April 25, 2010

Clay Nelson

ANZAC Day

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In preparation for Easter, but before Glynn became ill, I was developing my Easter sermon around a quote by a scholar of comparative religions, Joseph Campbell. He was interested in those aspects of any religion that are shared by all. The quote was that great religions have taught us to let “go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

Little did I know at the time that Glynn, Stephanie, their family, the whanau [i] of St Matthew’s and I were about to experience that reality first hand. What Campbell’s quote doesn’t reveal is how difficult the transition is. It didn’t warn me that I would wake up every morning hoping the last three weeks have been a bad dream. It does not spell out the anxiety we feel about that new life awaiting us. The nature of that new life has not yet unfolded before us. But in our gut we know everything has changed. Our carefully planned lives so neat and orderly on Palm Sunday have been revealed to be illusions. 

As I slowly come to terms with the reality that for the indefinite future I won’t have my best mate around to share the joys of ministry in this place, I find myself doing something very human but not very helpful. Having lost the life I planned, I find myself planning an alternative life – Plan B. Ironic, since this would be an illusion as well. Worse, it will delay further accepting the life awaiting me, awaiting us. There must be something better I can do.

A number of years ago one of my favourite theologians, Dr Seuss, wrote a book that would become a popular gift for friends who were experiencing milestones, such as graduation. It was entitled Oh! The Places You’ll Go. After telling the reader all the great things he or she will do or accomplish he lays some reality on them. Just as we are flying high, he tells us, we will be left in the Lurch:

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Eventually Dr Seuss promises we will get out of the waiting place, but what do we do with ourselves as we wait for new possibilities to be revealed and emerge? I think John Salmon offered a possibility last week. The missing link between letting go of the life we had planned and accepting the one waiting for us is remembering. Not remembering as a longing for the good old days or its opposite rejecting part and parcel the past, but as reframing. Reframing is looking at the past to mine at a deeper level lessons and understandings that apply to the present.

Today is a day the peoples of Australia and New Zealand spend a lot of time remembering. We remember and seek understanding of the tragic death of so many of our young men on the shores of Gallipoli 95 years ago. For both countries it was a coming of age moment that continues to shape us in the present day. We sent the better part of a generation to war with great fanfare and expectation, but when more than a third did not return buried on foreign soil and many more returned emotionally and physically wounded something fundamental changed in our national psyche.

It left us in The Waiting Place. We became a country waiting for peace.

As a country we are not conflicted about wanting peace and in that we differ little from most of the peoples of the world, but in how to achieve it. Our differences I believe are rooted in Gallipoli.

We are divided over how much or how little we should be prepared for war or to keep the peace as we prefer to think. We still find ourselves torn by the heroic actions of Te Whiti’s nonviolent resistance to settler surveyors carving up his people’s land in Taranaki and the reluctant hero Corporal Willie Apiata’s exploits in Afghanistan.

When the Waihopai 3 popped the balloon concealing New Zealand’s support of the US war effort, most thought their trial would be open and shut. As they admitted to doing it, conviction seemed all but certain. Their defense was to claim obedience to a higher law, a greater good. What the prosecution did not bargain for is that that defense would resonate with the twelve Kiwis on the jury. I suspect the jury had reframed their remembrance of Gallipoli.

We are seeing the conflict played out again on Queen Street. There some with buckets sell red poppies to remember the sacrifice of the fallen and to support their families. Others with buckets sell white poppies to remember that peace will never be achieved through violence and to support the teaching of peace and reconciliation. The controversy seems to be over when each should be sold. Some feel the red poppy alone belongs to ANZAC Day. Sell white poppies at any other time, is their position. Those who sell white poppies believe both should be associated with ANZAC Day. Red poppies are about remembering Gallipoli. White poppies are about reframing it.

Ormund Burton is an example of a Kiwi who would wear both. He was parishioner at what is now the Community of St Luke in Remuera. He enlisted because he believed the destruction of Prussian militarism would usher in a new age of peace and freedom through forgiveness and reconciliation under God. It was the war we all know that was to end all wars. He returned a highly decorated hero from Gallipoli and the Western Front horrified by the cost and outcome of the war. He became a Christian pacifist and Methodist minister committed to nonviolence as a higher law. Because of his vocal opposition to World War II he was eventually sent to prison for 20 years less 11 months for good behaviour. When he died in 1974 he was still waiting for a world of peace and freedom.

One of the factors keeping us in The Waiting Place for peace is sadly traditional Christianity. The church’s story is deeply linked to war and sacred violence and all too often has supported war efforts implicitly or explicitly. For instance Ormund Burton was expelled from the Methodist Church in 1940 for defying church policy to not preach resistance to enlistment. To the church’s credit it forbid recruitment from the pulpit as well.

It might be reasonable to ask how a movement based on following the teachings of the Prince of Peace ended up supporting violence. The short answer is by becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. In 312 CE the Emperor Constantine was at war with his rival for supreme rule. The story goes that the night before they met in battle at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a vision that he should adopt as his army’s emblem the first two letters of Christ in Greek. The next day he defeated his rival. With his victory he made Christianity legal and then made it the official religion of the Empire. He made Sunday an official holiday and made churches tax-exempt. Lastly, he ended a long tradition of Roman tolerance of other religions, making all others illegal except worship of the Emperor. We also have him to thank for Christmas. He decreed a pagan holiday on December 25th as Jesus’ birthday.

Making Christianity essentially an arm of the state would’ve been damage enough, but then he oversaw the Council of Nicea to end Christian bickering over the nature of Christ. That council officially made Jesus a god-man through Constantine’s direct intervention (and thus his equal, as the Emperor also claimed divinity). This would have been an unthinkable and even blasphemous proposition to Jesus, a good Jew. In the process the cross was transformed from a cruel instrument of execution of a good and holy man into a form of human sacrifice. Only now it was God sacrificing God for the salvation of humankind. By doing so violence became acceptable, necessary and sacred in Western Christianity. 

If we are to move out of The Waiting Place to a more peaceful world, a good first step would be for the church to repent by rejecting a 4th century understanding of Jesus that has supported violence in many forms for 1800 years. That will of course not be easy. But in this case reframing our understanding of who Jesus was and what he saw as his mission could go a long way to bringing about a more peaceful world. It is the life awaiting us.

[i] Maori word for family.