You all know I like Barth’s line about preaching with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other—of course here in Brooklyn we can say "The New York Times in the other." And today that’s easy to do, because the subject of my sermon—the recent protests and what that means in relation to the life of this church, is all over the New York Times. In fact (holding up the front page of the Wednesday edition), I spent about thirty hours in jail last week with these two guys right here. They’re French Canadians from Montreal who were in New York City to try and show an environmental documentary when they got caught up in the protests and jailed.

I want to fill you in on what all took place last week and then see if we can make some sense of it spiritually. The march on Sunday was actually, well, peaceful. Nearly half a million people marched to express their outrage over our country’s recent misguided invasions and military occupations and the profiteering going on around on by corporations like Halliburton. It was a shining example of democracy in action. People exercised their freedom to speak out and demonstrate their opposition to the out of control military regime that is running this country.

Now, I realize I’m using some strong language here. But these are dire times and if we don’t wake up to what’s going on around us, future generations are going to wonder, "How did they not see what was happening?" I’m not only referring to the blatantly illegal "pre-emptive" invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the social and spiritual climate that’s sustaining our imperial mindset.

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a Republican artist and some of the artwork he’s producing—and selling for top-dollar. One image shows George Bush "astride a horse, carrying the flag in one hand and the severed head of Osama bin Laden in the other…" (NYT, Saturday, September 4, 2004 B-11). This rendering of the far right’s crusading ideology is aptly titled, "Have Faith." How sick and pathetic that they are misconstruing the non-violent love of Jesus in their misguided, self-congratulatory celebration of homicidal violence.

And of course the violence is not restricted the painter’s canvas. We have to remember that 10,000 Iraqis have been killed and nearly 1,000 US soldiers. Our situation today is not unlike what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced in the late 60’s when he decided to speak out against the US war in Viet Nam. There were many even within the Civil Rights movement who, according to King scholar James Cone, were saying, "Don’t go bothering yourself with the war, Martin. We’ve got our work cut out for us right here." But King said he simply couldn’t preach about he power of non-violence when his country was waging war. Here’s a sample of his famous sermon at Riverside Church given on April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his assassination. He was talking about how hard it is to break the silence, especially when that means criticizing one’s own country.

So we can see that we’re not the first to wrestle with these things. We’re not the first believers to come up against the mighty US empire. And we can see that when King did, he sought to look to history, to understand the larger forces at work, and to press on despite not having all the answers, despite not being an expert on Asia or in our case the Middle East. But there comes a time, as King said, when we must speak.

I am intentionally invoking King today not only because he was speaking out against war and questioning America’s role in the world, but because he took a courageous stand domestically through his work in the Civil Rights movement. We can all conjure up the famous video images of marchers moving through the streets of the south, facing the police and their dogs and the fire hoses. It was a time of great social unrest and these are times of great social unrest today.

Now before I try and make sense out of what’s happening today in light of today’s sacred text and the broader movements of history, I want to tell you the story of the protest last Tuesday. The action was planned and organized by the War Resister’s League, a pacifist organization that has been opposing war and militarism for nearly a hundred years. The general plan, which was discussed in The New York Times in the days leading up to the march—they even a map of the route—was the gather at Ground Zero, calling attention to the way that tragedy had been exploited as a justification for war. Then we’d walk up Broadway, past Union Square and on up toward Madison Square Garden. Again, the march was intended to call attention to the roughly 10, 000 Iraqis and 1, 000 US soldiers killed during the US invasion and during our still-ongoing occupation.

During the planning sessions whoever was leading the meeting would say, "Just to get a sense of this, how many of you are planning to risk arrest?" And about twelve hands would go up. So we were a bit surprised when about two hundred people showed up at Ground Zero. The size of the turnout was of course viewed as a threat by the NYPD. This wasn’t a permitted march that was going to simply dissipate like the one on Sunday. We were heading toward the Garden where we planned to lay down in the street, conducting a "die-in" to commemorate the dead.

Now you need to know that, though it wasn’t a permitted march, we had informed the NYPD of our general plan and through informal discussions they had indicated that, so long as we didn’t block the sidewalk and so long as we obeyed traffic signals, didn’t block traffic, etc., we’d be allowed to walk down the sidewalk. Not such a great concession really, when you think about it, the freedom to walk down the sidewalk. I mean, you’d think that would be one of the basic freedoms this great "democratic" nation would make available to its citizens, even those who disagree with the war-making policies of those in power.

And the police had led us to believe that they were going to grant us that basic freedom. So we set out thinking that, after walking the fifty or so blocks toward the Garden, those who were ready to risk arrest would break the law by blocking traffic. Those who merely wanted to express their opposition to the war without risking arrest would remain on the sidewalk.

But as soon as we crossed the very first street, a huge police officer ran up with his billy club screaming, "You’re blocking the sidewalk." You have to understand that those of us in front had only walked about thirty yards at this point, so that we were still getting ourselves adjusted. And here comes this screaming maniac, causing people to slow and cower. Then an officer charged up and got directly in the path of the marchers yelling, "You’re blocking the sidewalk." At that point about fifty NYPD bicycle cops flanked the street so that we were trapped between them and the wrought iron fence of Trinity Church’s cemetery. I happened to be in the very front so this was actually taking place behind me. I jumped up on the fence and shouted to the marchers, "Keep moving. You have a right to walk down the sidewalk!" But it was no use. The police had them hemmed in at that point and within thirty seconds cops were running up with the kind of orange fencing used to hold back snow and they were encircling the first 100 or so marchers who had crossed the street.

Once they had us all handcuffed with the same plastic binders that you see on the Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo or in Iraq, we were taken to a big holding pen down on one of the nearby piers. It used to be a bus depot of some kind, so concrete floor was covered in grease and grime. As long as you were standing it wasn’t all that bad. But eventually they crammed us into large chain-link fence cages tipped with razor wire without enough spaces for everyone to sit. After a few hours people were laying down on the floor and getting covered with grease.

Well I could go on and on, telling you about the thirty hour ordeal, but with the little time I have left this morning I want to try and get some sort of perspective on exactly what is going on in this nation and in the world, and to try to relate that to the Biblical narrative. Of course whatever I have to say on the subject will just be a first step, but as I said early, it’s time to break the silence and you’ve got to start somewhere.

When I thought about the Biblical narrative with an eye for where current events might be resonating, I thought of Paul’s shipwreck, while a prisoner on his way to go before the emperor in Rome. Much like the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul’s ordeal is all about the struggle against the Empire.

Paul refused to play the game of the Empire, to worship its leaders and pretend there is nothing more sacred then its political dominance. Paul has experienced first-hand the spiritual depths of reality, he knows the power of love, he knows there’s more to life than our meager little Empires. And this knowledge has emboldened him to take his message to the Emperor himself. That’s where he’s going when they encounter this storm.

In the story Paul realizes it would be foolish to risk the lives of everyone on board. The incentive to do so may have been to get the ship’s grain to Rome which, during the storm season, brought a special bonus. No doubt the centurion in charge wanted to get his prisoners to Rome without any further delays. So Paul’s concerns are ignored. Things go from bad to worse as the storm catches them and soon threatens to destroy the boat. Now there’s reason to believe Paul may have experienced an actual storm like the kind we saw in our film clip today (The Perfect Storm) or like the one bearing down on Florida this very moment (hurricane Frances).

But the storm also functions well as a metaphor for the social and political unrest. And as much as it pains me to say it folks, I think this is where we’re at in America today. Millions of people took to the streets around the world in protest of our invasion of Iraq—before it took place. We weren’t fooled by the faulty intelligence. We weren’t swayed by the false intelligence, by rumors and lies of weapons of mass destruction. None of the proposed justifications by those in power managed to dissuade us from taking to the streets to say, "Killing is not the answer." And yet they went ahead with it.

And now we are all reaping the whirlwind. We are being buffeted by a mighty storm of violence both abroad and here at home. Chaos reigns in Iraq; not the US installed "coalition" government. Here at home, your minister got arrested for walking down the sidewalk. Our entire social structure is being battered against the rocks of corporate greed and it’s not clear if there’s going to be enough left of our civilization to cling to when the structure collapses.

Now you might think this is hyperbole, that come November will have a new president and everything will change. But I’ve got news for you folks: the more things change, the more they remain the same. Kerry voted for the war. Besides, the storm that’s battering the ship is bigger than any one political leader or any one administration. General Eisenhower warned of a growing military industrial complex. King warned of the insidious interweaving of racism, poverty and militarism.

Drive across the country and tell me what you see: a river of gas-guzzling cars herded like cattle in cookie-cutter rest stops with identical fast food chains and cheap sunglasses. Get off the interstates and drive into small towns where mom and pop stores are being buried beneath gargantuan K-Marts and Wall-Marts and tell me, do you think we can outrun the storm that’s chasing us? Are there hidden petroleum reserves somewhere and a magic bullet that’ll stop global warming? Or are we on a ship run by centurions who are going to risk it all for a little more profit, caring nothing for the lives of the passengers, not to mention future generations?

In another famous sermon Dr. King warned that,

The parallels are frightening. The storm is raging. The battle is on for the soul of America. We must draw from the deep river of spiritual resources we have available to us, both the ancient texts and our recent prophets like Dr. King. In the ancient text, Paul managed to stay calm because he had had a vision. He said to his shipmates, "Men, you should have listened to me…." Paul’s only human and couldn’t resist saying, ‘I told you so.’ But he hasn’t lost faith in his God or those with him. And so he says, "I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For last night there stood by me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before the emperor; and indeed , God has granted safety to all those who are sailing with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told" (Acts 27: 21-25).

We can see that somehow Paul managed to tap into the spiritual dimension of the world around him, despite the storm, despite the political pressures that were coming crushing down upon him. At this crucial juncture in his journey to confront the emperor, he had faith. He held fast. He calmed those around him and convinced them there was a larger plan that they were all a part of. Even the centurion ultimately opted not to kill the prisoners, but to risk allowing them to go free long enough to reach shore. And notice that even the centurion played a role in life being spared.

Remember the scene from The Perfect Storm we watched earlier? The windswept waves were such that pilot of the Coast Guard helicopter couldn’t get the basket to the people in the water; so one of the cost guardsmen leaps into the storm. What an image. And what courage! There was no hesitation. He pulls off his helmet, dawns a wetsuit hood and leaps into the storm.

That is what we must do. That is what the spiritual life is all about. If we dare to speak the truth and confront the powers that be, we can all reach the shore together. If we can loosen the economic stranglehold of the world’s international financial institutions long enough, if we can refrain from invading any more countries, if we can preserve and cherish and perhaps even restore some of our lost civil liberties, then maybe there’s still time. Once on shore, we can begin to talk about alternative energy sources; international accountability built on the cornerstone of human rights; a newfound environmental consciousness designed to protect the Earth and her creatures.

These are the kind of things you didn’t hear discussed at the RNC. But you should have heard the talk in jail! Amen.