We may be on the brink of a Third World War!
That’s probably not what you were hoping to hear from me this morning – not from the pulpit especially! Many of us gather inside these cloistered walls on a Sunday morning because we need some time out from the grim and menacing world in which we live. We come for the good news. Is this really the time to talk of wars and rumours of wars?
Besides, some of the more traditionally-minded here might feel that a sermon is not an appropriate vehicle for discussion of this topic. Sermons should deal with matters religious rather than things political, and discussions of war and peace are matters of foreign policy and the domain of politicians rather than clergy!
If that’s you … well … I’m sorry. There’s plenty of uplifting reading material in the hymn book and you can ponder that for a while, though I don’t think many in this community really take that line, and if I really did need an excuse to talk war and peace, surely this is the week as this week we marked the 13th anniversary of the ‘9/11’ attack on the Twin Towers in New York – an event that changed the world for all of us!
I think it is important that we remember 9/11, even in church, and the questions it raised, of which there were three primary ones:
- Who did it?
- Why did they do it?
- What was an appropriate response?
As to the first question, there is (surprisingly perhaps) still plenty of debate going on. Of course we know the identities of the actual hijackers and Osama Bin Laden was happy to take responsibility as having masterminded the attack but there are still no shortage of persons in America and around the globe who consider the official explanation to be inadequate. Perhaps one day we will know the full story?
As to the second question – ‘Why did they do it?’ – the complete absence of discussion on this question has been almost as startling as volume of ongoing debate over the first!
I think a lot of people did actually accept George Bush Jr’s statement at the time – that it was because “they hate our freedom” – and this despite the fact that the hijackers of the 9/11 aircraft did go to great lengths, making explicit statements on video before their deaths, to state the reasons for their suicide attacks, primary amongst them being, of course, the United States’ unquestioning support for Israel and their subsequent complicity in the Palestinian Occupation.
It is amazing how few Americans are aware of this, just as very few Australians, I think, understand why the Bali Bombings of 2002 were carried out.
I remember a certain prominent politician (who will remain nameless) speaking alongside me at a remembrance service for the victims of the Bali Bombings (some of whom were locals), suggesting that, sadly, it was all over little differences in religion, and this again despite the fact that the perpetrators were quite explicit at their trials that their primary motivation was (as with the 9/11 hijackers) government complicity in the Palestinian Occupation (on the part of the Australian government in this case).
As to the third question – ‘What is an appropriate response?’ – I suspect that we would agree that it has been the complete failure of the US government to take that question seriously that has led us to where we are today, on the brink of a third world war!
And so the American President has now announced an impending escalation of violent intervention in both Iraq and Syria, and our leaders in this country are falling over themselves with eagerness to commit young Australians to the conflict!
Of course a rational response to the atrocities of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ would be to begin by asking the same sort of questions that arise in the case of 9/11:
- Who is really behind this?
- Why are they doing these things
- What is an appropriate response
The statement of our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, that these people are “pure evil” indicates very clearly that he has no intention of giving serious consideration to the second question as to ‘why’ these people do what they do. And because he won’t take the second question seriously he will almost certainly fail to answer the third properly. He will, in other words, NOT come up with an appropriate response.
The story Jesus tells in Matthew chapter 18 – the parable of the unforgiving servant – speaks very directly to all of this, I believe, though, again, this is not something that a lot of people are going to want to hear!
If I lost any religious people by talking politics, I’m bound to lose some political people now by talking religion, for just as a lot of religious folk resent the encroachment of politics into the realm of religion, so politically-aware people often see any attempt to apply the teachings of Jesus to matters political to be, at best, naïve, and very likely dangerous!
How on earth can Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness direct us on global issues of war and peace? Yes, it’s all very nice to encourage individuals to forgive one another for minor insults and indiscretions but countries cannot forgive one another like that just as the legal system cannot say to a paedophile “Oh, OK, … go and sin no more!”
And I appreciate that we mustn’t naively try to apply every teaching Jesus gave about interpersonal relationships to matters of state. Even so, please do me the favour of listening to the parable and thinking it through before passing judgement:
“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.” (Matthew 18:23-27)
That’s the first half of the story, and it seems to be warming up to be a lovely story! If you’ve ever owed money to the Taxation Department you will undoubtedly feel a special kinship with this man who finds himself with a debt that he cannot pay, at least until you come to terms with the amounts of money Jesus is talking about here.
From what I can work out, the sum total of the debt (ten thousand talents of gold) translates in our currency into roughly 16.3 billion dollars!
That’s a rough figure, of course, but if a talent (which is a weight) is around 34kg and the price of gold is around $48,000 AUD/kilo, you simply multiply 34 by $48,000 and it comes out at $1,632,000 dollars per talent. This man owed 10,000 talents, generating a total debt of $16,320,000,000!
No wonder he was having trouble paying it back! This guy owed an amount that was probably greater than his country’s national debt! How did you rack up a debt like that? Was he trying to construct the 9th ‘Wonder of the Ancient World’ or he was trying to build himself a new Youth Centre?
The other question that comes to mind, of course, alongside how the servant possibly got into this sort of debt is the question of how the king failed to notice it!
It’s conventional wisdom I’m told that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank 100 million dollars, the bank has a problem, and this guy owes a thousand times that amount, so he’s got problems but it’s the king who has real problems in this case, and yet it appears that this king had been blithely unaware of this national crisis until he started on his long-overdue audit!
Of course it’s just a story, and no doubt it is intended as a crazy story. Jesus is being deliberately tongue-in-cheek, depicting a strange king who loans out impossible amounts of money to his servants and then forgets to follow up on his loans. And indeed, if the loan was a crazy idea, so too is the king’s first plan – to sell his servant and the servant’s family into slavery as a means to recouping his losses.
Mind you, this is exactly what governments do! Some of you will remember one of our dear parishioner who was found guilty of pension fraud. She was told that she’d have to pay the money she owed back through deductions from her pension cheque. We worked out that she was going to have to live to age 125 to pay it all back! if she had to reach 125, this guy would have had to have outlived Methuselah to repay his debt!
And if the loan is crazy and the king’s first solution is crazy, the servant’s plea – “Give me a few more days and you’ll have it all back!” – doesn’t deserves comment! Indeed, there is only one thing that could possibly overshadow all this craziness and that’s the apparent lunacy of the king who finally comes out with “Ah … forget about it!”
How can anyone forget a debt like that? Is it even remotely responsible to just forget about a debt that big? But Jesus says of the king that he “had compassion” on his servant, and ‘compassion’ moves the king to do what is crazy, irrational and perhaps even irresponsible. He forgives his servant everything.
Biblical scholar Daniel Via compares the parables of Jesus to windows that we look out at the world through – windows that change the way we look at things – and then, all of a sudden, we catch our reflection in the window! It’s at this point of the story, I think, that we catch our reflections in the window, for we too are servants in need of compassion and forgiveness. It is comforting, of course, to find ourselves at this point in the story – subjects of a compassionate and forgiving king. Unfortunately though the story is not finished. Indeed it starts to unravel and become rather uncomfortable from this point on!
“But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:28-35)
And so the story moves very rapidly from a scene of mercy and forgiveness and new life for the servant and his family to one of unforgiveness and unending torture for the man (and perhaps for his family as well) and Jesus ends the story with a terrible warning:
“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35)
This is a rather unnerving conclusion that leaves us hoping that Jesus is still being a little tongue-in-cheek. Everybody ends up in gaol, with some being tortured while others do hard labour as they work off their debts. Meanwhile the king is left along with no servants, no money, and probably no viable kingdom! And so, no, it’s not immediately obvious that this story provides us with a useful model for management of a country!
And yet I think the key to this parable is in the exhortation at the end – to ‘forgive our brothers and sisters from the heart’. It’s what takes place at a heartfelt level that is essential here.
The failing of the initially-forgiven servant is not only that he doesn’t take seriously the compassion of the king but that he likewise fails to take the humanity of his fellow servant seriously! The king has treated him like a son, and this despite his atrocious failings, and yet this man nonetheless fails to treat his fellow servant like a brother. On the contrary, he doesn’t listen to a word he has to say and is only interested in how his relationship with this man is going to affect him economically!
The breakthrough that is needed is an awareness on the part of the servant of the common humanity he shares with his fellow servants! We are all debtors! We are all guilty of doing awful things, and while this isn’t a reason to trivialise our individual failings it does provide us with a basis upon which we can listen to each other with understanding for we know that none of us is righteous – no, not one!
None of us is righteous, and the flip side of that is that very few of us do the stupid things we do without reason. The servant’s debt seems incomprehensible to us but the king listens to him and has compassion.
Listening, indeed, seems to be a fundamental dynamic in the story. The king listens to his servant and has compassion. That same servant fails to listen to his fellow servant and hence shows no compassion. In the final showdown between king and servant the servant is silent and the scene rapidly degenerates into violence!
This is the pattern – that listening leads to dialogue and dialogue leads to understanding and compassion, but this is exactly what we struggle with! We look at these Islamic State terrorists and we say ‘they are pure evil’ because we are not listening to what they are saying because we don’t think of them as brothers and sisters in the human condition at all, any more than we would if they were paedophiles!
The cycle of creative dialogue that leads to understanding and forgiveness and new life begins with listening and is based on a common acknowledgement of human weakness. This should be as true in international relations as it is in a domestic dispute.
Forgiveness is a crazy ideal – yes – and I appreciate that it seems totally out of place in political dialogue but, in truth, experience tells us that forgiveness always seems out of place in every case of hurt and betrayal between friends and lovers too.
Forgiving someone is always a crazy thing to do for it requires you to abandon your right to justice! There is never a sensible time to do that! Forgiveness always involves a degree of recklessness, and that’s embodied in the story too for you can’t find anyone more crazy than the king in Jesus’ parable. At the same time though, forgiveness is serious business!
It is not easy to listen, to take time to understand and to have compassion and forgive. Even so, if we can’t learn to do that, and to do it from the heart, then may God have mercy on us all!
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 14th of September, 2014.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
I think certain elements of the Muslim community need to ask themselves what they are doing in Australia if they continue to support the ideals and of IS. Islam is a a religio-political system and Sharia, as I understand it, cannot be separated out from it.
Further the majority of Muslims are not Arabs and yet they are the one’s that seem to be at the very centre of the trouble most of the time. There never was a time when Israel didn’t exist and where one stands on the Israel conflict is irrelevant, the facts is, there is no justification for the recent be-headings of journalists and other foreign nationals.
Who is really behind this? Psychopathic fundamentalist autocrats who are leading largely uneducated, illiterate followers.
Why are they doing these things? I’m sure they would have many excuses.
What is an appropriate response? FA-18 bombings.
I find your response disturbing.
Beheading two journalists is certainly barbaric and horrible. Responding by using FA-18 jets to murder a thousand of your enemies would surely be a thousand times more barbaric and horrible!
As to Israel, it certainly did not exist as a nation-state between the Biblical era and 1948. Between those times no Jew would ever refer to themselves as an Israeli.
Ancient Israel was a kingdom and state enough for various empires to conquer it and disperse the Jewish people, a portion of whom nevertheless stayed in Israel through its forced name change to Palestine (Hadrian’s little effort) and back again to Isrtael.
Jews have always been known not as Israelis pre-1948 but a s Israelites, but themselves, by nonJews, by kings, priests and as Children of Israel, again by themselves and by others , including Muhammad in the Koran, where Jews are referred to constantly as the Children of Israel.
Your attempt to deny history in favour of your terrorist pets the Palestinians – who are Arab Muslims known as Palestinians only since 1967 – is what is disturbing. Your support of Hams is evil.
You talk a lot about forgiveness, but you never apply this forgiveness to the Jews. You are a hypocrite and parasite whose love for Islamofascist evil is as obvious as your Jewhatred, even as you attempt to quote Jesus, a JEW who preached Jewish principles to the people around him.
“You talk a lot about forgiveness, but you never apply this forgiveness to the Jews”
I don’t know where you got that idea. My hope and prayer is that the Israel/Palestine tragedy will be resolved peacefully and that there will be real forgiveness and reconciliation all round.
I appreciate that this looks less and less likely as things continue to degenerate but the very thought that the Palestinians might take retribution against the Jewish citizens of Israel for the violence of the Occupation is a terrible one.
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