Oh Death, Where is Thy Sting?  Oh Grave, Where is Thy Victory? – 1 Corinthians, 15 – 55

Good Friday, April 7, 2023 – A Prayer for the Love Of Humanity…
Witness & Resistance @Lockheed Martin, King of Prussia, PA.

Stations of Justice, Peace, Nonviolence, and Love. Honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , we adhere to the discipline of nonviolence “of fist, tongue, and heart” (Martin Luther King, Jr., Jan. 15, 1929– April 4, 1967)

LUKE 23: 33 – 49

(Readings Below)
*Jesus Condemned.  Reader or Speaker.   All: For the Love of Humanity. War No More, Stop Lockheed Martin.
*Jesus Carries his Cross.  Reader or Speaker.   All: For the Love of Humanity. War No More, End Hatred, Racism and White Supremacy, Stop Lockheed Martin.
*Wiping the Face of Jesus. Reader or Speaker.  All: For the Love of Humanity. Tell the truth, Stop Lockheed Martin.
*Jesus Falls Under the Weight of a Cross.  Reader or Speaker.  All: For the Love of Humanity.
*Jesus Crucified. Reader or Speaker. All: For the Love of Humanity. From handgun to H-Bomb End the Culture of daily Killing and Violence.
*Jesus Dies on a Cross.  Bell Tolls. All: For the Love of Humanity, Resist War; Resist Lockheed Martin.   We Declare Peace.

Daniel Ellsburg turns 92 this month.  Terminally ill with pancreatic cancer and a prognosis of three to six months to live, Dan is facing the impending end of his life, yet fully engaged in working for peace and justice.  April 24 – April 30, there are plans to Honor Daniel Ellsberg and his legacy of truth-telling, abolishing nuclear weapons, and ending war, around the country. See Daniel Ellsberg Week – DefuseNuclearWar.org . Locally, check with www.brandywinepeace.com

The Golden Rule and it message of nuclear weapons abolition will be docked in Philadelphia’s Penn Landing, May 9 to May 14.  See Veteran’s for Peace – Golden Rule Project (vfpgoldenruleproject.org)

Visit Brandywine Peace Community, www.brandywinepeace.com, for upcoming plans.

In 1944, as the fires of World War II still raged, President Charles E. Wilson gave a speech calling for the establishment of a “permanent war economy” in post-war America.  In 1993, GE Aerospace, headquartered   in King of Prussia, PA, was sold to Martin Marietta.  Martin Marietta doubled in size.   In 1995, Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed becoming Lockheed Martin, at the very moment of its incorporation the world’s largest weapons producer and war profiteer.  Lockheed Martin announced itself with the slogan “And This is Just the Beginning!” atop row upon row of pictured weapons.

We carry the weight of militarism and empire – the weapons it builds, the wars it wages, the lives it destroys, the societies and economies it cripples.  No less our own.  We all carry the weight of Lockheed Martin which receives more than $45 billion annually in weapons contracts. And it is growing.

2. July 16, 1945, the first test of an atomic bomb, code-named “Trinity”.  The bomb’s chief designer, J. Robert Oppenheimer quotes the Hindu Gita: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds” was followed three weeks later by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 175,000 killed in minutes, thousands and thousands will die from radiation poisoning (and continue to die).  The world would never be the same, or at peace, living with nuclear weapons.

Oh, God, save us. The Cold War, NATO, the H-Bomb, Teller, Dr. Strangelove, ‘duck-and-cover’ civil defense exercises for children, military-industrial complex, nuclear  submarines,  Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), MIRVs then MARVs.  U.S. war, military bases, and wars by proxy dot the earth.

Then Vietnam  ‘destroying the village in order to save it’, strategic hamlets, napalm,  Dr. King  “breaks the silence” saying at Riverside Church in New York that the bombs falling on Vietnam have their fallout on America’s “inner cities” and cites the U.S. as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.  We saw both on the evening news.  Something happened. Marches and demonstrations, civil disobedience.  Across the country young men said ‘Hell No We Won’t Go’,  Catholic priests burned draft files and went to jail.  Dan Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers and the war began to end.

3. Christmas 1978, the Brandywine Peace Community begins anti-nuclear weapons protests at General Electric plants in Philadelphia and King of Prussia.  People are arrested and go to jail.  Sept. 9, 1980, 8 people, dubbed the Plowshares 8, entered GE plant No.9, in King of Prussia and hammer on Mark 12A warhead casings, committing the first act of nonviolent disarmament.  Thank you:  Dan Berrigan (deceased), Phil Berrigan (deceased), Elmer Maas (deceased), Sr. Anne Montgomery (deceased), Carl Kabat (deceased), Dean Hammer, John Schuchardt, and Molly Rush.  The Plowshares 8, Presente’.  Thank You! All those that have gathered here in protest and nonviolence.  And those that have passed: Peggy Hasbrouck (All: Presente’), Bob Simpson (All: Presente’),  Mary Jo McArthur (All: Presente’), Annie Geers (All: Presente’) Marge Van Cleef (All: Presente’), Agnes and Charlie Bauerlein  (All: Presente’), and Bill Stuart-Whistler, our whistleblower who showed us what was behind the deadly secrets (All: Presente’) .

9/11, if alive you know where you were when terror on that scale came to America.   We called for ‘Justice not Revenge’. What we all got was “endless war”, invasions, lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” , and something new and deadly, brought to us by Lockheed Martin and other war profiteers, drone warfare.

4. “There are two problems for our species’ survival: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.  And the two are very much related”, Noam Chomsky

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced in January that the hands of its “Doomsday Clock” was moved to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been to Nuclear Armageddon in the three-quarters of a century the Clock has been set.  Nothing can justify nuclear war. Nothing.  So we can’t say it enough.  Abolish Nuclear  Weapons. Support the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has declared nuclear weapons illegal and therefore Lockheed Martin party to a crime.

5. From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s   Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech at the University of Oslo, December 10th, 1964.

I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that humanity is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround us.  I refuse to accept the view that humanity is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and reconciliation can never become a reality.  I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.  I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word  in reality.  I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.   I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of humanity.I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered people have torn down,  other-centered people can build up. I still believe that one day humanity will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. And I still believe that We Shall overcome!