Saturday is October 18th, the Feast of St Luke the Physician. It is the Feast Day on which members of my religious order (the Order of St Luke) annually reaffirm our vows. Among those vows, is one I'm constantly challenged into which I might live -- namely, that "I will live for the Church of Jesus Christ".
That's a difficult vow to live into.
It's difficult because I live in America.
America, of course, names that historical nation-state of practices born in blood. Human life was sacrificed -- blood was spilt -- for it. The blood of the solider consecrates and baptizes the flag and the nation. And because blood trumps everything, because there is no holier and more sacred thing than human life, the flag and the nation is the most sacred thing in the world to an American.
I experience this viscerally whenever I'm asked to stand at an athletic event for the national anthem. All around me there are grey haired men, many wearing ball caps telling about their military service. Veterans. Theologically, I chaff at displays of national allegiance. And yet, I feel awkward standing around these grey haired gentlemen during "The Star-Spangled Banner". I don't want my theological beliefs to be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. These men gave their blood, their lives, for that flag. That they survived doesn't diminish this. For in their memories, as they sing the national anthem, they see the faces of friends who made, as Americans say, "the ultimate sacrifice".
Make no doubt about it, all my theologizing about American nationalism and Christian pacificism can never be abstract ramblings. Because of all that spilt blood, it's real-life stuff I'm talking about.
This is why the Church needs its calendar, why we need our feast and fast days. It's why I pray on October 18 for the grace to sustain and live into those vows I took in 1996, when I was first ordained a deacon in the Church.
October 31st is another important feast day, the Feast of All Saints.
You see, nationalism and pacificism will never be adjudicated theologically. It'll only happen ecclesiologically, liturgically. In celebrating those days in Christian ways.
Is it any surprise that the Protestant tradition most associated with pacifism and anti-nationalism -- the Anabaptists -- is the Protestant tradition with the most robust commemoration of her martyrs?
John Howard Yoder didn't make the Mennonites pacifists. John Howard Yoder was a pacifist because of Mennonite saints and martyrs.
We theologians need to remember that.
We Christian pacifists worship the blood soaked cross. We order our lives around it. We even structure our calendars to remember those who gave their very lives as a witness to that cross. That's why the New Testament word for witness is the Greek martus -- hence our English martyr.
Not the blood soaked flag.
We know that America can never be what the Church must be: A witness to the Kingdom of God.
So we do all we can to reduce American violence.
But we Christian pacifists know what Americans are taught never to admit: Creating a nonviolent America just isn't possible, because America is intrinsically violent. Every modern nation-state (originating in Europe between the mid-15th and mid-17th centuries) was born in blood, implicated in violence ab initio. War made America, so Americans make war. We soak our flag in blood because our flag was born out of it.
Much as America is the modern incarnation of Rome, we, like Pilate, still have blood on our hands.
Christian pacifism will always be Christological pacifism, so the Church will always be the embodiment of that pacifism.
So we point constantly to the blood soaked cross. To Christ, the sacrificial lamb, the one who would rather die than kill.
Saint Luke -- yea, even all the saints -- point toward a different logic than the one we're taught as Americans.
As Hauerwas points out, American war is indeed a sacrificial system, but also "a counter-liturgy to the sacrifice at the altar made possible by Christ. Christians believe that Christ is the end of sacrifice -- that is, any sacrifice that is not determined by the sacrifice of the cross -- and therefore that we are free of the necessity to secure our existence through sacrificing our and [note well this next word] others' lives on the world's altars".
So as viscerally moved as I am by the veterans, I have to resist the temptation to elide civil religion with true religion, the blood-soaked flag with the blood-stained cross, the sacredness of soldiers' blood with the sacredness of the martyrs' ichor. Otherwise I fear we will collude in conceding the overwhelming spiritual power of war, the bewitchment of which will then continue to be irresistible.
So I'll keep "living for the Church of Jesus Christ", even when it means I can't embrace a blood soaked flag.
Because I'm embracing something grander: The blood soaked cross.