Wisdom of Solomon 6.12-20, Matthew 25.1-13
Remembrance Sunday, 12 November 2023
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
If you were ever a member of the Scouts or Guides then you’ll know very well the motto, Be Prepared. In Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell explained that it means ‘you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty… having disciplined yourself to be obedient to every order, by giving forethought to any situation that might occur, and by making yourself strong and active; so that you are ready and able to do the right thing at the right moment.’ [1]
Now, Lieut. Gen. Baden Powell C.B., of course, got his ideas about preparedness from his military experience. Scouting for Boys included sections on stalking, tracking, signalling and camping, and these also featured in the Girl Guiding manual, which Baden Powell co-wrote with his sister Agnes, and which was called How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire. [2]
So the ideas which the Scouting movement taught us about being prepared were rooted in a distinctly military frame of mind. Many of us grew up, simultaneously, with a set of directions from another source altogether. Whereas the Baden-Powells taught us to face the world prepared for combat, our Christianity presented us with Jesus, who taught us to face the world prepared to love.
Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids was his lesson in being prepared. It is not about preparing for a war but for a wedding; its intention is not to teach us to approach life as a military campaign, but to approach life as a marriage. Jesus was teaching us to be prepared… to love.
These two strands of our lives intertwine, and surface together at Remembrance, in different ways for different people. We may see Remembrance as a celebration of our love for our country and its people, our love for a way of life we value and affirm. Those whose names we memorialise epitomise a self-giving love for all that represents. We may see Remembrance as a statement of our love for all of suffering humanity, for all victims of violence and war. Many uphold Remembrance out of love for someone personally known to us, who fought in a World War, but who we recall and value as a grandparent, a tradesman, a neighbour, a school friend.
Our love - our loves - are forged in a world of conflict. There are disagreements and enmity. Our societies are well-acquainted with the ways of hatred and distrust. Every day we hear stories which can cause us to fear ‘the other’. We’ve been well-disciplined to separate ourselves from people we don’t understand, to be prepared to defend ourselves against all kinds of undefined alien threats.
In the face of all this, the challenge to every Christian is how to face the world prepared to love. For Jesus has, very unambiguously, taught us this: ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven’. [3]
Any person determined to live in peace in this world must work out how to be ready in mind and body to act peaceably in every situation: to be prepared to develop the self-discipline to obey peaceful instincts over aggressive ones, to be ready to do the thing which unites, not divides; to be able to do the thing which generates love, not fear. All this requires a firmness of mind and heart, an absolute commitment of time and effort and energy: a strength of character which challenges the lazy criticism that pacifism is a form of weakness. Far from it.
“Jesus rejected hatred” – not because he lacked “strength” or “vitality” or even “incentive,” but because “he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father.” Hatred is ultimately “the great denial” of life; Jesus “affirmed life.” Jesus calls us to love our enemies – not just our personal enemies, not just opponents within our in-group, but enemies that are to us as the Romans were to Jesus. We are to “Take the initiative in seeing ways by which you can have the experience of a common sharing of mutual worth and value. It may be hazardous, but you must do it.’” [4]
Jesus taught and lived in the tradition of Isaiah, whose vision of a world renewed by God spoke of people ‘beating their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks’, where ‘Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.’ [5]
Imagine this world where instead of training for war, we train for peace. Imagine our putting all the enormous resources of time and money which we currently expend on arms, into health, welfare and community-building. When people start to imagine it, then this world begins to emerge. Look at what has been achieved in our lifetimes, in Northern Ireland, in South Africa, where people have risked talking to their enemies, and shrewd nonviolent diplomacy has overcome armed conflict.
In Berlin, Ben David, an Israeli who spent his teenage years in a West Bank settlement, and Jalil Dabit, a Palestinian Arab from central Israel, together run a restaurant called Kanaan, whose menu melds the best of both cultures to serve up dishes such as shakshuka lasagne and hummus ragout. Imagine for a moment the process these men must have gone through before deciding to start this business together: the risks they must have considered, of how very possibly opposition to their project could have cost them a place in their families, or friendships, or attracted the worst sort of society’s critics - those who oppose peace-building initiatives by force of violence.
Now, hear Ben David describe his first reaction to the news on 7 October, of the Hamas attacks which killed more than 1,400 people. He said he ‘reeled’, and swiftly shut down the restaurant.
“I was overwhelmed,” he said. He lashed out angrily at Hamas, telling Dabit: “I wish that we will destroy Gaza.” He was shocked by the way that Jalil Dabit responded. “I was full of hate, full of anger, and he hugged me,” said Ben David. “He had faith in me and I had fear in me.” Dabit said he understood his friend’s anger at what Hamas had done. “I felt the same,” he said. “How could they do something like this? You’re not fighting for the Palestinians, you’re making a problem for the Palestinian people.”
Consider now, what it must have taken for the two men to decide to reopen the restaurant, during the following days in which Germany saw a rise in attacks on Muslims and Jews. Remembering that their opening party in 2015 had been met with protests and threats, Ben David said, “Of course we were scared. We didn’t really know that nothing would happen.”
The alternative, however, was to continue living in fear. “We need to give a place for the fear, to respect it but still be brave enough to cross through it,” said Ben David. “We’re taking those walls down.” People have since poured through the restaurant’s doors, embracing it as a safe space, said Ben David. “People are coming because they’re looking for an island of peace. A lot of people are getting lost in the violence of both sides at the moment,” he said. “It’s very scary to be scared. And you hear it from both sides.” [6]
Consider also this statement made to a Christian Aid partner in Israel last week, by an Israeli civilian who was eyewitness to the Hamas attacks:
“I saw [a family member] being taken on a motorcycle toward Gaza and then I saw [another] surrounded by four or five Hamas guys. I hope we can come together, so that together we can think about what is best for us and also for them. They are suffering, too; they are being battered, too.” [7]
Now, pause to ask where such an astonishing statement of empathy might come from, in that person: astonishing in this moment of fear and terror. It sounds to me like it must surely be founded on that person having given years of disciplined, deep, consideration of how love has to overcome hate in their society.
The song Make me a channel of your peace is disliked by some who regard it as a dull dirge expressing good intentions which we are impotent to fulfil in a world of conflict. But it needn’t be that: if we feel that we have it within us, and with God’s help, to develop the self-discipline to obey peaceful instincts over aggressive ones, to be ready to do the thing which unites, not divides; to be able to do the thing which generates love, not fear; if we think that we can train for peace … if we have this faith, then we can sing this song as a confident prayer.
I’d like to invite you to stand with me and sing it now; and as you do, to decide what meaning you will put into it, and what intentions you will draw from it.
Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred let me bring your love;
where there is injury, your healing, Lord,
and where there’s doubt, true faith in you.
O Master, grant that I may never seek
so much to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love with all my soul.
Make me a channel of your peace:
where there’s despair in life let me bring hope;
Where there is darkness, only light,
and where there’s sadness, ever joy.
O Master, grant that I may never seek…
Make me a channel of your peace:
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
in giving to all men that we receive,
and in dying that we’re born to eternal life. [8]
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Scout Motto
[2] Wikipedia: How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire.
[3] Matthew 5.44.
[4] Benjamin Crosby, Foolhardy Wisdom: Can we afford to love our enemies in an unforgiving society? Plough Quarterly, 22 August 2023. Quoting from Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited.
[5] Isaiah 2.1-5.
[6] Ashifa Kasam, ‘Best of both sides’: Berlin’s Israeli-Palestinian restaurant that won’t give in to fear. Guardian, 8 November 2023.
[7] Christian Aid / Embrace he Middle East, Resources for a Prayer Vigil [PDF].
[8] Make me a channel of your peace [YouTube]. Words: Sebastian Temple; attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.
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