War against Terror

The War against Terror

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9

This is one of those Sundays when the readings are fairly straightforward and can be summed up, more or less, in two sentences. ’Let’s not fool ourselves and think that we were clever enough or good enough to have found God. He finds us, and he has a party in heaven when we finally realise he has!’

So that clears the way for me to spend the remaining 10 minutes talking about the War on Terror.

I was at a dinner on Thursday with Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, the civil liberties organisation. She was answering questions on a broad range of subjects, and as you might expect, was fairly provocative.

She spoke particularly about the dangers of putting western society in a permanent state of emergency – a permanent war footing. During the Second World War, (this weekend marks the 67th anniversary of the Battle of Britain) there were emergency powers and the restriction of some civil liberties, but when the war was over, the powers were removed and freedoms restored.

‘But when will this War end’, she asked, ‘and what might be done in its name and so become virtually permanent emergency powers?’

I don’t wish to get involved in the political issues here, but I want us for a few moments to look at part of the Biblical analysis of our predicament.

Back to our text from Genesis: “But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"”

It reminds me of a week I spent with other trainee chaplains in a large psychiatric hospital when they still existed in the mid 70s. The Chaplain was explaining to us the dangers of asking rhetorical questions in sermons. He said he had once started a sermon in the hospital chapel by posing the question ‘why are we all here?’ – a man at the back shouted ‘because we’re not all there!’

God’s question must be rhetorical, or otherwise the incident paints a strange picture: the almighty, the omnipotent, the omniscient Creator of all things, playing hide-and-seek in the Garden.

“Where are you Adam?”

“Coming ready or not!”

And Adam is not ready. He is naked, and ashamed, and confused, and angry with Eve and with himself. And he has become afraid of the God who is Love. He has believed the Lie

“Where are you Adam?”

This is not a question about location. It is a metaphysical question.

Adam is lost. And so the war against terror begins.

“Where are you Adam?”

I am plotting mayhem and revenge; the slaying of Abel; the atrocities of humanity before the flood; the wickedness of the cities before the scattering from Babel;

I am plotting nationalism and weapons of destruction; infanticide and torture; oppression and racism; inquisitions and discrimination; religious hatred and world wars; holocausts and ethnic cleansing; acts of terror and global injustice.

The third chapter of Genesis is an ancient aetiology of human evil: an attempt to explain why the world is as it is.

Since the dawn of civilisation, humans have wrestled with the terror that is within, and how it expresses itself without.

Humans have experienced great goodness - the simple pleasures of walking with the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day.

And they have witnessed great evil - the exercise of godlike powers to humiliate and destroy those who are ‘other’.

I think the Archbishop was right this week to point out the insidiousness of reality TV which promulgates a culture of humiliation and mockery.

And so in this war against terror we are sometimes in danger of assuming that ‘the other’ against whom we fight, is somehow inherently different from us.

But we are all earthlings and tainted with Adam’s sin. We are all children of Eve and under our mother’s curse.

Solzhenitsyn, who certainly had his share of suffering at the hands of evil men and women, was wise enough to write:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Quoted in Mayne, Learning to Dance, DLT 2001, p166)

War can only ever be enjoined with a sense of humility, and with a recognition that those whom we attack are not all evil and we are not all good.

The little boy is standing up in the back seat of the car and his father keeps telling him to sit down.

At last the father stops the car and forcibly sits the boy down. As they continue the journey, the sulking boy in the back shouts: “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!”

From childhood we experience the ‘divided self’, that in this story of Adam and Eve, is the result of their disobedience.

For Adam and Eve in the garden, the duality within immediately skewed three dominant areas of their life, and all our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.

They were ashamed of their nakedness, and sexual companionship becomes an arena for struggle and not for pleasure and deepening intimacy; spiritually, they become afraid of God who only wishes the best for them; and as society, they turn on each other in blame and recrimination.

Genesis only hints at an answer to this war within. From Eve there is to come one who will strike the serpent’s heel. (Gen 3.15)

But the NT interprets the work of Jesus, the son of Eve, as the unifying factor in our lives, that may not end the war here and now, but that is able to give us sustained conquest over our dark side, and ultimate victory.

Our patron, Paul, further develops the solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.

He points to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who helps us to be what we are in Christ; to grow into Christian maturity; to have that attitude towards others that was in Christ Jesus, as he tells the Philippians.

Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in his letter to the Galatians. It is the ‘God side’ of our inner duality, the original image of God still present in every human.

These characteristics relate to God, Others and Self.

God - love, joy, peace - these should be the characteristics of our Christian life.

Others - patience, kindness, generosity - these are to be the marks of our Christian society.

Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control these are the way to tame the unruly heart.

To be led by the Spirit is to follow our desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful – but not just for its own sake. The Christian distinctive is in our motivation for the pursuit of beauty. Is it to worship the creature - or to worship the Creator, who is blessed forever?

And lest this should all sound like some long mediaeval struggle for impossible purity, our Lord uses a more vibrant and life-affirming metaphor – the Spirit as the breath in our lungs, the wind in our sails: it is like sailing - finding the wind - and the exhilaration of running before it.

All human beings are capable of this, and we must never forget that whatever else we justify in the war against terror, redemption is always possible, and there is rejoicing in heaven when the lost are found, not destroyed.

God’s challenge to us, as it was in the garden, is to live with him, following Christ and the way to life; or, to hide with Adam and rebel and follow the destructive inner path to death.

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9

The Aroma of Christ, Holy Week 2006

The Aroma of Christ (Holy Week)

Reading: Mark 14.1 - 15.47; Is 50; Phil 2

You can now get sniffer dogs for dry rot! Dogs have remarkably sensitive noses and can be trained in so many different and useful ways. For many animals, the sense of smell is vital. Over the course of evolution, as humans we have modified its importance. But it is still a crucial sense. I can still ‘remember’ the smell of my mother (and how do you do that?) I know what most of my friends smell like.

Of course it can be deceptive. Jacob deceived his father Isaac by wearing Esau’s clothes:

Gen 27.27 So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said, "Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed.”

For many of us, smell is a part of the worship life of the church. When we come to Prayers on Monday morning, the church is still full of the rich, heavy smell of incense: the smell of God. The people of Israel were given instructions on how to make incense and also forbidden from making it to use at home (Ex 30.34-38). It was to be a fragrance that was uniquely associated with the people of God at worship:

“The LORD said to Moses: Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (an equal part of each), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy; and you shall beat some of it into powder, and put part of it before the covenant in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you; it shall be for you most holy. When you make incense according to this composition, you shall not make it for yourselves; it shall be regarded by you as holy to the LORD. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from the people.”

The passion narratives which we read this week are full of the smell of God made Man: the divine smells of ‘the Anointed One’; the salvific smells of the bitter herbs, the wine and the bread of the Last Supper, the Passover; the Garden where now, full circle, Adam’s sin was coming to fruition in the second Adam as he sweats beads of blood in his anguish; the myrrh & vinegar of the cross; the human smells of sweat and blood, of torches and fear, of mobs and bloodlust, of urine and all the vileness of ritual torture and execution.

Mark positions the story of the expensive ointment at the beginning of his passion narrative - the variations found in the other Gospels reflect either that there were other women who made similar anointings (Mary Magdalene didn’t come into the picture till a 4th century tradition), or that the Gospel writers were quite imaginative in their interpretations of the one event.

In Mark this story is used as a summary of the Gospel which is why it will be universally recounted. As Jesus foretold, the Woman is remembered by millions of Christians around the world whenever the Gospel is read; as she has been remembered today.

The anointing is a prophetic action which prepares the body of Jesus for burial - there can be no anointing after death (Mark 16.1) - although the women try - for God will have raised him.

It is above all, a ’beautiful thing’ (14.6) which demonstrates love lavished on the Beloved, to borrow language from the Song of Songs which is also heavy with this passionate and erotic language of fragrance.

In this 1st century context, the woman has gate-crashed a men-only party and the barely suppressed eroticism of the act of anointing makes the onlookers feel uncomfortable. They want to be critical of the woman and of Christ. You can see why the early church, aware of the sensuality of this gesture, were predisposed to attribute it to Mary Magdalene - a woman with a past.

Of course there were cultural precedents for what the woman did. Rather like those scented freshen-up cloths you get given on aeroplanes, it was customary for wealthy hosts to pour sweet oil on the hair of guests. But not this amount nor of this quality (a year’s wages).

When I was at Lancing College in the 1970s, as I showed people round the magnificent Chapel, still then being built - and still being built today after 130 years - many would admire it but tell me it was a terrible waste of money; money that could go to the starving. But the Judaeo-Christian tradition has always shunned that either/or mentality, for it has recognised the deeper truth.

Being extravagant in what we spend on God, if it springs from love and deep devotion, will make us generous to the poor and needy. In contrast, those who are niggardly in their worship of God, bound by laws and a spirit of legalism, are usually ungenerous in their judgements and stingy with their possessions.

Mark, who was obviously in a Johannine rather than a synoptic mood when he wrote this, is anxious to bring out the cultural and mystical symbolism of the event, which is perhaps why he places it here at the beginning of the passion.

He and his readers are well aware that kings are anointed. Jesus the King rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Mk 11); he will be crucified as ‘King of the Jews’ (15.26) and challenged by the high priest - “are you the Messiah?” - the Anointed One. (14.61)

Now at this time it was not the custom to wash your hair daily – or, for that matter, very often at all. So the fragrance of this almost outrageous anointing must have been heavy upon our Lord throughout the coming days of trial and death.

The disciples lying in the upper room at the Last Supper would have smelled it; the soldiers and the high priests would have smelled it; Pilate would have noticed it.

The anointed king of glory was moving towards the offering up of himself - a fragrant sacrifice to the Lord.

Jesus had set his face like a flint (Is.50.7) to follow through his path of suffering, so that he might be ‘highly exalted’ (Phil 2.9) and bring us with him to glory.

We who live on the other side of the cross and the empty tomb can see how, in the words of Morna Hooker, “this woman’s action epitomizes Jesus’ death and resurrection, proclaims his status as king, and challenges others to share her devotion to him.”

Let this woman be an encouragement to us to be unembarrassed in our devotion to Christ, knowing that through our actions of love, we can point others to his saving work and joyful service.

Perhaps Paul had this incident in mind when he wrote:
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2.14-16)