Why is so much violence, terrorism and war linked to Religion?

People at Highbury have been asked to come forward with questions that we can then seek responses to in church ...

Many of the first questions to be asked relate to the terrorist attacks that have happened in Paris.

In today's service we began to make something of a response to those questions ... this is the sermon our Minister, Richard, preached this morning

I have to confess.

I don’t really know where to begin.

The problem is that that questions people asked last week were the questions I was asking last week.

And they are the kind of questions that don’t have a straightforward answer.

Hard on the heels of what had happened in Paris, the horrific murder of so many of the staff of France’s leading satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and the killing of Jewish people in supermarket selling kosher supermarket, and the gunning down of a Muslim police officer, eleven of the questions people had last week had to do with the way religion seems to be bound up with violence and war.

I want to do two things this morning.

The first, I do hesitantly.  The second I have no hesitation about.

The first thing I want to do is to offer some signposts – an indication of the kind of direction I feel prompted to follow in responding to these troubling questions.

Why is religion/faith the root cause of so many wars, acts of violence/terrorism in the world when it should be about love and peace?

Hesitantly I want to call in question whether religion is ‘the root cause’.  I have a feeling there’s a whole complex of things that come together and lead to wars, acts of violence / terrorism in the world’ – I want to explore the history of the French Muslim communities and what happened in Algeria, with IS and Syria and Iraq I think it’s important to seek an understanding of the history of those states.

Something draws me to the way another person put their question, grappling with the same issue.

Why ( or how come) most of wars, acts of terrorism are done in the name of religion, having nothing to do with any faiths/religion?

Again my hesitant response is to see those bent on war, terrorism and acts of violence as distorting the religion they come from.

The first police officer on the scene of the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices was Ahmed Merabet.  He was a Muslim.  He was brutally killed.

It was moving to hear the response his family made, and his brother in particular:

“My brother was Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims,” he said. “Islam is a religion of peace and love. As far as my brother’s death is concerned it was a waste. He was very proud of the name Ahmed Merabet, proud to represent the police and of defending the values of the Republic – liberty, equality, fraternity.”

Malek reminded France that the country faced a battle against extremism, not against its Muslim citizens.

 “I address myself now to all the racists, Islamophobes and antisemites. One must not confuse extremists with Muslims. Mad people have neither colour or religion,” he said.

“I want to make another point: don’t tar everybody with the same brush, don’t burn mosques – or synagogues. You are attacking people. It will not bring back our loved ones and it will not bring peace to the families.”

[source:  The Guardian website accessed 17/1/15 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/charlie-hebdo-policeman-murder-ahmed-merabet

IS and what it stands for and is doing in the persecution of other Muslims as well as the persecution of Christians is an aberration of Islam, Boko Haram in Nigeria with those awful pictures of whole villages massacred that same week is an aberration of Islam.

In just the same way in Uganda, in South Sudan, in Central Africa, the Lord’s Resistance army with untold atrocities is an aberration of Christianity.  And closer to home the religious justification of those involved in acts of terrorism in Northern Ireland was and still is an aberration of Christianity.

What is done to Palestinians by extremist settlers and extremist politicians is an aberration of Judaism.

That then gives rise to a subsidiary question that becomes more difficult.

Why has religion been hijacked as a justification for acts of barbarity?? 

And another question like it …

In the world today why is there so much violence and killing by people who believe in a God?

Grappling with that question, my hesitant response points me to something we as Christians share with Jews and with Muslims.

Each of those faiths has a sacred book.  The Jewish Bible is equivalent to our Old Testament, the Christian Bible of Old and New Ttestaments and the Koran all have passages that can be used to reinforce acts of violence and brutality.  It is no coincidence that fundamentalists in each of those religions have taken bits of those sacred texts and used them to justify violence and killing.

I am encouraged that in each of those faiths study of the sacred text leads to a very different understanding of what those faiths are about – and for us as Christians we need to have a strategy for reading our Bible.

Those are my hesitant responses – signposts if you like towards discussion that will go further – not least during our Explore evenings as we move towards Easter.

But there is a second thing I want to do in offering my response to those questions.

The second thing I want to do I have no hesitation about.

When religion plays a part in such atrocities one very understandable reaction is to give up on religion and say, a plague on all your religions.

I’ve had it said to me in no uncertain terms in the last couple of weeks.

I have no hesitation in saying, that’s not the response I want to make.

Far from it.

It drives me back not so much to the religion I am very much part of, but to the One who is at the heart of that religion.

Much as I value seeking an understanding of the historical background to these atrocities, and an understanding of those other faiths, and  of what’s going on I find myself drawn more and more to come at those questions from quite a different angle – I want to cut through all the debates those questions give rise to and go straight to the fount of Christianity, Jesus.

Jesus is someone you can get to grips with.  You can dig away at the history in the Gospels and a real person begins to emerge.  The more you do that the more you find he is a real person who can make a real difference in the living of your life.

It’s not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to the whole of life.  The shape he gives to life has at its heart love: love for God, love for your neighbour whoever that neighbour might be, and most radically of all, love for your enemy.  That’s what we need to hold on to now.  A love that sees people as people and refuses simply to label them.

It’s not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to the very idea of God.  The shape he gives to God has at its heart love.  One of his followers who was so very close to the heart of Jesus came up with the definition of God that is opened up for us all by Jesus: God is love.

It’s not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to the place God has in your life and in my life.  The God we come to know through Jesus is the God who comes as close to us as the most loving of fathers and the most loving of mothers to the most loved of all their children.

It’s not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to love itself.  Taking up the words of that closest of followers of Jesus, this is love: it is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave Jesus as the means by which all our failings, all our inadequacies, all our shortcomings are forgiven.

Drawn back to Jesus I say without hesitation that I am not prepared to say, a plague on all your religions!

It’s at this point, however, that I see a danger.  A very big danger.

If I don’t say, a plague on all your religions, and turn instead to Jesus, it’s very tempting for me to say a plague on all those other religions, and especially a plague on the religion of those gunmen.

That’s a temptation that’s even more important to resist, especially at this moment.

I want to enter into the debate and see what happened as a criminal act by the gunmen involved that needs to be responded to as such.  I want to enter into the debate and see what they stand for and the ideologies behind IS and the like are an aberration of the Islam that I have read about and known through Muslim friends.  I want to enter into the debate and say that for Christians to say ‘a plague on Islam’ is to do exactly what those committed to terror want us to do.

I want to resist that temptation for a much more important reason.  I want to go beyond the debate.

I want at that moment to go back to Jesus, the fount of Christianity.  He is the one who shapes the response I need to make.  And he does that in these words.

 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

            for they will be filled.

 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

            for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Hymn – 194 I cannot tell why

And one more thing is all important to me.

Such love is beyond my capacity to deliver.  I cannot do it in my own strength.  There is a strength from beyond myself I can draw on, a power to energise the living of my life.  Unseen, yet so very real it is a comfort, a strength alongside me and deep within me.  It is that very Spirit of God that gives shape to the person I seek to be.

Prayers of Concern

40  STL Lord we have come at your own invitation

Prayer

The Lord’s Supper

417 Lord Jesus Christ

Words of Blessing

A Reflection on Responding to Questions in Church

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The questions came in thick and fast last week … but our box of questions is going to be around in the church until the beginning of February.  So if there are any questions that trouble you or intrigue you, now’s the time to make a note of them, put them in the box.  In our services on Sundays we are going to turn our mind to the questions people in our church have.

That begs the question, what are we going to do with them?

One thing’s for sure!  Many of the questions people have already asked are not ones that have a simple answer.  Indeed, many of those questions don’t have an ‘answer’ at all.

At one level we are going to share possible responses we can make those questions.  But actually, in church, as we meet together in our worship we are doing much more than that.

The ‘sermon’ part of the service is not just an opportunity for someone to pass on their wisdom and insight.  It is definitely not the equivalent of a comment column in a paper.

What we have done as a church is to invite someone, today it’s our Minister Richard, to give some time to reflect on the questions people are asking, questions that will often trouble or intrigue the preacher as much as anyone else.  We have then asked the preacher to seek out what he senses is the response God makes to those questions.

That’s a tall order for anyone to claim to do!  But at the heart of our faith is the conviction the preacher is not on their own.  Our expectation is that the preacher will use the channels God has given through which He responds to us – prayer, the Bible, the presence of the Spirit that is the inspiration of the Bible and the wider community of believers in the church.  So, as we worship together, let’s pray and open our hearts that through all we share we all may hear God’s Word for us today.