Friday evening, driving back from my retreat in New York, we began to hear news of the tragic bombings and shootings in Paris, horrific violence in the name of Islam by a small group of religious extremists. The day before there had been a bombing in Beirut, with many killed, Muslim against Muslim. So yesterday morning, I opened the Spectator, and there, in addition to the news from Paris, was a long story about a Christian anti-abortionist sniper, who had both killed and injured doctors, in the name of his Christian faith, first as an Evangelical Protestant, and then as a Roman Catholic. So I got out of bed to say my daily office. The first lesson was from the first book of Maccabees, about the beginning of the Maccabean rebellion against the Romans. The lesson recounted how one of the Maccabean young men kills an apostate Jew at the altar as he is about to offer sacrifice to a foreign god, and calls for all apostate or heretical Jews to be killed. The Maccabean revolt against the Romans begins.
I thought to myself, I am not having a very good day: All three “religions of the book”, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, seemed to be advocating violence. The obvious subject of the sermon this morning emerged: religion and violence. The context of today’s Gospel reading is also violence, political violence. Speaking in a violent world of war in the Roman Empire, Jesus prophesies that the corrupt institution of the Temple will soon be brought down by military defeat but urges his listeners to be faithful, to continue to seek the Reign of God, and not be alarmed.
Perhaps it is good to begin with two presuppositions: First, virtually all religions, political movements and ideologies have extremists who are willing to pursue their extreme goals through violence and death, in the name of that religion, political movement or ideology, no matter how contrary those views are to the core beliefs of the religion, political movement or ideology. So the problem extends beyond the three “religions of the book” to all religions. For example, Buddhism, which we may think of as very peaceful, has produced torture and death in Sri Lanka and Burma/Myanmar. And Hinduism, apparently an exemplar of religious pluralism, can be ferocious in its opposition to Islam and even Christianity. But the problem extends beyond religions. All ideologies, even atheism, produce extremists – whether bloodshed of the French Revolution in the name of democracy or the death camps of Stalin. Extremists are very unhappy people, who see their way as the only way, to the point of being willing to kill and maim for the sake of their way, their faith, their ideology, their political system. Indeed, in the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century, Catholics and Protestants killed each other and one another in the name of purity of the faith. Today, we are friends. I shall come back to that theme of friendship.
Thus, and this is my second presupposition, it is really not possible to judge a religion or ideology by its extremists. In the wake of Paris, the social media has circulated many quotations from Mohammed in the Quran denouncing the slaughter of innocent people. Muslims around the world have condemned the Paris bombings. Likewise, as Christians we cannot let Christian extremists who would kill those they claim to love in the name of Christ be our representatives. Nor are Jews required to endorse the violent activities of Israel or of militant Jewish settlers today.
As Christians, we can simultaneously use two approaches:
The first approach is to use our God-given understanding to try to comprehend why people become extremists, whether personal psychologies or social conditions or broken relationships. People do not become extremists simply “out of the blue”. The extremism might be at the far political left or the far political right, it might be in any religious faith; it might be in any life-directing ideology. Often there is a history of alienation, of poor treatment, of being placed on the margins, of racism or some other form of discrimination. Such an approach requires listening and having friends across racial, religious and ideological boundaries, not just sticking to our small worlds. Because we realize that very few Muslims are extremists (despite what some on Facebook would say), we are called to try to build relationships of friendship with Muslims and not just write them off in fear. That Syrian refugee camps are being attacked and burnt following the Paris bombings and shootings shows that frustrated French victims have not made this distinction and not recognized that these refugees are victims too, victims of the same extremists. In Liberation Theology terminology, we need the right social analysis of what is happening. And for us as Anglicans, reasoning and understanding, rather than panic, is very important.
The second approach is to use the resources of our Christian faith. While this is not unknown in other faiths and ideologies, one very clear element of our Christian faith is that the principal subject of our faith, Jesus Christ, is not a perpetrator of violence but the VICTIM of violence, the violence of the Cross. Thus, as Christians, walking the way of the Cross, our solidarity is with the VICTIMS of violence, not the perpetrators of violence: the victims, whether the people of Paris, the people of Beirut, the people of Syria and Afghanistan (including their refugees around the world), those who have spent their lives in refugee camps around the world, the children of Central America amongst drug wars, Jewish victims of antisemitism, aboriginal women, black men in American prisons. The list of victims goes on; and many of them are potential extremists if we do not reach out to them with the love of Christ. And through solidarity with ALL victims comes resurrection.
We have a Saviour who was the recipient of violence, the suffering servant who did not cry out. He counselled “turning the other cheek” and returning hatred with kindness and love. Out of that kindness and love comes resurrection. Early Christians, frightened of shedding blood, did not serve in the Roman army or participate in decisions that brought about the deaths of others. Of course, with time, that changed. But the Christian biblical witness to creatively build relationships of love and friendship with both victims and potential (and, indeed, real) enemies.
On my retreat one of the books I read was entitled Friendship. It is written by an anthropologist and natural history museum curator who argues that in human evolution and the development of human society, ourselves as homo sapiens, all is not “survival of the fittest” (crude popular social Darwinism) but that the human beings we are today, living in society together, are as much (if not more) the product of human cooperation and friendship. Human beings need each other to grow and develop; the species need each other to grow and develop. And friendship is the way forward rather than competition.
Perhaps if we concentrated more on global friendship than economic profit, we could stop the flow of weapons and money to ISIS and other extremist groups. If we concentrated more on global friendship, we could seriously attack global warming, global poverty, global drug wars, and global disease. It is this commitment to human goodness that is encouraged in today’s reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together … but encouraging one another”.
Last week, reflecting on the side of the Hudson River amongst the beautiful Fall colours, I noticed that from time to time the river flowed in opposite directions. The original Algonquin name of the river meant the-river-that-flows-in-both-directions. Of course, the river is tidal, and twice a day the tide comes in and reverses the flow of the river. Talking about this with one of the brothers, he commented, yes, but in the end all the river’s water eventually goes to the sea.
As Christians, we are on a way of love and service, a kind of a river of love and service, a way of dedication to the victim and to peacemaking. From time to time, our way, our river, will be hit by forces going the other direction. They will stimulate us, mix with us, threaten us, or anger us. But it is up to us to persevere in the way of peace, standing in solidarity with the victim and encouraging and participating in relationships that build up the human community with love and justice, even it means countering extremists who call themselves Christians and befriending those of other faiths and ideologies who are also committed to peacefully building the human family in love and justice. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “do not be alarmed”, the End has not come; do not become the oppressor but stay faithful.
Let us pray: Lord, we remember those who have been subject to violence. May we be with them in solidarity, empathy and love. Help us to reach out to those different from ourselves, that all the world may come into the embrace of God’s love. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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