'We enjoyed you!' Sermon on the overcoming of death

Sermon. Trinity 4 2015 (Year B). St Michael and All Angels.

Wisdom of Solomon 1.13-15; 2.23

2 Corinthians 8.7-15

Mark 5.21-43

There's so much in today's Gospel reading. But I don't know if you realise that the First Reading shares some theme(s) with the Gospel. It's intended to. One of those shared themes might be this: death and the overcoming of death.

Hear again:

[First reading:] 'God did not make death and he does not delight in the death of the living.'

[From the Gospel, Jesus said:] 'The child is not dead but sleeping.'

'He took her by the hand and said to her: “Talitha qum!” Which means little girl get up.'

Or little one, rise – rise - as if/as in from the dead; both the Hebew (qum) and the Greek use the normal language for resurrection.

Death and the overcoming of death. It is good for us to think of these things, because death will come to us all, whether we face up to that or not. However, we also need to think of death because our news reports are drenched in talk of the taking of life, of death by killing. When we now hear of Tunisia, Kuwait or France (and there are other countries getting less publicity), we will not think of lovely holiday destinations of various degrees of exoticness. Our stomachs may tighten, and we fear news of new atrocities. Not only of killing, but of brutality, of people chopping heads off and displaying them on spikes! Lord, have mercy!

Clearly people are coming under evil influences to see violence as the answer to everything. That they have a duty to commit vile acts of violence, wherever and however they can. That they must teach others this too. That this pleases Gd even. We might add they fall in love with their own rightness, and that they get addicted to violence. Many, but my no means all of these people call themselves Muslim and say they're acting in the name of true Islam - not least when they kill other Muslims.

But to take a step back: it is not that this is a uniquely violent and violence-loving period in world history. In saying that, I am not saying 'things aren't that bad, just relax'. Quite the contrary. I am saying that there has always been violence and brutality in the world, including on industrial scale. This is scary and heartbreaking and unbearable. But there are two things we are forbidden to do.

The first is we are forbidden to take comfort (or add to our fears for that matter) by falling into prejudice against our Muslim neighbours, or against the 1-2 billion Muslims in the world. I wish the media would not speak about 'Islamic State' as they are not an Islamic. IS murderers revel in their violence. They film themselves killing people, quickly and slowly, and put the films on social media set to music. Apparently (I think one should not watch but I read from others) their film-making skills are high. 

Let us not do them the service of thinking they act out of piety. What they're saying is really: 'Look what a big boy am I! Look how frightening I am! My team are bound to win, and compared to me, you are not worth anything.' Let's be clear: Islam is against all of that. Alongside all the quotations in the Qur'an about peace and good relations, it is also the case that humility – against self-aggrandisement - is a cardinal virtue in Islam.

The second thing we are forbidden to do is despair. Violence will not win. Again, from the Wisdom of the first reading:

'God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome and there is no destructive poison in them.' 

So the world and its people were and are made, at heart, wholesome. How can we find and draw strength from that wholesomeness?

Well, let us think of another act of terror, which it seems was committed by an American White-Supremacist terrorist, in Charleston South Carolina. If things are as they seem (and no one has yet been found guilty), it seems that Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, attended Bible study for an hour, and then shot nine of the people there dead. Apparently he thought that to make white people stronger, you have to kill black people.

Once he was arrested, the families of those he had killed had chances to speak directly to him. Did you hear or read it? What they say, repeatedly is 'I forgive you. My family forgives you.' Extraordinary. This has nothing to do with politeness, niceness, softening or indulgence. But something profound about the Christian faith, and something revolutionary.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26Eysq22Yg]

Now, please don't mishear me. What I am not saying is that if someone kills your nearest and dearest, it's your Christian duty to say to them: 'I forgive you'. It's not, because forgiveness means six or seven different things, and some are acts of will, and others are inclinations that come only over time, and after internal conflict. The only form of forgiveness Christians must offer is (and this is what the word literally means): 'I forgo – I forgo any instinct or plans for vengeance. The cycle of vengeance stops here.' (That is, of course, what is revolutionary about it.)

And another family member said this to the man (here I warn you I may do a bad American accent and I may cry):

'We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautiful people I know. Every fibre in my body hurts. But as we say in Bible study, we enjoyed you. And may Gd have mercy on you.'

'We enjoyed you.'

I think what this wonderful Christian woman is saying may be something like this: I do not seek vengeance. And I am not going to re-invent history. Evil though your act was, it does not define you. Because we already had enjoyed your presence. We saw in you some of the wholesomeness that is at the heart of all creation, and we did what we could do to honour it. We refuse to take that back because of your actions. Through all the pain, through all that we are dealing with in living after your still-most-definitely-evil act, we say we were right. At the heart of our faith is the idea of welcome, and we enjoyed you. 

Let me add if we don't enjoy the people we welcome, heaven is going to be a form of hell. Of course, that can be hard. (Leaving aside sin, we are all very we are different.) But our faith trains us in the ways of welcome and the enjoyment of the another. Gd trains us in the ways of welcome and the enjoyment of the other, if we let Gd.

This – welcome and enjoyment of the other - is what will drive violence out of the world. This is the overcoming of death. May it come speedily and in our days. Amen.