In 1969, Robert Landman was in the infantry in the U.S. army and was in combat in Viet Nam. He would later recount an experience there that changed his life. His unit had captured an enemy soldier. Landman witnessed his Army Captain interrogate, roughly, this prisoner. After the Captain left, Robert felt led to talk with the young captive, through their unit’s Vietnamese interpreter. He learned they were both 19 years old, both had been drafted, both left behind people they loved.

Robert was moved to share with him his tinned rations. These are his words about what happened next:

“When he finished [eating], he looked at me. I mean, he really looked at me, deep into my eyes, perhaps into my soul. I looked back, trying to see in him what he might be seeing in me. It was a long moment … one of those rare moments outside of normal time and space, where the ways of the world cease to apply. It was as if I was looking into a mirror and the reflection looking back was another face …

“It was the experience of really being seen, and in that moment, I really saw him … not as a prisoner … or even a soldier … but, as who he really was … a human being caught up in a war that he and I would never have wanted to happen, did not want to part of, and wanted to end as soon as possible without any more loss of life …

“I realized that he was not the enemy … and … I could no longer be a soldier. From that moment on, I did not want to be in a position to bring harm to anyone. I immediately went to find the Captain and the Top Sergeant. When I did, I told them the war was over … for me. I was immediately threatened with a court-martial and being sent to the military prison at Leavenworth, but still experiencing a profound peace, I was not worried what would happen to me. I was not afraid or intimidated and responded, ‘What’s the worst that could happen … send me to Viet Nam?’

“They did not know whether to laugh or cry, but what they did get with certainty was, that for me, the war was over. I told them I would keep my word to honor and serve my remaining time in Viet Nam, but not in a capacity of taking life … They let me be …

“The next three months were long and hard, and I prayed longer and harder for help. My prayers were somehow answered. During that time, there were no casualties … on either side. This does not happen in war. Help and protection came from somewhere else, I believe from the same ever-present, unseen realm paralleling our own that had opened and welcomed two men on a mountainside three months before.

“After serving my time, I went home. In the years that followed, I had more time to think about what occurred. From that moment to this, I will be eternally grateful for that unexpected encounter on a mountainside in Viet Nam. In the middle of a war, in a Buddhist country, 10,000 miles from home, I was reawakened to the central teaching of Christianity, to treat others as we wish to be treated, and discovered the deep wisdom of Buddhism, to do no harm to any living being, are different expressions of the same truth … how we can meet … and … where we can meet … in peace.’

(Robert Landman, “The True Geography of Meeting,” in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, ed. Maxine Hong Kingston, pp. 240-243)

This autumn we have been exploring Awe, how experiences of awe and practices of awe are so important to living lives of faith, and indeed to meaningful, rich, life-giving living. We have been discovering that awe is a very powerful antidote to the forces in our world, in our society, in ourselves that want to close us down and constrict us in despair and desperation. What’s so awesome about awe is that it opens up to a wider reality that breaks the bonds of our limited point of view.

Today the invitation is to the experience of awe that comes when we glimpse and witness the depths of another person’s personhood. 

Behold: The vast reaches of another soul, the worlds within worlds that abide through another human being, and between us as we arise together.

You are your own “I,” as much an “I” as I am. So is everyone who ever existed. Therefore, my own “I” is not the center of the universe, not even close. Rather I arise in relation with countless other “I”s. When we experience something of this truth it can be a sublime experience, a glimpse perhaps into a God’s eye view of the world.

In fact, in the words of Martin Buber, a seminal 20th Century Jewish philosopher and religious scholar, “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”

Buber taught about the power and truth of relating to others in an I-You way, which honors the full reality of the other. I-You is way of relating that honors that You are another I. He contrasted the I-You way of relating with others to an I-It way of relating, in which we treat others as objects, or as numbers, or as stereotypes, or as tools, or as one-dimensional extras in the drama of our lives in which we of course alone are the main character.

A powerful force that can break us out of I-It relations into I-You relations is the force of Love. Romantic love has the power and possibility to draw us to behold and hold and honor the astonishing depths of the one with whom we are in love. Wow, who are you? Who are you? The love between parent and child, and the love of friendship can draw us naturally into I-You ways of being together, as does the love we share with those in the communities we really care about and care for (which I hope for you all includes our beloved community of faith here).

Curiosity is also a great help here. The character Ted Lasso said, “be curious, not judgmental.” The show writers attributed the quote to Walt Whitman, which isn’t true, but the wisdom is sound. Let curiosity lead us – who are you? Where are you coming from? What’s life like for you? Where are you hurt?

Yet, as we all well know, it can be hard to truly live this way, and consistently. It takes a commitment, a religious-level commitment, to practice the awe of beholding others in their holy wholeness. The Rastafarians, for example, have the practice of greeting others by saying, “I-and-I.” This, they say, is a way of honoring that you are an I equal to my I. But even then, the practice can become rote and lose its awesome intention.

We can easily fall back into not considering the whole being-ness of our spouse or partner or child or parent or friend or neighbor. We can ignore each other’s needs or treat each other as instruments for our will, or get caught up in the story we are telling about the other person, which actually isn’t fair to the whole truth, or otherwise we can treat each other as Its rather than Yous. This is when we can cause each other harm. Which happens. In healthy relationships, then, we can then hopefully snap out of it, and recognize the harm and repair that relationship and return to our commitment to treating each other in I-You ways.

May grace abound. Lord knows we all need it.

Buber was honest about what he called the “sublime melancholy” of the fact that we don’t stay in a sustained state of always beholding the astonishing mystery of everyone’s true being (Martin Buber, “I and Thou” trans. Walter Kaufmann, pg. 68). Rather, we revert back to treating others as Its rather than as Yous.

There are many forces in our world, in our society, and in ourselves that can push us to treat others as objects rather than as human beings or as fellow beloved children of the Living God. These are forces of sin in our fallen world.

At its worse we dehumanize people so we can justify killing them, or tearing them away from their families and locking them away without rights or recourse. We see this in the ways that other people are spoken about as “scum,” “roaches,” “parasites,” and worse.

Yet the power of the truth is stronger than these forces, and always manages to break through and cause trouble. That’s what happened in the story I opened with, from Robert Landman. Reality broke through to him, the scales fell from his eyes, when he truly witnessed and was truly witnessed by someone he had believed to be his enemy.

It is an awe-some experience, one that led him to a deep sense of integrity and a deep sense of peace, and an astonishing sense of a higher holy realm. But it is also in its way an awe-full experience, because it forces us to see just how tragic our circumstances can be. The lives getting crushed underfoot when our bombs drop are not just vile cockroaches, but fellow human beings, worlds within worlds. It can feel unbearable to glimpse the tragedy of this, just as we know the desperate tragedy of when someone tries to erase or extinguish our lives and humanity.

That is something of the tragedy we witness through the life of Christ, who laid bare how we humans have a pernicious way of trying to destroy the image of God in another. The faith of Christ is that this tragedy is not the end of the story, for it is not the truth and not of God.

I would take that tragedy over the sinful lie that I and mine are somehow the center and measure of all meaning and worth at the expense of all other lives. In the end that is a bitter, desperate, and lonely way to be. Most importantly, it is a lie that takes us far from God.

One important note about the Christian practice of loving enemies and praying for those who curse you: Loving an enemy does not mean giving them a pass to do terrible things to people; blessing those who curse does not mean blessing them to persist in evil deeds. Rather it means resisting them while praying for the true liberation of their souls, which is necessary for not without becoming what it is we hate, without letting ourselves mirror our enemies and becoming consumed by the powers of sin. Remember that Jesus modeled a commitment, above all, to uplifting and protecting the humanity especially of those who are “the least of these,” who are the most dehumanized, whose lives are judged unworthy or expendable. It’s not easy or comfortable to follow Jesus’ call in this way. When Jesus said, “love your enemies,” he assumed we would have enemies. Yet he called for resisting the cycles of violence and sin that enemies fall into. So we must pray for their souls’ liberation as well as our own.

It truly is liberating – even for just a moment – when we experience something of the truth about other lives, and their relation to our own, and thereby get a something of a glimpse of a God’s eye view of things. As Robert Landman’s story attests the experience of truly witnessing another is an experience of awe, which brings a sense of holy presence, and true peace, even in the midst of war.

Martin Buber wrote that God is “the eternal You.”  “Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal You. Every single You is a glimpse of that. Through every single You the basic word addresses the eternal You” (Buber, pg. 123). When we then turn and address God more directly, we can experience how God in turn address us as You. “That you need God more than anything, you know at all times in your heart,” Buber writes. “But don’t you know also that God needs you – in the fullness of [God]’s eternity, you? How would [humankind] exist if God did not need [them], and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you – for that which is the meaning of your life” (Buber, pg. 130).

So, to You and You and You and You and You, and all the billions of other Yous out there: You are astonishing and meaningful, in truth, and in God’s eyes. No one can take that away from you. We cannot take that away from each other. So, for the love of God, we have got to stop killing each other. We must drop our swords and turn in awe and allow ourselves to be truly witnessed by the holy gaze of our Holy Creator. And so be transformed.

Thanks be to God.

Delivered Sunday, October 11, 2026, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forg