"TO BE A WORLD CITIZEN"

A Homily by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, April 13, 2003

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

I would like to begin my brief remarks this morning with a reading. It is from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, head of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. These words were written soon after September 11, 2001.

Just a few weeks after the attacks on September 11, the Jewish community celebrate(d) the harvest festival of Sukkoth. Many Jewish families and organizations celebrate by building a sukkah. What is a sukkah? Just a fragile hut with a leafy roof, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, where it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, where its roof must be not only leafy, but leaky - letting in the starlight, gusts of wind and rain.

In the evening prayers we pray to God, "Spread over all of us your sukkah of shalom."

Why a sukkah? Why does the prayer plead to God for a "sukkah of shalom" rather than God's "tent" or "house" or even "palace" of peace?

Precisely because the sukkah is so vulnerable.

Much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness. Pyramids, air-raid shelters, Pentagons, World Trade Centers. Hardening what might be targets and, like Pharaoh, hardening our hearts against what is foreign to us.

But the sukkah comes to remind us: We are in truth all vulnerable. If "a hard rain is gonna fall," it will fall on all of us.

There are only wispy walls and leaky roofs between us (and the rest of the world). The planet is in fact one interwoven web of life. The command to love my neighbor as I do myself is not an admonition to be nice: It is a statement of truth like the law of gravity. For my neighbor and myself are interwoven. If I pour contempt upon my neighbor, hatred will recoil upon me.

What is the lesson when we learn that we - all of us - live in a sukkah? How do we make such a vulnerable house into a place of shalom, of peace and security, harmony and wholeness? The lesson is that only a world where we all recognize our own vulnerability can become a world where all communities feel responsible to all communities. And only such a world can prevent such acts of rage and murder.

It seems to me that we are at a most opportune moment in history. Never before have we had the ability to see so clearly the imperative for world cooperation among nations, and the dangers of relying on national politics to address world issues. We are being given a chance no other generation has had quite so explicitly - to move our world along the way to a genuine international community. Now is the time to see a vision of the future of the human race. This is a defining moment about what civilization will be like for the next several generations and beyond.

It is time now for us to recognize that the world's political and geographical boundaries are artificial, and that the problems each of us face in the world are mutual problems. It is time to have the courage to accept ourselves as one part of the great story of humankind. It is time to let go of the various provincialisms, as well as nationalisms, and begin the journey toward true world community.

And the United States, more than anyone else at any given time, has the opportunity to take advantage of the timing, and support, rather than inhibit, this inevitable direction for human civilization.

We have all lived through yet another momentous week in a long chain of such weeks. The war in Iraq has turned an important corner. They tell us the war is not yet over - there will be continuing fighting and killing and certainly a stable peace is still far from being established - but there is profound and precious hope that the long oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein is ended. Our attention can increasingly be turned to healing and to repairing the nation of Iraq.

Here is where the integrity of the United States is most put to the test. Here our actions are challenged to meet our rhetoric. It is time to let the world be part of the future. To hold the future of Iraq, or any nation, in the hands of a single other nation, is to derail the evolutionary progress toward world community.

We are, in some ways, atop the world of power and influence. To think our position in power is permanent is foolish. To think this is our destiny is a disastrous mistake and betrays a woeful ignorance of history.

A broader view shows that world dominance is always transitory. In terms of Western civilization, many countries have had their turn at supremacy, beginning, perhaps with the Greeks. The Italians, through the Romans, had their turn. At various times over the years different European countries have wielded dominant control - Spain, France, Germany, England. Even little Portugal had its turn. A lesson of history is that empires come and go, and it is a mistake to assume that those at the top will remain at the top forever.

The twentieth century was the story of the dismantling of various European empires, and the rise of American influence throughout the world. We begin the twenty first century in that position, but if history is any guide, this position, as for everyone else, is only temporary.

Our greatest legacy to the future would be to usher in that time when political borders are increasingly dissolved and loyalties are shifted from a national scope to a world community. The specific situation in the Middle East today offers, I think, a golden opportunity to make that happen.

There is a word used in theological discourse called "hubris." Hubris means "pride," but it is a certain kind of pride. It is not pride in the sense of being proud of accomplishments. It is rather the kind of pride that makes one not numb to other values. It is the kind of pride that plants the seed of self-destruction. It is the kind of pride, as the saying goes, which goes before a fall. It is the kind of pride that becomes an Achilles' heel, a pride that disables and eventually incapacitates.

Most of the great empires eventually succumbed to "hubris." They reached a place of pride that made them feel invincible - not just in terms of military power, but also in terms of moral power. Their hubris lifted them so high that when they fell, they shattered.

I am concerned for future and the destiny of my country. I am concerned that our vision not be too narrow, and we not become stuck in a view that is anachronistic and ultimately self-defeating. I am concerned that we, too, can succumb to hubris, and in position for a great fall.

The great Czech hero of the late twentieth century, Vaclav Havel, put it this way:

"We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions - if they are to be moral - is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded, and where, and only where, they will be properly judged."

It seems to me that there is one sure-fire way to avoid hubris, and that is to open ourselves to a shared vision of a world community. It takes some sense of humility to share power with others, but such an act would assure the transition to a new world that is run cooperatively.

The shift away from nationalism and toward world citizenship, I believe, would bring us benefits far greater than we can imagine. The great Mexican author Carlos Fuentes pointed out:

"I'm convinced that cultures that live in isolation perish, and it is only cultures that communicate and give things to one another that thrive, that live."

This is the time to begin thinking in terms of belonging, not just to a particular country, but to the world. Ever so slowly, I believe our allegiance must begin a shift.

To be a world citizen is to look not just at the interests of your own country, but to see how your own country's interests fits into the larger security and stability of the world.

It seems to me that the most effective way for this vision of world community to be understood and accepted is by person to person contact and interaction from various parts of the world. Nothing is more important to the future of the human race than the mutual experience of diverse cultures and peoples.