Sermon of the Week: God as ally

(In this 99th installment of this series of sermons, UPI religion editor Uwe Siemon-Netto, a Lutheran lay theologian, reflects on God as an ally in war).

This sermon Psalm 35.

Listen to this: "Contend, o Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Take up shield and buckler; arise and come to my aid."

Doesn't this sound like an appropriate text for a nation at war? Doesn't it sound just like the third stanza of the British national anthem? Listen:

"O Lord, our God arise/ Scatter our enemies/ And make them fall/ Confound their knavish tricks/ Confuse their politics/ on thee our hopes we fix/ God save us all."

Have we not always known that God was with us in combat? So here's the biblical proof -- the psalmist sang the same song as the British when in a martial state.

Or did he?

What about the German soldiers whose belt buckles bore the inscription, "Gott mit uns" (God with us)? What about the troops opposing each other in most wars? Whose side is God on? The answer is: both. But hold your anger until I have made my case. In the end, you might agree with me.

To say it outright, I find sermons glorifying any war -- or agitating against it -- inadmissible, except perhaps a homily affirming the war against one's own iniquity, which according to St. Augustine much of this psalm is about.

But the world is at war against a man full of "knavish tricks," to use a phrase from the British tune. Hitler, too, was a man of knavish tricks. So is it wrong to claim God on one's side in such conflicts? How can it be right to see God as the other side's ally as well?

Let's step back. What kind of God is this that allows tyrants to torture their own people and others for decades? Has it not bothered you that some of the most abominable brutes in history died peacefully in their beds -- Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot?

Why is it that no assassination attempt against them succeeded? Why is it that between 1928 and 1945 brave men tried 40 times in vain to kill Hitler, who in the end committed suicide -- but only when the victorious Allies were about to capture him?

"O Lord, how long will you look on?" the psalmist asks. "God, why does it take you so long to end suffering?" we chime in. Why does God allow evil to run its course? Why could did he not take out Saddam Hussein a decades ago -- after Saddam had slaughtered hundreds of thousands with weapons of mass destruction?

As my friend Gerald McDermott, an Episcopal theologian, reminds us, Scripture is quite clear about this -- God uses suffering to test, purify and strengthen faith. This is the message of the Book of Job. God uses Job to prove a point to the powers of evil.

And strong these powers are indeed. As we sing in the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God": "For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe/ His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,/ On earth is not his equal."

But then this hymn goes on: "And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,/ We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:/

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;/ His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,/ One little word shall fell him."

This stanza contains the answer to our questions: Whose side is God on? Why does God allow evil to run its course? What's he doing about all this?

The answer is the "one little word" -- Christ on the cross, "Christ whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood to be received by faith" (Romans 3:25). Before the Nazis hanged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he left us with this quintessentially Christian message about discipleship: We are to "suffer with God in a godless world."

This tells us first and foremost that God is a fellow sufferer. God suffers with us and for us in a godless world -- to the extent that he allows himself to be driven out of the world, as Bonhoeffer said, and be nailed to the cross.

In this sense -- and in this sense alone, for this is no or military political statement but purely one of faith -- is God an ally of soldiers, regardless of which side they are fighting on. He is there with them in suffering. This comrade is never absent without leave.

This leaves one point unresolved. What about tyrants, such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein, accomplices of the Evil One? They have already been vanquished. God who revealed himself in Christ has won this victory for us -- by his cross and Resurrection.

And as for their punishment, God whose timeframe is different from ours will deal with them soon enough. Until then the psalmist allows us to smile at these words about the Almighty and wicked rulers:

"He who sits in Heaven laughs; the Lord has them in derision" (Psalm 2:4).