In the bible that I use everyday, the gospel lesson this morning is labeled “The Necessity for Watchfulness.” The passage reminds us to “ Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” The passage in Romans is labeled “An Urgent Appeal.” There we are admonished to “put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” The readings remind us that Jesus is coming. In a few weeks we will celebrate the birth of the savior, and we will rehearse again what the coming of Christ means in our lives. These passages, however, point not to the first coming of Christ, but to the second coming, the end times. In my extended family, among my aunts, uncles and cousins in Alabama, I am closely related to a number of pentecostal and fundamentalist Christians, even some dispensationalists. I was from birth immersed into an ecumenical enterprise whereby these particular relatives were always trying to “save” me, and I was always trying to convince them of the gospel mandate for justice and peace. The New Testament passages today remind me of my relatives and their deep desire that, when the apocalypse comes, they did not want to leave me behind. As the bumper stickers on many cars state it: “ In case of rapture, watch out. This vehicle will be without a driver.” I, of course, prefer the bumper sticker that says: “God is coming, and she is pissed.” And so it’s clear that we have a long way to go in ecumenical efforts to reach across the differences that divide Christians. In contemplating these ultimate realities, however, whether we meditate on the season that anticipates Jesus’ birth or our readiness for the end of our time here on earth, Advent 2001 will be different from most others in recent years. The experience of terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11 makes this Christmas season unlike previous ones. For those who have recently lost loved ones to death, holidays are always very tender, and frequently difficult, times. This time, however, we as a country know in shocking and horrific terms of about 4000 or more families who lost loved ones all in one day. The sadness and grief have already been overwhelming for many (whether they lost relatives or not) and will likely only be more so as the holidays approach. My own reaction on the day of September 11 was like that of many others. I made sure to make contact with the family and friends most close to me, to cry with them, to hug them, to tell them I loved them, to make sure they were safe, and just to remind myself that my community was still in tact. Since that terrible day, many of us who did not suffer the loss of any relatives in the attack have taken stock of what really matters in our lives. We’ve now heard so many extremely moving stories of the phone calls and the last words of love and goodbye to relatives from those on the hijacked aircraft, or from the trapped fire-fighters who knew their odds of survival were not good. These gripping vignettes remind us all to take more special care to let those around us know more regularly of our deep love, affection, and gratitude for their presence in our lives. Any of us could die through accident or illness next month, next week, in the next day or in the next hour. We don’t often think such morbid thoughts, but September 11 reminds us all of our mortality, the end of time, and the need to be ready, the necessity of watchfulness, as Matthew puts it, particularly in our personal lives and our relationships to others. Advent and these stark reminders of the end of time should also make us more mindful of and watchful about our relationship to the whole of humanity, another reason that this particular Christmas season will be a tender one for tens of thousands of Americans. The United States is at war, and many families in this country will be missing loved ones stationed abroad for combat duty or killed in the line of duty. Such suffering reverberates across many countries where families have lost loved ones to war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in too many other places across the globe. The passage from Isaiah today prophesizes the word of God foretelling that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” What does this mean for our watchfulness this Advent? The University of South Carolina recently hosted a conference on inter-religious dialogue entitled, “Strangers and Neighbors: What does our faith require?” Planned long before the events of September 11, we invited renowned scholars from Judaism, Christianity and Islam to share the theological, scriptural, and other resources their faith traditions bring to the possibility of forging better relations across religious communities. Mary Boys, a Roman Catholic sister and a chaired professor in practical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, told a story that comes from her own project on particularity and pluralism. Members from Christian and Jewish congregations had been meeting together for study of each other’s scriptures as a means of engaging in inter-religious dialogue. At one point, a Jewish participant asked a simple question: “Why do Christians need Jesus? Why isn’t God enough for Christians?” Dr. Boys reported that the Christians in the dialogue group felt startled and shocked at these simple questions. They took Jesus so much for granted that they rarely stopped to ask, “Why do we need Jesus?” When Dr. Boys told this story at USC, however, the reaction among some Jews in the audience was one of equivalent shock. They wondered out loud, “Why would such an obvious question catch Christians so off guard?” Why, indeed. Advent and the admonition to be watchful offer us a perfect time to ask, “Why do we need Jesus?” Huston Smith’s classic book on The World’s Religions characterizes Jesus’ language as simple, concentrated, clear, extravagant, and invitational. Jesus’ teachings work with our imagination and our hearts more than our reason or our will, Smith claims. Like the experience of Christians in Professor Boys’ dialogue group, Smith states that if we are not astonished with Jesus’ stories and proscriptions for our lives, it is “because we have heard Jesus’ teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their subversiveness. If we could recover their original impact, we too would be startled. Their beauty would not cover the fact that they are ‘hard sayings’ for presenting a scheme of values so counter to the usual as to rock us like an earthquake.” One of the hardest sayings, as we remember to be watchful and ready in this Advent season, I believe, is the is admonition from Luke 6 where Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…” But Jesus continues and presses the point further stating, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same…” Frankly, this time around, whether in contemplating Advent or the end of our time, I think many of us who are American Christians would like to avoid the question of why we need Jesus. This particular teaching seems to be much too hard for most of us right now. But if we took it seriously, what would it mean to love our enemies at a time of war this Advent? At a time in America when so many have suffered so much at the hands of those who hate us, at the hands of our enemies, at the hands of those who want to give us a big, whopping taste of the terror their own people have suffered so long? Christ’s teaching and example unequivocally tell us that violence and war are wrong. He shocks us by telling us to love our enemies, to render to no one evil for evil. Throughout the centuries, however, in the face of the very practical and complex conundrums of how to prevent evil from consuming our lives, Christians have created theologies like the just war doctrine to address the situations where we need self-defense. We also, unfortunately, have a strong history of a crusade tradition where Christians wield the sword as a matter of faith. And we have the opposite tradition of pacifism, where Christians grapple most seriously with Jesus’ nonviolent witness. Quakers, for example, invite us to search for the light of Christ in everyone, even if it seems buried deep down inside, and even if those in whom we search for the light of Christ are our enemies. With the blessings of the vast majority of the population, the American government has chosen a crusade right now. President Bush slipped by admitting such early in the days after September 11, but he seems to have genuinely meant that we needed to crush our foes, using our faith, particularly the Christian faith, as a means of summoning up the strength and endurance to do so. For many of us in this country, the deeply held desire for violent retaliation and revenge far outweighs clear consideration of other, perhaps more effective alternatives from policy point of view, or clear consideration of other, more morally grounded alternatives from a Christian point of view. Political spinners have tried to correct the president’s mistaken use of the word crusade by cloaking the US war against Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in just war doctrine. For example, one of the editors of the Chicago Tribune, John McCormick, wrote in Newsweek Magazine recently of his dilemma with his children. In an article entitled “Enlightening the little pacifists,” he writes, that “For all the talk about our children’s being prematurely hardened by movies, videogames, and a culture of gun violence, the last few weeks have reminded us of how profoundly most kids abhor war. Through years of drilling into them the terrible costs of armed conflict, we have raised a generation of little pacifists.” He goes on to struggle with the problem of how to square his children’s regular prayerful, general entreaties to God for peace for the whole world, with the need to convince them that this particular war would have God’s blessings. Using the criteria of the just war doctrine, McCormick and his wife find that the answer is one of convincing their 10 and 12 year old that this war is a good war; this war is justified. Jesus told us to love our enemies, but he didn’t mean it to be a blanket command that would apply to the case of those in Afghanistan who used terrorism against Americans. Other secular commentators point, however, that carpet-bombing or cluster-bombing terrorists is like using a weed-eater to get rid of dandy lions. The criteria of the just war doctrine do not fit America’s war this time. This is not World War II, and September 11 was not Pearl Harbor. I fear that we will reap the whirlwind of the wrath from this war for some long time to come. I believe that, in the end, history will conclude that this war was not only ethically unacceptable but also genuinely counterproductive to our national interests and our national security. One of the ways to find out what impact America’s war is having in an age of globalization is to turn off CNN and other US new channels and to read the news on the internet from other parts of the world (see, for example, wcc-coe.org/wcc/behindthenews). A particularly insightful journalist from India and a winner of the Booker Prize is Arundhati Roy. Since September 11, in a variety of outlets, she has offered insightful commentary that Americans might find shocking. She writes: “What freedoms does it [the United States] uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things. Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate, and subjugate…So when the US government christens a war ‘Operation Infinite Justice,’ or ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’ we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear. Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.” Pressing the point further, Roy states that between them, the governments that are members of the international coalition against terror “manufacture and sell almost all of the world’s weapons, and they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshiped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn’t in the same league.” Many secular voices, like that of Roy, conclude that war is not the answer this time. That war will make America more insecure, not more secure. But in the sweep of shock, fear, grief, and genuine desire to uphold the rich blessings of this country so severely attacked, American voices that want to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice through means other than war, can scarcely be heard. In fact, some call them traitors. But what of the religious voices, the voices of Christian leaders? In their deep desire to provide pastoral responses to a wounded and grieving public, groups like the UM Council of Bishops and the governing board of the NCCCUSA, argue that now is not the time to call for justice with peace, for an end to this war. Americans are in too much pain, they have undergone too much shock, these Christian leaders say. Now is not the time to remind people of Jesus’ command to love our enemies. In his forthright statement against this war, however, James Wall writes in the Christian Century, “It was much easier to oppose the gulf war. The situation that evoked the US military response ten years ago was not personal, unless you count the loss of plentiful oil supply as personal.” This time, however, it’s very personal. But I believe, it is exactly the deeply personal character of our national experience since September 11 that invites us to reach into the depths of our faith tradition to say: no more violence. Bring those who use terrorism to justice, but do it in the most non-violent way possible. If we are reminded by September 11 of our mortality, of the possibility of our own death at any time, of the reality that we want to pay much closer attention to having our lives in order, our loved ones embraced and cherished more deeply than ever before, of the necessity for watchfulness, as Matthew puts it - what better time than now for living out our faith as best we know how? If we only love those who love us, Jesus says, what kind of test is that? What credit does that give us toward living the good life? He says, for even sinners love those who love them. Is now really the time we want to imitate the sinners? On this first Sunday in Advent, the scriptures remind us that Jesus is coming. And, why do we need him? ask the Jews. We need Jesus to make us ready, to rock us like an earthquake, to instill in us all those truly hard sayings. Jesus is coming. Are we ready? asks the bumper stickers. We need Jesus to get us ready to live today, tomorrow, and every day as though it were our last. We need him to help us love our enemies. We need him to help us know what justice with peace, what true security for America and for the world would be. And, as the Psalmist says (122), For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.’ For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good. Jan Love teaches religious studies and international relations at the University of South Carolina. She also Moderates the World Council of Churches’ Reference Group on the Decade to Overcome Violence.