Strength for the Journey

Worshiping and Working for Peace Seventy Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D.

Old Cambridge Baptist Church

August 9, 2015 – Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 19:4-8 (NRSV)

But [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

John 6:35, 49-51 (NRSV)

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”



You already know that one of the main reasons that I felt a sense of call to join you on the journey as your pastor is your long legacy of work toward peace and justice. Your exceptionally early declaration of welcome and affirmation for LGBTQ people, your FBI-defying work in the sanctuary movement for Central American immigrants, your anti-war activism during Vietnam, the way you challenged patriarchial norms through the feminist movement alive at OCBC in the 70s, your work in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s all the way through OCBC’s active Racial Justice Group today – all of these things spoke to me as signs that perhaps we belonged together.

In the history of this church that Marcia Deihl composed, she said, “OCBC has been known for ‘comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.’ It has often interpreted the gospel of Jesus as allegiance to a higher order than the state, or even ‘the Empire,’ whether it occurred in Roman times or in our contemporary United States, whenever government policies go against the basic precepts of the Sermon on the Mount.”[1] The work of peace and justice is a place where our journeys converge in some very meaningful ways and it sparked my imagination for what might be possible as we live into the future story of this congregation together.

So, when I realized what this Sunday was – the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki – I started to wonder what life was like at Old Cambridge Baptist Church during World War II. Fortuitously, while I was cleaning out my office I came across a publication titled, Old Cambridge Baptist Church: A History of the Quarter Century 1944-69,written by Keene Metzger.

Samuel Miller, pastor during WWII, lost two sons in the war: Albert Miller, a volunteer ambulance driver for the American Field Service, and Howard Miller, listed as dead after failing to return from a mission dropping supplies over Holland.[2] The windows in our Memorial Chapel were given in memory of Albert and Howard. Each Sunday during those days, about 50 servicemen attended services at OCBC and engaged in discussion on the meaning of the Christian faith in light of their situations over coffee and donuts between 9:30 and 10:00.[3]

It’s hard to tell what the tenor at the church was when the atomic bombs were dropped over Japan. I imagine there were very mixed responses back in those days. Clearly in the ensuing years, OCBC took a decidedly anti-war turn, providing sanctuary to a member of an infamous Vietnam War protest group and marching against the “human and financial waste” of war from Vietnam through Iraq and Afghanistan.[4]

It’d be easy to preach a good anti-war sermon in a place like this, even easier to decry the use of nuclear weapons that vaporize thousands of people in an instant and decimate tens of thousands more through the fallout. No one here would disagree that these things “go against the basic precepts of the Sermon on the Mount,” as Marcia Deihl wrote in our history of peace and justice activism. Might as well follow up with a pro-Red Sox sermon the next week. Both of these sermons would be a bit hit here, no doubt – everyone nodding in agreement and knowing what we said was right and good.

As I thought about such a sermon, I remember that in my former Unitarian Universalist congregation in Davis, Calif., there was a physicist named John Jungerman who died just before I arrived at the church, but whose legacy lived large there. As a 22-year-old physics student at U.C. Berkeley, Jungerman was sent to New Mexico to work with the Manhattan Project group. His obituary in the Sacramento Bee tells this remarkable story: 

Three weeks before the Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima, Japan, [John] and two project buddies sneaked off to camp out overnight in the desert after learning the bomb was to be tested. At the appointed hour before dawn on July 16, 1945, nothing happened. They waited a half-hour and began collecting their sleeping bags, thinking they had been misled.

Suddenly, from 20 miles away, the desert lit up like the sun. Dr. Jungerman spun away to protect his eyes from the searing light before turning back to see a mushroom cloud boiling upward into the sky. He ran with his friends to their car and sped off to escape toxic fallout from the first atomic blast, which was codenamed “Trinity.”

On the ride home, his emotions were mixed.

[He said,] “The first thing was a feeling of pity for the Japanese people, because it was going to be used on them. That was the whole idea at that point…Then there was a sort of dim realization that the world had changed in some way.”[5]

            And that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s not our individual or even collective remorse for what we’ve done that hits us like a punch in the gut on this 70th anniversary. It’s not even our deep anti-war sentiments shaped by the Sermon on the Mount that are most potent in our minds and hearts today. It’s the overwhelming and intractable ways we have changed the planet with our monstrous ingenuity that really gets us. It’s the crushing sense that the world has changed in some way.

Now 70-year later, the shadows of an atomic cloud still shroud the dim flicker of hope for peace we hold in our hearts, and this ominous anniversary necessarily casts a pall over our best hopes for a future in which the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are enfleshed in our living, both locally or globally.

            And this morning we have the prophet Elijah—fresh off his triumphant victory over the 450 prophets of Baal—the river of Kishon now running red with their blood. His allegiance was to a higher order than the Empire—whether the kingdom of Ahab or anyone else. Elijah was a prophet’s prophet. His life has been in danger since he came on the scene in the book of First Kings. He’s fled Ahab once already. Ravens in the wilderness fed him during a period of drought and a widow who was, herself, about to die of starvation gives him bread to eat as he journeys. He miraculously revives a boy who has died and outruns Ahab’s chariot for seventeen- miles. And high atop Mt. Carmel, he calls down fire from heaven in a victorious display of the power of the God of Israel over the god of Baal.

 “Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” was his mission. Like any good prophet, it’s what he felt called, summoned, even compelled to do. And he’s such the prophet’s prophet that many of the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament are cast in the image of the Elijah stories, and on the Mount of Transfiguration who else would appear alongside Jesus and Moses in a resplendent display of glory before the three wide-eyed disciples but the great prophet Elijah.

But now…

Now Elijah journeys alone, afraid and fleeing for his life. The very last prophet left in Israel. Pretty soon, one would become none. Jezebel’s hit men are in pursuit. Leaving his own servant behind in the last habitable town, Elijah journeys a day’s length into the wilderness and collapsed under a tree, wishing he could just die.

“Too much! I’ve had enough,” he says. “I am alone in the world – the last of the prophets.”

You know the feeling, don’t you? You can’t be a prophetic community for as long as you’ve been in the business and not know what he’s talking about.

“I am no better than my ancestors,” Elijah says.

And we, too, look around and wonder if we’ve done any better than those before us – if our prophetic work for peace and justice in the world has made any difference whatsoever.

Today in the shadow of the atomic clouds that boiled over Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago, we gather for worship and the prophetic work of peace and justice in an era when now over 15,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled the world over.[6]

“It’s too much. We’ve had enough.”

You know the feeling, don’t you? You can’t be a prophetic community for as long as you’ve been in the business and not know what he’s talking about.

“Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again.”

Today, even as we mark the globe-shifting event of nuclear attacks upon Japan, we also mark a more recent anniversary. One year ago this very day, an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was killed by Ferguson police, and left for four-and-a-half hours on the pavement of his neighborhood street, igniting outrage – yet again – over the killing of an unarmed black man. And after him 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and after him Eric Harris, and after him Walter Scott – and those are just a few that made national headlines. A year now filled with protests and demonstrations against police violence against unarmed black men punctuated, yet again, with yesterday’s police killing of unarmed black teen, Christian Taylor, in Arlington, Texas. 

“It’s too much. We’ve had enough. We’re no better than our ancestors.”

You know the feeling, don’t you?

It’s part of the prophetic work of peace and justice – a call to which you, as a congregation, have responded again and again. With LGBTQ affirmation and feminist activism and anti-war protest and racial justice striving and providing sanctuary to the earth’s most vulnerable citizens.

And you’ve seen the results – almost as miraculous as being fed by ravens in the wilderness or outrunning a chariot for seventeen miles: You’ve seen the lives of LGBTQ people touched by the warm embrace of a church family. You’ve seen laws changed and oppressive practices overturned because of your insistence upon justice for all. You’ve seen lives saved in the safety of the sanctuary you provide. You’ve seen real, tangible results from the prophetic call you’ve followed – nearly as palpable as fire from heaven.

And still the problems we confront with prophetic endurance grow: nuclear arms are stockpiled, and wars are waged for lucrative ends, and unconscionable numbers of black and brown bodies are imprisoned for the profit of private corporations, and the environment is decimated for our short-lived comforts.

And it’s perfectly understandable, isn’t it, when we say, “It’s too much. We’ve had enough. We’re no better than our ancestors. Let’s just call it quits.”

On a day like today, how will we worship together, reminded again of how capable we are of the unmitigated destruction of life?

In a time like this, how will we persist in following our call toward peace and justice when the journey seems too much for us?

“The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’”

“He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to…the mount of God.”

“It’s too much. We’ve had enough.”

You know the feeling, don’t you?

Even today, the call continues, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and [endure]. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”

And “in the strength of that food,” the prophetic journey continues.


[1] Marcia Deihl, “OCBC History – Buildings, Causes, and Some Wonderful People,” 4.



[2] Keene Metzger, Old Cambridge Baptist Church: A History of the Quarter Century 1944-69.



[3] Metzger.



[4] Marcia Deihl, “OCBC History,” 5.



[5] Robert D. Dávila, “Obituary: UC Davis physicist John A. Jungerman, 92, helped develop first atomic bomb,” The Sacramento Bee (April 1, 2014), online: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/obituaries/article2594309.html



[6] Plowshares Fund, “World Nuclear Weapon Stockpile,” online: http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report





But [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

  • The Rev. Cody J. Sanders