Sermon Archive
'Us' versus 'them'?
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 14 March 2004
Isaiah 55.1-9 ; 1 Corinthians 10.1-13 ; Luke 13.1-9.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the media, last Thursday evening, began to talk of Madrid 3/11 as Europe's 9/11. But for me, it was a disturbing comparison. On both days, in 2001 and now in 2004, I had been in London for a meeting, and heard vague rumours of a disaster as I walked back to King's Cross to catch the last train home. But on neither occasion did I discover its full extent until we were heading north. On September 11th, surrounded by people who had been evacuated from Government and other tall buildings, getting well clear of London had seemed a relief. But last Thursday, it was on trains themselves that the bombs in Spain had exploded. Yet the striking contrast between my fellow travellers on these two occasions was that on September 11th , everyone had been talking to everyone else about the disaster, whereas last Thursday evening no-one seemed to be. On both occasions a woman sitting opposite me was talking volubly into a mobile phone. But the woman on September 11th was talking about the twin towers, whereas the woman on Thursday evening was complaining about feeling 'stressed' and 'needing space', with reference not to terrorism but business pressures.
Now there may be many reasons for these different reactions to the two disasters. But let me just comment on one further similarity between 9/11 and 3/11. On both occasions, almost the first question asked was: 'Who is to blame?' Clearly there were very practical reasons for asking that, since the political and policing implications of these disasters would be very different depending on whether the terrorists involved were home-grown, or part of the shadowy international network we have come to know as Al Qaeda. But the reasons for asking 'Who is to blame?', I think, went beyond political and policing concerns. The media, and to some extent all of us, wanted to know whom to blame, not just for practical purposes, but also because there is something in all human cultures that makes us feel more secure if we know who our enemy is, and can fit him into our own mythology of good and evil. During the Cold War, and before that the World Wars, and before that the French Revolutionary Wars, and before that the Wars of Religion, and so on back into ancient history, people have regularly divided up the world into 'us' versus 'them', employing the mythology of good versus evil; and the same need for a mythology of good versus evil seems to be felt no less urgently today. That is the case, moreover, despite the fact that many people now claim that science and secular common sense have superseded myth as the basis of modern culture: for that claim, of course, itself is a myth; and indeed insofar as it divides the world into the 'us' of Western rationality over against the 'them' of religious irrationality and fanaticism, it is part of the problem, rather than the answer to terrorism.
After events like last Thursday's in Madrid then, politicians and policemen may well need to ask 'Who is to blame?' But that may not be the most important question for the rest of us. That the question of blame is one people have always asked, of course, is underlined in the passage from Luke's gospel we heard a few moments ago. Jesus was asked if people killed in various recent disasters were 'worse sinners' than those who escaped. The question here was not about those who caused, but who suffered a disaster. But the drift of the questioning was the same. If we are able to blame someone, either as an enemy, or even as a victim (who 'had only himself to blame'), that somehow helps us to distance ourselves from him - and also from the disaster, as the kind of thing that happens to other people. But that, as Jesus points out, is the most fallacious and superstitious reasoning, and any security it makes us feel is false security. 'Unless you repent', he tells his questioners, 'you will all likewise perish.'
What does Jesus mean by this? Not, clearly, that unless his questioners repent, they will all be killed by the Roman authorities or by falling towers as the victims they asked about were. The repentance he called for, rather, was to save his questioners from the fatal effects of seeking false security in an imaginary world where they were somehow different from the kind of people who perpetrate or suffer from disasters. To imagine that we are somehow different from the people we think of as 'enemies' or as 'victims' does not necessarily mean that one day we shall suffer the same earthly fate as theirs. But it is fatal, in the sense that it blinds us both to our common humanity and to our common mortality, and thus prevents us from realising our individual and communal human potential.
If we follow Jesus' reasoning then, the real question posed for most of us by events like those of last Thursday, is not 'Who is to blame?' but 'What is the problem?' One of the daily lectionary readings for last Thursday morning suggested an answer. Also from Luke's gospel, it was the story of Dives and Lazurus, the rich man who feasted sumptuously every day and the poor man who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. It is of course difficult for those of us who often struggle to make ends meet, to think of ourselves as the rich man in that story. But in the world today it is also very difficult to deny that we who live in Western countries must appear as Dives to many others in the rest of the world, not just in terms of material goods, but also in terms of freedom and security. Clearly it is not the case that the great majority of our fellow human beings outside Europe and North America actively support terrorism: most just want to get on with their lives. But as long as the current vast disparity in material goods and political power remains, it seems likely that terrorism will continue, and that the only way to prevent it in the long term is by these disparities disappearing.
Politics clearly has a central and crucial role in this. But something beyond politics also is needed. Both in today's gospel and in his story of Dives and Lazarus, Jesus reminds us that we are answerable not just to public opinion, or that of our own circle, or even that of the Church, but to how we and everyone else are seen by God. But how do we know how we are seen by God? God is not an entity in time or space, nor an idea we can get our heads round. God is known rather in the calling we experience in our conscience and community, to trust that our lives have a meaning and a goal, and that even the smallest effort to realise that meaning and to work toward that goal is worthwhile. But this calling, equally, is for everyone; and repentance is needed whenever we forget that, by distancing ourselves from others, or thinking of them as 'them' rather than 'us'.
The world today is as dangerous as it has always been. But the greatest danger is to imagine that we can gain any lasting security by distancing ourselves from others. People perish not only at the hands of terrorists, but also by hardening their hearts to one another. That was Jesus' warning. But in today's gospel he followed it up with the story of the fruitless fig tree. 'Let it alone, sir', said the vinedresser, 'this year also, till I dig it about and put on manure.' God desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live. The purpose of repentance is fullness of life, for all God's children.
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