Qaeda, whoever and wherever they are thought to be.

Thousands more Afghan civilians have been killed and more infrastructure has been damaged in the course of this latest bombing. The Afghan people are relieved that the bombing has been less damaging than that done by the Soviets or the warlords, but there has been substantial damage nonetheless. The US government's response has been to deny or to minimize these latest deaths or to claim that they are unfortunate but necessary. In Kabul, we met with a leader of the International Committee of the Red Cross who is still angry at the US bombing of the Red Cross warehouses filled with relief supplies at the start of the bombing. The Red Cross told the US about their warehouses in advance and put a 3 m by 3 m Red Cross flag on top. The US bombed them anyway. The Red Cross protested and then put a 9 m by 9 m flag on top of the remaining warehouses. The US came back 10 days later and bombed them again. The Red Cross protested again and eventually the US issued an apology, the only such apology for damage to civilian targets in this war. At the same time, the Pentagon continued to say that the warehouses had been a legitimate military target.

Other relief agencies we spoke to said they had documented thousands of civilian casualties and destroyed homes from the US-led bombing, just in the immediate vicinity of Kabul. They had not yet been able to document the damage in other heavily bombed areas like Tora Bora and Kandahar. The US-led coalition has deliberately chosen high-altitude bombing as its principal tactic with all the errors and inaccuracies that that entails. Just as they did in Kosovo and in Iraq. The death toll for Afghan civilians is certainly higher now than the toll for those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Does that matter? Doesn't each death matter?

What would Jesus say? Signs down south say, "God bless America." Will God bless America?

In Gn 4 we read that Cain's descendant Lamech boasted that when a young man struck him, he retaliated by killing the man, and said, "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (vv 23-24). Moses sought to put a limit on such retaliation and restricted vengeance to "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" (Ex 21:23, Lev 24:19-22). Jesus said he had come to fulfill the law and the prophets. He said that "whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 5:17-19). But he went on to say, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (vv 43-44)...Put away your sword; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (26:52)." This is how the law of God is fulfilled.

If we seek security through the deaths of others, where have we put our trust? How do we live as people of peace in a country at war? How do we rally others to get in the way of Jesus rather than the way of war, to pick up our cross instead of the flag and the gun? The Hebrews brought the worship of the universal God into a world following after tribal gods. How do we witness to a universal rather than a national God who only cares about our citizens' lives? Can we listen to the peaceful voice of Jesus rather than the voices of fear, hatred, and revenge?

Afghans we met asked us repeatedly, "Where have you been for the last 23 years?" Will we abandon them again as we abandoned them to the Soviets and then to the warlords and then to the Taliban? The next question Afghans asked us was, "Why do your governments say only Muslims are terrorists? How do you define terrorism? Is not the bombing of our citizens also terrorism?" One particularly religious group said, "We saw President Bush put his hand on the Bible when he was inaugurated. Why does he not do what the Bible says?"

Will God bless America and Canada for this war on Osama, this war on terrorism, this war on the Afghan people, this war on their homes? Instead, could we perhaps consider offering apologies and consider offering to rebuild Afghan homes as a way to begin making things right again? A simple mud-brick home in Afghanistan costs about $3,000 for 2 rooms plus a toilet. Could North American churches lead the way in healing and reconciliation by offering to rebuild these recently bombed homes?

4. Justice in the Gate

In conclusion, Psalm 27, which I was given before I began this mission, held the promise, "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living" (v 13). I did see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. I saw it in the eyes and heard it in the voices of the Afghans we met who are excited and ready to rebuild their country. They are returning from exile and are regrouping in their schools and offices and villages. One morning at the Foreign Ministry we witnessed a joyful reunion. Government officers who had stayed on at their posts, despite the Taliban and having no salary for the past six months, hugged and joked with other government officers returning that day from exile in Pakistan and Russia.

While Afghans are eager to get to work, they are concerned about security. The same old warlords are trying to reassert control over roads and towns, and are attacking and robbing people again. But the people are vigorously responding to the warlords. Afghans are re-establishing the authority of their village "shuras" or community councils to counteract the artificial authority of the warlords and their armed gangs. Like the "elders at the gate" in Israel (Dt 21:19, 25:7), the shuras will dispense justice locally and assure the people of a voice. Afghans ask that we join them in this peacebuilding effort by cutting off the supply of weapons and funds and legitimacy to the warlords. Afghans feel that they have a few months to get on top of these warlords. Otherwise the region will slip back into the pit of vengeance and retaliation with the dangers for the whole world that we all saw on Sept. 11.

Afghans would welcome CPT working with them as they address their security concerns. The current window of opportunity is a limited one and so the need is urgent. Therefore, we have recommended to CPT's Steering Committee, which meets next month, that we place a full-time team in Afghanistan by the end of May. This team would work with Afghan organizations to promote respect for international humanitarian law, investigate armed attacks or threats to people, accompany Afghan aid workers, and confront the warlords and armed groups to let them know the world is watching.

This assignment would be a challenging one for CPT since travel and communication are difficult after so many years of war. But the need is great, the time is short, the invitation is there. I am confident a CPT team there could take comfort, as I did, from Ps 27:

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

I am confident that working with the Afghan people our team would see, as I did, "the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living."

And may it be so. Amen.