4th of July Greetings from Jesus II

Imagine you're an army recruit stationed at Fort Dix who is about to participate in an invasion of Iran meant to provoke an all-out war with the Muslim world to secure unlimited oil and, because the America that is about to launch this war is run by Christian extremists, to hasten the Apocalypse. Now imagine that on the eve of being shipped out to Iran, the real Second Coming of Jesus Christ appears at the gates of your base to heal and then preach. What would the re-incarnate Christ say?

In his first novel, The Messiah of Morris Avenue, Tony Hendra, author of Father Joe, writes a sermon for this occasion uncannily similar to what Tolstoy in his luminous The Kingdom of God is Within You imagines to be the sum and substance of Christ's message to Judea and all who vowed then and since to embrace it. Given this is Independence Day Eve, I thought it might be good for whoever drops by to read this sermon on a soap box outside of Fort Dix--first, to yourselves and then aloud to others. If it moves you as much as it did me, you might also pass this on to others as a chain letter of nonviolence at this time when our nation is seriously derelict and directly responsible for too much of the world's bloodshed.



Christ II's Sermon On The Soap Box:

Then he said what he'd come to say. "Love your enemies. I do. I have loved every soldier on every side of every war ever fought. I have loved every child of God murdered by another child of God. Because--make no mistake--whenever one of my children kills another on purpose, it's murder. Whether it's from thirty thousand feet or three, it's murder. It's no less murder than creeping into their bedroom while they're asleep and beating them to death with a tire iron.

Murder is not a mission or a calling or a career. If you went to West Point or the Air Force Academy to get a degree in it, it's still murder. All the fancy words your superiors come up with--retaliation, extreme prejudice, overwhelming force, collateral damage, smart this, and pinpoint that--cannot alter the fact that all these words mean murder.

Wearing a uniform does not stop killing from being murder, killing for your country does not stop it from being murder. Clicking on an icon a thousand miles away does not stop it from being murder. Sending a command to a robot does not stop it from being murder. If your sergeant tells you to do it, it's murder; if you are told by your officer to tell an enlisted man to do it, all three of you commit murder. It's murder if a court absolves you of all wrongdoing. It's murder if a man of God blesses the weapon you murder with. It's murder if you vote for someone who tells others to murder in your name. It's murder if the one you murder has murdered.

And if you say God told you to murder, I say to you it is not God you are listening to."

The crowd was many hundreds strong. Many people were holding up recording devices and phones to get Jay [the Messiah of Morris Street] and his words down. People on the fringes were being told by people closer in what he was saying. Still, there seemed to be no objections, no puzzlement even.

At this point, MPs began appearing. Some stopped and listened. Others began circling the crowd, looking for a way in, to start breaking things up. Jay continued.

"I have always hated wars waged in my name. God is on our side! Gott mit uns! Deus Vult! God bless America! I am on no one's side. I am not on America's side, or Islam's, or Israel's, or Europe's. I have never been on the British, the German, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Catholic, or the Protestant side; I did not uphold the Crusaders, not the Turks, or the Golden Hordes, not the sons of Ali or the sons of Muhammad. I did not guide the hand of David or Solomon, or the hand of Caesar or Alexander or Ptolemy. Thou shalt not kill. There are no exceptions."

Officers began to appear. There was confusion, since this didn't seem to be a demonstration or a fight--just a guy talking. Plus it was still early, people were half awake, hung over from last night's beer. The MPs began huddling with the officers and a few officers hurried back into the base, for guidance or reinforcements.

"You are the same blood, you and every child of your Mother in Heaven alive on this planet. When you spill their blood you spill your own. If they call you a coward for refusing to murder your brother or sister, be a coward! In your Mother's eyes, you're a hero!

"There are no just wars. War is a collective murder-suicide pact by members of the same family. You may not take from her other children the gift your Mother in Heaven gave you: existence. Love is the only family value that matters."

The crowd was now enormous, a thousand or more. Some official decision appeared to have been taken, and several officers led groups of MPs into the crowd, trying to penetrate to Jay. There were protests, batons swung, several of them pulled from MPs' hands and tossed away. It was the first violence of the gathering.

When the crowd began to realize that the officers and MPs were trying to get to Jay and arrest him, the whole center--hundreds of people with a single thought, it seemed--linked arms and began hustling Jay, Kevin, and Deion [the last two, disciples of Jay] through the gate, protecting them from capture and giving them the opportunity to escape. When the crowd came to the apostles' vehicles, a path opened for them. It was a Gandhi moment: as if the crowd had absorbed Jay's message of nonviolence and instantly acted on it in the face of the baton-swinging head-butting tough guys.

--Tony Hendra, The Messiah of Morris Avenue, Henry Holt, 2006, pages 191-3