EDITORIAL:
Amazing Grace and 09-11-01

This issue of DSM was moving toward proofreading as 09-11-01 created before and after. Thank God before and after are similar enough it is possible for writings from before to still speak after. Surely the underlying faith in grace which threads its way implicitly through these pages is now even more needed. If there is anything with power to cut the cycle of violence, it is amazing grace, that love which stuns by appearing precisely when least expected or deserved.

But if those pre-attack ponderings of grace still resonate in the quieter sides of our lives, we are also needing to ponder how grace applies post-attack. My first ruminations involved what to say as pastor at a prayer service the day after. I was grateful to be held accountable by awareness of diverse participants. Many had been shaped by a lifetime of historic peace church influences. Others had joined the congregation with appreciation for its peace position but from families whose members had a history of honorable military service.

As I stood before this rich mix, it seemed it would make a mockery of the love of enemies I was about to preach to value only some perspectives. My instinct was (and still is) to call for waging peace, not the promised retaliation. But I risked launching pacifism so righteously as to become one more zealot. Thus though I worried that the risk for those with military ties might be knee-jerk support for retaliation, I sensed I needed what they could see even as I hoped they might benefit from what I could see.

So—though aware of complexities of applying them—I suggested we might learn from each of these texts:

• In Romans 13:1-4 the apostle Paul says God ordains government, and “if you do wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain!” Might a biblical response to terror include U.S. “police” action to bring to justice those most responsible?

• In 12:19 Paul forbids revenge. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord,’” he quotes. Surely Christians dare support no action motivated purely by vengeance and claiming the right therefore to do unto others what has been done to us.

• In Matthew 5:43, Jesus teaches, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye,’ but I say. . . .” What a huge “but” that is now, after 09-11. Yet how deeply it resonates as a different way of proceeding.

Exactly what actions these texts might lead our congregation to support, I don’t know. But I hope linking them invites us to offer each other the amazing grace of inviting all views to contribute to discernment—rather than turning even each other into enemies battling over what sword God lets authority wield and how enemies are loved.
—Michael A. King