QUARANTINE BLOG # 617

December 7, 2021

“Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives:

“YESTERDAY, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

The speaker was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, less than 24 hours after the receipt of the first news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, drove to the Capitol to deliver the message to a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Congress approved President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war on Japan with only one dissenter.  The vote was 82–0 in the Senate and 388–1 in the House.  

Jeannette Rankin (R), Representative from Montana, was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan.  Representative  (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous – or at very least, to abstain – but she refused.  “As a woman I can’t go to war,” she said, “and I refuse to send anyone else ... I voted as the mothers would have had me vote.”

View from a Japanese plane as USS West Virginia is hit by a bomb

USS West Virginia hit by 6 torpedoes and 2 bombs during the attack

USS Arizona hit – 1,177 sailors and Marines died

All eight of the U.S. Navy battleships were damaged.  Four were sunk.  All but USS Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war.  The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer.  A total of 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded.  

Oil still seeps up from the Arizona, as if the ship is crying

USS Arizona exploding after forward ammunition magazine hit

Since 1982, the U.S. Navy has allowed survivors of USS Arizona to be interred in the ship’s wreckage upon their deaths.  Following a full military funeral at the Arizona memorial, the cremated remains are placed in an urn and then deposited by divers beneath one of the Arizona’s gun turrets.  To date, more than 30 Arizona crewmen who survived Pearl Harbor have chosen the ship as their final resting place.

👉  Today’s close, “Transformative Solidarity,” is from Celebrating Abundance, by Walter Brueggemann.

“Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness sake, O Lord! 

“Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads die humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees” (Psalm 25:6-10).

The Psalmist revels in God’s mercy, goodness, and steadfast love. It is the same term three times, steadfast love, a term that most fully characterizes the God of Christmas for whom we prepare in Advent. Steadfast love means solidarity in need enacted with transformative strength. It is the solidarity enacted with strength that Israel knows in the exodus and in a thousand other life-giving miracles.

It is the solidarity in need offered by Jesus to the woman at the well, to the tax man in the tree, to the blind beggar. What human persons and human community most need is abiding, committed, passionate transformative solidarity. This psalmist waits for it in need and knows the place from where it comes.

Truth to tell, that kind of solidarity is not on offer in our world from the big players in power and money and authority. Israel knew that it was not on offer from Pharaoh, who always demanded productivity. Jesus knew it was not on offer from Pilate, who washed his hands of need. It is not on offer by most of the loud voices of ideology and propaganda among us.

Imagine a whole company of believers rethinking their lives, redeploying their energy, reassessing their purposes. The path is to love God, not party, not ideology, not pet project, but God’s will for steadfast love that is not deterred by fear and anxiety. The path is to love neighbor, to love neighbor face-to-face, to love neighbor in community action, to love neighbor in systemic arrangements, in imaginative policies.

The decrees of Caesar Augustus continue to go out for taxes and for draft and for frantic attempts to keep the world under our control. But the truth is found in the vulnerable village of Bethlehem outside the capital city, the village that disregarded the imperial decree. It will take a village to exhibit this alternative, and we are citizens of that coming society.

In the midst of a tired and fearful word, we have heard the promise of your steadfast love, your transformative solidarity. May we wait with eager longing for the one thing needed, for the one source that assures. May we be in readiness for your coming, O God. Amen.

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