“Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)
It’s been a rather intense week for all of us, I suspect!
This time of year is always intense, of course, but this week has been even more intense than usual due to the amount of violence we’ve been experiencing.
I’m thinking first and foremost of the Martin Place tragedy, of course. I was in the food-court of Broadway Shopping Centre when I first became aware of what was going on – noticing that everybody was crowding around a TV screen situated in the middle of the food-court that was broadcasting what was happening a little closer to the centre of the city.
Sydney was under siege! We were experiencing our first full-blown terrorist attack (or so we were being told).
A ‘Daily Telegraph Special Edition’ took pride in breaking the story – “Death Cult CBD attack. IS [Islamic State] takes 13 hostages in city café siege.” Further reports, suggesting that unknown numbers of bombs had been planted around the city compounded the sense of panic as the entire inner-city, from the Conservatorium to the Sydney Opera House and everything in between, was locked down!
Along with everyone else in Sydney, I monitored the siege throughout the day. You couldn’t avoid monitoring it for there was nothing else on the news! As I worked away through the night I kept the TV on in the background, muted. I was interested to see whether News 24 would actually cover any other stories that night. They didn’t. They just kept recycling the same interviews with witnesses and politicians, and the politicians were certainly making the most of the event.
We hit a new political low-point, I felt, when our State Premier broadcast his words of fatherly concern – “we will get through this together” – particularly as, by that stage, it was entirely clear that this was not a terrorist attack but just a mentally ill guy with a gun. There were no accomplices, there were no bombs, and there weren’t even any ‘demands’, beyond the gunman’s request for a talk with Tony Abbott!
Of course it all ended very bloodily in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and you really had to turn off the TV if you wanted to stop seeing that horrible final scene being endlessly replayed, of police storming the café with guns blazing!
Three people died in the tragedy, of course, including the gunman. Terrible indeed, though at least that the ended the tragedy. Or did it? In some ways, it seems to have been just the beginning, as with those shootings there commenced a period of communal grieving that for me is unprecedented in living memory!
I wasn’t in the city on Tuesday morning when the grieving started but I was there on Thursday night. I was attending a vigil for the poor children killed in the school shooting in Pakistan (which really was a terrorist attack). We lit some candles in Hyde Park and said some prayers, and it was good to see a decent number of people there – mainly Pakistanis, of course, but I also saw my friend Rabbi Zalman, and even though the only news crew covering the event was from a Pakistani TV station it was nonetheless encouraging to see that there were plenty of Sydney-siders wanting to show solidarity with our suffering sisters and brothers in Pakistan. And then some of us walked down to Martin Place to pay our respects there too.
I’ve never seen anything like it!
We started at the upper level of Martin Place and I was astounded by the number of flowers there! There were barricades and numerous security officers, directing us in an orderly fashion past the display of flowers and the other memorials that had been erected. And then we walked down to the next level of Martin Place, opposite the actual shop where the violence took place, and that display of flowers absolutely dwarfed the one on the upper levels!
And there were people everywhere – people walking silently past the displays, people sitting quietly with their heads in their hands, people staring, crying, meditating, praying – and this was after 10 O’clock at night!
As I say, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I could not help but compare the scene in my mind to an act of violence that I’d been close to earlier this year.
I was in my hotel room in Damascus in April, having a shower actually, when I heard an enormous ‘bang’ go off that did not seem far away. Thirty seconds later there was a second ‘bang’. It turned out that two mortar shells had landed in the car-park of our hotel, and two of our hotel security personnel had been killed.
Some members of our peace delegation were the first on the scene and they later described what they saw – a description that I won’t repeat now. Suffice it to say that it was too late for one of the men they found but they did try to help a second man who had lost his leg. He was successfully transported to a vehicle that could get him to a hospital.
What was striking for me in that incident was that by the time I got downstairs (which was not many minutes later) the ‘mess’ had been cleaned up and people were getting on with their day. The incident was not even being spoken about much in the hotel. We had to ask around in order to find out what had happened.
Now I’m not wanting to suggest that this sort of non-reaction to violent death is a positive thing. On the contrary, it is surely a very bad sign when you get so used to this sort of thing that it barely interrupts your day. Even so, I’m also not sure that the Sydney reaction is healthy either.
Why were so many people so deeply affected by the Sydney siege such that the news media now speaks of last Monday as the day ‘that changed our nation forever’.
Of course I’m not thinking here of the immediate friends and family of the victims. Our hearts go out to them as indeed we understand that this must be a terrible time for them. And yet most of those grieving were no closer to the two siege victims than they were to any number of other people who died tragic deaths in Sydney over this last week – victims of domestic violence, of alcohol-fuelled street-fights, of road-rage, or of any number of other tragic acts of violence that are sadly commonplace in this city of ours.
Of course I don’t know the total number of persons who died tragic deaths in Sydney this week because most of these kinds of incidents are not considered newsworthy. Even so, we know that tragic violence leading to death is by no means a rare occurrence in our city, and yet such violence does not normally generate this kind of reaction. What made this incident so unique?
The ‘F word’ comes to mind – FEAR!
Please don’t think I’m wanting to trivialise the degree of genuine empathy that people across our city might be feeling for those who were killed in the shooting. Even so, for the reasons I’ve already suggested, I think it’s clear that this massive outpouring of grief is not generated solely by feelings of sympathy for those who suffered there. Our empathy is mingled with fear!
This comes through loud and clear in the way I hear people talk about the incident – “I was only there myself last week!” and “I walked past that shop only the other day” and “I was thinking of heading into the city myself on Monday morning!” There is a very strong feeling from people across this city that ‘it could have been me’!
We don’t react this way when we hear of the children killed in Pakistan or even the children killed in Cairns this week. We recognise these events as tragic and our hearts go out to the bereaved but we don’t fill the city with flowers either because these incidents don’t hurt us in the same way.
It doesn’t occur to most of us in most of these other tragedies that ‘it could have been me’ because most of us are blessedly immune from the effects of domestic violence and most of us don’t get involved in street fights. Most of us are fortunate to live in relatively stable domestic situations where there does not seem to be any imminent threat of death. Life is as stable and predictable as it was for those poor victims of the Sydney shooter. They were just like us! It could have been me!
Fear is a terrible thing. Fear cripples us. It makes us easy objects of political manipulation, and it leads us to strike out at the people we fear, and often fear leads us to strike out at the wrong people!
And we saw the negative side of that fear in Sydney this week too – in the increased acts of harassment towards Muslim people across Sydney that was another outcome of the Monday night incident.
The crisis for the Muslim community was encapsulated for me, not in any particular narrative being shared on social media that day, but in a press release I received from the Arab Council of Australia on the Tuesday morning. The Arab Council (which is a secular organisation) were desperately trying to distance themselves from the actions of the shooter. The amazing thing about that, of course, is that the gunman wasn’t even an Arab!
As I say, the Arab Council are a secular organisation, so there is no obvious link between the shooter and the Arab Council. Even so, our community, it seems, has been so conditioned over recent years to equate Arab with Muslim with terrorist that the Arab Council of Australia was in damage control this week!
Now … unless you’re here in church for the first time ever you will know that the goal of this sermon time is to reflect on one of the Bible readings that has been set for us today – normally on the Gospel reading – and, that being the case, you might be forgiven for wondering by this stage how I am going to relate this discussion of the Sydney siege to the story of Mary and her visit from the Archangel Gabriel!
What, you might ask, could the story of the angel’s visit to the blessed virgin, warning her of her impending pregnancy and of the consequent birth of Jesus, possibly have to do the violent activities of a crazed gunman in Martin Place two thousand and something years later?
The answer is ‘everything’, I believe, and the connection, is another ‘F word’ – FAITH!
“Do not be afraid, Mary” the angel says – understandably, because he came bringing her news that gave her plenty of reasons to be afraid!
“You have found favour with God”, the angel tells her, “and now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:30-32)
If Mary had been a cynic she might have asked the angel what sort of ‘favour’ this was, as it wasn’t obvious that God was doing her any favours by giving her an unwanted and unexpected child!
Mary wasn’t married at that stage, and the sudden appearance of a child who was clearly not the progeny of her partner would not bode well for her future happiness!
Being a single mum has never been easy, but it would have been even less easy in those days. Mary was a peasant girl. She had no obvious way of supporting a family on her own. Mary faced abandonment, isolation, humiliation and life-long struggle.
In the space of this one angelic visit her future prospects went from rosy to terrifying! And yet Mary does not respond with fear but with faith – “behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”, she says. “Let it be to me according to your word!” (Luke 1:38)
Faith is a very powerful force – even more powerful than fear! Of course we must distinguish genuine faith from its counterfeits.
Faith is distinct from that fatuous optimism that so often accompanies youth – that attitude of invincibility that so many people Mary’s age have. Mary’s hope lies not in her own invincibility but in God’s mercy – “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”.
Neither is Mary simply naïve, thinking ‘what could possibly go wrong?’ She knew she was not being led down an easy path, and indeed it would not be an easy path!
We should beware of confusing faith with an assumption that everything will go smoothly so long as God is in control. The life of Mary well illustrates how having God at the steering wheel is no guarantee of an easy ride!
Every time we see Mary in the pages of the New Testament she is in distress! From the painful and degrading scene of the birth of Jesus to the time when she loses Him as a child in Jerusalem, to the conflict she has with Him over the wine at the wedding in Cana, to the alienation from Jesus that she experiences when she can’t understand or support His ministry, to the agony she experiences as she watches Him die on the cross!
I remember once hearing a wise Christian say “I’m sick of hearing people give their testimonies and tell me how Jesus solved all their problems. Most of my problems began after I met Jesus!” That was Mary’s experience too.
And yet Mary’s faith is not to be confused with resignation either – that ‘such is life’ attitude, as expressed by Ned Kelly on the gallows.
Mary is an archetype of faith for us. Without naivety or fatuous optimism or resignation she embraces the vocation that has laid out for her, and she embraces it with passion – “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”.
How we best imitate Mary’s faith in our own context is another issue, of course, but, in the context of the events of this last week, I think that perhaps the ‘#illridewithyou’ campaign suggests a way forward.
For those who might not know the story, it began with a post on Facebook by Rachael Jacobs, who said she’d seen a woman she presumed was Muslim quietly removing her hijab while sitting next to her on the train: “I ran after her at the train station. I said ‘put it back on. I’ll walk with you’. She started to cry and hugged me for about a minute – then walked off alone.”
The story of Rachael’s encounter with the woman in the hijab inspired a Twitter user (Sir Tessa) to encourage people on her bus route who might be wearing a hijab and feeling vulnerable. She said “I’ll ride with you”. This was subsequently turned into a hashtag – ‘#illridewithyou’ (which gives it an easy avenue for being spread quickly). Apparently there were 40,000 tweets using the hashtag in the following two hours, and 150,000 within the next four hours, and it continued to grow from there!
“Perfect love drives out all fear” says the Apostle John (1 John 4:18) and there is a deep and powerful truth in that! If Mary had had access to Twitter, I think she might have been one of the first to use the #illridewithyou hashtag!
For faith is the opposite of fear. Faith frees us from the prison of fear. Faith liberates us to act in love. Faith gives us the freedom to take our eyes off ourselves so that we might focus ourselves squarely on the needs of others.
Let me close though by repeating that faith is not to be confused with naivety or with fatuous optimism or with any belief that things are going to go smoothly from now on.
While this Martin Place tragedy was not a terrorist attack, as you know, I do believe that we are at genuine risk of a real terrorist attack, and I believe that the actions of our current government, most especially in sending troops into Iraq and Syria, are making it far more likely that such an attack really will one day take place.
Given our response to last week’s tragedy, God knows how we will handle a real attack if it does take place, but my hope is that we will handle it with faith rather than fear!
The future is uncertain. We cannot control it. What we do have some control over though is how we respond to the uncertainties that lie before us. We can look the other way, we can live in denial, we can resign ourselves to misery, we can panic, we can live in fear, or we can do what our mother-in-the-faith Mary does, and chose faith and live in love!
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”!
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 21st of December, 2014.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
