Not Torn Apart

There was a massive falling out this afternoon in our house. It had to do with one person, (tried beyond the limits of human endurance it seemed) coldly destroying another person’s complex lego helicopter. This was a treasured object for which the instructions have been lost. As a third party trying for twenty minutes’ respite before setting off for the nearest play area (it being a damp afternoon), the inevitable uproar proved that my ‘red line’ is far closer than I had hitherto assumed it to be. I was furious with both of them – until, of course, an almost unbearable compassion, ‘twin suffering’ perhaps, took hold of the situation.

Then it became a case of who to deal with first when it came to ‘damage containment’ – and assessing where the most significant damage lay. The easiest course of action might have been to lay down the law by shouting louder than either of the combatants and to dismiss the lego as just an old toy, easily replaceable, thereby also dismissing its owner’s valid grief. Such a course of action would have done nothing to heal the far more significant long term damage which might have been done to the two individuals concerned in their relations with each other. Such moments embed themselves in a person’s memory and grow like tumors as, over the years, they become overlaid with words or gestures which ‘trigger’ that particular memory, so giving it enormous significance. Ideally, the situation needed to be resolved without the final arbitrator appearing to take sides.

But in such defining moments, one’s instincts are often correct. So the first tranche of my volcanic fury landed on the perpetrator. How then was this person to be helped to take the first step in the healing process, unless I could provide some cooling off time – time to really feel what the victim was feeling? Meanwhile, the victim continued to howl – taking full advantage of having been wronged. It became clear that reconciliation was only going to take place once the victim had stopped howling for long enough to hear the word ‘sorry’ spoken in truth, a word which was beginning to shape itself in the perpetrator’s heart, once the usual formulaic (no eye contact) ‘sorry’ had been said.

I demanded more of both of them – more willingness to take responsibility and more courage to let go.  And perhaps because by this time I was close to tears myself, I got it. There was silence, life-defining silence, followed by a deep embrace, almost painful in its goodness. And then laughter. For a moment we knew the Kingdom of Heaven.

Applied to the present fevered political climate this invites pause for thought. Hatred, bitterness and blame could be transfigured in a single moment of ‘twin suffering’. Everything might be perceived in a different light, the light of hope, which is the knowledge that all things work to the good for those who have not forgotten how to speak the kind of truth which makes for real reconciliation, but reconciliation is not what we want from our politicians – or is it?

The gospel for this Pentecost Sunday speaks of a comparable situation. A group of people holed up in a room, afraid, confused and by now probably falling out with each other over who was to blame for what happened two days ago. Everyone wants the last word. The Christ steps in to the room, seemingly from nowhere – or had he been there, unrecognised, all the time? Into the mounting tension he speaks the words “Peace be with you”. They are a command, not an exhortation, a command which comes from within the deepest compassion for the human predicament, of which my two combatants were only a tiny sample.

It is our humanity which is at stake in such quarrels because blame reduces not only the perpetrator of the original wrong, but the victim as well, to an object – something to be conquered, ‘bested’ or won over. The recent televised election debates, though articulate and at times passionate, suggest that our politics are a magnified version of what went on in that upper room, before those words were spoken, and of two children trying to have the last word over how and why the lego helicopter was wrecked. In so doing, each is trying to have power over the other, to reduce the other to something legitimately ‘won’, a kind of trophy figure.

The incident which took place in that upper room reveals that the authority given by Christ to forgive or withhold forgiveness is the only authority which really counts. It follows the command to be at peace, knowing that we ourselves have been forgiven. How badly do we want forgiveness in these elections? Or peace for the world in the longer term?  No political party can deliver on these things. It is we who must start by wanting it, working from within the system itself, of which we are a part whether we like it or not.

With sighs too deep for words

What are we to do in the face of the suffering we see in Gaza? And not only in Gaza, but in the whole of the Middle East. We are there, virtually, at around 7pm every evening. Are we to ‘switch off’ at the end of the news and try to return to our normal lives, even if they are not always all that normal? How are we to think of other things? Is it even possible, at the stage which these various conflicts have reached, to do so? So much has been written. So much has been said, but there is little in the way of sane prognosis for the future, or of how to alleviate suffering in the present. We are left feeling angry, confused and profoundly disturbed by it all. So what can Christians, Muslims and Jews living away from these conflict zones, but watching the events unfold before their eyes day after day on the news, do that would make the slightest difference?

As a Christian, I am convinced, along with St. Paul writing in his letter to the Romans, that neither hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Rom.8) This does not make me feel especially safe, because engaging with this particular text attentively requires that we also engage with violence. Furthermore, we have to do this from our most vulnerable place, the inner space where we know ourselves most truthfully. This truthful space is that part of our selfhood which  few others know. Only God himself knows us as we really are and loves us as we are. There exists a similar conceptual space for nations and peoples, in which all are both accountable before God and fully ‘justified’ – their cause understood and dealt with justly by him because of his deep love for them. History has shown that in this place of truth he remakes nations.

Here then is a place for Christians, Muslims and Jews who want to see an end to the suffering in the Middle East to begin the work of remaking. All people of genuinely good faith can do this by engaging directly with God and with his redemptive purpose for the whole world, and for every person caught up in violent conflict at this moment. Together, as Christians alongside other people of faith, we need to allow ourselves to feel the pain on all sides by owning it as our own before God.

This is not just a vaguely spiritual exercise. It involves honest thinking, leading to the asking of difficult questions of ourselves as well as of those we either disagree with, fear, or simply hate. So one way to begin, with regard to the conflict in Gaza, might be to consider what Hamas, itself an agent of fear, represents in the minds of ordinary Palestinians, both in Gaza and in other parts of Palestine/Israel, and what it represents to Palestinians living in other parts of the world. Do they believe that Hamas is to be trusted with the well being of a people in the longer term? Has it proved itself, in this respect, so far? To what extent, might it be directly responsible for the carnage which is taking place in that country now? How much does it really value the lives of the people it has been elected to protect and serve? Do its members think of Israelis as in some way less human than they are? Is it conceivable that Hamas might one day think of Israelis as something other than ‘occupiers’, to quote its leader in exile, Khaled Mishal?

Similarly, how does the ordinary Israeli, who genuinely wants peace and justice for all, view the wholesale appropriation of Palestinian lands and the bulldozing of their homes? Are they prepared to accept that they are indeed, to a great extent, ‘occupiers’? If so, might they be willing to dialogue with Hamas, beginning with this crucial point? How do these Israelis come to terms with the hugely disproportionate numbers of Palestinians being killed or wounded (the majority being women and children) compared to the relatively few Israelis (mainly military) in the current conflict? Would these Israelis personally be prepared to go into Gaza to help rebuild what has been devastated? If a climate of trust could be generated, in the way I am about to suggest, could they conceive of a time when the brutal wall which divides families and has wrecked lives, be dismantled with their help? Could they see themselves, as people whose faith centres on a righteous, just, merciful and holy God, rebuilding what has been shattered by decades of conflict? Would they even like to think this possible?

These are questions which need to be addressed from within a place of truth and of deep silence before God. It is a silence shaped by sighing and longing, always in the presence of God. Before there is any more talk of truces and ceasefires, we and all who long for an end to this incessant killing need to keep silence together for an hour before God, the hour to be followed by two hours the following day, three on the third, and so on, until continuing with the slaughter and the hatred is revealed in all its ghastly futility and stops. This would be a time for everyone in that region and elsewhere in the world, to simply stand in the presence of God. Secularists should respect it and try to use it to the highest possible good for all in whatever way they can, but they too should remain silent.

This is just one way of re-directing sighs, so that they acquire a purpose. That purpose will ultimately consist of God’s word speaking wisdom into the silence through the voices of women and men who want the kind of peace which, as we say in the blessing given at the end of the Eucharist, ‘passes all understanding’ but which might just get people together who can speak wisdom into the turmoil which is overtaking the Middle East.