AN EASTER MEDITATION
Does our ostensibly Christian society understand the message of
Jesus Christ, or do we just pay lip service to it?
Let us imagine, just for a moment, that we were to take the Sermon
on the Mount seriously. Would we still consider ourselves Christians?
Quite frankly, we do not practice Christianity, which is based
on love and forgiveness. What we practice is a modified form of
Judaism, flattering ourselves with the illusion that we are, after
all, the
"good guys", the chosen people of God, that we shall
we saved and that all others are doomed (and probably deserve
to be doomed) -- the Muslims, the Bahais, the Hindus, the Buddhists,
the agnostics, the atheists.
Every time we read the Old Testament and accept with self-righteous
contentment the idea that our God sent ten plagues to the Egyptians,
ordered the Israelites to smite the women and children of Canaan,
to kill everything living in Jericho, to slaughter the city of Hai
... everytime we read such stories without reflecting on what they
ultimately entail, without realizing the cruelty and unreligiousity
of it all -- we are not behaving as New Testament Christians, but
as Old Testament patriarchs equipped with divine legitimacy and
justification to take our promised Lebensraum by force.
(Exodus, Chapters 8 to 15, Deuteronomy Chapter
VII, verses 1-6, Chapter XX, verses 16-18, and Joshua Chapter
VI, verse 21, Chapter VIII, verses 18-29). In the Old Testament Jaweh is defined as the Lord of Armies, Lord of Sebaoth (from Hebrew ṣəbā’ôt, pl. of ṣābā’, army, from ṣābā’, to wage war). This concept of a warrior God is common to many other religions -- but does it satisfy our sense of religion, our sense of morality, our sense of justice?
Apparently it does. And many evangelical churches project this
image of divinity. Somehow it seems that the majority of Christians
do not even try to live according to the Sermon on the Mount,
because they think it is too tough, because we reject the fundamental
premise of the equality of human beings. We want to be the privileged
class, even if we do not admit it to ourselves. It is not equality
that we want, but privilege!
We know the Beatitudes only in name -- not in practice -- for
in essence we still live according to Old Testament rules, considering
ourselves the good people and judging all others as heathen and
worthy of destruction. We adhere to the myth of the "clash of
civilizations" instead of looking for an alliance of civilizations,
for a rehabilitation and reconciliation of cultures.
When I go to Catholic Mass on Holy Thursday to celebrate the founding
of the New Alliance and the concelebration of the Eucharist feast,
when I go with my wife to the reformed Protestant Good Friday service
to meditate on the overwhelming symbolism of the crucifixion, when
we go to the oecumenical Easter Sunday service, I like to focus
on the mystery of our existence.
How ineffable the very fact that we exist, that one day we all die,
and that above all we believe in Life and have faith in the Resurrection.
As Rilke said: "Das Leben ist eine Herrlichkeit".
I like to reflect on the overwhelming mystery that a GOD CREATOR
would so love his Creation that he would send his SON to die in
the Cross to redeem us. Admittedly, a mystery of faith. Either you
believe it, or you don't.
If you do, you would agree that we can be saved only by GRACE, i.e.
by the same act of creation. We ought to endeavour to do the right
thing, to be good, but our good works can hardly be enough to deserve
salvation. We are only the vessels into which Divine Grace is poured.
If we practiced Christianity, we would at least make an effort not
to hate our neighbours. Maybe we could even persuade ourselves to
love most of them. Instead, we provoke the hate of our neighbours,
committing that first and gravest of the seven capital sins –
the sin of arrogance.
Christ taught us humility, not arrogance.
And yet,. listen to John Cotton of the first Church of Boston in
the 17th century, to Israel and Cotton Mather of the Second Church
of Boston in the 18th Century. They considered themselves the New
Canaan, the New Chosen People of God, entitled to smite the indigenous
population of Massachusetts, who first gave them food and taught
them how to survive in the wilderness.
Sixty years ago the Nuremberg Trials were in progress. The Prosecutors
condemned the vanquished and prostrate Germans, both the Nazi leaders
and the common folk. It was an exercise in arrogance, because the
crimes of the British, American and Soviet leaders were not less
in the eyes of God. Who were we to cast the first stone against
the adulteress? For we were guilty of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden,
Katyn, Nemmersdorf, Lamsdorf, Swientochlowice, Aussig and Brno,
the expulsion of 15 million human beings from their 700-year old
homelands.
Not without reason Christ asks us, “But why dost thy see
the speck in your brother’s eye and yet does not consider
the beam in your own eye”? Matthew Chapter VII, verse 3. Nuremberg
was not a Christian tribunal. It was an Old Testament tribunal,
in the spirit of revenge, not reconciliation. When I think of Nuremberg
I cannot help but be reminded of Luke, Chapter XI, Verse 52
"Woe to you lawyers! Because you have taken away the key of
knowledge"
Nuremberg was an exercise in hypocrisy. A truly Pharisee tribunal.
George W. Bush too is a Pharisee. Certainly no Christian, even
if he masquerades as one and misuses the name of Christ. When
he does, he blasphemes, like so many before him. Alas, he is but
one in a long list of politicians who have abused religion as
a justification for crime. Just as the fanatical Islamists misuse
the Koran. Thus can good books like the New Testament be transformed
into evil deeds. For indeed our God is a God of Peace, not a god
of war like Mars or Wotan.
The New Testament is a "plan of action" for peace and reconciliation,
but in AD 312 Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity his
personal religion and in AD 380 Emperor Theodosius declared
Christianity to be the only State religion. This transformed the
New/Old Testament into a programme of war and conquest,
instrumentalizing it into a weapon of mass destruction, an instrument
of asserting power -- and keeping it.
It is appropriate in Holy Week to be reminded of the core of Christian
faith, which is the Beatitudes
:"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they
shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew, Chapter V, verses 1-10)
And I would turn to that passage of the Sermon of the Mount
“If thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest
that thy brother has anything against thee, leave thy gift before
the altar and go first to be reconciled with your brother, and then
come and offer thy gift.” Matthew V, 23-24.
We should reconcile ourselves with our families, with our neighbours,
with the indigenous people of the Americas, of Australia and Tasmania
against whom our European ancestors committed genocide, with the
blacks, whom we enslaved for hundreds of years, with the Palestinians,
whom we have ravaged and murdered since 1947, with the Vietnamese
and Cambodians, whom we napalmed for no reason, with the Iraqis
whom we aggressed and despoiled of their riches, with the Iranians,
whom we are preparing to shock and awe.
The Sermon on the Mount is the New Law, replacing the Old Law of
the Old Testament.
Moses proclaimed the Old Law from Sinai
Christ proclaimed the New Law from the Mount near Capharnaum.
Let us hail the golden rule: “Therefore all that you wish
men to do to you, even so do you also to them” Matthew VII,
12.
The New Law has replaced the old, as a new Alliance with all of
humanity (Matthew Chapter 26, verse 28, Luke Chapter 22, verse
20) has replaced the Old Covenant with a chosen people. And this
new Alliance rests on two principles, that of love, and that of
forgiveness, which Christ so clearly stated in the Lord's Prayer, et
dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus
nostris.
Let us intone the Benedictus of Beethoven's Missa
Solemnis
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini
and the Agnus Dei
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi
dona nobis pacem
And now let us medidate for a moment. What would we do with
the Lamb of God if He were to visit us today? We probably would
not recognize Him. Bearing in mind that the establishment in the
Roman province of Palestine in the time of Emperor Tiberius considered
Him to be a seditious person, a kind of intellectual terrorist,
who knows, maybe He would find Himself today on a rendition flight
to be tortured in Syria or in an incommunicado cell in Guantanamo.
Easter is the name of the pagan goddess of spring. It commemorates
the rebirth of nature, thus the resurrection of Christ. It is good
that we do not celebrathe the blood of the Egyptian first-born,
the Pass-over, when the angels of God passed over Egypt and "slew
every first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharao
on the throne to the first-born of the prisoner in the dungeon,
as well as all the first-born of the animals" (Exodus, Chapter
12, verse 29) sparing only the Israelites. I think we do well to
celebrate Spring and Resurrection.
I think we do well to reflect on Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical
"Deus Caritas est", for indeed this is the new
Covenant, God is Charity and enjoins us to love one another. "A
new commandement I give you, that you love one another" (John
Chapter 13, verse 34), "Peace I leave with you, my peace
I give you" (John, Chapter 14, verse 27), and to reflect
on his newer encyclical Spe Salvi.
And let us imagine ourselves back in that high room of the cenaculum
in Jerusalem where Christ invited his 12 disciples for Seder service.
He invited them all -- even Judas Iscariot, even Peter who would
deny him three times that very evening! We are all invited -- we
sinners, and all the world is invited to the table of our Lord the
Creator. It is not only the "elect" or the "pure"
who are invited. In fact, we sinners are those who most need God's
grace and Christ's blessing to acquire the strength necessary to
carry us through the vicisitudes of every day. We are all invited
to share the bread and the wine.
Let us be thankful for this invitation and sing Psalm 136, Confitemini
Domino, quoniam bonus. Confitemini Domino Alleluia.
Amen.
Pax vobiscum.
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