No better witness
Based on John 4:5-42
Four years ago,
almost to the
day,
I woke up feeling
particularly positive. Maria and many other
young people were avoiding school for the day to participate in a global
youth strike
to
make a stand about climate change.
The
consequences of humankind’s failure to care for creation had long been
causing me grave concern, and seeing young people making a stand was giving
me some hope for the future.
As I was leaving to go to work, I remembered what day it what was, and
without giving it much thought, channelled my inner Shakespeare and
said,
“Beware the Ides of March.”1
I had no idea just how prophetic that would be.
By chance, I
ran into
Maria
and some of her friends at lunchtime.
I
told them how
proud
I was
of
what
they
were doing and took a photo of them. But little did we know that something
was happening about 300 km away that would completely overshadow their
efforts and would make 15 March 2019 Aotearoa New Zealand’s darkest day in
my living memory.
As
we all know, a
white supremacist killed fifty-one people aged between two and seventy-two,
and wounded forty-nine more, in Christchurch. During Friday Prayer at the Al
Noor Mosque in Riccarton and the Linwood Islamic Centre. When he was
apprehended, the offender was on his way to continue his massacre.
His next target was likely to be
either the mosque in Ashburton or the
An-Nur Child Care Centre in Hornby.
Four years
later, I am still struggling
to fully comprehend how
something like this could happen in our relatively safe, peaceful, and
tolerant land.
Of course, I knew there were pockets of white supremacism festering
below the surface.
I was also aware that
Islamophobic sentiments have been part
of the landscape for some time now.
But I never thought a group of people would be targeted in such a horrific
manner on the basis of how they worshipped God.
Christianity has never been the sole faith
tradition
here, although it has been the dominant one
since colonial days.
But
its position has been eroding. The number of people who say they follow no
religion on the census to continues to grow, and the main reason why the
number of people who identify as Christians has stayed so high is
immigration from countries like the Philippines. And I believe we are
going to be faced with some uncomfortable truths about the status of the
Church when the results of last week’s census are released.
The increasing diversity of our society makes
some people feel uncomfortable.
When you have people belonging to the
dominant cultural group in society feeling marginalised and displaced,
because the world has changed when they were not looking, they
can
begin to feel like they have been left behind. And it can result in some
people whose position is not as privileged as it may once have been -
especially
working class
Pākehā - wondering who or what is to blame. And this can leave them open to
being manipulated into believing people of a different race or religion are
responsible for their plight.
Most people who feel this way to do not go on to commit acts of unspeakable
terror. But tragically - as
the events
in
Christchurch of four years ago
have shown us - some people do. Including some who identify as Christians.
Unfortunately, Christians do not have a perfect track record when it comes
to tolerating,
let alone
including people who
are different. And, as ‘The Troubles’ in
Northern Ireland have shown us, this can
even
extend to other Christians. We don’t talk about
this
much today, but it was until not that long ago that anti-Semitism was
absolutely
rife in the Church. Jews were accused of all manner of wickedness, including
being collectively responsible for killing Jesus and were
subjected to extreme persecution. The Holocaust was the logical conclusion of two
thousand years of antisemitism. It was not a stand-alone genocidal tragedy;
the torch was ready to light long before the nazis came to power.
In more recent times, it has been our
Muslim brothers and sisters who have been
the primary
scapegoats
of Christendom.
If only people realised that
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God. The God of Abraham.
At this point, you might be thinking, ‘But don’t
Muslims worship Allah?’ Yes, they do. Allah this is the Arabic word for God
(just like God is the English word for God) and that it is the word used for
God by Arabic speaking Christians. If you were to go to a Palestinian
Church, you would hear the phrase, “Allahu Akber.” Which is also the opening
to the Muslim call to prayer, and means nothing more than, “God is great.”
But to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have a problem
with our Muslim brothers and sisters even if they did not worship the same
God as us. You see, Jesus
did not reject people of other races or who
followed other faith traditions.
The gospels are full of
stories of him not letting social barriers get between and those who were
socially unacceptable in his culture. He fed the hungry, healed the sick,
and showed compassion to those in need. He did not stop to check who was and
who was not worthy. Or what religion they followed
To give but one example, most of you will know the
story of Jesus healing the Roman centurion’s servant.2 The
centurion would have been a follower of the Roman state religion. But when
he begs Jesus to heal his servant, Jesus offers to come to his house. But
the centurion says he is not worth to have him come under his rood and says
he only needs to give the word, and Jesus is amazed by his faith. And there
are other similar stories in the gospels.
And neither did Jesus reject people on the basis of
their gender. This morning we heard the story from the Gospel according to
St John of Jesus meeting the
the Samaritan woman at the well.
She was astounded when Jesus spoke to her. Because any other Jew would have
treated her as an outcast.
It was bad enough that
was a Samaritan. In Jesus’ day, Jews
and Samaritans despised each other. Centuries earlier, they had been kin,
but the Samaritans had intermarried with foreign people, which was an
abomination for a strict Jew. Hundreds of years later, the mutual loathing
continued, and no Jew would have been seen dead talking to a Samaritan.
But not only was she a
Samaritan, she was a woman and
a
woman with a reputation.
And not a very good one. It would seem even her own people avoided her.
There was no concept of gender equality in Jesus’ day. Women were held in
such low esteem in the Jewish world that rabbis debated whether women even
had souls. It would have been considered scandalous for a rabbi to greet a
woman in public. Even his wife or daughter.
But that didn’t stop Jesus having women among
his closest followers. Even
if they were not listed in the official
top twelve.
But Jesus did turn away people rejected by mainstream
Jewish society. It didn’t matter if they were of a different race or
followed a different religion. And neither did it matter if they were women,
who had little status. Even if they were the subject of moralistic judgment.
Jesus gives us two simple commandments: to love
God, and to love others. He also
makes
it quite clear that that
it is how we treat others, especially those in need
that matters above all else.
Unfortunately, many branches of Christianity struggle
to accept this.
But if we are to
be
authentic
followers of Jesus the Christ, we
need to show love and compassion to
all who need it. Including
our Muslim brothers and sisters,
especially as we approach the fourth anniversary of the tragedy in
Christchurch of four years ago.
We may have no local mosques, but we have Muslims in
our local community, and this is likely to be difficult time for them. They
may have lost people close to them four years ago. And they may well be
scared and anxious.
So if you know or encounter any of our Muslim brothers
and sisters at this time, be
friendly,
fully accept
them and the way they worship God, and treat them as you would want to be
treated yourself.
Please don’t try to convert them or undermine their faith. There is no need
for that and it is not a good advertisement for Christianity.
In this regard, I will leave you with a quote from American writer
Madeleine L'Engle, which
you may have heard me use before.
“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they
believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by
showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts
to know the source of it.”3
And there is no better witness to the world of our
faith than that.
Darryl Ward
12 March 2023
1
Shakespeare, William. ‘Julius Caesar.’ Act 1, Scene 2.
2
Matthew 8:5-12
3
L’Engle, Madeleine. (2001) Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
All Bible references are from the New Revised
Standard Version (NRSV) unless stated otherwise.