Sermon Tone Analysis

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*Anabaptist Teachings*

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*Pacifism and Nonresistance*

\\ *Romans 12:9-21*

/9//Love must be sincere./

/Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

/

/10//Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.

/

/Honor one another above yourselves.

/

/11//Never be lacking in zeal, /

/but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord./

/12//Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

13Share with God's people who are in need.

/

/Practice hospitality.

/

/14//Bless those who persecute you; /

/bless and do not curse.

/

/15//Rejoice with those who rejoice; /

/mourn with those who mourn.

/

/16//Live in harmony with one another.

/

/Do not be proud, /

/but be willing to associate with people of low position.

/

/Do not be conceited.

/

/17//Do not repay anyone evil for evil./

/Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

/

/18//If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, /

/live at peace with everyone.

/

/19//Do not take revenge, my friends, /

/but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: /

/“It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”says the Lord.

/

/20//On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; /

/if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

/

/In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”/

/21//Do not be overcome by evil, /

/but overcome evil with good.

/

 

For today’s message I have asked two people

       To introduce the theme of

       “Pacifism and Biblical Nonresistance”

       With a Readers’ Theater by Joan Baez.

I present to you Ray Braun as Fred

       And Crystal Klassen as Joan.

* *

*What Would You Do If? *

*By Joan Baez*[1]**

*Fred*: OK.

So you're a pacifist.

What would you do if someone were, say, attacking your grandmother?

\\ *Joan*: Attacking my poor old grandmother?

\\ *Fred*: Yeah, you're in a room with your grandmother and there's a guy about to attack her and you're standing there.

What would you do? \\ *Joan*: I'd yell, "Three cheers for Grandma!" and leave the room."

*Fred*: No, seriously.

Say he had a gun and he was about to shoot her.

Would you shoot him first?

\\ *Joan*: Do I have a gun? \\ *Fred*: Yes \\ *Joan*: No.

I'm a pacifist, I don't have a gun.

\\ *Fred*: Well, I say you do.

\\ *Joan*: All right.

Am I a good shot?

\\ *Fred*: Yes.

\\ *Joan*: I'd shoot the gun out of his hand.

\\ *Fred*: No, then you're not a good shot.

\\ *Joan*: I'd be afraid to shoot.

Might kill Grandma.

*Fred*: Come on, OK, look.

We'll take another example.

Say, you're driving a truck.

You're on a narrow road with a sheer cliff on your side.

There's a little girl sitting in the middle of the road.

You're going too fast to stop.

What would you do? \\ *Joan*: I don't know.

What would you do? \\ *Fred*: I'm asking you.

You're the pacifist.

\\ *Joan*: Yes, I know.

All right, am I in control of the truck?

\\ *Fred*: Yes.

\\ *Joan*: How about if I honk my horn so she can get out of the way?

\\ *Fred*: She's too young to walk.

And the horn doesn't work.

\\ *Joan*: I swerve around to the left of her since she's not going anywhere.

\\ *Fred*: No, there's been a landslide.

\\ *Joan*: Oh.

Well then, I would try to drive the truck over the cliff and save the little girl.

/Silence/

*Fred*: Well, say there's someone else in the truck with you.

Then what?

\\ *Joan*: What's my decision have to do with my being a pacifist?

\\ *Fred*: There's two of you in the truck and only one little girl.

\\ *Joan*: Someone once said if you have a choice between a real evil and a hypothetical evil, always take the real one.

\\ *Fred*: Huh? \\ *Joan*:: I said, why are you so anxious to kill off all the pacifists?

\\ *Fred*: I'm not.

I just want to know what you'd do if...

*Joan*: If I was in a truck with a friend driving very fast on a one-lane road approaching a dangerous impasse where a ten-month old girl is sitting in the middle of the road with a landslide on one side of her and a sheer drop-off on the other.

\\ *Fred*: That's right.

\\ *Joan*: I would probably slam on the brakes, thus sending my friend through the windscreen, skid into the landslide, run over the little girl, sail off the cliff and plunge to my own death.

No doubt Grandma's house would be at the bottom of the ravine and the truck would crash through her roof and blow up in her living room where she was finally being attacked for the first, and last, time.

*Fred*: You haven't answered my question.

You're just trying to get out of it... \\ *Joan*: - I'm really trying to say a couple of things.

One is that no one knows what they'll do in a moment of crisis and hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.

I'm also hinting that you've made it impossible for me to come out of the situation without having killed one or more people.

Then you say, 'Pacifism is a nice idea, but it won't work'.

But that's not what bothers me.

\\ *Fred*: What bothers you? \\ *Joan*: Well, you might not like it because it's not hypothetical.

\\ It's real.

And it makes the assault on Grandma look like a garden party.