Revd Mark Bonney
The Bible is an uncanny book. When I got up on Thursday morning, before coming over to church for Morning Prayer I turned the television on to hear the news - and there were the stories of the first attacks on Baghdad. The first reading that Fr Martin read came from the prophet Jeremiah and had these words:
"A lion has gone up from its thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant……… Look! He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind;…. Besiegers come from a distant land… they have closed in around her like watchers of a field." Jer 4:7,8,16,17
I'll just let that text hang there for a moment and come back to it.
Those of us who were here on Wednesday evening to hear Rabbi Kathleen Middleton speak had what a found a very helpful and thought-provoking talk - not least because of the contrasts with the Rabbi who had spoken the previous week. Amongst many points that she made was the one that the Bible has some pretty unpleasant bits in it - at the moment they are reading through the book Leviticus - here's a little bit from ch 3 that never gets read on a Sunday:
"You shall lay your hand on the head of the offering and slaughter it at the entrance of the tent of meeting;.. the priests shall dash the blood against all the sides of the altar. You shall offer from the sacrifice of well-being, as an offering to the Lord, the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is around the entrails; the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins….Aaron's sons shall turn these into smoke on the altar, with the burnt offering that is on the wood on the fire, as an offering by fire of pleasing odour to the Lord." Leviticus 3:2-5
This morning we've just heard what is the most violent of Jesus' action in the NT - and described most violently in St John's gospel - it's only here that we read that Jesus drove them out with a whip of cords. Driving out those who were selling the animals needed for the very sacrifices described in the book of Leviticus. Those who are familiar with their Bibles will be aware that in Matthew, Mark and Luke this incident comes at the very end of Jesus' ministry and is the catalyst for the drive towards Jesus death. In John's gospel this cleansing of the temple appears at the beginning and is a backdrop for all that happens later (it's the raising of Lazarus that becomes the catalyst for the end of Jesus' life in John)- from the point of view of chronology there's no way to reconcile the two accounts - but chronology isn't the heart of the matter. The incident appears in all four gospels because it's pointing to the fact that in Christ there is a new temple as it were - that following the resurrection those who were in Christ were members of the body of the church - a temple not made with hands.
Let me now return to the passage that I quoted at the beginning from Jeremiah that was Thursday morning's reading.
"A lion has gone up from its thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant……… Look! He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind;…. Besiegers come from a distant land… they have closed in around her like watchers of a field."
It was uncanny for obvious reasons - and events subsequent to Thursday morning have only intensified things. I had to steady myself - collect my thoughts for a moment lest I read the passage entirely out of context. The prophet Jeremiah was telling the people of Israel and Judah what would happen to them if they did not repent from their evil ways and turn to God - and the one who would be dishing out the punishment, the one who would be coming like the whirlwind would be God.
Having heard national leaders on the television - calls for the turning from evil ways - and then what is happening you can understand what games my mind was playing; the Iraqi's on one side, the US and UK acting like God…. I had to get a grip of my wandering thoughts. -- there is always a special terror when anyone speaks as though God is on somebody's side at the end of a gun barrel or a cruise missile.
But where is God in all of this?
God is where he always is - in the misery and pain and hurt; in the struggle and the anguish and the grief. And that will be the pain and struggle and hurt of those who have desperately hard political decisions to make as well as those who suffer as a result of action and inaction.
It's somehow part of the foolishness of the cross that we heard about in the reading from 1 Corinthians. The cross is the antithesis of power in human terms - only the powerless died on the cross and yet Paul asserts that the cross is the place that reveals God's power - it is the place where God's ways and human ways are revealed as irreconcilable. Not all see this - which is why it's a stumbling block to so many - but it's only by meditating upon the cross and year by year entering more deeply into its mysteries that we begin to glimpse what it's all about.
The events of our world at the moment, meditating on Christ and the cross made me recall some words of the First World Ward poet Wilfred Owen. In a letter to Osbert Sitwell in 1918 he wrote thus of his wartime experience:
"For fourteen hours yesterday I was at work - teaching Christ to life his cross by numbers, and how to adjust his crown, and not to imagine he thirst until the last halt. I attended his supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb and stands to attention before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha."
A hundred years hasn't changed things a lot - except that somewhat voyeuristically, almost pornographically, it's all on our TV screens.
The passage from Jeremiah that struck me on Thursday was a call to repentance. That remains a call for all of us at this terrible time. We should indeed pray for all involved - for our armed forces and for the people of Iraq.
Writing in the Church Times on Friday the Bishop of Oxford said that having got into war we must be concerned that it is conducted justly - the main imperative being that those who are not directly contributing to the war effort should never be the direct object of attack. But he finished bu making the point that we should never have got where we are now. Of course Saddam Hussein, an evil tyrant that the world will be well rid of, is primarily to blame. But western policy has been complicit for decades, supporting his murderous war against Iran, selling him weapons and failing to act when he gassed 500 Kurds. The prophet Hosea said - if we sow wind we will reap a whirlwind.
We're in a mess - but God is ceaselessly at work making something better out of the mess that we've made of things - that's part of the foolishness of the cross; even in our destruction he draws some good out of evil and invite us to share in the work.
Some words of a prayer to finish - they were by the German theologian Reinhold Niebuhr , written during WW2 .
"Look with mercy, O Lord, upon the peoples of the world, so full of pride and confusion, so sure of their righteousness and so deeply involved in unrighteousness, so confident of their power and so imprisoned by their fears of each
other…"
Look with mercy O Lord for your truth's sake. Amen