Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 9, 2026
Scripture: Micah 6:6-8 and Mark 8:34-38
Dr. Seuss Connection: The Butter Battle Book
This year, we are having a Seussian Summer - each week during the Story for All Ages, we will be reading a different Dr. Seuss book, then pairing it with scripture to see what wisdom we might find within its pages.
I suspect that some of you here this morning are old enough to remember the Cold War, that decades-long conflict that divided the countries of the world into two opposing sides, a war that was characterized by conflicts that popped up all around the globe.
I’m a bit too young to have had to do the “Duck-and-Cover” drills of the 50s and 60s, but I was definitely aware of what was going on in the world in the 80s. We always watched the evening news as a family, and CBC Radio was usually on in the background at other times of the day. And my parents were well-informed and they always answered the questions that their daughters asked as we absorbed the news too.
I also remember feeling the push and pull of trying to make sense of the news. The USSR were the bad guys, but at the same time I felt sorry for all of the people living in Russia and East Germany with no freedom. I knew that a nuclear bomb could wipe out the world with the push of a button; but I couldn’t understand why all of the countries didn’t just get rid of their nuclear bombs at the same time because why would anyone want to destroy such a beautiful world.
One term that came out of the Cold War era was the concept of “Mutually Assured Destruction” – the idea that if this side over here presses the button to launch the nuclear bombs, then that side over there, before the bombs reach them, will press their button launching their nuclear bombs back at the first side. Either side can press the button, and by doing so, will assure that both the enemy and themselves will be destroyed.
And there were several times during the Cold War that the world almost reached this moment of Mutually Assured Destruction.
With all that background, you probably won’t be surprised to know that Dr. Seuss wrote The Butter Battle Book in the early 1980s in the era of peak Cold War. It is said that Dr. Seuss didn’t know if he was writing this book for children or for adults, and this book has also been called a parable – an interpretation that I can get behind!
Remember that a parable is a bit different than an analogy. With an analogy, you are going for a one-to-one equivalence, but with a parable, we don’t have to say that the Yooks are NATO and the Zooks are the Eastern Block; we don’t have to say that the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo at the end is the nuclear bomb and wonder who is going to blink first.
Instead, a parable allows us to open our minds and our hearts and ask, “what is this story trying to teach us?” And to me, The Butter Battle Book points out, using silly words and rhymes, the absolute futility of war, and how one-up-man-ship will never resolve anything. Because if I’m always trying to one-up you, and you respond by trying to one-up me, then there is no way that we will ever be able to resolve our differences.
The place where the parable of the Butter Battle is different than the parables that Jesus told is that Jesus always told parables to teach us about God; but Dr. Seuss’s parable doesn’t point us to God, either explicitly or implicitly. Instead, the book ends on the threshold of Mutually Assured Destruction.
So the question that I asked, when I first read this story, is how might Jesus respond to the parable of the Butter Battle? And the answer that I landed on was the cross. Jesus knew his Micah, he knew that the most important thing in the world, more important than saving face or one-upping ones enemies is to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. And so instead of repaying violence with more violence, Jesus chose the way of the cross.
If you think of the story that we read every Good Friday, when Jesus is arrested and placed on trial, in none of the four Gospels does Jesus fight back. He allows himself to be arrested, and even rebukes one of his disciples for carrying a sword and choosing the way of violence. He doesn’t argue with Pilate or Herod. When he is nailed to the cross, he doesn’t smash the wood into splinters or zap the soldiers who are doing the violence against him. If we believe that it is God, God-self, who is being nailed to the cross, then Jesus had the power to do that, he had the power to one-up the soldiers, but he chose not to.
Instead, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them.” Forgive them.
Jesus broke the cycle of violence by refusing to participate.
And Jesus calls us to the way of the cross too. Jesus tells us that we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him. We are to push down those urges that say, “They did that to me, so I have to do it back to them, but maybe with a bit more force.” Embracing the way of the cross means embracing a way of radical non-violence, no matter the cost. Jesus goes on to say, “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” What will it gain those Yooks to drop the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo? They might win the Butter Battle but it will cost them the world.
But on the other hand, what do they have to lose by choosing the way of the cross? What if either the Yooks or the Zooks were to choose the way of the cross, and refuse to play the game, and lay down their weapons instead? What if we didn’t always have to be right and impose our way on others?
The Cold War has been over for more than 35 years now, but that doesn’t mean that all war has ended. We see conflicts breaking out, seemingly at a faster pace than they are ending. Ukraine and Russia. Palestine and Israel. Iran and the United States. Israel and the Arab States. The US and Cuba.
What if we could sit down the leaders of every country and read them The Butter Battle Book so that they can see the futility of war? And then once they can see that war only leads to destruction, what if we could introduce the way of the cross as an alternative? I rather suspect that some world leaders would consider this to be the action of a weakling, “What, you’re just going to sit back and let them win?” But then again, I rather suspect that these same leaders might consider the actual Jesus to be a bit of a loser or a weakling, contrary to the image of a Warrior Jesus that Christian Nationalism has built.
And we, as the church… well, we are here because we have chosen to follow the way of Jesus. And while I don’t think that any of us here have the power to end global conflicts, we are still called to choose the way of the cross in our day-to-day lives – we are called to break cycles of conflict, cycles of violence, by refusing to participate in them.
And even though this runs contrary to what the world might tell us is the best path – You’ve got to stand up for yourself! Might makes right! Grow a backbone and don’t let them take advantage of you. With the world’s mindset, the cross makes no sense at all. And yet because we follow Jesus, we choose the way of the cross. Because we know that the way of the cross will eventually lead, not to mutually assured destruction, but to resurrection and new life.
And may it be so.
And may it be so, in every corner of the world.
Amen.
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