Benedic, Domine, nobis

Benedic, Domine, nobis, et donis tuis. These are the first words of a Latin grace, grace being a Christian prayer said before meals. They translate as ‘Bless us, O Lord, and your gifts’.

We rarely pause long enough to understand what the word ‘bless’ means, or what we are doing when we, often casually, invoke a blessing on others. When a person sneezes, we bless them, a custom which derives from the once held belief that a sneeze separates the soul from the body, so making it a prey to the devil. The words “Bless you” were spoken to snatch the soul back, so to speak.

It is not the only prayer to have been rendered commonplace. The exclamation “Oh God!” is a cry born of a visceral need for God in the moment of its uttering, even if that need is unacknowledged. Given the state of global politics, and the future of the planet itself, would that such an exclamation could be uttered in the desire for it to be heard.

This is why I have, once again, used Bellini’s Christ Blessing as an image for this post. All of last week, and in the wake of the recent plane crash over the Sinai peninsula, the painting has been at the forefront of my ‘envisioning’ mind. One does not simply look at such a painting. One envisions it by carrying it about in one’s inner consciousness, because it is iconic in the original sense.

Icon means image, or ‘imprint’, of a real person. An icon has, quite literally, a life of its own. So it has to be allowed to do its work which, in the case of the Bellini painting, is the work of blessing. Christ is blessing all that we have seen in the last week by way of tragedy and human suffering, on whatever scale. At the same time, he is blessing the private tragedies and agonies which many people live with on a day to day basis. All are blessed and embraced as part of  human suffering.

The Bellini painting engages the imagination on a number of levels, because this is how iconic paintings work. They invite us to engage with, and to allow ourselves to be engaged by, the image. The image engages us where we are bound, or captive, to the suffering of the rest of humanity and to the causes of that suffering.

So it engages us in the visceral nature of our own, sometimes denied, feelings and responses to suffering. We become the child separated from a parent in a crush at the last remaining border gate opening to a new life. We are in the tragic hopelessness of a disgraced Church leader, or of the young man who, accidentally or not, has murdered his step sister. It engages us at every level of conflict and in all its causes. Whether or not we bear some personal responsibility for suffering, the Christ of the painting continues to bless and to speak peace into it.

But the blessing, and the peace which comes with it, are neither superficial or easily bestowed, because together they constitute judgment. It is impossible to receive a blessing if one is out of favour with the one who gives it, and out of kilter with what it represents. So we are also under the critical regard of the giver. His blessing holds us to account, both personally and as members of a free and democratic society, for all that is going wrong in our world. We are held to account in the blessing because it bestows an even greater freedom.

The freedom given to us in the blessing of the risen Jesus is a freedom to be known by God as his own children, the brothers and sisters of his Christ. But it is not lightly given. If we look closely at the painting we see faint traces of suffering on what remains, nevertheless, a vulnerable body. Neither is the blessing easy to receive. We look at the painting and receive the blessing as we acknowledge in ourselves the suffering of millions whom we have never met, as well as some who we may know well and whose suffering we may have contributed to. We look, hold all the suffering and allow the blessing to fall on victims and perpetrators alike.

This program of blessing is the only program available to us for world peace, and for the future of the planet itself, because it derives from ultimate justice. The blessing bestowed by God in the risen Christ changes the way things are because it changes the way we see other people. It challenges us to a radical re-think of how we view other human beings, often as they appear to us from within highly charged contexts.

It obliges us to accept the blessing of the risen Christ on all. This includes all governments and leaders, all policy makers, all members of Isis and Al Khaida, all Palestinians and all Israelis, all Kurds, as well as the newly re-elected Turkish government, and all who have lost land or livelihood to greed and the short-termism of industrial exploitation. The blessing falls on Russia and its allies (including Bashar al-Assad), all refugees and victims of torture, all perpetrators of torture, all who we love, all who we find it hard to love, and any we may hate.

Only when we have allowed it to include all these categories and individuals can it fall on ourselves. So the blessing is a judgment of profound understanding. It changes the way we see things. 

True authority and the conflicts of today

Jesus provokes the religious leaders of his time in a number of contexts. He disturbs the status quo by threatening individual power bases, including religious ones. He outrages the authorities by openly challenging them in his teaching and through subversive behaviour, such as driving out the money lenders from the temple. But most significantly, he threatens their authority by winning people’s trust. He connects with people. In other words, he connects with the truth which they inherently sense but seldom hear spoken, or witness in the lives of the powerful. In Jesus they experience truth as something understood at a primary level of human consciousness. They experience truth, rather than just hear it discussed. This is what makes the authority of Jesus recognisably authentic.

Authority comes with trust. True authority is always given, or entrusted, but it does not always come with power. In fact, Jesus refused to be seduced by power. As a result, his authority challenged and disturbed the powerful. The authority of Jesus was not the same as political power. Through the authority given him by the Father, he inspired and changed lives and convinced people of the love of God, but he did not get rid of the Roman occupying forces. Instead, with the authority given him, he radically changed the destiny of the world. He set it on a different course.

It is authority and not power that is needed today with regard to the conflicts raging in the Middle East. We need an authority which is vested in God’s love for all of humanity, and so capable of changing the world, but which at the same time has been entrusted to our leaders by us, through the democratic process. Trust has to have been earned if authority is to be freely given. It is probably fair to say that political authority is rarely earned in the way God would have it earned, with the exception of one or two rare individuals – Myanmar’s President Aung San Suu Kyi being one which springs to mind.

Entrusting authority to world leaders does not exempt the rest of us from taking responsibility for what they do with it. So they should know that we expect and demand that the wisest, most truthful and most judicious course of action be taken in our name. For us at present, this involves taking responsibility for our country’s active engagement in  a conflict which has been brought about by violent extremism borrowed from religion, and from the lust for power. There are issues of genocide, our own security and that of other countries at stake, all of which return us to the question of authority rightfully earned and exercised in the interest of the freedom and safety of all. ISIS has no such authority. This is also true for those who facilitate or support its actions.

People of faith, as well as those who do not think of themselves as religious, should give religious and secular leaders who are engaged in the urgent business of defeating this particular evil their full and heartfelt attention. Giving such attention is a business which concerns us all. Attentiveness means being alongside the world’s leaders in heart and mind,– in other words, in that part of the heart which also thinks. This does not mean agreeing with them. In fact attentiveness will inevitably face us with some uncomfortable truths regarding other conflicts that we have caused, been involved with, or simply stood by and allowed to happen, Gaza and Israel being one of the most recent examples.

Nevertheless, where there is a heart and head attentiveness, there is also hope. We have had brief and surprising glimpses of what this kind of attentiveness could lead to. Who, for example, could have imagined that a group of leaders whose countries have long distrusted one another and, in some cases, declared themselves to be in a state of mutual enmity, would sit around a table in order to plan how they might best work together to overcome the evil being manifested through the murderous activities of ISIS? The scenario is of course far more complicated, but something of wisdom and common sense is at work here. Something of true authority is being exercised. It shows that an evil which is everyone’s problem requires a concerted and judicious response. If, either as individual nations or collectively, we do nothing, we shall all be responsible for a growing violent anarchy which is capable of doing immense harm to those its perpetrators hate most. This is true both in its own sphere of influence and in the wider global context.

But we are also implicated when we act. This is why trust is so badly needed in politics today. Exercising authority in a judicious way means doing the right thing for the right reason. But this can only be done with the support and trust of a majority who want the same just and peaceful outcome, including those of us who may not be 100% sure that a particular course of action is the right one tactically or as part of a broader strategy, but do know that we need to act. 

Exercising authority in the way God would like us to exercise it begins with humility. It means that the authority given comes with an awareness that our human and often short term thinking does not always turn out for the best for the greatest number of people. Such authority involves us all, so let’s try to be more deeply attentive to those who are accountable to us for the decisions they make in our name.