 Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, and Dr. Jerry Falwell. Mr. President, the young people of Liberty Baptist College, and musicians from all across 15 fundamental Baptist schools who have contributed music during this three-day event here in Washington, Baptist Fundamentalism 84, would like to dedicate this next song to you. Would you please stand with Liberty and justice for all you may be seeing? Mr. President, while it would be improper for us to endorse you or to in any way appear prejudiced, we are hopeful that during your second term you do as well as you have your first term. When you hear the politicians asking the question, where's the beef? The beef is here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you. Reverend Falwell, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for... Well, there are no words to describe a welcome such as you've given me here. It's a real pleasure to be with so many who firmly believe that the answers to the world's problems can be found in the Word of God. I'm only sorry I can't spend the entire evening with you, but I'm expected across town. But tonight, believe me, I came here with some trepidation and your warm welcome didn't exactly make me feel any easier because I'm going to do something that I haven't done before. I'm not going to talk to you about some of the things we've talked about before and some of the things that we've tried to accomplish and that we haven't yet. With regard to that, I will only say let us all heed the words of an old Scotch ballet for those defeats that we've had so far. We are hurt. We are not slain. We'll lie us down and rest a bit and then we'll fight again. What I'm going to do, and I know you're not supposed to apologize any time you start speaking for what you're going to say, but I know that even you who's calling it is to keep the rest of us, if possible, on the right path. In these days of cynicism, in these days when there are people that in the guise of separating church and state would go so far as to say we should not even have chaplains in the military service, I know that there are times when all of us wonder whether we're being effective. And tonight I'd like to share an account that I received that shows how God works in our lives even in the darkest of towers. This report concerns the Marines in Beirut, brave men who believe that the goal we sought in that place was worthy of their best and gave their best. In the end, hatred centuries old made it impossible for Lebanon to achieve peace when we and so many others hoped it would. But while they were there, those young men of ours prevented widespread killing in Beirut and they added lust or not tarnish to their motto, Semper Fidelis. I'm going to read to you another man's words and their words that perhaps answer what I said a moment ago about whether we sometimes were shaken in our faith and in our beliefs. On that October day, when a terrorist truck bomb took the lives of 241 Marines, soldiers and sailors at the airport in Beirut, one of the first to reach the tragic scene was a chaplain, the chaplain of our sixth fleet, Rabbi Arnold E. Renskoff. And here is what he finally felt urged at the end of that day to put down in writing of the experiences of that day. He said, I, along with Lieutenant Commander George Pucci Pucciarelli, the Catholic chaplain attached to the Marine unit, faced a scene almost too horrible to describe. Bodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere. Screams of those injured or trapped were barely audible at first as our minds struggled to grasp with the reality before us. A massive four-story building reduced to a pile of rubble, dust mixing with smoke and fire obscuring our view of the little that was left. Because we thought that the sound of the explosion was still related to a single rocket or shell, most of the Marines had run toward the foxholes and bunkers, while we, the chaplains, had gone to the scene of the noise, just in case someone had been wounded. Now as the news spread quickly throughout the camp, news of the magnitude of the tragedy, news of the need for others to run to the aid of those comrades who still might be alive, Marines came from all directions. There was a sense of God's presence that day in the small miracles of life which we encountered in each body that, despite all odds, still had a breath within. There was more of His presence, more to keep our faith alive in the heroism and in the humanity of the men who responded to the cries for help. We saw Marines risk their own lives again and again as they went into the smoke and the fire to try to pull someone out or as they worked to uncover friends all the while knowing that further collapse of huge pieces of concrete precariously perched like dominoes could easily crush the rescuers. There was humanity at its best that day and a reminder not to give up the hope and dreams of what the world could be in the tears that could still be shed by these men regardless of how cynical they had pretended to be before, regardless of how much they might have seen before. Certain images will stay with me always, he writes. I remember a Marine who found a wad of money amidst the rubble. He held it at arm's length as if it were dirty and cried out for a match or a lighter so that it could be burned. No one that day wanted to profit from the suffering of catastrophe. Later the chaplains would put the word out that the money should be collected and given to us for we were sure that a fund for widows and orphans would ultimately be established. But at that moment I was hypnotized with the rest of the men and watched as the money was burned. Working with the wounded, sometimes comforting, simply letting them know help was on the way, sometimes trying to pull and carry those whose injuries appeared less dangerous in an immediate sense than the approaching fire of the smothering smoke. My kippa was lost. That is the little headgear that is worn by rabbis. The last I remember it, I had used it to mop someone's brow. Father Pucciarelli, the Catholic chaplain, cut a circle out of his cap, a piece of camouflage cloth which would become my temporary head covering. Somehow he wanted those marines to know not just that we were chaplains but that he was a Christian and that I was Jewish. Somehow we both wanted to shout the message in a land where people were killing each other at least partially based on the differences in religion among them, that we, we Americans, still believe that we could be proud of our particular religions and yet work side by side when the time came to help others to comfort and to ease pain. Father Pucciarelli and I worked that day as brothers. The words from the prophet Malachi kept recurring to me. Words each uttered some 2,500 years ago as he had looked around at fighting and cruelty and pain. Have we not all one father, he had asked? Has not one God created us all? It was painfully obvious, tragically obvious that our world still could not show that we had learned to answer yes. Still I thought perhaps some of us can keep the question alive. Some of us can cry out as the marines did that day that we believe the answer is yes. Before the bombing, Pucci, that's his name for the other chaplain with him, and I had been in a building perhaps a hundred yards away. There had been one other chaplain, Lieutenant Danny Hewlett, a Protestant minister who had spent the night in the building which was attacked. Pucci and I were so sure that he was dead that we had promised each other that when the day came to return to the states we would visit his wife together. Suddenly Pucci noticed Danny stole what he used to call his Protestant talent because it was far from the area Danny was supposed to be in. There was cautious hope that perhaps he had been thrown clear, that perhaps he had survived. Later Danny would tell the story of his terror. He was under the rubble, alive, not knowing what had happened and not knowing how badly he was hurt. Then he heard voices of the Marines searching near his stole in his cry for help. It was answered with digging which lasted four hours before he was dragged out alive. Danny told me later that I treated him like a newborn baby when he came out, that I counted his fingers and toes trying to see that he was whole. I didn't realize that I was so obvious, but the truth is that we couldn't believe that he was in one piece. I hugged him as they brought over a stretcher. I can still hear his first words. Racked with pain, still unsure of his own condition, he asked how his clerk was. Like so many of the men we would save that day, he asked first about others. These men, the survivors, still had no idea of the extent of the damage. They still thought that perhaps they'd been in the one area of the building hit by a rocket or mortar. We would wait until later to sit with these men in the truth to share with them the magnitude of the tragedy. After the living were taken out, there was much more work to be done. With the wounded, with those who had survived, there was the strange job of trying to ease a gnawing feeling of guilt that would slowly surface. Guilt that they... Wouldn't it be nice wouldn't it be nice wouldn't it be nice if a little bit of that marine spirit would rub off and they would listen to about brotherly life? I was talking... I was talking about the guilt that was felt by the men who were alive. The guilt that they had somehow let down their comrades by not dying with them. That is something that happens a great deal in combat. So our job, he said, was to tell them how every life saved was important to us. How their survival was important to our faith and our hope. They had to give thanks with us that they still had the gift and the responsibility of life which would go on. I've got more decibels at work for me than they have. With others, the marines who stayed behind to continue the job of digging a terrible, horrifying job of collecting human parts for identification and for eventual burial, there was a job of comforting them as they mourned. Thankfully, the self-defense mechanism within us took over from time to time and we were able to work without reacting to each and every horror that we would encounter. But suddenly, something would trigger our emotions. Something would touch our humanity in a way impossible to avoid. For some, it would be the finding of a friend's body. Someone filled with life only days before. For others, it would be a scrap of paper or a simple belonging, a birthday card or a picture of someone's children which would remind them that there was no... this was no abstract body count of 240 military casualties. This was a tragedy of people where each was unique and each had a story. Each had a past and each had been cheated of a future. As the Mishnah puts it, there was a world. We were not digging up 240. We were digging up one plus one plus one. I have a personal memory of two things which brought to my mind images of life, images which haunt me still. One was a packet of three envelopes tied together with a rubber band. On top, under the band was a note which read to be mailed in case of death. The other was a red cross message delivered the next morning. The American Red Cross is the agency used by many Navy families to communicate medical news from home. This message was a birth announcement. A baby had been born and we were to deliver the good news. Only now there was no father whom we could congratulate. No father to whom the news could be conveyed. That message stayed on the chaplain's desk for days. Somehow we couldn't throw it away. So it stayed on the desk and without mentioning it we all seemed to avoid that desk. I stayed in Beirut for four more days before finally returning to Italy into my family. During those days as the work went on a Marine here or there would send a silent signal that he wanted me. That is a chaplain near. Sometimes it was to talk sometimes it was so that he could shrug his shoulders or lift his eyes and despair. Sometimes it was just to feel that I was near. For despite the struggles I might be feeling on a personal level I was a chaplain and therefore a symbol that there was room for hope and for dreams even at the worst of times. In our tradition of course when we visit the home of a mourner during Sheva the first week of the death of a loved one visitors follow a simple rule if the mourner initiates the conversation the visitor responds otherwise you sit in silence communicating concern through your very presence even without words. Somehow I applied those rules during those days of digging when a soldier or sailor said something I responded otherwise I stood by. During all of my visits to Beirut along with the other chaplain spent much time simply speaking with the men informal discussions whether going on while crouched in a fox hole or strolling toward the tent set up for Chao were just as important as anything formal we might set up. I remember the first time I jumped in a fox hole the first time the shells actually fell within the U.S. area looking around at the others in there with me I made the remark that we probably had the only interfaith fox holes in Beirut. The Druze, Muslims, Christians all had theirs the Jewish forces in the Israeli army had theirs but we were together. I made the comment then that perhaps if the world had more interfaith fox holes there might be less of a need for fox holes all together to cling to our humanity even in the worst of times we bring with us the wisdom of men and women whose faith has kept alive their dreams in ages past. We bring with us the images of what the world could be of what we ourselves might be drawn from the visions of prophets and the promises of our holy books. We bring with us the truth that faith not only reminds us of the holy in heaven but also of the holiness we can create here on earth. It brings not only a message of what is divine but also of what it means to be truly human. It's too easy to give in to despair in a world sometimes seemingly filled with cruelty and brutality but we must remember not just the depths to which humans might sink but also the heights to which they may aspire. That October day in Beirut saw men reach heroic heights. Indeed heights of physical endurance and courage to be sure and a place of compassion, of kindness and of simple human decency as well. And even if the admission might bring a blush to the cheeks of a few of the marines, heights of love. Long ago the rabbis offered one interpretation of the biblical verse which tells us that we're created in the image of God. It does not refer to physical likeness they explained but to spiritual potential. And have within us the power to reflect as God's creatures the highest values of our Creator. As God is forgiving and merciful so can we be. As He is caring and kind so must we strive to be. As He is filled with love so must we be. Because of the actions I witnessed during that hell in Beirut I glimpsed at least a fleeting image of heaven for in the hearts and hands of men who chose to act as brothers I glimpsed God's hand as well. I did not stand alone to face a world forsaken by God. I felt I was part of one created with infinite care and wonderful awesome potential. We live in a world where it's not hard to find cause for despair. The chaplain has the challenge to bring to those who often see terror at its worst for some reason for hope. We need to keep faith and to keep searching even in the worst of times. Only then may we find strength enough to keep believing that the best of times might still be. These were the words of Lieutenant Commander Reznikov. I read them because I just felt that all of us and I know how much you do of this let us strive to live up to the vision of faith the chaplain Reznikov saw that day and let us not never stop praying and working for peace. Thank God and thank you and God bless you all.