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
? ?
? ?
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.
