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“MORAL COMPASS”
Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
February 14, 2010
The Rev. Charles Helsabeck
Copyright © 2010

I recently saw a movie called “Thirteen Days.” It is a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Kevin Costner.

I once aged myself by using the Cuban Missile Crisis as an illustration in a Senior High class, and all the teens stared at me with blank expressions. Yes, Virginia, there was a Cuban Missile Crisis; and yes, I am old enough to remember it.

Those were scary, almost surrealistic days. In elementary school we practiced what to do if there was a nuclear missile attack. Now mind you, we were practicing for a missile attack in Rural Hall, North Carolina. What did we think they were going to blow up--our cigarette factories? But we did practice. At the appointed time we all got under our desks on our hands and knees in the fetal position. If the authorities had taken time to think about it, the fetal position was about right because life as we know it would end.

The Red Scare was real, and we were told the Communists would get us if we weren’t prepared. Remember Patrick Swayze’s first movie, “Red Dawn?” It is a movie that takes one of those places that is flat and remote with mountains nearby. It is just the spot for the Russians and the Cubans to invade the U.S. because it is so remote. Patrick Swayze leads a small group of high school students, the Wolverines, into the mountains after their teachers are killed. He and his high school friends wage guerrilla warfare against the invading Communist army.

Movies like that were common in those days, along with bomb shelters in your back yard. I remember looking at the contrails of jets and wondering if they might be the first sign the battle had begun.

My memory of those days is somewhat sketchy. I remember how Fidel Castro had taken over an island near Florida called Cuba and how he was misled into joining with the Communists. But that event got little coverage in Rural Hall.

In October of 1961, less than a year after John Kennedy took office I remember hearing about how the Russians–we didn’t refer to them as the Soviet Union, they were the Russians–how the Russians had, according to my memory, tricked the Cubans into letting them put missiles there. It wasn’t too dangerous, so I believed, but it was the principle of the thing–we couldn’t let the Russians do that. So, John Kennedy ordered the Navy to blockade Cuba to prevent any more missiles from going there. Then when the Russian ships heard that, they all turned around and went back to Russian and took all the missiles with them. History was easy to me then. The good guys, us, always win. End of the story.

I was so fascinated by Costner’s account of that event I decided to read some more about it. What I found out was quite different than what I remember. I did not know that by the time the U.S. found out about the missiles, the Soviets already had medium range missiles operational in Cuba and that there were nuclear weapons for those missiles already in Cuba. I did not know that the Cubans had asked for help from Russia because after the Bay of Pigs they were afraid that the U.S. would launch an attack on Cuba. I did not know that the U.S. was planning an attack on Cuba. I did not know that the U.S. was so pleased with the coup the CIA led in Guatemala that we were planning a similar operation in Cuba.

I did not know that some of the Soviet ships also had submarines escorting them, and when our forces tried to disrupt and annoy the submarines into surfacing at least one of the Soviet submarine captains thought that World War III had started and the Americans were jamming his radios so that he would not find out about it; so he ordered his nuclear missile to be armed and ready for firing.

I did not know that after Kennedy ordered the military to DEFCON-3, that is Defense Condition 3, one of the Air Force generals who wanted to bomb Cuba ordered his units to DEFCON-2 that is an order to prepare for war. Later when that general was questioned about risking a war of annihilation with the Russians he said, “Well, if there are two Americans alive at the end and only one Russian, then we win.”

Other than the fact that I lived in Rural Hall, why didn’t I know the truth about what was going on between Russian and the U.S. until almost 40 years later?

The reason I didn’t know what was going on was that the same people who ran our country control what others know. Too often, truth is a relative term when it comes to government. Reinhold Niebuhr saw this truth when he wrote that a government’s function is to control, and therefore governments can never be moral.

We live in darkness.

The Jewish people in Jesus’ time knew what it was like to be controlled. They were living with an occupying army. Rome told everyone we have the power to bring you peace if you just submit to our rule. Rome offered peace, Pax Romana, but it was peace through force, peace through control.

The Jewish people in Jesus’ time lived in darkness.

The writer of Luke/Acts used the contrasting themes of light and darkness. When Jesus is born there were “shepherds…in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Night time in Corvallis is not very dark. Night time in the Judean country was dark. These shepherds knew darkness. “Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them….” When the angel of the Lord appears there is light.

In Jesus’ time his birth story was not the only one that told of bringing light into darkness. In the stories of the birth of Augustus, he was conceived by the god Apollo in his human mother, Atia, so Augustus was known as the “Son of God” by Apollo, and Apollo was the Roman god of light. Moreover, on the night of his conception, Atia’s husband, Octavius, had a dream in which he saw the sun rising from his wife’s womb. The meaning of the birth story of Caesar Augustus was clear to people of the first century: that as the son of god, Augustus brings light into the world. But, according to Luke, Jesus is the light in the darkness. The other one, Caesar, who claimed to be the light in the darkness, is not. Indeed, that “light” is really darkness.

Furthermore, when the angels appear to the shepherds they proclaim “peace on earth” in direct opposition to the peace of Rome. The Romans did bring an end to the civil war that had wracked the Roman world for decades. Of course, from the vantage point of the oppressed and conquered, the Peace of Rome was described by a historian of the times as “they make a desert and call it peace.”

Jesus’ birth story and the story we read today called The Transfiguration proclaim that instead of Rome, Jesus is the true light in the darkness. Only by following Jesus could a person experience the true light of God. Marcus Borg tells us that the church’s first understanding of the resurrection was that in a showdown between Jesus and Rome, Jesus wins.

In thinking about today’s passage I realized that the situation of 21st century Americans is very different from the first century Jews. Not only are we the ones occupying other countries in order to bring peace to them, but most of us have never experienced darkness as a force of nature over which we have no control.

Where do we experience ‘darkness’ these days?

David Halberstam, in his book ‘The Best and the Brightest,’ described the poor decision-making in Washington during the days when the U.S. was considering invading Cuba as:

[A] serious misreading of aspirations of a non-white nation, bringing Western, Caucasian, anti-Communism to a place where it was less applicable;
As, institutions pushing forward with their own momentum, ideas and programs tended to justify and advance the cause of the institution at the expense of the nation;
It was an example of too much secrecy with too many experts who know remarkably little either about the country involved or about their own country;
Also, it was too many decisions by the private men of the Administration as opposed to the public ones;
And too little moral reference.

Halberstam wrote, “Bringing Western, Caucasian, anti-Communism to a place where it was less applicable.” Change “anti-Communism” to “anti-terrorism through force” and it sounds remarkably like the decision to invade Iraq.

We live in darkness.

He wrote that “Ideas and programs tended to justify and advance the cause of the institution at the expense of the nation.” When I listen to the arguments about why universal health care will not work they sound remarkably like this.

We live in darkness.

He also said of decision-making in Washington in 1961 as, “Too much secrecy with too many experts who know remarkably little either about the country involved or about their own country,” sounds fairly accurate of the decision-makers that have all too often occupied our government.

We live in darkness.

Another characteristic Halberstam says was, “Too many decisions by the private men of the Administration as opposed to the public ones,” sounds remarkably like our recent policies toward energy and health care have been made.

We live in darkness.

Lastly, and perhaps the most significant of our nation’s decision making, “Too little moral reference.” When gut feelings take the place of a moral reference, the people and the nation live in moral relativity.

We live in darkness.

So, what do I know about politics and what should I tell you about politics?

Very little. Not only do I not know how to balance the federal budget but I also know that what I used to be sure of I have later changed my mind.

But I do know that torturing people is wrong. I don’t care how esoteric the legal arguments are; I know that torturing people is morally wrong.

I do not know how to solve the illegal immigration problem, but I do know that to stand by and not help while people are dying is wrong. I read that a minister was arrested recently because he left water bottles along the border so that those desperate enough to try to cross would not die for lack of water. I do not know and cannot comment on other factors of his arrest, but I do know that Jesus said, “In as much as you have done it to one of the forgotten and powerless people you have done it to me.” Not helping when you know people are dying is wrong.

I do not know how to solve the health care problems in our country, but I do know that it is immoral to allow 45,000 people a year, or 5 people an hour, to die because they do not have access to adequate health care.

In Joshua 24.15 we read, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served…or the gods…in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

Choose today and everyday whether you will serve the Lords who, “make a desert and call it peace.” Or, choose the Lord who brings the captives out of slavery and who brings good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind. Amen.