Sermon Archive

Religion and Politics

Sermon preached by Ken Boyd at Evensong on 25 April 2004

Exodus 15.1-21 ; Revelation 20.11, 1.1-7.

Political opinion was deeply divided on last week's proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but not other former Palestinian land. Was this abandonment, or a way of restarting, the 'road map' process? Only time will tell perhaps, and perhaps it will be a long time. The origins of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it could be argued, go back at least three thousand years to the events described in tonight's first lesson - Israel's Exodus from Egypt and the Jewish people's consciousness of being God's chosen people. Modern Israel's aspirations, of course, are more secular. But as in other parts of the world where peoples are divided by religion, suspicions and animosities engrained over centuries repeatedly fuel and flare up into conflict. The burden of history is not easily cast off.

One response to this, nevertheless, is to say that this burden should and can be cast off. That, in essence, was the response of many people in Western Europe, wearied by the senseless slaughter of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion which followed the Reformation, and sensing that a secular solution was the only way forward. There was no earthly way of arbitrating between the conflicting claims of Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed doctrines. But there was perhaps a better earthly prospect of peace and prosperity, if religion, which itself seemed to be the problem, could be sidelined, and society reconstructed on the basis of scientific knowledge and secular common sense.

Now that response, to give it its due, seems in many respects to have served Western Europe well. We are now more peaceful and prosperous than ever before; and even the religiously conflict-ridden north-eastern and south-western fringes of Europe, Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, are being drawn into this peaceful and prosperous secular fold. So it is not surprising that many people today assume that the long history of religion's complicity with conflict and violence demonstrates that the world would be better off without religion, and the sooner the better.

But would the world be better off without religion? One objection is that this question is too theoretical to be worth contemplating. Western Europe's current disenchantment with organised religion is exceptional. In the rest of the world religions are growing rather than contracting; and in the 21st century, religion seems likely to be more rather than less politically important. Another objection is that during the 20th century, some of the worst violence and crimes against humanity were perpetrated not by religious, but by openly atheistic Fascist or Communist regimes which claimed to be 'scientific'. That does not excuse Christians or Muslims and even some Buddhists for complicity with conflict and violence. But it suggests perhaps that blaming religion for history's ills is too easy an answer.

Let me suggest a different way of looking at this. Our first lesson tonight records Israel's rejoicing at being delivered from Egypt. 'Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.' This is a song of slaves, victims, the despised and rejected, the wretched of the earth, who have nevertheless recovered their human dignity and freedom. Or rather, whose human dignity and freedom have been recovered for them, by a more than human agency, by a power greater than human power. It is a song of thanksgiving. But it is also a song poised on a knife edge between thanksgiving and triumphalism. With the slightest change of accent, it could become a song no longer thanking God, but taunting the Egyptians who were 'thrown into the sea'. 'Our God', with the accent on 'our', 'is greater than your gods', Israel might have jeered. Perhaps they do not quite say this, but the risk is there; and the Old Testament is replete with warnings against assuming that God, who has grasped Israel, is in Israel's grasp, or that the good and perfect gifts which come 'from above', like manna, are Israel's permanent and secure earthly possession or property. 'My ways are not your ways', says the Lord, who warns Israel against being 'at ease in Zion'.

What was true for Israel is true for Christians also. Christ's resurrection, for example, is not something which can be conclusively proved as an historical fact. Neither, on the historical evidence available, can it conclusively be proved not to have taken place, or to have been an illusion or deception. The meaning of the resurrection remains, rather, a real question, which each individual has to answer for him or her self. By giving an affirmative answer, countless Christians have found, the resurrection becomes meaningful not as a theoretical possibility in the past, but as a life lived in the expectancy of God's goodness, in this life and in the world to come. But even then, the resurrection life is not any Christian's permanent and secure earthly possession or property; and when Christians and the Church have hardened expectancy into dogma, their dead certainty has often sapped, and sometimes killed off, the experiential roots of a living faith.

Now dead certainty in religion, I think, is very much at the root of religion's complicity with violence and conflict. Dead certainty about God assumes that God can be known as we know an object in the world, that we can have objective knowledge of God; and so when our objective account of God is challenged by the very different account of another religious group we feel threatened, become defensive; and of course the best means of defence is attack: hence the conflict and violence.

But to imagine that we can have dead certainty about God, of course, is a snare and a delusion. Human knowledge of God arises not from observing or theorising, but in experiencing and participating in life; and insofar as we can speak meaningfully about God, it is only in the language or prayer and poetry, mystery and myth, charity and politics. Religious knowledge, strictly speaking, is not knowledge about God at all, but an attitude of loving openness and trust toward the ultimately unknown, which can be satisfied by nothing less than addressing the ultimately unknown as 'Thou'.

Our second lesson tonight, from Revelation, is the high poetry of this mystery. John's visions are inspired images of time's enfolding in eternity, and the consummation of all human longing in the love of God. His vision of the last judgement and the New Jerusalem testifies that all human lives, and particularly those of the despised and rejected, are not lost in the wastes of time, but made meaningful in the eternal mercy and compassion of God, 'who will wipe away every tear from their eyes'.

There is of course no earthly way of theoretically proving or disproving this testimony, and in secular terms it is easily dismissed. But to see things in secular terms is by definition to see them from the perspective of the present, and the present is the middle of the story, whose beginning and end are hidden from us. To make the perspective of the present the touchstone of truth, therefore, is the secular equivalent to the dead certainties of religion, and hence just another way of avoiding the ultimate question that our experience of life poses.

So the question remains; and how we answer it remains up to us. But so too remains faith's testimony - that love will make love's meaning plain; and that it is only as we rise each day, each hour, to the calling of love's risen life, that we learn, patiently and prayerfully, how to play our part, personally and politically, in the coming of God's kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.

But what, finally, of the question I began with? Last night I received by email the weekly circular letter sent by the minister of the Scots' Church in Jerusalem. He had been attending a conference there of Christians, Jews and Muslims. Many felt depressed and oppressed by President Bush's endorsement of Prime Minister Sharon's proposal, made apparently without consulting the Palestinians. Was there any way ahead, and if so what? No-one had any easy answers. But two contributions were thought-provoking. One was by a priest, who said that 'only the Palestinians can relieve the Israelis of the burdens they are carrying, and only the Israelis can relieve the Palestinians of the burdens they carry. Outsiders may be able to encourage both sides along the way, but in the end, it will be when the Israelis and the Palestinians are able to help each other, that the conflict will be resolved.'

The other contribution was by a Palestinian Christian lawyer, whose own house was under threat of being taken away and who saw plenty of reasons for feeling depressed about the current situation. Nevertheless he rejected such attitudes. 'It had not been the Romans whose Empire had survived', he said. 'It had not been the British whose Empire had survived. It will be no human Empire that will survive. It is God who will rule', despite all present appearances to the contrary. The lawyer's speech, the minister writes in his circular letter, 'was more than an antidote to the feelings of hopelessness affecting many. It was his way of reminding us of the Good News we have been given, and which it is our job to translate into action.'

'The Good News we have been given, which it is our job to translate into action.' What can one add to that, except 'Amen'.