Sermon by Ko Koyama
August 7, 2005
Jeremiah 7:1-7, 24-26
Luke 18:9-14
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Exactly 60 years ago, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was incinerated by a nuclear bomb. The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy” exploded 570 meters above the ground creating a fireball 100 meters in diameter with a temperature at its center of 300.000 degrees Celsius. Instantly the city became a land of death and destruction. 140.000 people perished. Three days later, on August 9th, the city of Nagasaki suffered the same fate. 80.000 perished.
This happened when I was 15 years old. My generation is now fast disappearing. Since I survived several carpet bombings of Tokyo in 1945, on this 60th year anniversary of human tragedy, I have prepared a few words for this morning.
I was baptized into the Christian faith – the religion of the enemy of my country! – during the WWII. Very soon I noticed a curious contrast between our Japanese gods and the God of the Bible. The Japanese gods never criticized or warned Japanese people. “You are ok,” they told us. “Do whatever you desire to do. Invade China? Fine, go ahead!” In contrast, the God of the Bible says;
I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.”
This God calls God’s own people a stiff necked people!” Stubborn, unthinking, unyielding even when you are wrong! Now read this in the Book of Exodus, how God, in anger, cries against God’s People:
Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you’ (33:5).
This contrast comes to me as powerfully today as it did 60 years ago. Dear sisters and brothers, it is far better to have a God who criticizes you and warns you when you “oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood” than to have God who simply agrees with you. The “yes-man” God will bring ruination upon nations.
War starts in the inflated delusion of the human mind. Here is my Japanese experience: The simple but extremely toxic idea that “Japan is a special nation, not like others, excellent in morality, a righteous nation governed by a divine emperor” – that is to say, the delusion that “Japan is exceptional” - destroyed Japan. For 60 years this theme has come back to me from time to time. The God of the Bible warns and judges the self-serving arrogance that believes “we are exceptional.” We hear in Jesus’ parable “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector!” This is not a prayer. This is propaganda.
When the American B29s began, night after night, to invade the Japanese sky, our Japanese rulers propagandized; “Believe in Japanese military might and trust in the protection of our gods!” Tokyo is safe. Tokyo is not an ordinary city. In it is “the palace of the divine emperor, the palace of the divine emperor, the palace of the divine emperor!” Soon, before our very eyes, the 66 major Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were reduced to ashes. Japan did not know that the security of a nation, as Jeremiah told his people, is to be found in taking care of the weaker members of the community; the alien, the orphan and the widow (7:5-7). Japan did not do this, and was destroyed.
Suddenly the doomsday fireball came down upon the fully populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This fireball is a human copy of the great fireball called the Sun. On August 6, 1945, 60 years ago, humanity actually stepped into the unimaginable possibility of cosmic super-violence. We, the species called human on the third planet of the solar system, are now capable to obliterate all living beings upon the earth. When Hiroshima/Nagasaki was nuclear bombed, symbolically the whole world was bombed. Every bomb used against others is ultimately a bomb exploded upon ourselves. How dedicated we are to destroy ourselves! Since Hiroshima, war is not about this nation against that nation. It is we, all of humanity, against our own good. The army of the “righteous Japanese empire” destroyed 300.000 Chinese civilians in November 1937 in what is now called the Rape of Nanjing. Japan’s enemy was its own violence.
The opposite of the delusion that “we are exceptional” is “we wish to share.” Sharing creates the international community. Let us read from the Book of Isaiah:
On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage” (19:23-25).
This was a surprising proclamation, because Assyria and Egypt were Israel’s predatory neighbors.
For us, the Communion is the ultimate symbol of sharing. Here all are welcome. There are no tests or requirements. You do not have to be one of us or like us. You do not have to think or believe as we do. We are all God’s beloved people. This invitation creates open intercultural and international highways. Blessing is not monopolized, but shared. We are freed from the delusion that “We are ok. You are not ok.”
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(The New York Times, August 3,2005, Ill Will Rising Between China and Japanese: Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution that plays down this country’s militarist policies in World War II, less than two weeks before ceremonies takes place across Asia marking the 60th anniversary of the war’s end on Aug.15. Though expressing “regret” for the wartime past, the resolution omitted the references to “invasion” and “colonial rule” that were in the version passed on the 50th anniversary. The action will most likely be seen by China and Japan’s other Asian neighbors as further proof of growing nationalism here.)
