Sermon for St Patrick’s Day 2019 - A response to the massacre in New Zealand Mosques

What does St. Patrick's Day mean to you? Is it about the parades, the green beer and a nice long weekend?  Is it about our Patron Saint and the stories told about him and attributed to him, some of them true perhaps and more of them legends? Is it about the history of Christianity on this Island? Or is it an opportunity to celebrate our Irishness, our culture, our identity and indeed identities plural because it is not so easy to define what it means to be Irish today? 

When I was growing up Irish identity was assumed to be Catholic and Nationalist and we Protestants were a small minority who kept our heads down but now we are part of an increasingly diverse Ireland which is uncomfortable with identifying with any religious tradition and if anything has come to define itself in terms of its plurality and openness to difference. I think this is a good thing but we still have our moments - times when we get sucked back into that them and us way of thinking.

          Like many people on this island I watched with disbelief the shambolic behaviour of the British parliament last week in dealing with the ongoing Brexit issue and I was provoked to post some very negative satirical material on social media which to the neutral observer might be deemed anti British. It is a fine line that is very easy to cross when defending ones own nation becomes an attack on another and I think in hindsight I probably crossed that line - and that is not a good thing. Celebrating or even protecting our own national identity should not necessitate attacking or undermining another! 

          Today we live in a world where a very strident and aggressive nationalism is on the rise and is characterised by demonization of various minority or marginalised groups.  It is a politics of hate and makes no apology for that.

Sadly it was part of the narrative that brought about the result of the Brexit referendum which was fuelled by the politics of fear and hate concerning immigrants and refugees. It is also to be witnessed in the domestic and foreign policy of the United States under their current president who cannot bring himself to condemn Nazi intimidation in his own country and has created an entirely false narrative equating immigrants with terrorism when virtually all such incidents on US soil have been perpetrated by white US indigenous nationals.

          Just a few days ago we saw the outworking of this mindset in the New Zealand massacre by Brenton Tarrant who in his manifesto praised Donald Trump as a 'symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose'.

          If all of this is sounding too political for the pulpit let me assure you this is not about party politics - but the kind of politics that Jesus himself was concerned with - Jesus was probably crucified because of his politics. The Gospel when you take it seriously and try and implement it in the world is a very political instrument.

          So how do we respond as Church to this? - Many people have said that 'Thoughts and Prayers' are not enough and that we need to be proactive - not just salving the wounds but addressing the very roots of the problem. One response to the New Zealand massacre published in the Guardian was an article by Masuma Rahim who said this:

........it’s not just Muslims who are losing their lives at the hands of far-right nationalism. It’s Jews and Sikhs and black people. Because when fascism comes to call, it usually doesn’t care what shade of “different” you are. All it knows is that you are different, and it does not like you for it.

My fury and my pain is not lessened when a Jewish person is killed, or when a Hindu person is killed. We share a common humanity and that is sufficient for us to feel rage and pain. ............ It’s time to make a stand. Defend our rights......... Use your position to send a clear message that hatred has no place in society. .......Too many have died. More will die if you fail to act. History will judge you for it.

I want to pick up on one of the phrases that Masuma Rahim used and that was 'common humanity' which straight away resonated with me as I am currently reading a wonderful book which is all about embracing a more generous worldview and faith that focuses on those things that unite us rather than divide us as peoples and nations. In this book, The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr makes the comment that 'Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages'.

Well that is certainly an understatement - we have a lot of work to do on our humanity when these atrocities can be committed in our name and in the name of faith and we must do all in our power to stop the Gospel ever being used to condone, hatred, exclusion and persecution.

In this same book Richard Rohr identifies some specific issues with the way that Christianity has evolved which is at best not helpful in the current crisis and at worst may actually fan the flames of hatred. Much of these failings are truths that we have forgotten but which were part of our faith tradition from the very beginning.

He calls for a recovery of an 'incarnational worldview' which is 'the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally everything and every one'.

'Without a sense of the inherent sacredness of the world....we struggle to see God in our own reality, let alone respect reality, protect it or love it. The consequences of this ignorance are all around us, seen in the way we have exploited and damaged our fellow human beings, the dear animals, the web of growing things, the land, the waters and the very air.'

 He also points out that we have narrowed the remit of the Gospel and ignored some key Scriptures such as  the prologue of St John's Gospel which makes it clear that Christ has existed from the beginning of history - Christ as he puts it is not Jesus last name:

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. ............... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,  full of grace and truth.

And yet despite this proclamation of the universal nature of the Incarnation our faith became a competitive theology with various parochial theories of salvation instead of a universal cosmology inside of which all can live with an inherent dignity......As a rule we were more interested in the superiority of our own tribe, group or nation than we were in the wholeness of creation.

This is where it gets uncomfortable because this is exactly the theology which feeds and legitimises the kind of tribal zenophobic nationalism that is so destructive in our world today and it is not authentic Christianity.

Rather says Rohr: 'Authentic God experience always expands your seeing and never constricts it....In God you do not include less and less; you always see and love more and more. The more you transcend your small ego, the more you can include. And Jesus says: 'Unless the single grain of wheat dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it does it will bear much fruit.'

I said earlier that much of our failings are about truths we have forgotten - If proof were needed just listen to the words of this extract from the Breastplate, attributed to St. Patrick:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

In a world scarred by fear and hatred, distrust and disillusionment let us embrace and proclaim, as did St. Patrick  a more generous Christ who alone can reconcile and heal our brokenness.  Amen.