What good is it my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?

"Go in peace. Keep warm and eat your fill,"

And yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Dear Friends,

I must be frank with you. Every fall, when we have our Liberty & Union Weekend, my heart goes out to high school students from the local Junior ROTC who come to participate in the weekend. We invite them not only because the weekend has a largely military theme and they represent the present-day U.S. military, but because they are nice kids. They are clean-cut, well-disciplined and respectful youth, just the kind of recruits the Army wants. But I want to shout at them, "Save your lives! Get out while you can! Don't risk being sent to that horrible, misguided war in Iraq! Don't risk being killed or maimed or emotionally scared!" But of course I can't. We invited them here because of they represent the military establishment. I assume they would be offended and wouldn't understand that my words weren't an attack on them. So I bite my tongue and pray for their futures.

Who pays the price for the war in Iraq... besides the young (and not so young) people in the military? This is a rhetorical question really. By now we know ...or should know ... who pays the price at home. We all pay the price, us adults, children and youth. According to the official estimates, the cost of the war for Americans to date is $522 billion. (Source: National Priorities Project) But according to authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes the true cost is hidden from the tax payer. It is really much more, somewhere around $3 trillion!ⁱ

So we all pay. By more modest calculations from two years ago, an average of $720 million per day is being spent on this war rather than on programs here at home... or on programs which would benefit the neediest people around the world. We pay the price in great reductions in domestic funding for education and social programs... and in housing assistance for the poor. This would include housing on the Gulf Coast... and affordable housing here in Taunton. We pay the price in the billions, perhaps trillions of dollars which have been wasted in this ill-begotten war ... and which promises to be even costlier in the year ahead.

Of course, the Iraqis pay an even bigger and more obvious price, which the administration also tries to hide from us. They pay for it in loss of perhaps millions of innocent lives, and in the lack of basic necessities of food, water and electricity. They pay with less peace and security, even less than they had under that cruel dictator Saddam Hussein

On March 19, on the 5th anniversary of the war, a group of 200 people protested the Iraq War at the Federal Building in Hartford. Nearly 100 were Unitarian Universalists from several Connecticut churches. Five people were arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing when they refused to move away from doors of the building. One was a UU minister, Rev. Kathleen McTigue, of the Unitarian Society of New Haven.

Following her release from jail, Rev. McTigue said, "The [federal] administration has been frighteningly successful at making the cost of war invisible. We do not see coffins, we see almost no images of Iraqi people cradling their dead... If our faith is worthy anything at all, it compels us to do what we can to end military action in Iraq. We created this mess, and we have to figure out how to end it. The military surge has helped to quell some violence, but within that, the Iraqi government has been incapable of forming a functional governing body. Unless something is in place diplomatically, multi-nationally, there will continue to be a huge amount of civil violence."ⁱⁱ

Four million Iraqis have been displaced because they've fled this violence. Two million of those have left their country as refugees. Iraqi children pay perhaps the biggest cost. I read in on-line NPR report this week that there are an estimated four million Iraqi orphans. Only a fraction of these live in orphanages. It is an Iraqi tradition to take in the orphaned children of your relatives, so aunts and uncles and grandparents are caring for these children as best they can. But youngsters are often living in poverty and out of school. Many are left to fend for themselves, beggars on the streets of Baghdad and Bazra

The NPR report states: "The sight of dirty children pressed up against car windows at traffic intersections is as common in Baghdad as the permanent layer of dust that blankets every surface, every statue and every bridge in the city. Children take advantage of the multiple checkpoints that slow traffic along Baghdad's main streets to hawk everything from Kleenex tissues to cigarettes and chewing gum. Others stand along the sides of the roads, selling black-market gasoline. There's no one to tell them to go home or to go to school."ⁱⁱⁱ

Although the costs of war may be greatest among our troops and the Iraqi people, none of us here are immune to its terrible affects. Besides the killed or returning disabled vets and their families, the ones who pay the greatest price are the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

While rents continue to increase, it's the low-income households which cannot afford the rent of a decent apartment. Over the past few years, federal Section 8 rental subsidies have been cut back drastically. And with the Massachusetts state budget crunch in 2001, state funds for rental vouchers were eliminated. The $720 million we spend each day in Iraq could pay for homes for nearly 6,500 families.

Who pays the price? It's the cities and towns that need new school buildings. At an average cost of $8.5 million for an elementary school, $720 million could buy 84 brand new schools. Who pays the price? It's the high school student who can't afford college and who sees no possible future except in the military. The $720 million per day could pay 35,000 college scholarships. It's the families who can't pay their electric bills. $720 million could pay to retrofit a million and a quarter homes with technology for renewable electricity. Who pays the price? It is all of us who suffer from the "trickle up" effects of the suffering of the disenfranchised, the poor, the disabled and the elderly.

But there's more than the material price. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

We pay the price of this war with a growing sense of hopelessness and cynicism. And we pay with greater alienation from our federal government... particularly from an administration that seems deaf to the voice of the people. We pay a moral price... in our quiet acquiescence to a foreign policy that we know, in our hearts, is wrong. We pay by not loudly and publicly protesting our government's policies which turn American values on their heads. We know that in Iraq, as elsewhere, democracy cannot be won at the point of a gun. Democracy is something that grows from within.

In the public's defense, hopelessness and cynicism are not all our fault. These attitudes are fed by a media which largely underplays or ignores anti-war protests. We think to ourselves, "What's the use of speaking out? It doesn't change anything!" That's a terrible price to pay, for the strength of our democracy is our collective involvement beyond just the ballot box. Voting is good, but it's just a start.

As it was written, "Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." To stand aside and do nothing only feeds on our sense of hopelessness. It's our involvement in the world, our expectation that we can make a difference, that really fuels our energy, our passion, our faith. Whether it's standing at a candlelight vigil on the Taunton Green or at a busy intersection... or doing some good work in the community, or knocking on doors for on a political campaign, it really makes a difference. Not only to those people or causes we might help, but to ourselves.

As Adrienne Rich wrote, "My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world."

Unitarian Universalists know that we are a small denomination. Sometimes we wonder if, like single individuals, we can make much of a difference. Yet many of us pride ourselves on our political and social activism in this country and around the world. We are aware of how a few voices can spark a change in consciousness. And a change in consciousness, if well nurtured, can stir a peaceful revolution of hope. It is possible to make a difference by becoming informed and aware, by being brave and not giving up, by coming together into voluntary associations and organizations.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is such an organization. Although its membership is open to non-UUs, it is the activist arm of our denomination. Because the UUSC only has 47,000 members, it increases its effectiveness by joining with other organizations, religious and non-religious, who share its mission and goals. The UUSC's mission is to advance "human rights and social justice around the world, partnering with those who confront unjust power structures and mobilizing to challenge oppressive policies." Just as we are not a "peace church," so the UUSC is not a peace organization like its near cousin the AFSC. But on the issue of Iraq, it is squarely against the war.

The UUSC has joined with peace activist groups in opposition to the war. In a statement issued last June, it spelled out its continuing opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. It said, in part, "UUSC is proud to be part of a growing peace movement in the United States that is working to bring an end to this war; to support our nation's men and women as they return from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries; and to rectify the grave harm caused to our nation's reputation by the events in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and in the use of secret prisons."

"As part of its opposition to this war, UUSC works with military, veterans, and human rights organizations to achieve our goals. In addition, UUSC is an active member of the Win Without War Coalition, and regularly shares news of coalition activities with its members and supporters, and Unitarian Universalist congregations." There is a lot more to the UUSC, which you can learn about through its newsletters and on its website: . So I urge you to join (or rejoin) the UU Service Committee. It is an outspoken and effective voice for all of us and worthy of our support.

On the March 19th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, Charlie Clements, President of the UUSC, stood with UUA President William Sinkford in denouncing this war. Rev. Sinkford, in a pastoral letter to our congregations dated March 14, wrote:

"It has been five long years of war and occupation in Iraq. Five years. Nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead; many more wounded and maimed. An unknown number of Iraqi dead, some estimate a million; certainly hundreds of thousands. And millions of Iraqis displaced from their homes. Many of you, like me, have been praying and protesting this war, since before it began." Rev. Sinkford then lists the tremendous cost of the war, in sheer dollars and in our national reputation and in our economy. He continues, "But perhaps the greatest cost has been to the spirit, to the soul of this nation. We like to see ourselves as innocent. We like to see ourselves as fair, compassionate and kind. We like to see ourselves as freedom-loving and freedom-promoting. The Iraq war has stripped that self-image away from us. Given our actions in Iraq, innocence is no longer an option for us. We have been acting like an empire."

In the letter, he talks about the value of faithfulness, about continuing to raise our voices although it would be easier to stay in lamentation. "It would be easy," he writes, "to simply critique and complain about the actions... and the inactions of our government. As people of faith, we have to go deeper."

He concludes his letter. "As a person of faith, I know that peace will not come because we simply wish for it, or even pray for it. Peace will only come when we begin to embody it, when we begin to make it real in our personal lives and in the life of this nation. [In the spring of the year, this season of rebirth and renewal,] this can be a time of hope. This can be a time when we commit ourselves to the creation of the Beloved Community."

For myself, I will not give in to despair. I will not lament. Although, out of politeness, I may not speak frankly to the Junior ROTC youth, I will continue to speak out and work for my beliefs.

Like Adrienne Rich, I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." I cast my lot with those who refuse to give up, who stubbornly carry on the work. I know the power of gathering together in groups and coalitions of groups to speak out, to demand change. I am excited when I stand with a lit candle at a peace vigil among a group of 20 or so friends in Easton... or when I stand with a picket sign for women's rights among hundreds of thousands on the Mall in Washington, DC. I feel the same spirit now that I did once as a youthful peace demonstrator against the Vietnam War 40 odd years ago. And I aspire to be one of those gutsy old ladies in white tennis shoes who dare to be arrested for refusing to move away from a federal building. You may think this is pointless, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. But I know this is what feeds my faith and hope for the future. And I believe that it does make a difference. We cannot refuse to do what we can do.

In this new season of hope, let us cast our lot with those stubborn people who dream of peace and justice and who have faith that, by their actions, they can change the world.
Let us lift up a vision of what we, as a people and a nation, can become and let us work for it.
May we do more than just pray and light candles in our service. May we do more than just talk. May we embody our faith in the world. Amen. Blessed be.

i Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, The Trillion Dollar War; The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., March 2008)

ii From the UUA website: http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/103923.shtml. (c) Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.

iii From the National Public Radio website: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17204210 Copyright 2008 NPR.