When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was to do no harm. In order to show evidence that we are a people who are being saved by God we should do no harm.

The rule to do no harm directs those of us who are Christians to practice non-violence. A Christian is someone who is horrified by violence, refrains from violence in her or his own life, and seeks to restrain violence in the world insofar as possible.

The practice of non-violence is advocated in many religious traditions and philosophical teachings down through history. More than that, it expresses the will of God who is revealed in the story of the Bible.

There are many different ways of hearing the story of God’s revelation in the Bible. One way of hearing the story of the Bible is by listening for the theme of peace that is sounded throughout its pages. When we listen for the theme of peace, we begin to understand by faith that the living God is a God of peace, that God’s people are called to be a peaceable people, and that God’s purpose is to establish a peaceable kingdom. We also understand that evil is the force of destruction and death, and sin is the practice of violence.

Hear again the story that is told in the Bible in order to listen for the theme of peace that is sounded throughout.

The story begins in Genesis where it is written, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." John Millbank has said that the goodness of God’s creation means that God has established the world upon an "ontological peace" rather than an "ontological violence." In other words God makes the world to be a peaceable place, and violence is an aberration from God’s good purposes for the world.

Following the primordial fall of Adam and Eve, the first sin that is committed is when Cain murders Abel. In the generations that succeeded

one another sin continued to multiply until it could be said, "Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence." A new beginning is attempted with the flood and the salvation of Noah, his family and the animals on the ark. Following the flood God warns Noah that violence must be restrained; primary in God’s will is that the blood of human beings should not be shed because all human beings are made in the image of God.

When human beings persisted in their ignorance of God’s will, God began to call a particular people to know him and obey him. Eventually they would be known as the people of Israel, and Moses would be their great leader. They would be different from all of the other peoples in the world because God would transform them by binding them to him in knowledge and obedience. It is notable that Moses had been a murderer whom God called to proclaim to his people, "You shall not murder."

Over the centuries the people of Israel became restless with their calling to be different from the other peoples of the world, and they wanted to be a nation like the other nations. They would not heed the warning of God through Samuel that their kings would conscript their sons and send them into wars. Over the centuries they learned the bitter lesson that "all who take the sword perish by the sword."

Then at the right time in human history God sent his Son "who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age." When Jesus was born, all of the angels in heaven praised God and promised peace on earth. When he grew up he inaugurated his ministry by being baptized by John in the Jordan River; the Spirit of God confirmed that he was the Son of God by descending upon him not as an eagle but as a dove, the bird of peace. He taught the people, saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God." As one would expect in a world of violence the Prince of Peace suffered a violent death. This was to be expected because his enemies were not mere flesh and blood, but the cosmic powers of this present darkness represented by the devil whom Jesus described as "a murderer from the beginning." Yet his death was a victory rather than a defeat because he refused to play the devil’s game of repaying violence with violence. He signaled his own strategy of nonviolence when he rode to his destiny in Jerusalem not on a war horse but on the colt of a donkey, an animal used for work rather than for battle. By his violent death he overcame violence. Then God vindicated him by raising him from the dead; and when he appeared to his disciples he announced, "Peace be with you."

On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon his disciples, and the church was born. The church is a community from all of the nations called to be a peaceable people who follow Jesus until he comes again at the end of history and establishes that kingdom where "death shall be no more: mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

No wonder then that the prophet Isaiah could perceive that the unfolding story of God’s purposes in history could be described as the creation of a reign of peace and the destruction of violence. During the Exile he declared God’s Word, "I will appoint Peace as your overseer and Righteousness your taskmaster. Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise."

In light of hearing the story of the Bible as the revelation of the God of peace, we who are the church are called to be a peaceable people. In our practices and in our public witness we are called to make peace in the world. We acknowledge that the ultimate kingdom of peace has not yet been established by God. We ourselves cannot build the kingdom, but we can build for the kingdom. We can live and witness in ways that can lead to a more tangible peace here and now that points to the coming kingdom of God.

The world needs the church’s witness to God’s peaceable purposes at this moment in history. We live in a time when nations use war as the primary political instrument in the struggle against terrorism, even to the point of engaging in preemptive war contrary to the moral standards for just war. Genocide is being practiced against thousands of innocents because of their tribe or religion. The violence of economic injustice is justified in the name of globalization. Even entertainment is sold by the titillation of gratuitous violence in movies and video games.

Pope John Paul II has made a powerful Christian witness to God’s peaceable purposes in his 1995 encyclical on "The Gospel of Life." He warned the world about creating "a culture of death" that is rebellion against "the Gospel of life." He showed us that a culture of death is one that endorses abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. He asserted that the commandment, "You shall not kill," is integral to the revelation of God. He stated, "Only when people are open to the fullness of the truth about God, man, and history will the words, ‘You shall not kill’ shine forth once more as a goal for man in himself and in his relations with others."

In the United Methodist Church we ought to apply our theological reflection, our pastoral guidance and our public witness against the violence of abortion in the name of the God of peace.

In the United Methodist Church often many of us are silent and passive about abortion. At the same time, we can be outspoken and active in our opposition to war and capital punishment. Do we not perceive how opposition to violence requires us to be as vigilant in our witness against abortion as in our witness against war as a normal political tool and our witness against executions by the state? Opposition to war, capital punishment, euthanasia and abortion is a coherent and integral witness to God’s good purposes in a world under the evil spell of violence.

I suspect that we are silent and passive about abortion because often we allow ideology to trump theology in forming our ethical positions on controversial issues. It is no secret that abortion is captive to ideological and partisan political agendas in American life. The Republican Party is the party that embraces a position of moral concern about abortion in American culture. Those who do not agree with the Republican Party on its foreign policy and many of its domestic policies are reluctant to oppose abortion because they do not want to be supportive of this party on an issue that helps it to win elections. Yet we who are Christians cannot let our ideological or partisan political loyalties constrain our witness to the living God. We need to view abortion as a concern that transcends ideological or partisan loyalties.

I think that our silence and passivity about abortion comes from the difficulty of being a Christian in America. I used to think that being a Christian in America is easy. I thought it would be hard to be a Christian in a country dominated by other religions or in a Communist country where atheism was avowed by the state, but I thought it was easy to be a Christian here. Now I realize that practicing the Christian life in America has its own difficulties. The seductions of American life may seem more subtle, but

they are real and dangerous. In America both the culture and the state view persons as autonomous individuals who have private rights to live as they choose. But we who are Christians have a different anthropology: we view persons as members of a community who are made in the image of the Triune God and who have both rights and responsibilities. Therefore, we cannot endorse a woman’s right to abort an unborn child as a morally neutral decision because we understand that the child also has a right to live and the community has a responsibility to care for this child if the mother is unable to rear it.

I suspect that the tension between being a Christian and being an American is reflected in our Church’s statement on abortion in The Book of Discipline. As good Christians we say, "The beginning of life and the ending of life are the God-given boundaries of human existence…. Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion." As good Americans we say, "But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and the well-being of the mother, for whom devastating damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy." What does this "but" mean? If it means that abortion may be necessary under certain extreme medical conditions in order to save the life of the mother, then well and good. That would be that tragic conflict of life with life of which the Discipline speaks so eloquently. Yet I wonder if many United Methodists interpret this "but" as an escape from moral responsibility in the name of one’s individual right to choose as an American? Overall our statement in the Discipline is weighted with moral gravity about abortion, and it establishes strong boundaries around abortion. Nevertheless, we are not yet through with our work of continuing to clarify our witness to the world concerning abortion.

Can there be any doubt that there is silence and passivity about abortion in our Church? How often is a sermon about abortion or an educational forum on abortion offered in our congregations? How many congregations are involved in supporting crisis pregnancy centers in their communities or offering tangible support to women with unwanted pregnancies? What kind of pastoral counsel is being offered behind the closed doors of the pastor’s office? When the bishops gave splendid

leadership in the Bishops’ Initiative on Children in Poverty, there was a great mobilization of ministries for children, but not even scant mention was made of the deaths of unborn children because of abortion. At the 2004

General Conference the Church endorsed our agencies’ continued participation in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice without much of a debate about how participation in this Coalition compromises our public witness against abortion.

We who are United Methodist Christians should continue to seek to embody in our teaching, pastoral guidance, congregational care and public witness the preservation of human life and a protest against the killing of human life in the name of the God of peace.

I am a bishop, not a philosopher or a politician. I do not profess to understand all the complexities involved in the philosophical debates about when a human being becomes a "person." Nor do I know the answers to all the questions raised about what should be the law of the land in America. Yet I can feel, and as a Methodist often I am better at feeling than thinking. What I feel is revulsion at the moral horror that is abortion. This revulsion is magnified when I reflect upon the fact, as Carl Braaten has said, "ninety-nine percent of all murders in the United States are abortions." I would like to be a bishop of a Church that knows how to make philosophers and politicians feel the same revulsion of the moral horror of abortion.

Perhaps this feeling of revulsion against the horror of abortion is a feeling shared by most human beings. Certainly Christians have feelings others may not have because we have been told the Gospel. For Christians revulsion at the moral horror of abortion is a sensibility shaped by the story of God’s purposes told in the Bible.

It is often said that there is no clear prescription against abortion in the Bible. That is because such a horror is unthinkable and unspeakable to the people of Israel and to the people who are the church. The grand story of God’s gift of peace and God’s opposition to the sin of violence compels us to be a people who try to protect the unborn from killing and to work for a culture of life.

From the very beginning Christians everywhere have felt this revulsion against the killing of human life. As Christians moved into the wider world where abortion was not unthinkable or unspeakable they had to apply the divine commandment against murder to the horrible practice of abortion. They did so because of their knowledge of the God of peace in the story of the Bible.

In our time and place, in our own Christian communion, we who are United Methodists also have a responsibility to live according to our first rule, which is to do no harm. Do no harm to the unborn! Do no harm to the witness of the Church as a peaceable people! Do no harm to the Gospel of peace!

Our General Rules are not legalistic prescriptions, but concrete expressions of how we shall actually live in response to the grace of God. The rule to do no harm is not a harsh law; it is a gracious invitation. It is an invitation to live in communion with the God of peace, to whom be glory, honor and rule forever. Amen.