“No Easy Answers,”

October 2, 2011 –

Rev. Sharon James Fazel

“Mock executions carried out by white-masked ‘firing squads’ that clicked rifle bolts behind [their] backs … [as they stood] spread-eagled against a wall. Guards playing Russian roulette with revolvers held to the heads of two bound [persons]... Prisoners confined in basement cells where they were prevented from seeing sunlight for months, afraid even to look at each other because their captors thought they might be exchanging eye signals.” One of them described “being alternately bullied and obeyed, coerced and catered to, threatened and respected during …incarceration.”  When they weren’t isolated from each other, “they kept their days strictly regimented, running laps, weight-lifting water bottles, discussing literature and quizzing each other, in an effort to stay physically and mentally fit while in captivity.”

Do you recognize who’s being described in the journalism I just quoted? (pause for response). Oddly enough, only the last short bit about weight-lifting water bottles and discussing literature are descriptions of Josh Fatell and Shane Bauer. The first description of mock executions and firing squads are from a Time Magazine article written in February of 1981, following a January, ‘81 release of hostages in the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis.

The comments about being alternately bullied and obeyed are from Kathryn Koob’s book, Guest of the Revolution, about her experience as one of only 2 women out of 52 hostages held for 444 days.

We don’t know what Shane Bauer and Josh Fatell will say about their experiences when they have more time to reflect. It’s too soon to know. And too soon to ask. What we do know is, the experiences are very similar for the two young men, and their colleague Sarah E. Shourd – to that of the 1979 hostages.

Kathryn Koob credited her ELCA Lutheran faith for greatly supporting her efforts to stay focused while in captivity. A magazine article this year entitled “Where are they now?” says: “her sense of humor, her Lutheran faith and prayer sustained her... She worked out a schedule for herself, spending each morning in prayer and concentrating on a different topic.”

"I was a political prisoner and a hostage,” Kathryn said, “but there are people who are held hostage in everyday life, and that's so important that people understand that when you lose a job, there's a family crisis, kids don't turn out the way you want, this can turn you into a hostage to that situation. I didn't deal with it any differently than people deal with the things that they're dealt in everyday life. Mine just happened to be very public."

Quite remarkable at first hearing, don’t you think? And yet – I’d have to say I agree with her wholeheartedly. When we’re imprisoned within our own minds, our own resentments and/or hostility, our own fear – we might as well be in a prison cell somewhere far away – just like Kathryn and Josh and Shane and Sarah … and the Apostle Paul. Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians from prison, you know. He cast out a demon from a woman, so the story goes, while he was in Philippi, and got thrown in jail for it!

Kathryn Koob had only been in her position as director of the Iran-American Society — a nonprofit organization established by the U.S. government to foster ties between the two countries (albeit too late) – for four months before she was taken hostage. Shane and Josh and Sarah were hiking. And Paul was effecting some kind of healing for someone he met while making rounds of house churches, this one in Philippi. You never know, do you, what’s going to betake you, from one day to the next, in this uncertain world? It appears some things about the human experience haven’t changed in 2000 years!

But Paul doesn’t dwell on the pain of his own situation in his letter, does he? Instead, he tells his followers, to whom he writes this letter for intentional public reading to the house church, that neither his condition nor his past accomplishments nor his vita of unusual experiences count for anything in this world. He calls it all “Garbage!” What counts instead for Paul is striving within the love and fellowship of a covenanted community toward the ideal of mutual respect, love and ultimate deliverance into the unending grace of God. Fascinating, isn’t it, that we become less materialistic, more philosophical, and even theological, when the chips are down and we have been stripped of all the trappings which usually define us? “The justice I possess,” says Paul, “is that which comes through faith in God. It has its origin in God and is based on faith.”

And no, Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi is not written in a vacuum. Nor is it a sermon masquerading as a letter. It is a letter to a specific group of people in answer to some rather specific concerns that have been raised to him in the letter that we don’t have, that went from Philippi to Paul. Evidently, there are people threatening the very life of the gatherings Paul has spent time and energy and shoe leather establishing in Philippi. The threat from the people trying to disrupt his beloved Philippian house church comes partly from their insistence that those gathered apply the Laws of Torah to all believers, Hebrews and non-Hebrews alike, to be sure that all males joining this company of believers undergo circumcision -- regardless of their age. (Ouch!) In other words, these wayward followers have lost track of the core values of The Way shown them in the life of Jesus, and have returned to demanding some sort of external sign that they indeed belong in the circles Paul is gathering together. This explains Paul’s justification of himself as a good Jew at the beginning of today’s section of the letter. He can’t be considered dismissive of Hebrew Law for lack of knowing it. Rather, he had himself been a persecutor of the very people he now shepherds! But his job as a leader of his community now is to remind them that they are now re-formed -- around a new and different ideal. Not the rule of Hebrew Law, but the rule of God’s love and grace, as it flows to us and through us in the Spirit of the Risen Christ. Paul’s passionate plea to hold fast to that ideal of love and grace, even toward one’s enemies, is striking from one who writes these pleas while shackled in prison.

The 30th anniversary of the first Iran Hostage Crisis, was on January 20th of this year. Kathryn Koob is now 72 years old, and now the only surviving female hostage of the 1979 event. Here’s what she said about her ordeal:

"People would say, 'Well, do you love your enemies?' when I first came home. And I said, 'Well, I don't know, but if the absence of anger, bitterness, hatred [and] resentment means love, then I guess I do. And then, as I was teaching a course in reconciliation at Wartburg [College] many, many years later, I realized that loving your enemies is a gift of the grace of God. You wonder how could I do this, and then you discover it's not you, it's the spirit of God in you that enables and empowers you."

Paul himself didn’t say it much more clearly than that, did he? When there are no easy answers to resolve the conflict between us, around us, or even within us, the answer that sustains us is found in connecting with those sacred core values. They bring us strength, grant us patience, grace us with compassion, embolden us with courage, and give us the ability to survive things we never imagined we could. It is those core values that Paul speaks of in his letter to Philippi.

Praise God that we are able to hear them today, even as the Philippians did then.

Please pray with me:

PRAYER: Not my will, O God, but yours, be done in me and through me. Let me ever be a channel of blessings – today, now – to those that I contact in every way. Let my seeking of the sacred within and my quest for justice out in the world, be in accord with that you would have me do. And, as the call comes, “here am I; send me.”  Use me. Amen.

1“Where Are They Now,” AARP Bulletin. January 20, 2011.

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