September 11 and the Gospel

The Gospel from the lectionary today – Luke 6: 27 – 38, is very appropriate for the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you….Do to others as you would have others do to you.

Would that the US government had paid heed to these words in 2001, when people throughout the world felt a great sympathy with the US. What power that solidarity in suffering could have brought to the world.

But the US government began one war, against Afghanistan, and then initiated another one a few years later against Iraq. Today I even hear threats of a war against Iran. More violence, more deaths, greater insecurity. More terrorism, not just from fanatics but the terror of war and torture which the US and some other governments have engaged in.

And then there is the “terror,” the “violence” of poverty. While trillions are wasted on weapons and war, so many suffer and die from hunger. Here in Honduras, in a nation of 7 million, 300,000 children suffer from malnutrition.

This morning, I heard a priest at the Mass broadcasted by the diocesan radio station speaking about President Bush as a terrorist and about the political and economic terrorism that Latin America has suffered from US policies. The language was strong, some would say harsh – though combined with a deep sympathy for the victims of the attacks. The Mass was offered for all of them.

The priest did not mention that September 11 is also the anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the elected president of Chile, in 1973, with the assistance of some US companies and , very possibly, the CIA. That coup left in its wake thousands killed, tortured, and exiled.

The priest did not mention the charges of torture and maltreatment of prisoners of the “war against terror” held by the US. Just yesterday I learned that Joshua Casteel has recently published Letters from Abu Ghraib, a collection of the e-mails he sent while an interrogator in Iraq., I heard him speak in January 2006 at the Iowa Social Action conference. about his experience there and the struggles that led him to leave the army as a conscientious objector. I hope to find and read his book when I visit Iowa next month.

For me, the response to terrorism has to be love, solidarity, and strong nonviolent resistance to injustice and tyranny of all sorts.

It’s a challenge – but what I think we lack most is imagination.

Walter Wink’s commentary on the passage about turning the other cheek in Matthew’s Gospel has intrigued me. His little book, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Fortress Press, 2003), is a great summary of his exegesis.

Turning the other cheek is not giving in to violence. It is a type of moral jujitsu – a type of creative resistance; It says that you cannot treat me like a think you just bat around; I am a person. Know that if you hit me, you are hitting a real human being, like yourself.

Of course, this won’t always work. Nor does violence. But there are many personal and historical instances when creative nonviolent resistance has worked.

Even so, I think this is more like what Jesus calls us to do. For “the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you.” (Luke 6: 38)

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On another theme:

Yesterday we had the formal inauguration of the lunch program for poor kids - the Comedor de Niños. The bishop, Monseñor Luís Alfonso Santos, blessed the comedor after a few speeches. I gave the invocation, in which I reminded the people that the site had been the chapel of the diocesan office, where people had been fed on Jesus, the Bread of Life, and now we are planning to feed chidlren with their "daily bread." That's worth an extended meditation on the significance of the Eucharist for hunger.