It is ironic that on the day after the UK, France and the USA launchmore than 100 missiles into Syria that the Bible readings, across the world, haveJesus in a body which spans heaven and earth, meeting his disciples and the first thing he says to them is Peace be with you. "Shlam 'ahlaykhu" in Aramaic, which Jesus would have said. Close to Shaloamalechem - the Hebrew. These were the guys who disappeared into the night when he was arrested. This is the first time he meets the eleven, according to Luke, and his first words are not - "where in God's name did you go when I was arrested" - but a wish for peace. "Shlam 'ahlaykhu", "Peace be with you".
Those of you who have followed the news over the past weeks will know that the United Nations Security Council has been a forum for a real war of words about the poisonings in Salisbury and the chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta. The newspapers talk of a new cold war and even World War 3. It is frightening and abysmal that the world learns very little from the past.
Sin is an old-fashioned the word but the war in Syria is full of individuals and groups on all sides who are sinning. There is hate, with precious little love for neighbour, and whether that is underpinned by lust for power or unbelievably misguided and corrupt religion makes no difference, this is darkest and deepest sin. When anyone decides to randomly kill civilians in gas-attacks, this is sin. When anyone bombs randomly and destroys civilian lives and homes, this is sin, and all the greater when the people who die are innocent children. In a moment of deep anger all three synoptic gospels record Jesus saying
It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied round their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
It is sin that caused half a million deaths in Syria, sin that has displaced seven million as refugees, sin that finds thousands struggling across treacherous waters to some kind of jailed safety, sin that breaks up families, and that causes a generation of children to be without education and to live constantly in fear of being bombed out of existance or orphaned by war. This is raw sin. It is sin when ambassadors lie at the United Nations, when newspapers lie for their owners, when politicians lie to whole nations to boost their own popularity or power. Untruthful propoganda is sin.
Sin is at much local as national. I talked with Age Concern on Friday about elderly people, desperate for finance to pay for residential care. There is a market in providing very poor loans against houses and apartments for the vulnerable elderly, according to Age Concern, with valuations of one third or one quarter of the actual value of the property. This is sin.
You can cut out sin in three ways. (1) Kill the sinner, and in some cultures, cut off the hands of the thief. It certainly removes the possibility of sin, but this is not something I can ever sign up to. (2) Impose a fear of dreadful punishment. We were at Spring Harvest a couple of weeks ago and to hear the story of a North Korean Christian being tortured and jailed for her faith was sobering. Clearly that government thinks it is a sin to be a Christians. so imposes extraordinary punishments. It doesn't stop the rot though - there are hundreds of thousands of secret Christians in North Korea. (3) The only way to cut our sin is to change hearts and minds.
Hate, at the heart of this kind of sin, is not negated by bombing, by punishment or some eye for an eye revenge. It is negated by the love of a tortured and crucified God coming into a room and wishing peace on those who were quite prepared to run off when he is arrested. The darkness of sin is only overcome by a change of minds, by love, trust and forgiveness - and not just at the personal level but at the national level too.
John Hume was a key architect of the Good Friday Peace accord in Northern Ireland. To counter the hatehe wrote into the agreement that new groups must meet regularly:one group of the North talking with the South, a second of the UK government talking with the Irish government, and a third, a government in Northern Ireland representing all the people. Changing hearts and minds means proper dialogue between those holding the power, and not just rhetoric at a Security Council. Only when people meet and wish 'Peace be with you' will love reawaken. I was in Northern Ireland a month ago and withBrexit border fears and a failed Stormont, the taxi driver I had, feared the worst. Sin can trump peace if good people let it.
John wrote: Jesus appeared so that he might take away our sins. Peter says to those who shouted crucify: turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, Jesus says to his disciples:repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
Just as Jesus saw the eleven cowards in front of him as his witnesses, it was an impossible task for those random eleven to take the faith of Christianity to the ends of the earth, but, enabled by the Holy Spirit, they did and we are here as proof of that. Jesus looks at us too. He wants us, his disciples, to do the same, to live such a life of love and peace that the world will see in us a different way to live, a different set of values, a life, like his, poured out for the common good. Try it. Next time you walk into a room to someone who has let you down or you have let down, someone who hates you or you really dislike, wish peace on them, forgive them, say sorry. Those are the seeds we need now which change hearts and change the world.
Amen