‘In
Search of a Better World’
Reflections for Remembrance
Day 2017
12 November 2017
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Revised Text
Revised Text
Matthew 5.38-48
5.38 [Jesus said,] “You
have heard that it was said, ‘An
eye for an eye and a toot for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your
coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one
mile, go also the second mile. 42
Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to
borrow from you.
43
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall
love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be
children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love
you, what reward do you have? Do not
even the tax collectors do the same? 47
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than
others? Do not even the Gentiles do the
same? 48 Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
‘In
Search of a Better World’
Reflections for Remembrance
Day 2017
12 November 2017
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Matthew 5.38-48
5.38 [Jesus said,] “You
have heard that it was said, ‘An
eye for an eye and a toot for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your
coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one
mile, go also the second mile. 42
Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to
borrow from you.
43
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall
love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be
children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love
you, what reward do you have? Do not even
the tax collectors do the same? 47
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than
others? Do not even the Gentiles do the
same? 48 Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
There are few readings from the New Testament that confront
me more with my inadequacies as a disciple of Jesus than today’s gospel. I wrestle with what Jesus means when he says,
‘do not resist an evildoer.’ I have made
decisions as a priest that have restricted what funds we give and to whom we
give them. I struggle to be ‘perfect’, a
word that Jesus uses to mean ‘fulfil your true identity as a child of God’ rather
than ‘be flawless’. What I offer this
morning is a series of reflections on Christian discipleship.
During the past two weeks I have had two experiences which have
caused me to ponder what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in a time of
conflict, whether internal or external, civil or military. The first
experience was listening to a portion of the 2017 Massey Lectures given by
Payam Akhavan, a former UN war crimes prosecutor and human rights scholar. His lectures are entitled ‘In Search of a Better
World’, a nod, I think, to the motto of the Order of Canada (‘Seeking a Better
Country’). Not only has he been a
witness to the atrocities that human beings are capable of perpetrating against
their sisters and brothers, he himself is a member of the Baha’i community, the
object of continuous persecution in Iran and elsewhere.
What struck me in the brief portion that I heard on CBC’s Ideas was his firm belief in the unwillingness
of liberal democracies such as our own to accept the necessity of intervening
with military force when faced with human rights abuses. As a Baha’i Mr Akhavan comes from a religious
tradition which officially expects its adherents to shun partisan politics, yet
affirms the unity of God, the unity of religious tradition and the unity of the
human race. What I heard Mr Akhavan say
reminded me of something Frederick Buechner once wrote: a pacifist’s belief in non-violence should
not prevent her or him from picking up a baseball bat to defend a child who is
under threat.
I am not a pacifist but I respect those who are. It takes courage to resist the almost
universal human justification for force and coercion rather than witness and
persuasion. But like Payam Akhavan and
Frederick Buechner I believe that there are times when opposition to evil
requires the use of force, whether the force of law or of arms. I acknowledge and honour the sacrifices made
by my grandfather, my uncles and my father who served in the armed forces of
their respective countries. I know how
two of my uncles came to the end of their lives as casualties of World War II
long after the war was officially over.
There are qualities of character I learned as ‘an Air Force brat’ that I
continue to value and to exercise.
The other experience came after I had posted some thoughts
following the attack on the Baptist congregation in Texas that left the
assailant and twenty-six other people dead.
Among the thoughts that I posted was a hope that God would have
compassion on the assailant as well as the victims of the attack.
A young person I know well spoke to me a day or so
later. He expressed his inability to
have such a hope. This young man’s mood
was one that I think a fair number of people share throughout Canada and the
United States. We are accustomed to
having compassion for the victim and less accustomed, perhaps even unwilling,
to have compassion on the perpetrator.
Perhaps this difficulty arises from the mistaken view that compassion
implies some sort of approval with one for whom we have compassion.
I don’t think that this is what compassion means. The word comes from the Latin meaning ‘to
suffer with’ or ‘to share in another’s emotional state’. It’s easier for us to suffer with the victims
and families of tragedy, even if, for most of us, the scale of the suffering exceeds
anything we have ever personally experienced.
But it is very difficult to suffer with someone who causes such hurt
and trauma. We search for reasons behind
such a person’s actions, often, I think, hoping that we will discover that this
person is ‘inhuman’ or insufficiently human in one aspect of her or his
personality or another.
But compassion with the perpetrator, with the ‘other’, is
precisely what we need to cultivate in these times. In a recent article in The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that we will never
understand people’s motivation to vote for Brexit or for Trump if we don’t seek
to understand their anger and how it led them to vote against their own best
interests. Without compassion we may
find ourselves tempted to be judgemental, condescending and prone to complain,
shame and blame.
The compassion of which I am speaking does not mean
condoning or approving. It is the act of
taking the risk to understand the motivations of another person or group of
people whose actions are at such variance from my own or our own. Such compassion may actually lead us to
discern courses of action that lead to healing, reconciliation and genuine
progress.
But on this Remembrance Day weekend let me ask that we renew
our commitment to a compassion for those who are not only ‘different’ from
ourselves but who may actively oppose the values and way of life we hold dear
and for which our loved ones made so many sacrifices. It is easier for a world leader to threaten
others with military force than it is for the same leader to seek, with
compassion, to understand her or his perceived ‘enemies’. It is easier to speak of a ‘clash of
civilizations’ than to come to grips with the historic causes for many of the
world’s contemporary conflicts.
As disciples of Jesus we have an obligation to urge our
leaders to nurture such compassion within themselves and within the body
politic. As fathers and mothers, sisters
and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, sons and daughters, we
have an obligation to exercise such compassion for the sake of those whom we
hold dear. As citizens who remember the
sacrifice of all who confronted evil with their body, mind, strength and heart,
we have an obligation to foster such compassion so that their sacrifice will be
remembered as a step towards the fulfilment of Micah’s vision: “[the peoples] shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more; 4 but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their
own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.” [Micah 4.3b-4]
And then, perhaps only then, we will
begin to be perfect as our God in heaven is perfect, to be as compassionate as
the God who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the righteous
and the unrighteous.
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