Sunday 19 June 2016

when words are not enough (and sometimes too much)

This has been a heartbreaking week.

We're used to hearing the media report terrible incidents, but I don't remember a week where so many different bad events took place in the course of seven days.

And I don't know what to say.

I've been glued to news websites and social media all week. In one sense I feel I have nothing new to add to the endless articles and posts that have analysed and commented on this week's terrible events. And there is also a part of me that doesn't even want to try and construct a narrative, to say something that tritely and tidily wraps up this week's stories.

Which is strange, because the one thing I'm clear about is that they are all related.

Instead of writing a sermon I have collated pieces of writing and prayers that others have written about three events —the shootings in Orlando, Florida, the murder of MP Jo Cox, and the dismal depths of the debate about the EU referendum.

The first tragedy we heard about last Sunday after we got home from church. A gunman had walked into an LGBT nightclub in Orlando and shot dead 49 people and injured many more, because he couldn't stand the sight of two men kissing. It was America's biggest singlehanded gun massacre.

'Archbishop Cranmer' a pseudonymous blogger wrote the following response:

An Orlando shooting in which 50 blissful LGBT people were murdered in cold blood. Politicians have tweeted their horror, and the entire civilised world is appalled. There is no apparent end to the column inches and broadcast hours which are being dedicated to analysis of the tragedy. And there is no end to the judgmental agenda-pushing, cause-appropriating, blame-apportioning, score-settling, guilt-inducing commentary. Some target society’s homophobic attitudes, some Islamist terrorism, and some Islam’s view of gays. Others focus on America’s corrosive gun culture, others on partisan delinquencies, and still others on those heartless Christians who seek to uphold the sanctity of holy matrimony. Thousands are offering up a prayer for Orlando, while some tweet their scorn at the futility of those prayers. Even enlightened atheist-secularists can grind an axe in the blood of suffering.

Jesus just weeps with those who weep. He doesn’t only weep with those who consider themselves a touch righteous or morally upright, or with those whose behaviour meets certain standards of chaste perfection. He doesn’t only weep with Christian heterosexuals who live each day by grace, or with repentant LGBT people who have earned his mercy. He weeps with those who weep, and mourns with those who mourn. There are no conditions on his compassion, and no limits to his love.


You can read his full piece here:

My colleague Fr. Simon Rundell wrote the prayer below in response to the shootings:

Jesus, friend to the scapegoat and the victim,
you were always found with those who others hurt and despised.
Stand now with those LGBTI communities who live in fear, suffer violence, and face exclusion.
Come now to challenge human prejudice and restore human dignity.
Strengthen us now, that we would not turn away from anyone who bears the image of God.
Amen


While we were still coming to terms with the consequences of one man's inability to cope with those from whom he believed himself both different and better, Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, saw fit to unveil a new campaign poster which drew directly in sentiment and imagery from the Nazi's anti-Semitic propaganda in the 1930s.

This was a new low in the referendum campaign, which admittedly didn't have that far to fall given how dismal the debate has been so far. Both sides have used fear as their main campaign tactic, issuing threat and counter-threat, assertion and denial —as well as peddling barefaced lies.

What has been largely missing in the debate is anything rooted in vision or hope. One of those who stepped into this vacuum was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has written that our vision for the future of Britain "cannot be only about ourselves."

At the heart of Britain’s Christian heritage are certain glorious principles. They are what make the best of our nation, whether we are Christians, of another faith or of no faith. They come from Jesus’ teaching, especially in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.

Among those principles are a vision of peace and reconciliation, to being builders of bridges, not barriers. We demonstrated it in the years after 1945. The vision of the founders of the European Union was also peace and reconciliation... Peace and reconciliation exist in Western Europe today. It is the greatest cause for thankfulness that we can imagine. It is a blessing to be shared with the whole world.

The principles Jesus taught and which have so shaped us also include love for the poor, the alien and the stranger. The EU came together in a Europe broken beyond description by war, and has shaped a continent which until recently has contributed to more human flourishing, and more social care, than at any time in European history.

Jesus taught us to love our neighbour, and when questioned about what that meant gave the extraordinary story of the Good Samaritan. In that story the one who turns out to be a neighbour is the one who shows respect, mercy and love to the stranger, even to an enemy.

[He goes on to write about the role Britain played in liberating Europe from the tyranny of fascism, before continuing with:]

Sacrifice, generosity, vision beyond self-interest, suffering for others, helping the helpless, these are some of the deeply Christian principles that have shaped us. They are principles that show us at our best, as an example to other countries, as a home of freedom and democracy, as a beacon of hope that shines around a dark world. They are forward looking virtues. Those who fought in two world wars were not looking back but forward. Those who built the EU after the two wars, in which millions of Europeans had died, looked forward.

The vision for our future cannot be only about ourselves. We are most human when we exist for others.


You can read the full article here.

The Church of England's prayer for the referendum:

God of truth,
give us grace to debate the issues in this referendum
with honesty and openness.
Give generosity to those who seek to form opinion
and discernment to those who vote,
that our nation may prosper
and that with all the peoples of Europe
we may work for peace and the common good;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.


The heartache continued on Thursday. In West Yorkshire Jo Cox, a new MP, former aid worker with Oxfam, with a passion for helping the most disadvantaged including Syrian refugees, was shot and stabbed as she prepared for a surgery with her constituents. She died from her injuries. Her attacker is said to have shouted, "Britain First" or "Put Britain First." Jo was married and the mother of two young children.

Is this the outcome of all the toxic language and arguments that have been used during the EU referendum debate? A man charged with her murder appeared in court yesterday and gave his name as "Death to traitors, freedom to Britain."

The words we use shape other people's minds. As one commentator put it:

If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.


Our words matter. But today's politics and press is geared towards toying with people's fears. We are being emotionally manipulated by those who stand to gain from getting our votes, or our readership for their newspaper.

What do the Orlando shootings, Jo Cox's murder and UKIP's vile campaign poster have in common? Vanity, pride, ego, arrogance, hatred, distrust, scaremongering —all seeking to sow seeds of division.

Yet as Christians in the kingdom of God, we are called to unity and not division. St Paul wrote:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3.29-29 NRSV)


In the kingdom of God, Christ seeks to break down the barriers we create with others, knitting us together into one family. That line in Galatians about the offspring of Abraham alludes to the covenant that God made with Abraham, in which God promised to make Abraham the ancestor of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17.4-7). As it turned out, he also became the ancestor of the three great Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

From the start of the Hebrew scriptures in Genesis to the end of the Christian Testament in Revelation, where a multitude of people of all nations and languages are envisioned worshiping God together (Revelation 7.9), it is clear that God longs for us to unite with our brothers and sisters in spite of our differences. Not to sow seeds of division, but to work for the common good and build the unity of the kingdom of God.

But for when there are no words, or too many words, we can stand together in silent unity as we did this morning, lighting a candle as a prayer — for Jo Cox MP, for the Pulse nightclub victims, and for grace in our national politics.








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