How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? Or better, how do you dismantle 23, 574
nuclear weapons, each on its own able to destroy the twin cities.
Just this past January, you may have heard, Tsutomu
Yamaguchi died of stomach cancer at age 93. Mr. Yamaguchi was a young engineer for Mitsubishi Industries
on a business trip to Hiroshima when, on the morning of August 6, 1945, the
United States dropped the first atomic bomb, named ‘Little Boy’ on the city. He
was more than two miles away from ground zero but still was temporarily
blinded, sustained serious burns and a ruptured left eardrum. Most of the city’s buildings were
destroyed and more than 80,000 were killed. After a night in a bomb shelter, he caught a train
back home to Nagasaki where a few days later, while explaining to his
disbelieving boss what had happened to him, the US B-29 bomber dropped a second
bomb, named ‘Fat Man’ killing an additional 70,000 people. Most of his office building collapsed
in the blast; had he not been behind a steel-reinforced stairway, he might not
have lived. Yet he did, recovering and working most of his life, first for the
American occupation forces and then again for Mitsubishi. While his wife and children all
suffered from cancer and other health problems, he did not become an activist
until late in life. As part of a
documentary film about the so-called “nijyuu hibakusha’, or twice-bombed
people, Mr. Yamaguchi finally registered and remains the only official survivor
of both blasts. He gave a moving speech at the United Nations in New York in
2006 as the documentary was released, pleading with the audience to fight for
the abolition of nuclear weapons.
And this week, in a flurry of actions marking the one-year
anniversary of his historic speech in Prague calling for renewed commitment to
a world free of nuclear weapons, President Obama joined Mr. Yamaguchi’s
fight. It is a fight many are
joining. The recent push to renew
efforts to control the spread of, reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear
weapons comes in large part from a quartet of retired cold warriors, mostly
former Republican administration hawks. These four, George Schultz, William
Perry, Harry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, have marshaled compelling arguments that
in the age of global terrorism, any
nuclear weapons make everyone
vulnerable. Where arguments about nuclear deterrence did convince some during
the Cold War era, today we know that terror networks and rogue states want
nothing more than to gain access to these terrible weapons. Together Schultz,
Perry, Kissinger and Nunn have sponsored a film, Nuclear Tipping Point.
(I hope to screen it here at Hope in the next month or so; watch The Visitor for information.) They have formed the Nuclear Threat
Initiative, a charity aimed at advocating for the immediate reduction and
eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Why raise these issues today, you might ask. Last week on Easter Sunday I posed a
question I’d like to stay with for a few weeks. I asked us to consider how a resurrection really feels. I suggested that, contrary to most of
our standard thinking on the issue, the Gospel story from John is at least as
much about the resurrection of Jesus’ friends
and disciples as it was about his own
resurrection. They had abandoned
him, denied him, misunderstood him, tried to fight for him, mourned him and now
were hiding in a room for fear that their own death would soon follow his. They uncomfortably remembered his
invitation to follow him in the manner of a servant, even in the face of
possible suffering and death.
Not that kind of death, they shuddered. In response to the threats, held
captive by their fears, they gathered in the waning dusk, hidden behind locked
doors. Fear divides us. It causes us to find mechanisms of
defense. Yet into the thick fog of
their fears, paralyzed by their constricted imagination, Jesus came to them
greeting them in peace. He showed them his scars, erasing any doubt that he
really was Jesus, now living, now saying again, “Peace be with you,” as if they
didn’t or couldn’t hear him the first time. Here in their own dark tomb, Jesus comes offering them new
life, breathing on them the Holy Spirit, sending them out into their
post-resurrection lives that, in the words of Peter, “must obey God rather than
human authorities.” In that
moment, the disciples knew what a resurrection really feels like.
Do we imagine that the God we confess in Jesus Christ would
say “yes” to our hiding in fear behind the locked doors of atomic bomb
silos? Do we imagine the Jesus who
God raised from death would say “yes” to our fear-induced complacency in the
fact of such potential terror waiting to be unleashed on the innocent? President Obama, in his speech in
Prague, said “there are some” who will claim a world without nuclear weapons is
“impossible to achieve.” Yet, he
said, “we know the path when we choose fear over hope.” Today, we face two
futures, one funded by the paranoid fear hiding behind locked doors. The other
is born of a hope deeper than that fear, a love stronger than death. How to reach this other future?
President Obama can’t do it alone. Neither can retired politicians like Kissinger and Schultz do this
alone, as respected as they are in many circles. Not even the inspirational story of Mr. Yamaguchi can make
it happen alone. How do you
dismantle an atomic bomb? We
Christians have an answer.
Love. The love we know
through Jesus, the risen Christ, who despite our rejection, comes to us anew in
the midst of our locked rooms.
He comes to us in the tombs of our despair and resignation and apathy.
“Peace be with you,” he says to us, offering mercy and
forgiveness for trusting the voice of fear that rationalized doing away with
him. Today such fears still lead
us astray, leading us to rationalize a nuclear arsenal marshaled in our
defense. But now we know, more
than ever, that such terrible weapons built for our defense, could be turned
against us or any number of other nations in the most devastating way.
“As the Father
sent me, so I send you,” he says to us, calling his disciples to unlock the
doors of fear. What doors of fear
might we seek to unlock today in order to trust the way of love and mercy his
life makes possible? Specifically,
can we unlock the decades-old cold-war fears that have locked us into a game of
nuclear chess, risking horrific loss of life—human and natural? Tyler Wigg
Stevenson, a wonderful young minister in Washington D. C., has founded The Two Futures Project to help organize
Christians and all people of good will in this effort.
“Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus said as he breathed upon
them, giving them the promised advocate by whose very presence and power his
disciples were to do, as Jesus put it, “greater things than I.” Do we underestimate the ways God’s
Spirit is at work in the world today?
Have we caught hold of the Spirit moving, calling us to forgive, to
reconcile, to love? “Be what you
are!” St. Augustine said to early Christians who shared together the Lord’s
Supper. “Go,” he meant, and “be
the body of Christ today.”
How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? We Christians have an answer. Love.
Recent Comments