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 …
Not a day goes by that doesn't have me wondering what kind of a man my father would have been had he not perished in an On Duty accident while serving with the Ontario Provincial Police 44 years ago this morning.
