Love your enemies

Second Sunday of Easter 7.4.2024

(John 20: 19-29)

Dr Izzeldin Abueleish was born in poverty in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. His family somehow enabled him to study medicine at Cairo, London and Harvard, and to become the first Palestinian doctor to work in Israeli hospitals.

His wife died of leukemia 2008, leaving him to raise their eight children. In 2009, when Israel was attacking Gaza yet again, a tank fired two shells into the Abuleish apartment, slaughtering three of Izzeldin’s young daughters and a niece. Despite his extreme grief, Izzeldin wrote the book I shall not hate.

Dr Abueleish is a Muslim, but like the Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi, he teaches and lives Jesus’ central teaching, as contained in the gospels: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

He describes one way he learned why we should not hate: when we see newborn babies lying side by side in their hospital cribs – Palestinian, Jewish, Chinese or African – they have absolutely nothing within them which make them hostile to each other. All later hostilities come from human choices, distorted by our selfishness and anger.

In the emotional final scene in John’s gospel, we see Jesus’ disciples locking themselves into their meeting room, terrified that they too might be caught and tortured to death as he was. But when Jesus appears among them, they are filled with limitless joy. He then breathes God’s Spirit into them and sends them out on mission. But his instructions are puzzling. Why does he tell them to forgive people’s sins, and possibly sometimes to retain them? Surely he wasn’t giving instructions to priests about how to “hear confessions”, as some have piously thought! That custom – like ordained clergy – did not begin until many centuries later!

Jesus was summing up his whole teaching in a few words. Isn’t this the same command as “love one another as I have loved you”? (John 5:14) and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? (Matthew 5:44) Wasn’t he giving every disciple the immense power to transform our world, the power to forgive, and to “contain” sin with creative love? Like Dr Abueleish, countless good people have shown us the way to be peaceful to each other, rather than hostile: St Benedict, St Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Gandhi, Mandela, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, etc etc.

Our “Christian” nations – USA, Australia, UK, Germany and others – are still providing Israel with terrible weapons, enabling it to continue its genocide. Isn’t it up to us, now, to point out their gross sin? The world knows that for seventy-five years Israel’s leaders have been expressing their intention to remove all Palestinians from the whole land, of which in 1947 the United Nations gave Israel 56%.

In the same passage in John’s gospel, Thomas has difficulty believing that Jesus is alive. This challenges us too, but it is an even greater challenge to believe that we have the power to bring peace, as Jesus calls us to.

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In November 2023, Izzeldin Abueleish, now living in Canada, learned that an Israeli bomb had killed twenty-two more members of his extended family.

Ecce homo

Palm Sunday 24.3.24

(John 18:1 -19:42)

“Pilate said to them: Ecce homo… “Here’s your man”. (John 19:5)

Now it’s 2024

Scene 1:

Do you call that a human being?

That refugee? You think he could have a wash! And those rags he’s wearing! Hardly an Armani fashion advertisement. Ha ha! Don’t you think that funny!? And there’s thousands like this chap, trying to get into the UK by boat; and even trying Australia. They’re only looking for a more comfortable life! I’m glad our government’s got a tough policy to turn them back, or deport them!

Scene 2:

That’s not a human being!

You can tell he’s been on the grog; probably drugs too! And you know he spent six months in jail? But he’s just been to see the diocesan lawyers again. Claims he was abused by Father O’Donnell… 30 years ago! How can he say that? We all know the great work Father did to build up the parish… and to set up the Priests Provident Fund!

That druggie must have false memory syndrome! I’m glad they are going to defend the case strenuously when it goes to court.

Scene 3:

Do you call that a human being?

That sad case lying, under the bridge? We know her. Her name’s Monica. She actually prefers to sleep there. The Vinnies went to a lot of trouble to find her a flat, but she walked out after only three days. You think she’d be grateful, but she complained about the noisy neighbours!! And it’s not as if she doesn’t shout a lot herself when she’s had a few… and talk to herself all the time! No one can help her. She’s mad. Just leave her where she is!

Scene 4:

Voice 1: Julian Assange? Hardly what I’d call a good human being. Didn’t he put huge amounts of information online, exposing state secrets, risking the lives of our secret agents?

Voice 2: Well nooo… he actually took out all the names before he published wikileaks. The US government could never name anyone whom he put at risk.

And the so-called “secrets” he exposed… many of them were actually horrendous war crimes. But none of his judges has ever taken that into account.

And now he faces extradition, and the torture of solitary confinement, possibly for more than 100 years!

Voice 1; but… surely governments know better than we do, what’s best for the people?

Scene 5:

Not Gaza on the news again! Look at those people, fighting over food off the truck. They hardly look human! And it’s hardly news… I saw that video yesterday on facebook. That old lady is the grandmother, and the chap with the broken bucket… that’s her son. Yes, his wife and the other four kids died when their house was bombed. The little girl is the only granddaughter left. Six years old. Yeah, had to have her leg amputated. They said there was no anesthetic, but that’s hard to believe. Probably just anti-Jewish propaganda.

No, don’t turn it off. The sporting news will be on in a minute.

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Ecce homo. Look, there’s your human beings! The ones we crucify.

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Where is God in genocide?

Lent 4B 10.3.2024

(2 Chronicles 36:14-23, Ephesians 2:4-10, John 3:14-21)

The terrible events happening in Palestine today have reached the point where they loom as background behind every conversation we take part in, every piece we write or homily that we preach. Immeasurable crimes are being committed in full public view. If we do not discuss and demand action to stop the bombing of densely populated areas – including hospitals – and depriving more than a million imprisoned people of water, food and medicine, aren’t we failing to value and protect the rule of law which holds our civilisation together?

Besides, anyone who believes in God or is struggling with the question of God is forced to ask how this continuing evil can be reconciled with a divine Being who is presumed to be the source of all goodness.

In the readings chosen for the fourth Sunday of Lent, the ancient Book of Chronicles relates that when the people of Jerusalem had been unfaithful, refusing to heed the prophets God had sent them, they were invaded by the Babylonians. Ridiculously, the writer describes God as petulant, impatient and angry: “at last the wrath of the Lord rose so high against his people that there was no further remedy”. The Old Testament contains many similar passages. Wrongly interpreted, they have led people to think they are “doing God’s work” by destroying others whom they believe to be God’s enemies.

Scripture scholars show us how to interpret these writings of earlier cultures; how they are coloured by ways of thinking quite different from our own. Certainly we cannot build our view of God by crudely projecting human emotions onto the creator of a trillion galaxies. Christians, particularly, have heard the gospels speak of the Good News brought by Jesus of Nazareth, which can be summed up in this passage from John’s gospel: “God loved the world so much that he gave the only Son, that everyone who believes in him … may have eternal life” (John 3:16); and in the reading from Ephesians:“God loved us with so much love [that God] brought us to life with Christ.”

To project any emotion onto God is entirely metaphorical and almost ridiculous. Our own emotions or feelings are movements of the faculty we call our will, accompanied by physical effects in our bodies. We feel desire for a cool drink on the hot day; we enjoy it when we drink it. We may be afraid that an illness may get worse. We hope to find our life partner, and feel love for such a person where we find them, but none of these emotions comes within a million light-years of describing God, of whom we can have no description or definition.

But throughout history many sane people have experienced not only the presence of the Source responsible for sunsets, newborn babies and all the mysteries of nature, but have unmistakably felt friendship and love from this Holy One. These widely varying experiences of trustworthy people have given us the writings of the Christian scriptures, those of earlier religious traditions, and the beautiful outpourings of mystics and poets. In various ways these offer glimpses of the beauty and truth of god, who remains beyond description.

This Source of our Being teaches, through all major religions and through our own compassionate instincts, that our future depends on forgiving enemies and loving our neighbour as our self. Doesn’t this give each of us a part to play, speaking and acting with others, to stand against current examples of hatred, racism and genocide? Isn’t it up to us to free people oppressed by any regime that would try to dominate them?

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Whom do we call lepers today?

Sunday 6b     11.2.2024

(Mark 1:40-45)

       Refugees: some of today’s lepers

During a schoolboy football match, after jumping unsuccessfully for the ball, I was shocked to see that the two end joints of my finger were bent back at a sharp angle. At the sight of the dislocated digit I felt sick, as we do whenever we see something “unnatural”. How horrible must be the sight of dismembered bodies and limbs, which every child in Gaza must have seen by now, in the terrible genocide that is being inflicted on its people.

When a person has power over others – prisoners captured in war, slaves, poorer classes forced to become servants – those who hold power are often tempted to demean and mock, or even treat their “inferiors” violently. England’s centuries-long colonisation of Ireland produced the demeaning “Irish joke”. And after slavery was abolished in North America, when impoverished Negroes survived by developing their wonderful musical skills, the wealthier White classes mocked and imitated them with “Black and White Minstrel” shows.

In the 1930s the Nazis, aiming to expel or destroy all Jews, demand them with propaganda containing cruel caricatures. When we remember this, it deepens the tragedy that in Israel today its political and military leaders, and ordinary soldiers, describe and treat Palestinians as subhuman, and that school children are taught to sing about the destruction of Gaza.

But it is not only other people far away who are tempted to do these things. When we ourselves encounter people who are in some way damaged or deformed, or even strangers in our country, we may feel at first a natural, momentary revulsion. It is urgent then that we see beyond the person’s “difference”, to recognise that they are actually our sister or brother.

In fact the future of our world may depend on us learning to rise above our natural instinct to fear the “other”. We need instead, in all circumstances, to discover that “others” images of God just as we are. The core of Jesus’ Good News is that all people are equally children of the infinite, sharing the same profound dignity.

When the leper in today’s gospel approached Jesus, he began to grovel, begging Jesus to heal him. At first Jesus would have felt the same natural reaction that we do, but his deep compassion quickly moved him to say: “Of course I want to” as he healed the man’s “incurable” disease.

When Jesus reached out to heal outcasts, he disturbed the leaders of his own Jewish religion. By touching the “unclean” and healing them, even on the sabbath, he broke regulations and laws which originally had a good purpose – to prevent infection; to give workers rest; to remind people of the Transcendent. But such laws were often abused to wield power over others. When Jesus challenged the corrupt authorities who did this, they turned him into an outcast. Forbidden to enter towns or villages, Jesus began to share the fate of the rejected, and eventually died in solidarity with them.

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Real Good News

Advent 2B 10. 12. 2023

[Mark 1:1-28]

The Jordan Valley

Some time around the year 70 CE a man we know as Mark began to write down stories about Jesus of Nazareth, which he had heard from others or had witnessed himself. His short book – we can read it in less than ninety minutes – was not just a record of what Jesus said and did. Mark called it the Euangelion, the Good News, because it was a proclamation that a new age had begun: the Reign or Rule of God.

People in Mark’s time would recognise that this Good News challenged the Roman empire that ruled the entire Mediterranean world. The emperor and his generalsused the same word euangelion to announce some new conquest adding more gold, slaves and territory to the vast empire that Rome’s power had already seized. Mark’s little scroll dared to announce that here, now, was the true Good News: God’s Reign has begun, for the Transcendent One has come, showing that God loves us. This prophet Jesus, who is in some unique way is Son of God, brings the good news that we can change the world by loving and being compassionate to others, even our enemies. We can do this if we are prepared to imitate Jesus by “losing our life” in order to gain it at the deepest level.

Mark’s announcement and Jesus’ teaching presents us with immediate, practical questions: what must we do, now, to help bring about the Rule or Reign of God? Among many evils that challenge us in the world today, on the West Bank of the same river Jordan in which Jesus was baptised, enormous injustice is being done to our Palestinian sisters and brothers. The United Nations has many times condemned the systematic, government-sponsored theft of the Palestinian’s land, accompanied by the destruction of their homes and farms and the terrorising of the population by Israeli “settlers”. It condemns the fifty-six years of occupation by the army; the night raids leading to hundreds being jailed without reason, indefinitely. All this is intimately linked to the genocide being carried out in Gaza, 140 kilometres to the South West, where in response to Hamas’ recent terrorist attack, Israel has killed 17,000 people, mostly non-combatants and almost half of them children.

Some people find it difficult that I refer to such things in these reflections on the scriptures, but it is necessary to refer to contemporary injustices, because the Reign of God involves our real life, and each of us has a role to play in bringing about peace in our world. The essential first step is to know the truth – in this case to counter the systematic falsehoods being spread through powerful world-wide media, such as Murdoch press and tv. It is essential that we hear the many Jewish historians and commentators who expose the actions of their own Zionist government. A few of these authorities are Gabor Maté, Ilan Pappe, Norm Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and Anna Balzer * who point out that the founders of the state of Israel intended and declared from its beginning in 1948 to drive all Palestinians from the land and refuse them their right to return.

This plan – it is documented – was put into effect during the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) when 750,000 Palestinians were terrorised by massacres and violently expelled. The Israeli army then destroyed 531 of their villages. The United Nations has in vain protested against these crimes, as it has tried in vain to stop the genocide in Gaza. Its Secretary General correctly pointed out that the terrorist attack of October 7^th did not happen in a vacuum.

Mark’s gospel, in its very first line, challenges every one of us to recognise that God has come among us in Jesus. Before himself dying in the struggle to bring about the Rule of God, Jesus would tell us that “The truth will make you free.” (John 8:32) So while hundreds of thousands around the world march in the streets to plead for those who suffer in the world’s current wars, can we at least respond with deep compassion and prayer, acknowledging that because God is within every person, we are actually connected with all persons on every side? Seeing this, may we then join in love to bring the madness to an end?

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* My question is: if you were more shaken by the Israeli lives lost in one day than in 75 years of killing Palestinians, why is that? – Anna Balzer.

Hope during suffering

Adv1B 3.12.2023

[Isaiah 63:16 – 64:8, Mark 13: 33-37]

Sometimes life seems unbearable, not just because we are suffering ourselves, but because we see others suffering and can do nothing about it. We all realise the terrible agony of several million people of Gaza – including nearly a million children who will now all suffer lifetime PTSD – and we feel helpless to stop this evil genocide. We suffer with them, and also with the frightened people of Israel, who are made so insecure by their Zionist government’s stated policy to drive the Palestinians from the lands that Palestinians have occupied from time immemorial.

Immense numbers of people have suffered in other wars, but now we can see, close up, daily samples of this suffering through electronic media. The suffering does not seem to have an end, and we feel unable to do anything about it.

But we can! It is essential that we Christians do not turn away from this suffering. True, we must take care not to become so immersed in it that we suffer damage ourselves. However the core of our Christian faith is found in the words of Jesus, who commands that we must not turn away from any suffering people, for he identifies them all with himself. (Matthew 25:40)

Our sadness is increased by the fact that we tend to blame ourselves; we feel less worthy, and even feel that our world is an incurable mess. “We have all withered like leaves… all that integrity of hours like filthy clothing” (to quote the prophet Isaiah, in today’s first reading.) What on earth can we do about this? Do we feel like saying, again with the prophet Isaiah “O that you would tear the heavens open and come down”.

It is in this real and desperate situation that we turn to the immense treasure of the Good News, which is that we, every human person, is waiting for a meeting, an encounter. An encounter with whom? With the One who came among us, who went to the depths of our suffering and has gone through death before us. From him we get the strength to keep all suffering people in our hearts, praying for them daily.

The time of Advent is not just to prepare for Christmas. These four weeks are like a ladder by which we can climb up in hope, and even to some degree reach a much greater event than the birth of a baby in Bethlehem long ago. We are looking forward to the return of the Transcendent One, who is our father, but because transcendent, much greater than a father.

Groping for a metaphor to describe our human situation, the prophet Isaiah said that we, the entire human race, are like clay in the hands of a potter. The deeds of every person on earth, whether we are loving another person or stealing the land of another nation, are somehow under the complete control of the One who made us.

So we are waiting, really, not just for Christ to return, but for the moment when we meet the Infinite Trinity who made our cosmos of a trillion galaxies. For the risen Christ cannot be separated from the Trinity, and each of us is waiting to merge with this Trinity, living in timeless, everlasting consciousness and love.

So as the gospel writer Mark says: “stay awake, be prepared”. Although the present moment may be horrible for many, the Good News is that by we can use our love to understand and speak the truth, building a future in time and eternity, where the good of everyone is assured.

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Can we trust our leaders to be truthful?

Sunday 31A 5^th November 2023

[Malachi 1:14-10, Matthew 23:1-12]

5000+ children killed or injured in Israel’s bombing of Gaza

As I sat at lunch in the food court, I saw at the next table a mother with her two beautiful twin daughters, perhaps six years old. In these sad days, seeing children brings to mind the hundreds of them in Gaza who are being bombed day and night. Many have been trapped under rubble, screaming in pain; or taken to a hospital which has run out of medicines and anaesthetic. As I pondered, I saw too that the little girls were just like the countless Jewish children forced in cattle trucks to be slaughtered in the Nazi gas chambers.

Each of these murderous atrocities, within my lifetime, were planned and carried out by highly intelligent political leaders, admired and loyally followed by populations of millions. Watching the lovely family meal nearby, I saw how urgent it is to question, deeply, those who lead us in government or church.

The prophet Malachi, around 500 BCE, criticised the leaders of his society: “You have caused many to stumble by your teaching; have shown partiality in your administration”. Jesus too, criticised the religious leaders of his time, who “occupied the chair of Moses”, having the education to interpret the Law. Jesus blasted them for twisting the Law to help themselves, instead of the majority, the poor; and for loving honours, flattery, titles and special dress.

We expect our leaders to be trustworthy for the same reasons that we expect it of our spouses, children and shopkeepers. Without trust and truth-speaking, families and society will collapse into chaos. Malachi and Jesus’ drew their teaching from the Jewish Torah, which speaks of the transcendent God, Origin of all being. Malachi said: “Are we not brothers and sisters? Have we not all one father?” Theologians conclude that God is not only the source of truth, but Truth itself, for God’s essence must contain all goodness and being.

Jesus warned us, his followers: “Call no one on earth your teacher… or your father, since you have only one Father…in heaven… The greatest among you must be your servant.” Our leaders in the Catholic church seem to have slipped up here somehow… and they failed terribly when they obeyed Canon Law to conceal priests who abused children. As I watched the little girls eating lunch in the food court, their many victims also came to mind.

Political leaders often speak falsely. They invent lies most of all to drag us into war, then to manipulate us with the horrors that war causes. After October 7^th Israeli leaders and Joe Biden got world-wide sympathy with the Big Lie that Hamas had beheaded babies. The truth now emerging is that of the 1400 people killed on that day probably half were Israeli soldiers or police, and of the 683 whose details have so far been released, only seven were under the age of nine, and so far, no evidence of atrocities has been produced. *

Again, Israel’s leaders claimed that Hamas fired the missile that killed hundreds of civilians at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. In fact Israel had issued warnings before that attack, and (according to the WHO) has carried out 51 other attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since October 7^th. As veteran journalist Chris Hedges notes: Israel’s leaders do not deform the truth, then invert it, and most international news media unquestioningly echo their lies.

For decades, propaganda has badly eroded the truth about Israel and Palestine, so is is urgent that we listen to more balanced Jewish writers like Amira Haas, Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé or Gabor Maté, who agree with Palestinian historians in exposing the popular lies about the founding of the state of Israel:

That Palestinian land was largely unoccupied before 1947.

That 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages in 1948 because Arab leaders told them to, and not because of massacres by Zionist militias.

That Israel’s leaders want a just and equitable peace, when in fact they want the whole land.

That Israel is a democracy, when it is an apartheid regime, with laws that discriminate against its Palestinian citizens.

What is our task? To draw closer to the God of all peoples – who is Truth – so as to deepen our compassion for all people involved in the current violence? To pray with confident hope that truth will prevail?

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* Official Israeli report.

Gaza… and the Law of God

Sunday 30A 29^th October 2023

[Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:34-40]

The Warsaw ghetto

After the Nazi forces invaded Poland in 1940 they herded nearly half a million Jews – adults and children – into the Warsaw ghetto. They locked them into a few hectares, behind a three-metre wall, starving them and depriving them of medical supplies, although diseases were breaking out. In 1943, when the Nazis began sending tens of thousands from the ghetto to extermination camps, the Jews rose up against their persecutors. The German army then destroyed the ghetto, burning it down and capturing or killing “Jews, bandits and sub-humans”. Very few escaped.

Two thousand years before that, a young Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, had gone about teaching people how to become free, to live in ways that would bring about the Reign of God. His simple teaching challenged the established religious leaders. In this excerpt from chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel the Pharisees tried to trick Jesus by asking him what was the greatest commandment in their law.

Jesus pointed out: “You shall love God with all your heart, soul and strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). He was summarising what many prophets had pointed out: that God expects us to treat every person justly: “Do not oppress the orphan, the widow, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another…” (Zechariah 7:9)

The Nazi’s inhuman cruelty was the complete opposite of this teaching. The same can be said of the murder and kidnapping committed by Hamas when they emerged from Gaza to kill or capture nearly 2000 people on October 7^th 2023.

But the Israeli government is now retaliating more violently against the innocent people of Gaza. Bombing that densely populated area it has already killed four times more non-combatants than Hamas killed. It has blockaded Gaza for many years, but now cuts off its water, food and the fuel needed for electric power to pump water and sewage. Hospitals have almost no medical supplies, so that operations are performed without anaesthetic and many more people die. In addition to these horrors, Israel commanded a million people to move from the northern half of Gaza to the already overcrowded southern half, but continues to bomb them there.

When the Secretary-General of the United Nations dared to say that Hamas’ actions “did not happen in a vacuum”, the Israeli ambassador exploded in anger. He attacked Antonio Gutteres for daring to point to what many Jewish historians admit: since Israel was founded seventy-five ago, its government has committed grave injustice against the Palestinians. When the United Nations gave Israel 52% of the land, Israel’s leaders from the beginning intended to acquire it all, by driving out the Palestinians. In 1948 – just four years after the Warsaw ghetto – Israel destroyed 500 Palestinian villages, massacred hundreds of Palestinians and expelled 700,000.

Today the Israeli army has occupied most Palestinian territory for more than fifty years. It destroys Palestinian homes, schools and olive-orchards. Its soldiers conduct brutal night raids and imprisons people – even children – indefinitely. Against international law, nearly a million Israeli “settlers” have built homes on stolen Palestinian land, and are now being armed and encouraged to attack the Palestinians around them. The UN Secretary-General was saying that these decades of inhuman treatment have driven Hamas to seek liberty for their people.

These tragic happenings, are completely opposed to Jesus’ teaching and to the Jewish Law. They challenge us to ask what we can do to bring about the Reign of God, a world of peace, the foretaste of eternal life. Since Jesus also taught that “The truth will set you free”…

Can we cut through the lies that always accompany war, to learn what is actually happening?

Can we speak the truth that all people are of equal value?

Can we demand that our government act to consider all the most vulnerable “orphans and widows”: those massacred by Hamas and the many more killed by Israel’s bombs in Gaza?

Can we remind ourselves and others that colonising other peoples’ lands is unjust?

Can we pray, not foolishly trying to get God on our side, but to let the Spirit of the Holy One empower all of us to heal our broken world?

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