I changed the gospel reading for this morning because I want to talk about the impending war. The gospel I chose is the story from St Luke's gospel (Luke 11:23ff ) to which the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Michael Peers, refers in a pastoral letter issued two weeks ago for all Anglicans entitled War on Iraq not Justified. The gospel describes the dilemma of those who chase out unclean spirits from themselves or another only to discover that the unclean or evil spirit is only set free to rally even more evil spirits all of whom will return to possess the person and the last state of that person is worst than the first. This example occurs in a portion of Luke's gospel where Jesus is casting out demons and he cautions those who want to know how this is possible to remember that demons are cast out by God not by others means. In other words, it is a word of caution about the whole endeavour of identifying what is evil and even greater caution about how that evil is to be cast out.

The Primate concludes and I quote,

"In its reckless desire to rid itself of Saddam Hussein's admittedly malignant presence in the life of the world, the United States government and its supporters might ponder what the "last state" of Iraq, the Middle East, and of the world, is likely to be. It is wishful thinking of the most irresponsible kind to base an invasion on the fallacy that evil resides in one person alone, or in an axis of three nations or anywhere else but in the midst of us all."

In issuing this letter Archbishop Peers joins his voice with most other religious leaders and religious organizations around the world including the Canadian and World councils of churches, The Roman Catholic Conferences of bishops in Canada and in the United States, the Unites States Episcopal House of Bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury to mention but a few.

I want to convey to you some of the Primates reasoning in his pastoral letter. I do this for a number of reasons. We have all read and heard a great deal about the impending war. We all know that everyone hates war, or so they say, but even amongst governments duly elected within western democracies war continues to be the most common and least successful instrument for the resolution of conflicts among and within nations.

Like you, I am alarmed by the certain havoc that this war will wreak upon millions of people and the environment. I am told that there are 5 million people in Bagdad, two and one half million of whom are children. I cannot even imagine the anxiety I would suffer if I were in that city and a parent. Nor can I imagine what it will be like for members of our armed forces to be obliged to rain down destruction upon them. What son or daughter in the military, if they return home, will ever be the same again?

Secondly, I bring you this letter as a Christian leader. It is untenable that we should meet as a faith community and not talk about the war. If the church has no moral guidance to offer on the issue of war, the most horrible of all possible situations for our world, then I can see no reason why it would have a credibility word to say about anything else.

Thirdly, I desperately want to DO something and in this I believe I share the feelings of many of you at this time. Can our voices have an influence upon the decisions of empires and power blocks?

Now, You may not agree with the primate's conclusion which is that a war against Iraq is unjustified but whether you do or not he had said a word which I believe you should hear as members of the church. Over the past few weeks I have listened to news reports daily, read many editorials, listened to public debates, and spoken with colleagues and parishioners. In all of that an important piece is missing- and that is the moral piece.

People have spoken of the security aspect, the economic aspect, the environmental aspect, the geo-political aspect and the humanitarian aspect but very few voices have tried to apply a standard of moral reasoning. This the religious leaders are striving to do.

Most of you are probably not even aware of the statements to which I refer, not even to the one from the national head of your own church. Why such statements are not of interest to the media is a good question in and of itself.

The Primate uses the just war theory in his attempt to provide legitimate grounds for Christians to participate in armed conflict. St Augustine, in the 4th century, laid out conditions under which it would be appropriate for Christians to participate in armed conflict in defence of the Roman Empire. This is a centuries old theory but not universally accepted by all Christians. The Primate acknowledges that there are many Christians who believe that there is no justification for the use of violence that the church can condone which was indeed the teaching of the church for four centuries of its history.

I will now share a few passages from the Primates pastoral letter.. You can read the full text on the internet or posted outside the church office. After I have read these bits I will add a few observations and that is really about all there will be time for.

Many of the voices clamouring for this war would have us believe that all the risk is aligned on one side. Delay and negotiations, they claim, simply allow Iraqi leaders to compete their program of weapons development and encourage them to believe that they can act with impunity. For those who believe that an invasion will nullify such risks, the voices of peace seem recklessly naive. But those who advocate and seek a peaceful resolution are simply asking that we pay attention to a wider set of questions about the impact of the invasion on the stability of the Middle east, on relationships among regions, nations and cultures, and on the future of Iraq itself. Even if one could justify the toll of violent death that will be exacted from the Iraqi people, they argue, the outcome will not be the stability and peace that advocates of this invasion are promising. .....

It is precisely because of evil's capacity to surprise us in the confidence of our own goodness that Augustine developed a set of principles known as the "just war theory". Submitting the justness of a cause to a set of principles allows us to see our intentions through lenses other than our anger, frustration, or fear,

1. A just was can only be waged as a last resort.
2. A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority.
3. A just war can only be waged to redress a wrong suffered.
4. A war is just only if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injuries incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
5. A war is just only if its goal is to re-establish peace. Moreover, the peace established as a result of the war must be an improvement over the circumstances that would have prevailed had the war not been wages.
6. A war is just only if the violence used us proportional to the harm suffered.
7. The weapons used must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Non-combatants are never permissible targets of war. Their deaths are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

As the United States administrations seeks to broaden the basis on which war may be prosecuted, it has so far outstripped any notion of a "just war" that it makes no attempt to interpret its intention in those terms. Instead, it has introduced a new and perilous set of criteria, justifying an invasion of Iraq based on the American desire for a "regime change", and as a hedge against the possibility of damage to the American economy should Iraq attack the United States.

Now we all know that when it comes to public pronouncements societal leaders tend to say predictable things. One would rather expect religious leaders whose primary task is to commend love of neighbour to speak out against armed aggression and one would also rather expect national political and security leaders to speak in the interests of those whom they are charged to protect. For most of us here who hold little power to influence the ultimate decision about war all we can do is prayerfully consider all of the arguments.

How do we speak a word of peace that is credible? So often the only time there is public concern about peace is when we are on the brink of some kind of violent conflagration. It's like going to marriage counselling after 10 years of accumulated resentments and unresolved conflicts. When decades have passed of spiralling violence and the lack of political will to address degenerating situations there are no easy solutions. Peace and non-violence is never a short-term answer. Tanks and guided missiles are always such.

As a peacenik I am deeply sensitive to the inevitable accusation of being naive. This dismissive epithet is inevitably thrown about by the realists, as they would term themselves, those who really know what is going on. And yet those who really know what is going on persist in using war as an acceptable instrument of state even though, for over a century, most of civil society ( that is NGO's and ordinary folk like us who do not have the trillion dollar resources of governments and military systems) have consistently pointed to long term alternatives.

For example, the Hague Appeal For Peace, issued in 1998 under United Nations auspices, emerged from an extensive process among hundreds of civil society organizations reflecting upon the most important challenges facing humankind. It produced a fifty point agenda to end the scourge of war. Such agenda exist in the hundreds throughout the world and have so for decades and yet, to conclude as those at the Hague Conference did, as long as the issues of peace and security are left in the control of politicians and military systems alone, we will not enjoy the commitment to peace that will endure. It is our responsibility to wrest peacemaking from this exclusive and distorted control .

Otherwise, we will always be left in exactly the situation we face now - and by we I mean individuals and all the institutions of civil society- a situation where the options are manufactured and narrowed down by powerful vested interests and we are left with the pathetic role of saying yay or nay to equally abhorrent options.

And these equally abhorrent options is precisely what Archbishop Peers is referring to when he asks whether the second infestation of evil spirits into Iraq may not indeed be as bad or worse than the ones presently seen.

Let me conclude by giving the Primate the last word. At the end of his pastoral letter he comments,

If we must risk, let us consider taking a risk that is consistent with out humanity, with our vocation to be God's agents of healing and reconciliation. Peace will not come as a result of ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein; it will come by ridding ourselves of our perverse habit of imagining that only the other, only the enemy, can provide a vehicle for the advancement of evil.