Monday, May 02, 2011

A Response to the killing of Osama bin Laden

A Response to the Killing of Osama bin Laden

Jesus said love your enemies. We acknowledge, that at times, this seems
to be an impossible task. We have compassion for and pray for our
leaders who have made difficult decisions, that would drive us
to our knees. The hard work of building a more just, peaceful and
equitable world continues. We pray, therefore, that "God's holy and life giving
Spirit may so move every human heart, that barriers which divide us
may crumble, suspicions disappear, and barriers cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through
Jesus Christ our Lord."

I have spent the day in deep prayer, discernment and conversation with my sisters and brothers at the Clergy Leadership Project. The death of Osama bin Laden and our Church's appropriate response has consumed our attention. As sisters and brothers of Abraham and followers of Jesus, we are called to a path of love, justice and peace for the citizens of the globe. It is most appropriate that we spend our time in prayer, as guided by our Book of Common of Prayer and studying the teaching of Jesus in our Holy Scripture to determine how we should respond. Those teachings are clear, "we are to love our neighbors as ourselves - and we are to love our enemies." These are the hard teachings of Jesus and our common prayers. Let us be willing to take the risk of building our souls by being true to who Christ has called us to become.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good thoughts, Gil. Stanley Hauerwas says, "War is impatience." I hear people (one person in particular whose skin I inhabit) saying things like, "Well, sometimes you have to kill." Or else what? What i really mean when I say something like that is that someone's physical death is a worse outcome than obeying Jesus. I don't want to sound brave when nobody's threatening my life - or even possessions - at the moment, but how I would live out the truth, while relevant, is a different issue from what the truth it.

Laura's summer adventure said...

I believe we must never celebrate the death of a human being, but I can understand the desire to. The reaction of some/many seems more like we just won a football game than committed murder. I think prayer is exactly the right response. Thanks, Gil.