24 December 2010 - Midnight Mass

Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 William Allberry 11^th September 2011 Genesis 50.15-21
What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?
The Old Testament in our Bibles contains so many stories that tell us about our human nature – human nature that is just the same now as it was 3,500 years ago. You remember what happened to Joseph – the youngest of 11 brothers, probably a rather precocious boy and his father’s favourite – and therefore not too popular with his elder brothers. And you’ll remember how they resented him so much that they sold him into slavery. In Egypt of course Joseph did rather well, and was put in charge of the country’s stores: so that when famine came, and the brothers went down to Egypt to beg for food for their elderly father and their families, it was Joseph who eventually revealed himself to them as their little brother
What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?
Our readings today are about forgiveness, and this is a good story to tell us about human nature. Forgiveness is essential if we’re going to be able to break the vicious circle of hurt and retaliation which is so destructive. We see it again and again, and everywhere. We see it in Israel and Palestine where a stone thrown by an Arab boy is returned by fire from the Israeli soldiers, and in turn the boy’s family and friends send a suicide bomber into a crowded street in Jerusalem. We see it in family feuds in the Middle East, where a slight against a family member is returned by retaliation against the perpetrator or their family, and ultimately people die. And it’s not only in the Middle East. We’ve see it in revenge killings in Northern Ireland.
What if Joseph pays us back for the wrong that we did to him?
After their old father dies, the brothers beg for forgiveness in his name. But Joseph is ready to forgive them, as he sees that good has come out of the wrong that the brothers did him. Am I in the place of God? he asks, thinking of course of the verse, Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Have no fear, he says.
Do read the Joseph story – as long as you’ve got a good modern translation! It’s a gripping read, in Genesis chapters 37 onwards, and it’s a really human story.
Humanity is surely what is needed in a world that’s full of recrimination and retaliation. A world that’s ruled so often by mistrust, resentment, and violence. If only we could see others as human beings just as we are, and deal with them as human beings, things might be different.
Today we’re reminded of almost 3,000 deaths in the attacks in the United States on 11th September 2001. 3,000 deaths too many. And the response of the West, putting it crudely, has resulted in many more deaths in the Iraq war – certainly over 4,000 casualties among the American forces, and more among the other coalition forces; and countless thousands – literally countless, perhaps 100s of thousands of casualties – among Iraqi forces and civilians. Each one of those deaths was one too many. And the casualties continue.
No one is suggesting that we simply forgive and forget. Retaliation is a human reaction too. But I wonder what lessons we are learning from all this.
Tony Blair in his radio interview yesterday said that he didn’t accept that the response of the West to the 9/11 attacks had caused the radicalisation of the Muslim world. ‘There is this view, which I'm afraid I believe is deeply naive in the West, that somehow these people, you know, misunderstand our motives, that we've confused them, that that's why they've become radicalised. Understand one thing - they believe in what they believe in because they believe their religion compels them to believe in it.’
I think this is terribly dangerous and misleading talk. Dangerous because it is simply wrong. Of course it’s true that the radical Muslims, the really fundamentalist ones like Osama bin Laden and those around him, did believe that their religion tells them to believe what they do, and his followers still believe that. What Mr Blair doesn’t seem to understand is that those people don’t represent Islam. The argument that I think is self-evident is that the action of the US-led coalition in Iraq – surely fuelled by retaliation for the 9/11 atrocities – has radicalised a huge section of the middle ground of Muslim people; a whole generation of young men in the madrasas in Iran and in this country too are told that the West hates Islam and wants to eradicate it – just as we are told that Islam hates the West and wants to take over the world.
Neither of these is true. Islam is a religion of submission, and encourages respect for people of other faiths. The prophet Mohamed himself had great respect for the ‘people of the Book’, as he called the Christians and the Jews. And is it true that we want to take over the West and impose Christianity or Judaism on Muslim countries? I don’t think so. It may have been true in the days of colonialism, and there are indeed some Christians who want this too, but I don’t think it’s true for all of us.
I’ve strayed into the realm of politics, but I don’t apologise, because I think we must apply our Christian philosophy and beliefs to the world we live in. There’s so much the Bible has to offer to a world full of hurt and the desire for retaliation, that we mustn’t keep our heads down and pretend that the bible only tells us about our relationship with God and how to say our prayers.
In South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped to free people from the cycle of resentment and retaliation. It encouraged people to speak about their experiences, and their feelings, and brought people together so that they could understand something of the experience and feelings of their enemies. If only we could apply what was learned from the TRC in Ireland, in Israel ...
St Paul gives us the answer. The commandments, You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The law of love is the only law we need, because it sums up all the rest. If we love our neighbour as ourselves, (and in today’s world, the global village means the Iraqis are our neighbours just as much as our countrymen), if we actually love our neighbours as ourselves, then we actually respect their feelings, and feel their pain, just as we expect them to feel ours. The only way to break out of the vicious circle is to live by the law of love.
We may not be ready to forgive the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocities: and by the perpetrators of course I don’t just mean the 19 hijackers but the organisation behind them, and those who support it now. We may not be ready to forgive them and we may never find it in ourselves to forgive them, because we’re only human, and that might be too much to ask, particularly of those who lost loved ones in the attacks. But what we mustn’t do is to allow others to exact revenge on our behalf, because that revenge has made the world a more dangerous place than it was. We must work for a better world, in which people are not judged by prejudice but by real knowledge. We need to find ways of showing Muslim people in this country and in other countries that we respect them, and their religion, and that we have no desire to impose our ways on them. I’m not going to suggest how that’s to be done in international terms – that surely is the realm of politics – but I do know that I personally have a responsibility to find out about Islam, and to make it my business to challenge prejudice when I see it.
As Christians it’s our responsibility to live by our faith. We can begin with our difficult next-door neighbour, or the person we dislike at work. Let’s not be guided by blind prejudice: let’s see what we can find out about others who are different from us. Only then can we claim to be following the law of love.

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