State Violence (2 page)

Welcome to Paradise, to a world wrapped in light, dashed with colours, veiled in shades and darkness. Welcome to beautiful Earth made by God. I have seen a blue haze like a filmy net hanging over the vast expanse of the bush in Australia under the shimmering desert light. A missionary friend has described to me the tropical jungles of Burma dank with oppressive heat and moisture. I have often seen pictures of the sun gleaming on the soaring white mountains of the Himalayas. We are happy in Ireland to walk among our familiar brown bogs and green fields. How lovely the pleasant waters of the River Lee! How delightful to wander along the meandering banks of the Callan in Armagh! To listen to silence or to drink in the sound of music is to be transported back to Paradise. This world is given to us to honour and love. How mysterious it is! Its stewardship is entrusted to humankind. Our responsibility is very great.

Welcome to Paradise and Peace. The peace of God which is greater than all understanding. God breathes within us linking us in our Garden of Eden to individuals of every description, linking all peoples in one great family. Humanity is the community of God. This is Paradise. Peace with God, peace in one's own heart, peace among all peoples.

When God created us in his image, he endowed us with divine dignity. He taught us how to use the earth and its fruits for our own good and the good of everyone. He himself is reflected in the work of human hands.

We regret that we took the forbidden fruit. Man refused to acknowledge his Lord and Creator. He believed that he was his own master. Man destroyed the harmony between himself and others and all the creatures around him. ‘When they were out in the fields, Cain turned on his brother and killed him. The Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He answered, “I don't know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother?” Then the Lord said, “Why have you done this terrible thing? Your brother's blood is crying out to me for revenge.”'

Are we brothers and sisters to others? We hear the daily death toll from Rwanda and Bosnia. We have listened to and experienced the tragedies in this tiny part of Ireland for twenty-five years. ‘A mountain of suffering', Cardinal William Conway used to call it. Last week we buried a young woman in our parish, victim of a sectarian murder. She was badly beaten and her throat was cut in a sectarian attack on Castlereagh Road, Belfast. On Wednesday a Catholic man was murdered near Armagh, shot dead in his lorry while at his work. Last month an IRA bomb blew eight Protestants to bits in Teebane, County Tyrone. Last month the UDA shot dead five Catholics in a bookie shop on the Ormeau Road, Belfast.

The Old Testament is full of evil behaviour of this kind, man using the gifts of creation to burn, ravage and kill. The People of God, our ancestors in faith, the Hebrews, carried out cruel acts of violence and wars against other nations and got itself entangled with their wars. The war God protected them from their enemies and made them victorious over other enemies.

But this image of a war God is not the only image in the Old Testament. Amid the tragedy is a God of Israel who is not only the God of a single nation but also the creator of the world who wishes all peoples to be saved. The Old Testament testifies to the life of justice and peace which Israel is asked to seek in union with God. The chosen people were called on by God to seek not only freedom, justice and security but also a peace founded on God's covenant. It was more than a social and political peace. It was also a religious peace. This peace expressed itself in justice to one's neighbour. Peace is the work of justice says Isaiah. ‘Everywhere in the land righteousness and justice will be done. Because everyone will do what is right, there will be peace and security for ever'(Isaiah 32:16–17). The lament of Isaiah 48:18 makes clear the connection between justice, fidelity to God's law and peace; he cries out: ‘O that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.' Peace was strengthened by God's help and by man's adherence to God's laws. The Old Testament message is true for us today. Whenever we accept God in our life, justice and peace are possible. This is the fulfilment of the words of the psalm: ‘Mercy and truth have met together, justice and peace have kissed each other' (Psalm 85:10). We pray this evening that we will recognise and acknowledge God's rule, that God's truth and justice will prevail in our thoughts, aspirations and actions.

Peace in this world is always under threat. There is no utopia, no final state of peace in a new political order. We look forward to the parousia, a new heaven and a new earth, but we have learned that that is kingdom come when all creation will be made whole. The ‘gospel of peace', the message proclaimed by Christ, announces the presence of God's rule. It brings about our reconciliation with God and people. However, the full realisation of God's rule remains to be brought about in heaven. The old world of sin has not simply disappeared. We still have to struggle against the forces of darkness, a struggle which began with Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, and which will last until the end of time. Pride and disobedience harden the hearts of us all. Even Christ's new creation, redeemed people, can yield to the temptations of power. War and enmity are still present, injustices thrive, sin still manifests itself. Hatred, oppression and violence lurk in the social, political and institutional spheres of our human existence. ‘All creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth' (Rom. 8:22). There is evil in the world despite its redemption.

The final victory, however, is with Christ. The New Testament shows how people have experienced in Jesus ‘the kindness and love of God our saviour' (Titus 3:4). Jesus himself is God's messenger of peace. His words and deeds bring God's liberating kingdom nearer. His words, especially as they are preserved for us in the Sermon on the Mount, describe a new reality in which God's power is manifested and the longing of the people is fulfilled. In God's reign the poor are given the Kingdom, the mourners are comforted, the meek inherit the earth, those hungry for righteousness are satisfied, the merciful know mercy, the pure see God, the persecuted know the Kingdom, and peacemakers are called the children of God. Jesus is a healer who takes care of people in their concrete situations in life. He gives both a physical and spiritual salvation. He gives sight to Bartimaeus. He consoles and praises the Syro-Phoenician woman. He interviews the woman at Jacob's well by day and listens to Nicodemus by night. He forgives sin, ‘Young man, your sins are forgiven'. He makes a friend of Mary Magdalen. Jesus teaches people to pass on to others the reconciliation which they have gained, ‘go at once and make peace with your brother and then come and offer your gift to God' (Matt. 5:24). In the eyes of Jesus peace is not something that is easy to obtain. He talks about a peace the world can not give. This peace does not afford protection against those who oppose it. Jesus himself achieved the reconciliation between God and people on the cross. When we look at a crucifix we understand the power of evil. Violence and injustice in our world are so great that Jesus had to die on a cross to bring about peace and justice. He who lived a life of non-violence became a victim of violence. The cross and resurrection of our Saviour: these are our peace. In his death there is life. In his defeat there is victory. As disciples and as children of God, it is our task to seek for ways in which to make the forgiveness, justice and mercy, and love of God visible in a world where violence and enmity are too often the norm. When we listen to God's word, we hear again and always the call to repentance and to belief: to repentance because although we are redeemed we continue to need redemption; to belief, because although the reign of God is near, it is still seeking its fullness.

The Church of Jesus Christ faces a challenge to continue to testify to the peaceful words and deeds of Jesus and in a spirit of hope against hope to make them her own cause. She invites her members to become a community of reconciliation in practice. She invites all people to found the peace of the world on a relationship with God and in a spirit of trust in his commandments.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred bishop of El Salvador, said: ‘The way of Jesus leads to communion with all people. His enduring presence in the Church is the foundation of a profound brotherhood in the world just as God desires it. Love the Church as the Lord himself. Though she is burdened with the weakness and sinfulness of a long history, she is still the instrument of his Kingdom, his work of salvation for the world, the germ of a new creation.'

Moved by the example of Jesus' life and by his teaching, some Christians have from the earliest days of the Church committed themselves to a non-violent life-style. Some understood the gospel of Jesus to prohibit all killing. Some affirmed the use of prayer and other spiritual methods as means of responding to enmity and hostility. When the wall dividing church and state fell in Roman times, Christians began to share the responsibility of wars. It is easy to see the weakness and sinfulness of the past. While making allowance for our difficulty to understand varied historical situations we would have to say that the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land were waged with great cruelty. Pope John Paul II has called on historians to prepare studies for the year 2000 and the new millennium, a recognition of errors committed by members of the church and, in a certain sense, in its name. I am sure it will include a humble repentance for the excesses of the Crusades, the religious wars of the sixteenth century, the Inquisition, and reviews of Galileo and Copernicus, Luther and Hus. The Catholic Church will look at its own witness, culminating in the martyrdoms of the last hundred years and perhaps produce an ecumenical martyrology which would include martyrs from all the Christian Churches and communions. Nearer to our own times the colonial wars were barbaric in nature. Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy can hardly lift their heads with shame for the violence and death and suffering they brought in brutal fashion to America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and the Far East. These countries still feel the pain of the wounds. Even in Ireland today we still bear the scars of the genocide policy of the nation-state established by the Tudors. A letter appeared in a recent issue of
The Tablet
– ‘Why do Christians kill one another in Africa? is a question tormenting those attending the African Synod in Rome – in Europe have we become so hardened to the practice of Christians killing one another that we no longer bother to ask?' Yes, Christians still succumb to the temptations of power and violence and thus disregard the word of the Lord.

Looking back on the history of the Church, on the good side one can say that Christians have struggled hard from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to debate the problems of war and peace. Pacifism has gained ground, especially in the recognition of personal conscientious objection. The theory of a just war was always something incomplete. Today it is heavily limited with the presumption against war, the immorality of nuclear warfare, and the immorality of conventional defensive strategy which violates the principle of proportionality, going beyond the limits of legitimate defence. There have always been movements and figures within the Christian denominations which have been exemplary in their fulfilment of Christ's testimony that we must love our enemies and practise peace. Such a spirit is embodied in St Francis and in the Franciscan prayer ‘Lord make me an instrument of your peace'. Many Christians have proved themselves peace-makers in the midst of violent confrontation. The modern popes from Benedict XV to Pope John Paul II and other Christian leaders have grown louder in their calls for disarmament as the threat of annihilation of entire peoples and states by nuclear weapons has increased. They have deplored the incessant arms race, promoted world authority for the regulation of conflicts, directed attention towards promoting human rights and establishing humane conditions of life.

It is difficult for us to understand the world we live in. Missiles and weaponry of all kinds abound, the cost of which would feed the world many times over. And yet one half of the earth, the northern hemisphere, prospers and the southern hemisphere is starved of rice, bread and medicines. The great economic powers of the world, USA, Europe and Japan and its neighbours may fight their trade wars out, or they may make a global agreement to share, but will they exclude the underdeveloped southern hemisphere? Is the power of Christians now so weak in the developed countries that it will not be possible for them to get these great powers to really accept that the globe is inhabited by a single family in which all have the same basic needs and all have a right to the goods of the earth, an interdependent world with a common nature and destiny?

Europe is still in a process of healing in the wake of the horrors of two world wars. Gorbachev and Pope John Paul, mighty giants of peace, have by their influence in Poland and Russia helped to end the east-west conflict. The United States and Russia have given new hope to the world, and to the planet, by their programme of progressive nuclear disarmament, begun by Kennedy and Kruschev and bearing fruit with Reagan and Gorbachev, with the present governments and we hope into the future. Surely there is tremendous moral pressure on the United States of America, Russia, France and Britain to destroy their nuclear weapons – in the absence of that surely it is hypocritical to comment on North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Israel?

There have been more than 130 wars in the Third World since 1945 which have cost the lives of 35 million people. Through television, the media and missionaries we have felt the human suffering in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Ethiopia, Somalia, Liberia, Angola, Mozambique, the Sudan, South Africa, Bosnia and many other places in recent years. The Palestine-Israeli conflict seemed perennial. Their present peace evolution seems like a miracle. F. W. de Klerk has been magnanimous in his tribute to Nelson Mandela – ‘You have come a long way', a far cry from Ian Smith's ‘Not in a thousand years'.