Is IS anything to do with religion?

The terror attacks in Paris have painfully thrown up this week the difficult question of so called 'religious motivation'.

Are Islamist suicide bombers motivated by obedience to the God of the Qu'ran, or simply violent people using Islam as a cover story? Most sensible people want God to be at least moderately likeable, but what about a God who is apparently a militant, avenging purist? Is begs the question, what is God really like, and whose God is the real God?

The Religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) find their ideas about God from the written word. For followers of these three monotheistic religions, the concept of revelation is key. God takes the initiative and reveals something of him*self, through dreams, visions, voices, supernatural events, people. So we don't invent our religion (adopting a kind of do-it-yourself spiritual toolbox) we receive God's own revelation of himself through the scriptures, which we are enjoined upon to read.

The philosophical idea behind the concept of a Holy Book is that if God exists, and is at all knowable to humans, he must be like something we can understand. So people who claim to know God, say he is characterised by love, or mercy, or peace, or purity, or ...fill in the blanks. How do we know? We know because he 'contacted' us before we contacted him. In the case of Christianity, we go one step further and say that he became one of us to make it as clear as possible. To the question, What is God like? the Christian answers, look at Jesus.

Practically, it matters what God is like because followers of a religion are bound to become like the God they worship. So sacred writings are important. The book moulds the person, so to speak. It is a misunderstanding to assume that only religious people are moulded, while everyone else is 'neutral' and cooly choosing their own identity in some philosophical vacuum. In point of fact, we're all being moulded by something or somebody; it's just that some of us are more aware of it than others.

People of the Book do have issues with their books though. It's not as straightforward as reading your Book and then knowing what to do, how to be, in every situation. So the problematic terrain around militant Islamist motivation can be boiled down to one question: how do religions interpret their texts? 

It would appear that the Qu'ran contains so-called 'sword verses' alongside 'peace verses'. Clearly if you read a 'sword verse', like 'and slay them wherever you find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out' (Qu'ran 2:191) it's going to look like Islam is promoting violence. But then you might also read 'fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress the limits, for Allah loveth not transgressors', which you could read as sanctioning self defence, but no more (Qu'ran 2:190). 

The Bible is also a mixture of texts which may be taken different ways, according to their interpretation. This was the whole issue around whether women could minister equally in the Church of England. Some texts of St Paul do illustrate restrictions on women's roles, as they were being worked out then, while others suggest that equality in the early Christian communities began to develop very fast. The arguments about whether gay unions may be sanctioned by the Church are another example of different readings of texts, with new readings challenging traditional readings, and each group claiming to know what God says on the subject.

When Christians have disagreed about the interpretation of their texts, depending on the century they were in they have either burned each other at the stake (16th century, regrettable) or argued endlessly on Twitter about it (21st Century, preferable). Sitting down and talking about disagreements is now thought of as a mark of a civilised society, and rightly. It brings to mind a lovely invitation in the Old Testament where God says, 'come now let us reason together' (Isaiah 1:18, KJV). It seems that God is at least as interested in how we argue, as in what we're arguing about (and perhaps more so).

So what to make of IS? Whether we think of this frightening phenomenon as in any way connected to Islam is important, because it feeds into how we view Islam in general and the Muslims we live amongst in particular. 

It may be we don't need to look further than Jesus' injunction, 'by their fruits shall you know them' (Matthew 7:20). For the People of the Book, it can never be just about a blind 'which words shall we follow today?' but a living out of faith in the spirit of humility, goodness, love and all the other 'fruits' that the average person will tell you are the pre-requisites of being a decent human being, let alone a religious one. By that simple test, IS does not qualify.

*the impossible pronoun question means God has to be referred to as either he or she or both. For ease and simplicity, I'm still in the habit of referring to God as 'he', whilst realising the limitation of the English Language and the implied theology of using 'he'.

The Leaning Virgin

Notre Dame de Brebieres, Albert, France.

Sermon for Remembrance

Revelation 21:4 
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.

Matt 5: 3-5
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Next year, 2016, sees the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

As part of our summer holiday we visited Albert, a pretty town in heart of the Somme region of Northern France, which found itself right in the centre of action during the First World War.

World War I Tourism is a big source of income in Albert to this day and part of the draw is the enormous and ornate Basilica, in the centre of the town, at the top of whose dome is a golden statue of the Virgin and Child, designed by sculptor Albert Rose and dubbed The Golden Virgin.

The statue was hit by a shell on January 15, 1915, and slumped to a near horizontal position, as Rupert Edward Inglis, a Forces Chaplain, describes in a letter home to his family:

2 October 1915.

We went through the place today where the Virgin Statue at the top of the Church was hit by a shell in January. The statue was knocked over, but has never fallen; I sent you a picture of it. It really is a wonderful sight. It is incomprehensible how it can have stayed there, and I think it is now lower than when the photograph was taken, and no doubt will come down with the next gale. The Church and village are wrecked, there’s a huge hole made by a Jack Johnson just outside the west door of the Church.

 Far from falling in the next gale, the Golden Virgin (soon to be renamed The Leaning Virgin) somehow miraculously remained where it was for a further three years, sticking out at a precarious angle, after French engineers did all they could to secure it. It was said by the French that whoever toppled the Virgin would lose the War.

Albert’s Basilica was finally destroyed by heavy shelling in 1918, and the Leaning Virgin fell and disappeared, assumed to have been taken back to Germany for scrap metal. However the whole church has since been lovingly rebuilt, down to the last tiny detail, including a meticulous reproduction of the Golden Virgin by Edouard Dutoit.

Today it rises high above the town, a symbol of victory on many levels, and a strange victory at that.

Victory is of primary importance in War. Everything, in fact, is geared up to victory.

Turning to World War II, here is Churchill on Victory:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be…

However, through the Christian lens victory is subtly redefined, centered as it is on the victory Christ won over sin and death. In addition the Beatitudes, which we had for our gospel this morning, seem to suggest that in the economy of the Kingdom, things which we think make us losers, are very much turned upon their head.

'Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.'

Christ’s own victory on the Cross is a victory won by sacrifice, not by superior physical or military strength. It is God’s victory of self-emptying, fuelled by love.

Perhaps the French engineers who secured the Leaning Virgin at the top of the Church in Albert, understood something of the symbolic significance of Christ’s victory over evil. Perhaps their Virgin and child was worth saving because it reminded them that victory in war is more than just being on the winning side.

In the conflicts of today, against extremism, against terror, against ideologies and perceived threats, military victory is much less easy to define. The goodies and the baddies are horribly mingled together on the global stage and we may just as well fear the threat within as well as the threat without.

Perhaps today, victory might be seen as to do with retaining our humanity and learning how to live with the physical and psychological consequences of war, something Prince Harry has done much to promote with his Invictus Games and concern for the disabled survivors of modern day conflicts.

As the Great War dragged on, some of the more perceptive of the poets of that day began to spread the rumour that victory would be at too high a cost. One such was Seigfried Sassoon. As well as describing the horrors of the trenches, his poetry satirized those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for jingoistic pretentions. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces as he protested against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, a piece of writing which led to his admission to a military psychiatric hospital.

In the same year that the Golden Virgin was nearly toppled from Albert’s church, the lyricist Alfred Brian wrote an anti war song about a mother’s viewpoint on victory, which was an instant hit, selling 650,000 copies and intensely annoying the American President Theodore Roosevelt:

What victory can cheer a mother's heart,

When she looks at her blighted home?

What victory can bring her back

All she cared to call her own?

Let each mother answer

In the years to be,

“Remember that my boy belongs to me!”

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy.

Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,

To shoot some other mother's darling boy?

Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,

It's time to lay the sword and gun away.

There'd be no war today,

If mothers all would say,

"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."

(Bryan, Alfred, Al Piantadosi, and Will J. Ward. 
I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. 
New York: Leo Feist, 2005).

In a similar vein, Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the Falklands Conflict, famously annoyed Mrs Thatcher by objecting to her cry ‘Rejoice', as she urged Britains to celebrate their victory over Argentinian aggression. Instead he asked worshippers to pray for the dead, both British and Argentinian. 

Victory doesn’t look the same to all parties.

Above the church in Albert, the Virgin holding her child aloft is visually striking. A child – not powerful, not armed, seemingly defenceless; yet victorious. It’s as if the child asks us ‘what really is victory’?

After the long years of destruction and loss during World War I, loss which permeated even the smallest of villages, as hundreds of war memorials attest to, the child Jesus is held aloft, high over all other landmarks and high over history.

In our Epistle we were reminded of a similar exalted vision, that of St John on the island of Patmos, where his striking and puzzling ‘Revelation’ was received from the very same Jesus.

As the book of Revelation unfolds, we see, with John, the nations and peoples of the earth, and we understand, with him, that though wars come and go, though nation rise against nation, ultimately it is God’s kingdom that endures. Ultimate victory is to our God and to the Lamb.

The symbol of this victory is the throne, on which is seated the Lord of Lords, and from here he declares the advent of the new heavens and the new earth that all who have really suffered find themselves longing for:

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

If we mourn today, if we are touched and troubled by war and conflict, we can at least know that everything in the kingdom of God is turned on its head. In Christ, hardships and suffering are finally redeemed – those who shed tears are comforted; those who hunger and thirst to do the right thing are vindicated, and everyone who turns to God in humility is given life giving water.

Our response to those who have given their lives in war, in our defence, is one of humility and gratitude. Our response to our neighbours, whether local or global, is one of generous open heartedness, remembering that Jesus has had the final victory and calls us to follow him today.

And we pray for our political leaders, that they may be people of wisdom, equity and peace.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

3D God

Sixth Sunday in Easter

Revelation 22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.

John 14: 26-7 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. 

·         Is your vision of the Christian faith 2D or 3D?

·         I was pretty skeptical of 3D cinema when it first came out.

·         I’ve always found the cinema larger than life and extremely noisy anyway (not in a bad way but they have really beefed up the surround sound in recent years.)

·         But now you can go to see a movie with 3D glasses on and it fairly jumps out of the screen at you.

·         Try The Life of Pi, like I did, with 3D glasses, and the tiger with whom the boy hero is shipwrecked is absolutely terrifying! As is the very realistic capsizing of the boat on which Pi and his family are travelling.

·         For children growing up today who have never been to a 2D cinema, I would imagine seeing a film in 2D now would be a very tame experience.

·         Today we have a vision of the city of God set before us which is decidedly 3D.

·         The book of Revelation is perhaps the most 3D book in the whole bible.

·         What does it show us of the Christian life? How can it enlarge our vision of the peace and power available to us as we Christ today?

·         We will look at this vision of the glorious City, the New Jerusalem, and particularly at the river of life which runs through it, and think about that river as a spiritual image for us here in our village, to see if we can begin to see in 3D…

·         Revelation is full of terrifying images of dragons, beasts and warfare; but also the most beautiful and beatific images as well.

·         Is the book of Revelation about heaven?

·         I am constantly uncomfortable with the word ‘heaven’ because of the images it conjures up, which I find rather 2D; images of wispy clouds and disembodied people floating around or not doing very much.

·         We celebrated this week the life of much loved priest in the Memorial Service to Angela Butler, someone who devoted her life to an energetic and active serving of her Lord and God.

·         I cannot somehow imagine her sitting around in a whitish space not doing very much but being quite peaceful…

·         We often say of the dead: ‘May they rest in peace’ and in many ways they may be at peace, but there’s a second part to that prayer: ‘And rise in glory.’

·         ‘Glory’ is a word implying something active and alive; and that is the picture of the Holy City in Revelation.

·         We can begin that exciting life here and now, and it continues when we inherit eternal life

·         Let’s look at the 3D vision of the Holy City:

·         It has no temple for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (in other words, it’s not buildings orientated.)

·         It has no need of sun or moon because the light of God is so bright within it.

·         This light is like divine guidance: the Kings of the earth walk by it.

·         And there’s a river running through the middle of it.

·         Settlements have always been built on rivers, because of the need for refreshment of course: they bring life to everything.

·         The river is described as ‘bright as crystal.’

·         It flows right through the middle of the city, down the city street!

·         And the tree of life grows on each side, producing fruit which nourishes people in every season.

·         What a different picture from many of the world's cities.

·         What a different picture from war torn Syria, where in Damascus, armed militia are roaming the streets and daubing crosses on the doors of those they plan to kill, making it one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the moment.

·         In the light of this violence, Obama is even considering arming the other faction so they can retaliate, a move that has little support across the world...

·         It’s a far cry from the Holy City, the city where God is so present everyone can see him face to face, where the good things that grow there heal people, instead of killing them.

·         Our gospel is one of the readings often chosen at funerals: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you…do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.’

·         When we remember that Jesus spoke these words on the eve of his own violent death, we know he must have meant a kind of robust peace which can stand up in the face of all sorts of trouble; not just an airy fairy, vague feel good factor.

·         We pray for peace because power without peace is often misused; but perhaps peace without power is too vague an idea to effect change in very difficult areas of the world.

·         And perhaps we need the power of God as well as his peace in our lives; power to be transformed from the inside out.

·         Peace and power are brought together in the person of the Holy Spirit of course.

·         Returning to our 2D/3D image, when someone mentions the Holy Spirit, I wonder how you picture him?

·         Francis Chan has written a book called ‘Forgotten God’, subtitled ‘Reversing our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit.’

·         Because the Holy Spirit is often the neglected person of the Godhead.

·         If you have trouble picturing the Holy Spirit, try picturing that river in Revelation.

·         Ezekiel, a prophet in Israel’s history also had a vision of the Holy Spirit, connected to a river

·         In his vision the river began shallow - he started to wade in it, led by an angel, and it was ankle deep.

·         He was beckoned to go in further; it became knee deep.

·         He was beckoned in further; it became waist deep; even further and he couldn’t wade anymore; ‘it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed’ (Ezekiel 46:5).

·         ‘And the angel said ‘Mortal man, have you seen this?’ (next verse).

·         Have we seen this Spirit?

·         Can we be envisioned by the Spirit for our life here?

·         Have we experienced the rushing, the nourishing of something (someone) who’s alive and available to us every day?

·         The life of that Holy City starts when we turn to Christ and open our lives to the Holy Spirit: He is the river which waters our lives and our communities.

·         We have ample illustration of that river here in Whitchurch, with our own Thames, which frequently bursts its banks after too much rain.

·         You cannot hold a river in; it’s ‘alive and goes where it will.

·         Yes, it does offer a tranquil setting as summer dawns; everyone is drawn to a river which reflects back the blue sky on a cloudless day.

·         But remember the river is about life and sometimes it’s quite unpredictable.

·         Perhaps we could imagine a figurative river of life running through us here… down the High Street, past The Old Stables, up the drive and past the church door, blessing and healing as it goes; even through the church door…?!

·         We are part of that river, inhabited by the Spirit, needing renewing every day.

·         As we recall Jesus’ words ‘My peace I give to you’, we also remember he sent the Holy Spirit to fill us for service and mission.

·         He even said that it was a good thing he was going to the Father; otherwise no Spirit

·         They might have wanted to hold onto Jesus forever, in bodily form, but he said ‘do not cling to me.’

·         Perhaps he was trying to get them to progress from 2D, to 3D vision…

·         If we let God enlarge our vision from 2D to 3D, what will that look like in Whitchurch?

·         It will be a vision that sees our community and all its life through the 3D lenses of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

·         As we approach Pentecost, may the life of the Spirit of Christ nourish us and give us hunger for more, as we wade out into the river, even to the point of swimming.