Monday, October 27, 2014

Sermon from October 26th 2014 - Choosing Love over Fear ...









German Theologian, Karl Barth suggested that the proper way to preach in the Church is with the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other. Our task in the pulpit is to engage the issues swirling around us in a meaningful way, while seeing and framing them through the lens of scripture and theological discourse … Today makes for a challenging moment if one is to honour Mr Barth and preach in the context of events this week in Montreal and Ottawa …
          Happenings in those cities were indeed tragic … the death of the two soldiers in random acts of violence were horrible and troubling … but … wrapping everything in a patriotic flag and painting these happenings as proof of the danger of radicalized Islam fails to grasp the many nuances at play in these events …
          For me personally, I frame the tragic deaths of two soldiers in isolated and troubling incidents along side the fact that behind the parliament buildings in Ottawa stands a memorial etched with the names of over 700 men and women who have fallen on duty as Police and Peace officers serving our country. Wearing a uniform puts them at risk … the video tape from Ottawa of various security and police officers rushing into the maelstrom of gun fire while everyone else ran the other way, speaks volumes about the risk they face every day as part of their job.
          The deaths of Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent are indeed tragic, but they are no more tragic than the deaths of the RCMP officers in New Brunswick a few short weeks ago, or the shootings of Four RCMP officers in Alberta a few years ago, or the death of any man or woman wearing a uniform protecting our nation and its values whether that happens in distant corners of the world, or in our nations capital …
          The handwringing and fear mongering has taken a tragedy and turned it into a political circus … if we are to honour one soldier, we are to honour all … if we are to honour one uniform we must honour all equally. The shootings in Ottawa and the ‘attack’ on the Parliament Buildings is more about the failure of our health system to address deep mental illness, then it is about radicalized Islam.
          The connection to radicalized Islamic teachings is tenuous and marginal at best … the connection to an untreated largely neglected mental illness is clear and is being overlooked in the frenzy to ‘protect ourselves’ and ensure security … events in Ottawa are really no different from the events in Manitoba a few short years ago when a deeply mentally ill man took a life on a grey hound on the transcanada hwy …
          What troubles me most deeply today, is the insistence from some corners that something changed on Wednesday … I have said since the events of 9/11 in NYC that nothing has really changed in the world – it is and remains a deeply violent place. But that violence – violence we read about every day in the media – violence that tears communities apart and destroys lives – that kind of violence has finally come to North America. We are no longer immune … we have it here too …
          Further contributing to my concern and worry are the calls for tighter security and the stripping away of freedom and rights and access in the name of security and safety … one does not make things safer by feeding fear and paranoia and encouraging the breakdown of community and common good … or worse, calls for freer gun laws – I’ve read on line opinions saying “if Canadians were armed with side arms, none of this would have happened, someone would have dropped the shooter, or stopped the driver before those soldiers died …” … or … more could have been wounded and killed in the ensuing mayhem of a shoot out … lost in the shuffle this week is the coverage of the trial for the shooting at the food court in the Eaton Centre where two died and a dozen were injured and a city was traumatized … violence is violence … suffering and death is suffering and death … events like those in Ottawa are far from unique or new – everyday our newspapers are filled with horrific happenings – nothing has changed this week we’re just waking up to the simple fact that as a society we have actively chosen to overlook such happenings and instead frivolously focus on other things … dozens of native women are missing and dead, but we look to find last night’s scores … hundreds of thousands of Canadians suffer with poverty and inadequate shelter, but we look for the latest sale at Target or WalMart … various isms run rampant in our society from sexism to racism and we chose to check our stocks rather than be outraged at the depth of hatred around us …
          This week – the newspaper in my hand speaks of an attack on our Nations’ capital and on a symbol that has significance for generations of Canadians … but it also offers a clarion call to embrace this idea of love that a radical Jewish preacher whispered into the world and in the process managed to bring HUGE and dramatic change into being …
          Speaking of Jesus’ message The Reverend Martin Luther King noted at Christmas in 1968 in a sermon broadcast on CBC as part of the Massey Lectures that:
          This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power.
          In the context of preaching a message of peace King went on to note of love:
          There are three words for "love" in the Greek New Testament; one is the word "eros." Eros is a sort of esthetic, romantic love. Plato used to talk about it a great deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. And there is and can always be something beautiful about eros, even in its expressions of romance. Some of the most beautiful love in all of the world has been expressed this way.
          Then the Greek language talks about "philia," which is another word for love, and philia is a kind of intimate love between personal friends. This is the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well, and those whom you like on this level you love because you are loved.
          Then the Greek language has another word for love, and that is the word "agape." Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies." And I'm happy that he didn't say, "Like your enemies," because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can't like anybody who would bomb my home. I can't like anybody who would exploit me. I can't like anybody who would trample over me with injustices. I can't like them. I can't like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than liking. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can't ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.
          I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens' councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."
          We have a choice today as people, as a community of faith, as a nation – we can give into our fears and build the kind of walls that see far worse than just hateful graffiti scrawled across the front of Islamic Mosques, or we can commit ourselves to a path of compassion, care and love …
          As people of faith, there really is no other option … the call is for us to stand in hope that our world WILL be transformed by love … we can live by the newspaper, or we can live by the Scriptures … one is about fear and selfishness … the other is about love and building community …
          There really is no choice … Jesus boldly offered one simple commandment if we dare to listen …
          Thanks be to God … let us pray …