Terror and the Peace which Passes Understanding
December 15, 2015
November 13:130 killed, 368 injured by terrorists in Paris
November 24: Video of Laquan McDonald shot in the back by Chicago police
November 27: 3 killed, 12 injured at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs
December 2: 14 killed, 22 injured by terrorists in San Bernardino California
Advent came in the nick of time this year – during a storm of brutal news. By November 29 it was time to sing, “Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus.” Dark days. We need light. How do hope, love, peace, joy survive in such a troubled season, when the world seems to have gone mad?
In the darkest days of World War II W. H. Auden wrote these fearsome lines:
Outside the civil garden
Of every day of love there
Crouches a wild passion
To destroy and be destroyed.
O who to boast their power
Have challenged it to charge?
Like wheat our souls are sifted
And cast into the void (1)
Of every day of love there
Crouches a wild passion
To destroy and be destroyed.
O who to boast their power
Have challenged it to charge?
Like wheat our souls are sifted
And cast into the void (1)
What good is faith in the face of ISIS? Is Jesus just a fool in the face of foes like these? Isn’t it time to face reality? Name the enemy. Arm ourselves. Build a wall. No fly zone. Carpet bomb. Close our borders to immigrants, visitors, refugees.
The bible promises that God will deliver us, not always from tragedy, but from the “wild passion to destroy and be destroyed.” You see, “like wheat, OUR souls are sifted.” If WE give in to fear, WE are cast into the void.
Hear, again, words of deliverance and defiance:
Choose life…
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…
Love never ends.
God will wipe every tear from their eye. Death will be no more.
The darkness of hatred turns our eyes to search for the light of love. Shattering gunfire calls us to listen for a song of joy. The wilderness of hatred turns our hearts to welcome people we don’t know into the civil garden of our love.
Women, children, young people are fleeing the wild passion of war, torture, rape, chemical weapons. In May I visited a small United Methodist Church near Berlin, Germany, where I met Emmanuel (God with us), whose family was killed by Boko Haram in Camaroon. He walked north across Africa and came by boat across the Mediterranean Sea. Sitting next to him in worship were Mita and her mother, Ferial, Muslim Kurds, who made their way from Syria through Turkey to Germany.
What would Jesus do? What would the good Samaritan do? The Church welcomed them in to worship, to community. It opened its kitchen for people from around the world gather and eat familiar, traditional foods.
In the desolation of death, we cultivate life by sowing love. We know how love wins – by people who, in spite of their fear, trust that the Holy Ghost “over the bent World broods with warm breast and Ah! bright wings,”(2) and open the door to welcome strangers. This is the table of blessing.
Emmanuel. God is with us. Peace on earth, good will.
Elaine J. W. Stanovsky
(1) For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. W. H. Auden
(2) "God's Grandeur," by Gerard Manley Hopkins
No comments:
Post a Comment