NO END IN SIGHT

 

NO END IN SIGHT

I was five years old and remember talk of the end of the Japanese war that year, 1945, but if there was mention of the liberation of the death camp in Southern Poland, I knew nothing of it. And many to this day do not know of the systematic killing of millions of people, mostly Jews, by the Nazis in the terrible war of that period. Perhaps that is why such publicity has been given this week to the discovery, by Russian soldiers, of the many emaciated people awaiting death in Auschwitz eighty years ago.

The Northern Irish reporter, on a recent visit to the camp, was close to tears as he showed us the ordinary looking railway lines that carried millions to their death, the block houses and the gas chambers. How could human beings devise a complex efficient system of deliberately killing millions of people? Even after eighty years it still sounds unbelievable.

And eighty years later, we are in the midst of the long-drawn-out re-assertion the Jewish people have been pushing ever since that terrible time. With international backing, they carved out a foothold in Arab lands without the agreement of the people who had lived there for centuries. The result was tension, violence and war. The Holy Land is now an armed camp with both peoples locked in a bitter struggle with no end in sight. Thousands have been killed, homes destroyed and lives of survivors blunted forever. This week has seen a truce given joy to a few on both sides but no sign of a lasting peace.

Also this week, we commemorate another event involving Jews. Following custom, every first born male Jewish child was brought to Jerusalem and ‘presented to the Lord.’ So Mary and Joseph took the child Jesus up to the temple and ‘offered in sacrifice a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.’

Is there any connection between these events? Jewish history was supposed to be about hope. Abraham was the father of a movement that would see his descendants as numerous as the sand on the sea shore – impossible to count. The child who suddenly appeared in the temple was the fulfilment of the longed-for promise, a pilot project that would multiply and create a new world where everyone would be a new born son and daughter. A light would appear in the darkness and each would look at their neighbour and say, ‘brother, sister’.

It hasn’t happened – yet. Paul’s ‘sorrow and unceasing anguish’ because ‘my brothers – my own flesh and blood ... have not recognised God’s saving justice and have tried to establish their own’ remains.

2 February 2025   The Presentation     Mal 3:1-4    Heb 2:14-18    Lk 2:22-40

THE WORD

 

THE WORD

When I went to Mhondoro to learn Shona many years ago, I was astonished how much people enjoyed talking to one another. I saw two people approach each another on a path and they started talking before they met. They stood for a while talking and then moved off in their different directions still talking until they were out of earshot.

People could listen to Jesus for hours, even days – ‘these people have been with me for three days’ (Mark 8:2) – and not get tired. The early church circulated his teaching by word of mouth but as time went on, and those who listened to Jesus began to die, they decided they must write down his words and deeds. We have all benefited from this.

This week our readings record Jesus himself relying on the written word - from Isaiah. The first reading tells us of the return from exile when, frankly, most people had forgotten their own history and the promises God made to them in the desert. So when Ezra found the book of the law and read it to the people ‘from early morning until noon’ they ‘were all in tears as they listened.’

When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah – ‘The spirit of the Lord has been given to me ... to proclaim liberty to captives ... and the Lord’s year of favour’, his hearers in Nazareth were astonished and ‘he won the approval of all.’

And now it is our turn to draw life from the written word. We are celebrating Sunday of the Word of God and it is a moment to remember what a rich treasure we have in the bible. It contains in written form the whole story of God’s gradual revelation of his purpose to the human family. The church has instinctively preserved the early texts through centuries of war, fire and floods. The original languages were put into Latin in the fourth century and, in modern times, in every language under the sun.

In the days before books, the monasteries developed the practice of lectio divina, holy reading, by which a person was invited to ponder, relish and express their thoughts in personal prayer. There would be lots of pauses in the reading to allow the meaning to sink in like water on arid soil.

This is accessible prayer for us all. But we can also realise, in our secular age, that the written word by any good writer can also convey a message to us. We can be nourished by the words of Shakespeare and also Chinua Achebe or Charles Mungoshi.  If we ‘listen’ attentively, the written word can be a partner to us in a dialogue about our world.

26 January 2025           Sunday 3 C                  Neh 8:2...10       1 Co 12:12-30            Lk 4:14-21

 

THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES

 

THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES

As Christmas disappears into our rear-view mirror, we are invited to begin the new year by listening to the letter to the Hebrews which is a meditation on what Jesus did. ‘He has purged sins away’ (1:3). I find myself asking how did he do it. From our earliest years we learn that Jesus ‘died for our sins.’ But what does that mean? How did that help us?

Well, one answer must surely be that he took responsibility for sin despite the fact that he was sinless. I remember as a small boy we were all herded into a classroom and the teacher announced no one was leaving the room until the one who had committed some crime owned up to being the culprit. He didn’t and we were kept in that room a long time. But I have since fantasised, ‘what if I had owned up, even though I was not guilty’?  I would have enabled the others to go free though I might have brought some punishment on myself.

They would have gone free but that might not have solved whatever the issue was. There are always consequences. Many innocent people bore the cost of the liberation of Zimbabwe. We attained freedom through their sacrifice. But that does not mean the root causes for the conflict were wiped away in a day. The consequences remain.

We have to work through the consequences. Even though we might say we were not responsible for ‘the system’ that existed in Southern Rhodesia, we have to engage in a new struggle to remove the ‘sin that clings’ to quote Hebrews again (12:1). What Jesus has done is clear the ground so that it is much easier for us than it was for our ancestors to build a just society which reflects the ‘hidden purpose of God’.

We can do this, first, by accepting our responsibility and becoming engaged in this building. Second, by enduring the consequences of failure when we have done all that we can – even if it means the cross. Edmund Campion tried to engage with Eizabeth I of England in 1581, in the days of persecution with these words:

If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to commend your case and mine to almighty God, the searcher of hearts, who sends us his grace, and sets us at accord before the day of payment, to the end that we may be at last friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

19 January 2025    Sunday 2 C           Is 62:1-5     1 Cor 12:4-11       Jn 2:1-11