May 13, 2001

John 13:31-35/ Micah 6:6-8

“And what did you do to these people?” “You deprived them of life, liberty and property. You did not guarantee those rights. You deprived them of them.” These are the words of Timothy McVeigh as quoted on the television show Sixty Minutes. He was talking about the incident, tragedy, massacre, which took place in Waco, Texas in 1993 at the Branch Davidian Compound. For most of us it was just another one of those terrible stories that we can’t quite figure out but to Timothy McVeigh it was the disillusionment that would shape the rest of his life and the decisions he would subsequently make.

Now I know that some of you are right now wondering why I would bring up this gruesome subject on Mother’s Day. Now that the stay of execution has given him another month of life why talk about it now? Well let me say that I don’t like doing it but this is the thing about life. It doesn’t divide itself up neatly into times when it is appropriate to celebrate and times it is appropriate to be reflective about things we need to think about and sometimes something as terrible as an execution can be scheduled any time and sometimes it creates such incongruities as the need to talk about terrorism on Mother’s Day. And since the stay really nothing has changed. He is still sentenced to die, that doesn’t seem to be something that is going to change and so it still does invade this Mother’s Day. It shouldn’t but it does.

And on another level I think it is appropriate because I believe that Mother’s Day is about a very special kind of love. It is the kind of love that literally gives life. It is the kind of love that I believe must have a bearing on our every decision if we are to live in this world in a way that Jesus encouraged and God has mandated. If we are to live lives of real meaning we cannot ignore the need that we have personally and collectively to love and so be life giving. And when I think about publicly sponsored execution it is clear to me that such love is missing in our collective judgment.

In June Timothy McVeigh will be killed by lethal injection. It is the first Federal execution in more than half a century. There is no doubt in my mind that what he did is beyond tragedy. And I admit that if someone I loved had been killed in the Oklahoma City bombing I might not hold to this opinion but that having been said it is a grave step that we take together. I don’t think it is anything we should ever do but if you don’t agree with me on that I know that you will agree that it is nothing we should do lightly.

Timothy McVeigh has testified that the stand off and conclusion at the Branch Davidian compound was instrumental in his decision to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City. As far as his opinion about what happened in Waco I somewhat agree. It was a travesty of justice. I don’t know the details enough perhaps to even have an opinion but children were killed. Many children were killed. But there was no great public outrage about their deaths. Because they were “crazy religious” people somehow it seemed acceptable. But not to Timothy McVeigh. And so the next years of his life were about trying to make that tragedy right. Of course nothing ever makes those things right. The temptation is to believe that such things can be made right but the truth is they cannot.

Timothy McVeigh made a dreadful choice in trying to put things right. He chose a method that could only make things worse. He did something that multiplied the tragedy of Waco infinitely. He killed one hundred and sixty some people, many of whom were children. There is nothing that is accomplished in such killing. It just deprived that many families of their loved ones. It just crushed the lives of so many people. Out of his righteous indignation for the innocence of the children in Waco came the same tragedy and worse.

Perhaps Timothy McVeigh didn’t know any better. Maybe he believes that retribution can make something right. Maybe to him revenge is the best remedy to the times that he has been wronged. Maybe the military solution is the only solution that he could think of. He was a young man and it sounds as if he was an immature young man who saw no other options.

But do not think I am try8ing to excuse him or really pleading his case in any way. I just see one picture of the aftermath of the bombing and then remember that he has confessed to doing this and I feel nothing for him. Nothing. But my point is that we need not be as immature and immoral as he was. We need not compound the tragedy the way he did. We need not believe mistakenly in the power of retribution. As a country of over two hundred years of collective experience we should know better than this misguided young man but our solution is similar, our attempt to make things right is the same only different in degree. It isn’t right. It isn’t wise. It isn’t civilized. Jesus said so and we ought to know so.

You know Jesus did not preach his message of love or die for this commitment because it was easy to do. Too often when we talk about love in church I think it is perceived as the nice thing to do in nice circumstances. And though that kind of love has its place and a very special place in all our lives it was hardly what Jesus was talking about or living for the most part. When he says to his disciples that they should love one another as he has loved them he is not using an example that is extolling the virtues of the disciples as if they were so wonderful and easy to love.

Rather he is talking about his effort to love those who are almost unlovable. I know there are times when Jesus wishes he had not called this bunch together. He even asks how long he must put up with this faithless generation. If you read it in context you know that he was referring to his disciples. He called Peter Satan. He has to put up with the constant bickering about who is the greatest. They never quite figure out what Jesus is about and continually ask the most off-putting questions that reveal their ignorance. And in the end these people who he gave his life, gave him, in his earthly life, hardly the devotion or loyalty he deserved. He loved them until the end it says in scripture even though they denied, betrayed, and deserted him.

Love each other as I have loved you. It is a plea for us to love in spite of all the good reasons we have not to love. Like a mother’s love, incidentally. That is the kind of love he is talking about. No one knows what a mother goes through with her children, except mothers and God. Think of what Timothy McVeigh’s mother is going through right now. She loves him like only a mother can and I bet it is the most wrenching experience of her life or any life. The kind of love that takes everything you have got is what Jesus is talking about when he says love one another.

Even love your enemies Jesus said. That is a hard fought, incredibly powerful; incredibly difficult to maintain kind of love. It is the kind of love that is needed right now. And by definition it cannot include killing someone.

But I am afraid that this June or some time soon after that the gruesome truth will come again. We will disappoint our God again. And perhaps God will wonder whether this will ever end and whether we will ever learn. God will cry over God’s creation because we don’t believe in God’s word and don’t trust God’s word. And there will be sadness that we would do such a thing to a living breathing human being. God will sob for our inability to figure something else out that is more in tune with what God has intended from the beginning.