Moses begged, “Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person.”

About a year ago I received an e-mail from a man who had been attending our church with some frequency. Doug wanted me to consider leading a veterans’ group called “Warrior’s Journey Home,” a ministry that originated in Ohio.

I believe there is a place for war, but I will admit my first thought was cautious. “I have advocated for peace since Vietnam and my convictions have only strengthened since our post- 9/11 wars.” I was also very aware that on the whole my congregation feels the same way.

I have been in the sacred calling game long enough not to dismiss requests like this out of hand. I know that the Spirit’s calling often comes from unforeseen quarters.

When I met with Doug, I was not only moved by his humility and desire to serve, but I was quite impressed with the group’s website. The leader of the ministry writes, “I don’t hear war stories, I hear love stories. The objective of Warrior’s Journey Home is for our veterans to listen, speak, and heal.”

I told Doug that we would take this in a step -by- step discernment process. I called the Congregationalist Pastor, Rev. John Schluep, who directs the ministry in Ohio. I bounced it off of my spiritual director. We took it to our Adult Programming church committee. I read the book, “War and the Soul.” Every movement lined up.

Even though I felt a deep kinship with the entreaty of Moses, I was also sensing a call to lead a veterans’ healing circle. I have served as a medical chaplain and have led hundreds of bereavement groups, yet this is among the last things I ever envisioned myself doing.

Would this mean I was becoming a pro-war minister? I shared my fear in a conversation with Rev. Schluep. His reply unearthed a truth deep within my heart. “We will never have peace in the world until we heal the soul of the warrior.”

In March my congregation, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church began a Warrior’s Journey Home ministry. Our healing circle is open to veterans, their families and civilians who have been impacted by war. It is non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan.

The healing power of telling our stories has impressed me afresh. I have been called to examine my own biases and wounds.

My faith is calling me to make a distinction between the political leaders who start wars and the soldiers who carry them out. My faith is calling me to respect fellow citizens who make very different choices from mine. My faith is calling me to honor the service of our veteran’s. My faith is calling me to realize peace is not just about healing the warrior’s soul. Peace depends on healing my soul as well.

Jesus opened his mouth and taught them…“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

I raised my hand in our freshman Bible class at Abilene Christian College. “God seems to be very different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. Did God change? Did God evolve over time?”

Dr. Brecheen answered calmly and reliably. “Oh no.” “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

I was just a 17-year-old kid, and I had no doctor’s degree but it seemed like there was some Olympian religious gymnastics going on here. First of all the text says, “Jesus Christ is the same.”

Now, I was willing to make the Gospel of John leap, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But beyond that, my professor’s response though sincere lacked basic candor or authenticity. In one scripture God is ordering revenge & genocide and later his Son is teaching us to love and pray for our enemies so we can be like God! Jesus wouldn’t be the first son to rebel against his father, but from all I read they seemed to have a pretty tight oneness.

At this point I committed myself to reading the Bible cover to cover making every effort to forget what my fundamentalist preacher Father and Church had told me it said.

I still have that worn out Harper’s Study Bible, a holy artifact of my spiritual pilgrimage. Before I ever heard of Jung, Campbell, or Process Theology it became clear to me that either God or Humanity had evolved along the way. I have come to believe now we have essentially created God in our own image.

Ever since Emperor Constantine’s dream that envisioned a symbol of Christ on his victorious soldier’s shields Jesus Christ became a warrior God like his Old Testament father. He became the God of Empire.

In more contemporary western history this Christ God imbued and blessed the British and American Empires. The American creed is Manifest Destiny.

How did God’s non-violent conversion come about?

In 1846 a Universalist preacher named Adin Ballou wrote a book titled Christian Non-Resistance. Thoreau read it and penned an essay, Civil Disobedience. Gandhi read Thoreau and was inspired to employ non-violence to bring down the British Empire in India. A Christian Minister named King emulated Gandhi and brought non-violence to the American Empire.

An American Universalist influenced a New England Unitarian Transcendentalist who invigorated an Indian Hindu to set the captive Christ God free from Empire. The zealous Hindu served as a model for an African American Christian to call his nation to conscience through the liberated Jesus.

Here at home the urgent necessity for an evolved non-violent God comes to mind as riled up “Christian nation patriots” throw bricks through windows, spit on elected leaders, hurl vile epithets threaten lives, and “Christian Militiamen” are arrested for plotting to murder police officers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

All the while our President makes a Sunday surprise visit to Afghanistan with an impassioned defense of the war exhuming the putrefied argument, “We were attacked viciously on 9/11…this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership.”

Gandhi declared & then admonished, “Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence…I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

The Bagram tent revival closed with the ritual Presidential altar call. “God bless you. God bless the United States Armed Forces. And God bless the United States of America.”

Which God will we pledge our allegiance to; the tribal warrior Father, or his “converted” risen Son?

One of his disciples, Glenn Beck went off on Jesus. “Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.”

Jesus gently chuckled and explained. “This is a party where each successive course is eaten at a different host’s house – the guests progress from house to house. Hence, the name progressive dinner party.”

Glenn was still suspicious, but this was Jesus for God’s sake. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

The first stop was at the home of a fellow disciple who was an IRS agent. While they were having dinner many other tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with them. Glenn began to mumble to the other disciples, “Why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Righteous Glenn kind of liked this. He considered them to be sicko “tax and spend” sinners as well.

On the next stop of their progressive dinner party Jesus took his followers to a big rally.
“When Jesus saw the large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” This disturbed Glenn because not one of them presented an insurance card. It seemed a bit “socialist” to him.

As evening approached, Glenn came to Jesus and demanded, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”The other disciples offered, “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish.”

“Bring them here to me,” Jesus said. He directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

By now Glenn was getting exasperated with Jesus. He turned to the other disciples and railed.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion…are going to come under the ropes in the next year…I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’. If Jesus uses these words run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising you to leave this group? Yes!”

Glenn aimed to show Jesus the way it should be done. So, he volunteered to host the final leg of the progressive dinner party.

Glenn provided a sumptuous feast. He sat at the head of the table with all of his prominent FOX broadcasters seated in order of their cultural eminence.

Then Jesus said to Glenn, “When you give a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Glenn was enraged. He knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was not only a socialist but a Marxist. Glenn had his Foxwater security agents evict Jesus from the progressive dinner party.

As the door hit Jesus on the backside he looked at Glenn with the same compassion he offered to the tired, penniless peasants he had healed and fed earlier.

With sorrow in his eyes Jesus spoke. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”