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Welcome to "Sermoneutics," a weekly devotional based on the upcoming texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. Each year I will blog about one set of lessons - Old Testament, Psalms, Epistles or Gospels. I include an original collect and compose a benediction, both based on the week's passage. I hope these will prove useful both for personal devotion and as "sermon starters" for those who preach regularly.

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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Ten Years Later: A Response from a Soldier

Captain Ron Fisher, Battalion Chaplain, United States Army and a graduate of Logsdon Seminary/South Texas School of Christian Studies, emailed a thoughtful and challenging reply to my blog on the upcoming anniversary of the 911 attacks. I believe his insights should be available to a wider audience. With his permission, I am reproducing his remarks below:

I applaud your courage, for surely what you've written here is an unpopular devotion with much of the blood lusting mass in our society and Church (or seminaries).  I was deeply grieved to see Americans (many of whom would claim Christianity as their faith) celebrating in the streets at the news of bin Laden's execution.  That response failed to reflect the spirit of Christ to me.  The enemy too is created in the image of God.  This makes our, those of us in uniform, killing a sacred act, one not to be taken lightly or without much thought and prayer.   
I recall an experience in Baghdad.  We were in a home with two women and a number of children.  Our mission was to deliver bread and space heaters as the inhabitants in this Muhalla there were without food and heat.  There was a picture of a man on the wall.  When we asked through the Interpreter with us who the man was, he answered, "He is their husband.  But, you killed him.  He was a sniper for Al-Queda." The thought struck me that we in uniform aren't always able to turn the other cheek or to love our enemies, but that doesn't keep us from loving their families in their absence.  

For what's it worth, I very often find myself conflicted between the realities of God's Word on the matter and my own growing conviction that there remains certain individuals and groups in the world today who just need to get dead.  Luther said being a Soldier "is a holy vocation." Paul seems to me to suggest the same in Romans 13.  While the Western Church remains fixated on winning Catholics in Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean, the Church allows the rapid expansion of Islam to penetrate every sector of our society.  We are losing the war for souls in America and abroad.  Granted, war is not the answer, but neither is indifference or inactivity on the part of God's people.  

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