The Assymetrical View of Life

It was August the 4th and it was a very sunny, but rather cool London morning and Marial l and I had got up early in the morning and we went for a walk and it took us through Soho Square and the magnificent garden that’s in the middle of it. The square that was founded in the 19th century has been a place where people have sat and enjoyed quiet in the midst of a busy city for many, many years.

And as the air was cool but the sun was continuing to get warmer, I observed as woman walking a stroller with a little baby in it. And she walked towards one of the benches and she finally sat down and picked up the child from the stroller and put the baby against her shoulder. I suspect from the look on both their eyes it had been a long night for mother and child and a little bit of peace in that garden was a gift.

She sat there holding this child and there was a peace, a countenance about her that you couldn’t ignore in the midst of the growing clamour of the city around her, in a beautiful spot under a tree on a bench in the middle of one of the world’s great cities, she sat peacefully, a mother and her child.

It reminded me of a painting by Marie Vigée Le Brun, the great painter from France, who did what I would consider to be one of the first selfies, a portrait of herself and her daughter in which there is complete peace, probably in the midst of a growing revolution in France. A marvellous painting if you haven’t seen it. And here sat this mother, a symbol of peace and bliss and harmony.

That very afternoon, just a few miles down towards the river there was a commemoration service held and the commemoration was for the beginning of World War I. Held at Westminster Abbey, many people participated and lined up to go in to that great service and music was given at its greatest, and yet most solemn, words were spoken, scripture was read. But there was a realization that a hundred years before on that very day the world had gone to war.
And as I listened to the service, when it was over my mind went back to something I had been researching just before the summer began, and that was statements that were made by German intellectuals and Christians in 1914, before the war began. A group of leading intellectuals and many theologians had written to Wilhelm II, the Kaiser, extolling the virtues of war, and I looked at the language that was used.

The language by one of the great German theologians, Ernst Troeltsch said, that the army of Germany was a tool in the hand of God, that going to war was the incarnation of the national spirit and that the word that was spoken of war had become the word of God and may it turn into a bayonet or a sword or a gun.

These theologians and intellectuals deep down genuinely, I believed, thought that the commencement of war and conflict was for the salvation of the world, and many of them gathered in churches to hear the same message being given from pulpits. And I listened to that and then I read one of the great theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth who wrote in opposition to Troeltsch and others and said, “hold on a minute now there is only one word of God and that one word of God is found in Jesus Christ and that the foundation of His word is love” and therefore he questioned the tying of war to a culture that was hell bent on war.

He of course received great opposition from people in power and prestige, Barth really was ridiculed. But as the many battle fields grew over the next few years and many died all over the world, both on the seas and on land and in the air Barth wrote, see the church is killing the church, Christians are killing each other, this is what we have become by not listening to Jesus.

What have these vignettes got to do with each other, what does the mother in Soho Square holding her child in 2014 got to do with Karl Barth writing in 1914. Well the answer lies in the passage that Janet read for us beautifully from the Book of Romans today. For two thousand years before the 20th or our own 21st century, the Apostle Paul was writing to the Christians in Rome, to a church that he hadn’t actually founded but one that he would soon be visiting, and he writes this epic work, the Book of Romans, some of the greatest, if not the greatest theology of the New Testament, and in it he gives advice to the new Christians in Rome.

He understands that they live within an empire that is basically founded on law and order and war. He knows that many nations, including his own, are subjugated by the power of Rome even though he is a Roman citizen himself. But he argues that Christians should be good citizens, that they should support the government, that they should pay their taxes, that they should honour authority and live a respectful life, and that Christians owe a debt to the society and to the world, should pay their taxes, should honour civil authority, but he says something greater.

He said, but there is a greater debt that we owe and the greater debt that we owe is to love our neighbour as ourselves, quoting word for word Jesus Christ himself. Paul suggests that Christians in Rome should above all else be examples of the power and the strength of loving their neighbour, and then he makes the most epic statement. A statement that so often gets overlooked, he says, ”love does no harm to its neighbour.”

They were powerful words then and they are powerful words now and I can’t help but think that Paul’s words stand in such contradiction to those who were espousing war and the God of war. How distant his concept of Christianity and faith in God is that from that which actually causes the slaughter and the death of so many. Paul’s words are timely.
Just before the summer break, I was having a meeting with a very well-known diplomat who was reviewing with us over this lunch the recent statement then by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in which he talked about the emerging crisis of Syrian refugees, now at the end of the summer some 2.9 million of them living in Lebanon and Jordan and elsewhere. And he talked about how to care for the children that are in these camps and tents set up in the heat of the deserts, and how the children that have been driven from their land and their schools and their homes and have no place are having to grow up after at least two years with no solidity and no peace.

During the ensuing months we have had tanks roll in and take out hospitals in Gaza, we have had bombs and rockets sent over to Ashdod, a city that Mariall and I visited years ago, children living in terror and fear and not knowing what the world will bring. Children in the eastern Ukraine not knowing whether or not their school is there today or tomorrow and what the future will bring. The children of the world living in a desperate situation, and I contrast that with the mother in Soho Square and the absolute picture of peace and tranquility and safety and love and I realize that we have in this world what I call an ‘asymmetrical view of life’.

By virtue of the limitations of our own human experience, from which we cannot break of course, we see some lives as being more valuable than others, some children more valuable than others. Not that we necessarily want to ascribe that value, it just happens. Children become in many distant places simply numbers on a list that is tragic, rather than faces and names that we can see, and war and violence and hatred and animosity towards the neighbour does that.

I hear so many times and it seems to be a recurring theme that I’m hearing, when people find out that I’m a religious leader and people talk to me in bars or they talk to me in hotels or they talk to me on the street or in lectures or in coffee shops, it doesn’t matter, one of the great things they keep saying to me is, look how much religion has been the source of violence and war in the world and I find it hard to argue against that. I try and make subtle suggestions and differences, and I do as others have done and try to show all the good that religious institutions of all kinds do in the world but it doesn’t matter. It is a reality and the reality is actually true, it’s true.

One need only listen to the Ernst Troeltschs of 1914 to realize just how true it is, how states can use churches and take them over for the sake of their own power and self-aggrandizement, as we’re seeing in parts of the world today. How easy it is to seduce people into believing that God is the God that is going to be on their side. Any rational thinking person knows this happens.

And then I open the Book of Romans and I read the bible and I read what Paul had to say, “love does no harm to its neighbour”. He knew of course that the neighbour of which he spoke was the neighbour of which Jesus spoke in the Good Samaritan, not just that that belongs to our clan or our nation or our cult or our family, but neighbour as the other.
Paul knew when he was writing to the Romans that he was giving them a word that was radically different from the culture in which he lived and it is radically different from the culture, I believe, in which we live. And what Paul was getting at more than anything else is that the Christian owes the greatest debt not just to the state, but to the love of the neighbour, the greatest debt we owe and I believe that how see God and how we talk about God determines how we look at our neighbour. How we care for the other is determined by the God that we worship and the God that we adore.
Earlier on in the Book of Romans Paul says, that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That it is Christ who binds us together, it is Christ who has removed any enmity between God and us, but also has removed enmity between God and ourselves and others. Read the magnificence of Romans 12 and you will see what I mean.

Paul understood that it was God’s initiative in Christ that came to show a sinful, and yes sometimes violent humanity how to live at peace with one another and how to live in love with one another, for love does no harm to its neighbour. But what a far cry that is from the God that many people talk about and use. In a sense it doesn’t matter which religion we’re talking about, to all extents and purposes all of them get you usurped at some point by a God talk that is undefined and esoteric and culturally based.

I was reading not long ago about the 5th and the 6th century Anglo-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons sort of created a God among the pantheons of the gods and the god was called Woden. And Woden was a god that the Germanic people took upon and improved upon and made stronger and made greater, and this god Woden became in a sense the god of war, the justification for war. And Woden would become part of the culture and the culture would pay homage and sacrifice to Woden.

I read this with great interest because a Christian missionary such as Saint Columba, who brought Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons, when first baptizing believers said you need to renounce the devil and you need to renounce Woden. Why did he do that, because Woden had become the god that the people were worshiping above the God of Jesus Christ.

It is almost fanciful to believe but it is true that every Wednesday we actually celebrate Woden. It is Woden’s day, doesn’t that trouble you. I’m glad it’s in the middle of the week not the beginning of it or the end of it, we can improve upon it. Wednesday is Woden’s day, that’s how ingrained it is in Anglo-Saxon culture and religion.

But it is interesting that in 1914 when the guns of war were being prepared on both sides of the English Channel, the name Woden kept appearing and as Karl Barth suggested, and rightly so, when they talk about god we’re actually talking about Woden, we’re not talking about the God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

So yes it is true that very often religion is used and usurped, that the names are taken and used interchangeably for the justification of the death and the slaughter of people. But it seems to be all the more reason why the world today, in its really chaotic state, needs to hear again the words of the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans, love does no harm to its neighbour, that Jesus’ word is correct and that it is a word that needs to be heard and promoted and encouraged. And so when I am challenged as you will be at times on do you not think that the religion is the source of so much conflict in the world, say yes but I follow Jesus of Nazareth, I follow Jesus of Nazareth.

But this is then a wakeup call it seems to me to Christians in the world. I think it is vital in this world that those of us who hold different religious positions are willing to stand side by side and pray for the same things. We’re doing that this afternoon at the Basilica. But I also realize how important it is to be able to cleave onto that which we know and we believe.

I think one of the great dangers of our time is that we lose sight of what Paul was saying. Paul was saying not only do we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, not only do we see the world differently through Christ but that it is through Christ that in a sense we see ourselves differently. Paul describes following Christ as something dramatically new for the Roman Christians. They no longer live in darkness but in light, no longer in night but in day, no longer in debauchery but decency, no longer in enmity but in love.

Paul saw that the transforming power of Christ transforms those who follow Him also in such a way that they who follow, embrace, understand and know the very power of that love of Christ that also loves its neighbour.

In the spring I was giving a talk and I found that during the talk I was being very distracted by something that was going on on my left. The people who had planned the event had decided, rightly so, to bring someone in who knew how to use sign language in order that those who were hearing impaired could hang on my every word, God bless them. And this woman who was sitting to the left of me was paying rapt attention to what I was saying and she was translating it into a sign language and I watched her very carefully.

In fact she was the only one at times who would get my humour and smile and laugh and nobody else would, and she would sort of do a smiley face or something. Nobody else would get it, I thought this woman, I like. And I watched her carefully and I watched something that she did throughout it all, namely that there were many times when I was speaking when she would take her finger and she would place it in the palm of her hand. And I noticed that the more I spoke the more she was doing this and she was touching the palm of her hand.

Afterwards I went to her and we had quite a discussion about the speech and the events and the day and she was wonderful. She was wonderful, I was so impressed. But I asked her, I said every now and again like you seemed to use the same symbol and she said, well you know you do talk about Jesus a lot and she says this is the symbol for Jesus. For those of you listening on the radio I’m taking my middle finger and placing it in the palm of my opposite hand.

And I asked how has this become the symbol of Jesus, she said because of the nail print in the middle of his hand when he bore the cross. And I was moved because I realized that the ultimate debt that we owe and the reason why we owe our love to our neighbour is because of the love of the nails in His hand. Are the nails that went through his hand a sign of the hatred of the other, of the indiscriminate taking of life, of the asymmetrical view of love, of the lack of care for the children who sit in desert tents with no home or those who are wounded in hospitals or on streets? Are the wounds in his hand those that are there because of a God who hates? Or, as I believe, are they there to reveal a God who loves so much that it gave of itself for the world.

When we are confronted by those who in the name of God wish to indiscriminately take lives or hate, remember the hand. Remember the debt we owe for the sake of the children, for the sake of our society, for the sake of the world, for the sake of that mother in Soho Square, remember “love does no harm to its neighbour.” Amen.