Pastor Pat Edwards 8/27/2006
Grace Baptist Church in Bountiful, Utah

Before we left for Rwanda I started reading a book called Flyboys written by James Bradley. In hindsight I can see God’s hand in the timing of my reading. Some of what I’m going to share this morning is unpleasant, even distasteful, but if we don’t confront our sinfulness and our desperate need for repentance we’ll never be the people Jesus wants us to be and do the things Jesus wants us to do.

Flyboys is the story of what happened to eight American flyers shot down during World War II over a small Japanese island called Chichi Jima. It’s about 150 miles south of a much more famous island called Iwo Jima. Seven of the flyers were captured but one was rescued by an American submarine just before a Japanese boat was able to capture him. That rescued flyer went on to become the forty-first President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. What happened to the other seven was kept top-secret for more than fifty years. Not even their families were told their fate because the facts were considered too gruesome. Japan never accepted the Geneva Convention so instead of being treated as prisoners-of-war the flyers were considered criminals. They were used for bayonet practice or beheaded but the atrocities didn’t end there. Certain Japanese officers were convinced that eating the internal organs of your enemy endowed one with greater courage and strength so several of the executed flyers were cannibalized.

The story is both shocking and compelling but the author does an excellent job pointing out why these things happen, what allows people to treat others in such barbaric ways. Such stories serve as a warning about the depravity of the human heart and the atrocities we are capable of when we deny each other our common humanity. And I personally believes it helps to explain why Christians often fail in their efforts to make disciples for Jesus. But more about that later.

Bradley’s insight is not new, he just reminds his readers that such atrocities occur because human beings have learned to classify people we don’t like as "others," as creatures who aren’t fully human. I grew up hearing about the barbarity of the Japanese in World War II. In high school history and social studies classes we were taught the Japanese viewed other races as inferior, even as sub-human and that was the reason they mistreated prisoners of war and captive civilian populations in the brutal way they did. It wasn’t until college and the social rebellions that swept our nation in the late 60's that we began to learn the history of American atrocities. It was then that we finally began to face our own checkered past and the treatment of the blacks, Native Americans, Filipinos and other minorities, even those most like us, fellow Europeans.

While the author wanted to tell this unknown story of World War II at the same time he didn’t want to present a one-dimensional view of the problem of "otherness," the belief that human beings truly are different justified by race or culture or religion or countless other criteria. So Asians are smart and Africans are athletic. The French are artistic and the Germans mechanical and the Spanish passionate. I’ve only listed positive stereotypes but most of us know that many times the stereotypes are negative and we believe "those people" really are different. I grew up in Colorado and when we studied that state’s history we learned about the Indian wars and one of the most famous battles which really wasn’t a battle at all, the Sand Creek Massacre. Let me quote an article on Sand Creek.

Although he was informed that Black Kettle had already surrendered, Chivington pressed on with what he considered the perfect opportunity to further the cause for Indian extinction. On the morning of November 29, he led his troops, many of them drinking heavily, to Sand Creek and positioned them, along with their four howitzers, around the Indian village. Black Kettle ever trusting raised both an American and a white flag of peace over his tepee. In response, Chivington raised his arm for the attack. Chivington wanted a victory, not prisoners, and so men, women and children were hunted down and shot.

But the story doesn’t end there. A short time later Chivington, an ordained minister, appeared on stage at a Denver theater where he received a hero’s welcome. And here I quote although I’m editing specific details. "What elicited the roars of approval from the Denver theater audience was not just Preacher John’s tale of ‘victory’ but the grisly evidence... Applause greeted American soldiers who displayed..." and here I’ll just say human body parts that adorned their clothing. No one likes to hear these kinds of things but it’s important that we recognize Americans and professing Christians have not been exempt from the behaviors that we condemn in others, behaviors taking place in our world today. But we were rarely taught about American or Christian misbehavior in our history classes just as we were not told in the Spanish-American War our soldiers killed over 250,000 Filipinos, mostly civilian, and one general gave orders to take no prisoners and kill anyone over the age of ten.

Why am I sharing these stories? What does all this have to do with Jesus and the good news? Our third day in Rwanda found us at one of the genocide memorials that dot that country. It was a church where thousands had taken refuge. There are gaping holes in the walls created by the attackers to get at their victims. As you enter the church you see simple wooden shelves with scores of human skulls placed neatly side by side. Many of those skulls are cracked or have gaping holes in them. Most are adult but many are child sized. You stand in disbelief that one human being could do this to another. And this happened almost a million times in a country that is predominantly Christian, almost 75% of the population is Catholic or Protestant.

But as I asked myself, "why?" I remembered Bradley’s recent reminder of what happens when we create the category of "others." To the Hutu extremists, the Interahamwe, a word that means "attack together," people of the Tutsi tribe were "cockroaches." That dehumanizing term justified even the killing of children and babies because they explained "little cockroaches grow up to be big cockroaches." Tutsis aren’t people, they’re cockroaches. But what does all this have to do with those of us gathered today in Bountiful, Utah far from such behavior and attitudes? A lot. Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians at Ephesus. 11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)- 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

Probably all of us gathered here today were once "others." We are not part of Israel, literal descendants of Abraham, the chosen people and we are foreigners to the covenants of promise God made with Israel. Paul writes we were "without hope and without God in the world." And more significantly we were separated from Christ.

But even though we truly are "other" compared to God and viewed as "other" by many, the Lord God and his people reached out to us rather than rejecting us. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. 14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Every human being is made in the image of God and every human being is created to live in fellowship with God. After humanity’s fall into sin God chose one man, Abraham, and his future descendants to be models of how fellowship with God could be restored to all people. But Israel focused on only half of God’s plan - that they were a blessed people. They ignored the other half - that they were to be a blessing to all other people by sharing their relationship with God. The coming of Jesus corrected that error. These verses tell us that through his blood those who were far away (you and me) were brought close. Jesus destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility; he made one new man out of two thus making peace and then brought us peace with God as well through the cross. He destroyed the category of "others" and changed the focus to "brothers".

Verses 19-22 teach believers are all fellow citizens in the kingdom of God, members of his household and building blocks of a holy temple in which the Spirit of God lives. There are still two classes of people though - the believers we have just read about, citizens of the kingdom, members of the family, those who are on the inside of God’s grace. The second group is every other living person, all those still outside but whom Jesus wants on the inside. So there are those who have it and those Jesus wants to have it. As far as Jesus is concerned those are the only two groups in our world today but do we feel the same way?

We have to stop seeing people as others and instead think of brothers. And if we’re honest we know that’s not easy. In one of his blogs Dave referred to our visit to the genocide memorial and his emotional reaction, I see their little beaming faces appearing on small round heads and think of those little skulls with machete cracks in them at the genocide memorial. This they in fact did even to neighbors who trusted them, once friendly guys down the street and right next door!… I remember standing there in silence, eyes flooded, asking the air "How dare they!?" I remember hurling into that same air the words "Surely there aren’t hot enough places in hell for such unconscionable beasts!!" Strange and wonderful beyond our imagining, of course, is that EVEN THESE merciless souls are not beyond our Father’s mercy, even these not beyond the reach of his forgiveness. I don’t really get it, yet my faith holds on to this.

Like Dave I’ve want to consign the Interahamwe, terrorists, pedophiles and a host of others to the depths of hell but Jesus died for them so that the image of God could be renewed in them, so that they could find truth and life and bring honor and glory to their Creator. We need to constantly remind ourselves of that. But most of us don’t deal with such villains in our daily lives. Instead we deal with each other and with family, neighbors, coworkers and classmates. I confess too often and more than once is too often, I classify people as "others." When I do that I lose love and compassion and concern for their salvation. Instead I belittle and ridicule and give up hope for them. In Utah it’s easy to draw those lines of distinction because we live in a culture where we are a minority dominated by a majority. So we lump all Mormons together, make jokes about their culture and wonder how they can believe all the stuff they do. We grow angry because we think we’re being overlooked or deliberately slighted or because our children are hurt by insensitivity. Mormons can become "others" to us and when that happens we lose our desire to minister to them in love.

Sometimes these things happen in our family, blood or spiritual. A brother or sister makes a choice, has a belief or does something that doesn’t click with us and we suddenly find ourselves considering them strange, odd, other than us. And we pull back, we separate. Two things can happen, we may give up on someone Jesus wants on the inside or if a person truly is a brother or sister in Christ our separation means what was one is divided into two and we undo what Jesus died to accomplish. When you look around this room, or your neighborhood or your place of work or your home or your classroom who do you see? Do you see others, strangers you can’t imagine having anything to do with, even resent? Or do you see brothers and potential brothers, do you see all those Jesus gave his life to bring into the family of God? The good news will never be good news unless the love of Christ radiates from us to all those who are different, all those who are other. Let’s pray.