A Letter to President Bush
1 Samuel 8:1a, 4-20; Psalm 130
January 14, 2007

I had not intended to preach about the war in Iraq today. I seldom preach “political” sermons. Partly I don’t preach political sermons because the primary task for the church in this generation (as I see it) is the recovery of a vital, personal, rich and experiential relationship with God. Our God-talk over the past couple generations has become idle, weak, defensive, moralistic or sentimental – take your pick. I would have us speak aloud of a God whom we know in the wind, in the traffic of our lives, in the ebb and flow of our children’s hopes and terrors, in the long crowded hallways of school and the stale air of nursing homes.

That is not to say that politics should not be addressed from the pulpit. It is simply to say that unless the preacher knows a lively God and can witness a faith that makes the preacher sweat in the middle of the night, then the political sermon is going to sound merely sanctimonious. Rare is the preacher today who can raise up justice events in our society and make the listener go: O My God, I need to come to grips with this!

How many of you remember these words from Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail? Like Paul who wrote so often from jail about his ferocious conviction that God is working his purpose out in the world even as Paul writes, Martin Luther King wrote a letter from the jail in Birmingham, Alabama, replying to a group of white pastors who complained that Martin’s words were too strong and his actions too radical. Here’s what Dr. King wrote:

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society…

You go, Martin! Then he goes on:

Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

So – does anyone else besides me stand convicted? How many of us have forgotten that the church is a thermostat to raise the heat of God’s passionate justice and not just a thermometer to monitor the tepidness of our own spirit?

So much for Martin, though, as we honor his birthday. We honor him more by turning the heat up under our own spirits and sharpening our own vision of God’s work in the world.

I turn today to President Bush’s announcement of a new strategy in Iraq. I turn to his words with a deep awareness of Samuel’s warning to the people of his time: If you make a king other than God, then the king’s plan will be your plan and his destiny will be your destiny.

So as I listened to President Bush, I thought, if we make this President’s plan our plan – if only by our silence – then this President and his plan will be our destiny.

I may be no expert on foreign policy, still less on the Middle East, but I know enough to find myself angry and afraid at President Bush’s new plan. I don’t mean mildly annoyed and concerned. I mean truly and deeply ticked off and terrified. President Bush prides himself on being a straight shooter. I find his new plan deceptive and mush-mouthed. Here’s what’s absolutely clear to me, dumb as I am about these things. First, that these words about a temporary surge in troop levels are either a lie or a delusion. This is an escalation in our military commitment in Iraq. Second, that the reason for the escalation is not concern for Iraqi society, but instead a desire to counter Iran’s influence in the region more aggressively. Thirdly, that the President has dismissed the Al-Maliki government, such as it is, entirely and the United States has now stepped in to care for U.S. concerns in Iraq in direct contradiction of the plans put forward by the Iraqi’s themselves. In other words, that the President has already – whatever he says – given upon the democracy project in Iraq, already accepted the consequences of the failure of constituted government in Iraq, already discounted the political bloodbath to come in Iraq, and instead postioned our military to challenge Iran directly, first on the battlefield of Iraq, and who knows where after that.

One thing I do believe in what President Bush said on Wednesday night. This is about the war on terrorism. But it’s not about terrorism that had a home in Saddam’s Iraq. It’s about the war on terrorism that we took from 9/11 to the shores of Iraq. Our President has decided that the U.S. needs direct leverage in the Middle East – in other words, that Israel can no longer be a proxy fighting our battles against Islamic radicals. Mark my words, this escalation is not a surge to calm down the civil war in Iraq; it is a step up into a regional confrontation in the Middle East.

That’s the plan as I see it, and it makes me angry and afraid. Angry because the President is being mush-mouthed about his actual purpose. Afraid because the assumptions behind his plan are hauntingly familiar. We are swimming in the unresolved waters of Vietnam, of the first Gulf War, and of the 9/11 attack on our shores. The conclusion President Bush has drawn from his own times is that the U.S. must take the gloves off and act directly on its own interests, interests that are not only military, but economic, social and even religious. In other words, President Bush’s proposed projection of American power may in fact turn out to be what none of us want to even think about – an American and Christian crusade against growing Islamic influence in the world.

That prospect makes me sweat in the middle of the night for my children’s sake.

I’ve decided to send a letter to the President. It’s a puny gesture, I know. He’s the president and I’m just a local church pastor. I’ll be lucky if I get as muchas a form letter in reply. But I’ll also send it to newspapers and put it online – blog it, in other words – and see where it goes. It’s a beginning.

Dear Mr. President,

I write in protest against your escalation of American troop commitment in Iraq. More than that, I write to you because you have not listened and I am afraid at the direction you are taking our nation. You have not listened to the results of the November election that called for a reversal, not an escalation, in Iraq. You have not listened to the Baker-Hamilton (Iraq Study Group) that advocated a phased withdrawal of troops and international negotiations. You have not listened to Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq who asked you for the opposite strategy than the one you are now pursuing in Baghdad. You have replaced the military commanders who pursued your previous strategy with new commanders who will pursue a more aggressive military campaign. You have dismissed the opinions of those who advocate containment of Iran’s ambitions rather than military confrontation.

I fear you are taking our nation into a far wider, more dangerous war with Iran.

I fear you are making us into a nation that cares far more for oil than democracy, far more for the projection of American power than for the welfare of allies, far more for your own possible legacy as a loser than for the lives of American soldiers.

Perhaps most of all, I fear that in the middle of the night, in the privacy of your prayer, you imagine that America is a Christian nation mustering its strength for a crusade against Islamic fundamentalism.

You and I have very different views of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the world. I say Jesus Christ went to the cross to show the futility of empires. I say Jesus Christ rose from the dead to show the power of non-violent confrontation with evil. I say Jesus Christ redeems the world with a tough love that demands listening to the poor among the nations. I say Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead according to our actions of justice, mercy and repentance at what we have done wrong.

I say Jesus Christ is not Lord of a crusade against Islam.

Mr. President, I call upon you to listen. I invite you to repent this war in Iraq. I ask you to reverse your decision to escalate.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I believe it is never too late. As a citizen of the United States, I fear it may be. Please, Mr. President, take this decision to escalate to prayer – and then listen.

In God’s love,

Rev. Peter Heinrichs