Alert to the signs of God in the world

How many of the early signs of Christmas have you spotted? They begin in the shops with displays of Christmas gifts from early autumn while, at work, the Christmas meal or party is being booked. Into November, and the displays of Christmas decorations and foods begin appearing. Then the Christmas displays in shop windows go up and the Christmas lights are put up in Town Centres. Before long the first Christmas decorations go up in a home near you triggering the annual competition to see who can cover their house in the most lights or have the largest illuminated Snowman. Bets begin to be taken on whether we will have a white Christmas and you are given the name of a colleague to buy a Secret Santa present for. Before you know it there are children on your doorstep singing the one carol that they know and people start saying there only X number of days to go. These are some of the signs that Christmas is coming and we all recognise them, probably with dread!

In our gospel reading today (Luke 21. 5 - 9) Jesus told his disciples to watch out for the signs of their times. He wanted them to watch out for what God was doing in their world and it was of vital importance for them because it spelled disaster for Jerusalem as well as vindicating all that Jesus had said and done.

Jesus had told his disciples, the crowds following him and the religious leaders that the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed because the people of Israel had not fulfilled God’s plan for their lives. The kind of place that Jerusalem should have become had been set out in Isaiah 2; a place that all nations could come to to hear from God:

“Many nations will come streaming to it, and their people will say,

‘Let us go to up the hill of the Lord, to the Temple of Israel’s God.

He will teach us what he wants us to do;

we will walk in the paths he has chosen.

For the Lord’s teaching comes from Jerusalem;

from Zion he speaks to his people.” 

Instead of that vision happening, the Temple had become a symbol of Jewish identity with all sorts of people excluded from worship at the Temple unless they conformed to the detailed requirements of the Mosaic Law. The Temple and the worship in it was actually preventing the free access to God’s word that God wanted to see for people of all nations. Therefore, Jesus prophesied that the Temple would be destroyed and told his disciples that they had to watch out and be ready for when this disaster would come about.

They had to be watchful and ready because Jesus did not tell them when this would happen, only that it was going to occur. They had to be watchful and ready because this act would vindicate Jesus; would be the final sign that in Jesus God had been acting to defeat evil and bring in his kingdom and rule. To those people who had not encountered the risen Christ, Jesus of Nazareth looked like just another failed would-be Messiah who had died a shameful death. The destruction of the Temple, however, would be the sign that Jesus had been right and that what he had said was true.

Tom Wright, the former Bishop of Durham has said that when they saw this sign, the vindication of Jesus, for themselves, they knew they were to get on with the task of implementing what Jesus had achieved. Jesus believed “that Israel functioned to the rest of the world as the hinge to the door” so “he envisaged his followers becoming … Isaianic heralds, lights to the world.”  

As Christ’s followers today, we inherit that task of putting into practice what Jesus has achieved through his life, death and resurrection. We are the people today who are called to work towards that Isaianic vision of nations streaming to learn what Israel’s God wants them to do, settling disputes among the great nations, hammering swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, and never again preparing to go to war.

How can we do that? Well, here is a story of a father and a rock band who have tried to do just that:

“Gordon Wilson held his daughter’s hand as they lay trapped beneath a mountain of rubble. It was 1987, and he and Marie had been attending a peaceful memorial service in Enniskillen, when a terrorist bomb went off. By the end of the day, Marie and nine other civilians were dead, and sixty-three had been hospitalized for injuries.

Amazingly, Gordon refused to retaliate … He knew that the terrorists who took his daughter’s life were anything but remorseful, and he maintained that they should be punished and imprisoned … [but] he refused to take revenge.

‘Those who have to account for this deed will have to face a judgement of God, which is way beyond [my] forgiveness,’ he said. ‘It would be wrong for me to give any impression that gunmen and bombers should be allowed to walk the streets freely. But … whether or not they are judged here on earth by a court of law … I do my very best in human terms to show forgiveness … The last word rests with God.”

On the evening of the Enniskillen bombing, in Denver, Colorado, the Irish band U2 and playing a gig on their world tour. Their lead singer Bono asks, “Where’s the glory in bombing a remembrance day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where’s the glory in that? To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of the revolution that the majority of the people in my country don't want.” And he leads the crowd in a shout of “NO MORE!” before launching into the song Sunday Bloody Sunday. This is a song which ends:

“The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On a Sunday bloody Sunday …”

Eleven years later, in 1998, U2 are playing another concert. This time it is in Belfast and it is a concert to draw support for the national vote on the Good Friday/Northern Ireland Peace Agreement four days later. In the concert, Bono is able to bring on stage David Trimble and John Hume, leaders of the traditionally opposing Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party, respectively. The political leaders stand on each side of Bono as he raises their arms together in a show of unity. Four days later, the Peace Agreement is approved overwhelmingly by voters in both the North and South.

We all know that there are still many difficulties in living with the legacy of terrorism in Ireland and of making and keeping peace. But these are two stories of Christians in very different situations who were looking out for God at work in their world, looking for the signs of peace, and seeking to claim the victory that Jesus won.

Although we have waited two thousand years for the coming of God’s kingdom in full, there have always been clear signs of that coming kingdom throughout the years in the lives of committed Christians like Gordon Wilson and U2. Our job is to join them in being watchful and alert to the signs of God at work in our world and in implementing what Jesus has achieved, claiming the victory that Jesus won on a Sunday Bloody Sunday. 

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U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Overcoming divisions in the Spirit of Jesus

The ‘peace lines’ in Belfast are walls that “were built in the early 60s, at the height of the “Troubles” – the hardest stage of the fight between the two communities [of Catholics and Protestants] – when Northern Ireland was at the climax of Civil War. At that period only weapons spoke and the paramilitary groups from both sides laid down the law: bombs were smashing Belfast day after day; reprisals were reciprocal ... rancour turned to hatred and life together was no longer possible. The only solution was to physically divide, and let communities close themselves into their own microcosm. Therefore, religious islands, divided by cement barriers erected by the authorities in order to stop the violence, grew up.”

A similar kind of hostility between Jews and Samaritans can be seen clearly in the New Testament. One of the worst insults that hostile Jews could offer to Jesus was to call him a Samaritan (John 8:48). When Jesus was refused hospitality by a Samaritan village because he was going to Jerusalem, his disciples James and John wanted the village destroyed before Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:51-56). The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:33-37) also reveals this division because it challenges the idea held by Jews that it would be impossible for a Samaritan to act charitably. This story of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well also shows up these divisions in that the disciples are amazed that Jesus was talking to a Samaritan woman (John 4:27) and the Gospel writer comments that Jews did not use the same cups and bowls that Samaritans use (John 4:9).

Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the "lost" tribes taken into Assyrian captivity. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that it was the original sanctuary. They also claimed that their version of the Pentateuch was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile. Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another.

All of which makes Jesus’ words in John 4.21-24 quite amazing: “… the time will come when people will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem … the time is … already here, when by the power of God's Spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants. God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”

Jesus seems to be saying that the reasons for conflict between Jew and Samaritan are about to be superseded in such a way that both will, in future, be able to worship together. This claim is one that the writer of the letter to the Ephesians repeats in 2.11-18, on this occasion about divisions between Jews and Gentiles: “… Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people. With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies. He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God ... It is through Christ that all of us, Jews and Gentiles, are able to come in the one Spirit into the presence of the Father.”

Both these passages focus on divisions being overcome as we come to God the Father in the Spirit. The Spirit that is being talked about is, of course, the Spirit of Jesus, the one who, with his own body, breaks down the wall which separates enemies; the one who, through his death on the cross destroys enmity and unites enemies before God. So, if we are to be ‘in the Spirit’ and are to worship God ‘in the Spirit’, we must do the same by laying down our lives in order to overcome divisions between enemies.

Gordon Wilson was the father of Marie Wilson, one of 12 victims of the Enniskillen Remembrance Day Bombing in 1987. The bombing could have provoked a response of anger and revenge; instead what emerged was an atmosphere of forgiveness and reconciliation because of Gordon Wilson and the way in which he responded to this tragedy in the Spirit of Jesus.
A few hours after the bombing, when interviewed by the BBC, he described his last conversation with his daughter, a nurse, as they both lay buried in rubble. He said: "She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could. She said, 'Daddy, I love you very much.' Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say." To the astonishment of listeners, Wilson went on to add, "But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She's dead. She's in heaven and we shall meet again. I will pray for these men tonight and every night." Historian Jonathan Bardon recounts that: "No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact."

Gordon Wilson forgave the terrorists who had killed his daughter. He said that he would pray for them. He also begged that no-one took revenge for Marie's death as that could not bring her back. His response to atrocity of the Enniskillen bombings was in the Spirit of Jesus and helped to overcome divisions between Catholic and Protestant as throughout the rest of his life he worked hard to bring reconciliation between people in Northern Ireland including becoming Patron of the Spirit of Enniskillen Trust which works to encourage dialogue and greater understanding between all social, cultural and religious traditions.

What Gordon Wilson did with his life is what we see Jesus doing in this story. Richard Burridge writes that in this story, “we have a real meeting of opposites - of a Jew with a Samaritan, a man with a woman, a rabbi with a sinner, the one ‘from above’ confronting the lowest of the low.” It is a story which “sums up all the bitterness of human separation by race, creed, class, sex, profession, status” and shows us what it means for Jesus to be the bridge, not only of “the gulf between God and the world, but also all the barriers human beings put between themselves.” It was for this reason that God sent his Son into the world, and for this reason there is hope for us all, from Northern Ireland to modern Samaria on the West Bank to here in Dagenham.

It is a terrible irony, and an absolute gift to those who argue that religion causes violence, that Christian faith was in Northern Ireland used as means to divide Catholic and Protestant. Gordon Wilson’s words, spoken in the Spirit of Jesus, helped to turn that situation around. Could our words and actions in the Spirit of Jesus do the same?

Where are the divisions within this local area and how could these be overcome in the Spirit of Jesus? What can you, as Christ’s people here at St Cedd’s, be doing and saying in the local community that would be in the Spirit of Jesus? How can you work in the Spirit of Jesus to encourage dialogue and greater understanding between all the different social, cultural and religious traditions found in this area? Are you willing to ask those questions? Are you willing to pray those questions? Are you willing to be inspired by the Spirit of Jesus to destroy enmity, to tear down barriers, to make peace, and to unite enemies?

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U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.