Lessons Genesis 1: 1 5 Acts 19: 1 7 St Mark 1: 4 11

Sermon Sunday 11 January 2015

Lessons Genesis 1: 1 – 5 Acts 19: 1 – 7 St Mark 1: 4 – 11

Prayer of Illumination

Holy God, may we be alert to Your Presence, Your voice, Your Wisdom, wherever it may be found. Open us always to new insights, new possibilities. May we be touched by Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

It has been a difficult week for France. Hundreds of troops are on the streets of Paris and 17 people have been killed. One of those murdered, a policeman, was a Muslim. The policeman’s brother referred to the terrorists as ‘pretend Muslims’. Mayfield Salisbury is an associate member of EIFA, Edinburgh Inter-Faith

Association. Earlier this week, EIFA released a statement which was signed by representatives of the Muslim, Sikh, Baha’is, Jewish and Christian communities in Edinburgh. The statement reads:

The senselessness of the acts of murder in Paris today is shocking. That they were carried out supposedly in the name of God only increases that sense of futility and outrage. Words cannot express the horror of such acts, nor do justice to the sense in which this was an attack upon, and betrayal of, so much that we hold dear. Edinburgh Interfaith Association stands in solidarity alongside the people of Paris gathered in the Place de la Republique tonight in their refusal to allow this violent act to have the final word. Neither will we allow it to define what Islam is. We assert that the future for our world, and for religions, will be found in respect for others, dialogue through freedom of expression, and collective action that seeks the wellbeing and flourishing of all.

1 Shaykh Jaffer Ladak, the Resident Alim (or scholar) of the Hyderi

Islamic Centre in London asked the terrorists:

What will you say to 'your' Prophet when you meet him? ‘I murdered because someone drew you?!’

You have not ‘avenged’ our Prophet, you have embarrassed and enraged our Prophet.

In Paris, a delegation of twenty imams were among the first to visit the Charlie Hebdo offices. They branded the gunmen, ‘Criminals, barbarians, satans, and not Muslims.’ The second target was not the office of a satirical magazine, but a kosher supermarket. The motive for killing was no longer cartoons of the Prophet but what?

The policies of the Israeli government or the murder of Jewish people in general?

It is important that we as a society, our politicians in particular, and in local communities, such as Edinburgh, continually draw a clear distinction between terrorists with their brutal ideology and

Islam. As an aside, it is important to remember that terrorists come in different guises, such as Anders Breivik, the White

Supremacist, who killed over seventy people in Norway in 2011.

In discussing Islamic terrorists, we must avoid oversimplification: oversimplification leads to bigotry, even violence.

2 Recently, I heard the American scholar, Reza Aslan, challenge the line of questions he was facing in an interview on CNN. The interviewer spoke of Islam as a backward religion, citing examples of female genital mutilation, stoning and the repression of woman.

The interviewer cited Somalia as a terrible example of mutilation and Saudi Arabia for its oppression of women. In response, Reza described genital mutilation is an African problem, not an Islamic one: it is as much present in Christian countries in Africa as

Islamic ones. Rightly, he said that it is not helpful to generalise.

The interviewer pressed him on the repression of women, in such countries as Saudi Arabia. While he acknowledged that Iran,

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are repressive regimes, by contrast, he pointed to Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Forcefully, Reza asked the interviewer, ‘Throughout the world, Muslim countries have had no fewer than seven heads of state who were women: how many has America had?’

Saudi Arabia is arguably our strongest ally in the Gulf region.

Since the beginning of August, in line with its justice system, it has beheaded scores of people. Over the past year or so, a blogger criticised the kingdom’s influential clerics and their conservative

3 interpretation of Islam: he has been sentenced to ten years in prison and 50 lashes per week for 20 weeks. Saudi Arabia needs to be challenged on so many fronts, but most Muslims do not live in the Middle East or Gulf region. We need discernment in our thinking.

The events in Paris were horrific but, in recent days, in Yemen, thirty-seven people were killed by a suicide bomber. Worst of all, described by Amnesty International as the ‘deadliest massacre’ in the history of Boko Haram, perhaps as many as two thousand people have been killed by Islamist extremists in a town in Nigeria.

The more the extremists seek to inculcate Islam in their violence, the more we need to differentiate them from Islam. Again and again, we need to remind ourselves that people are violent.

Violent people will bring violence to their religion. People have brought violence to Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. There is violence in the home and in the streets of every city in the world.

There is violence in the atheist state of North Korea: people disappear!

The story of the Baptism of Christ, like so much of Scripture, is spiritual history. In the language of mythology, we read of the

4 descent of the dove and the voice from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’. On one level, this story serves as an anointing of Jesus. Remember, Jesus is understood by the evangelists as ‘King of the Jews.’ In the ancient world, kings were anointed with oil. Before they received the Wisdom of

God, or uttered wisdom, they were anointed. For the evangelists,

Jesus’ Baptism is His anointing. In the same way as Solomon was anointed with the Wisdom of God, this son of David is anointed with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, the Spirit came upon the judges, Gideon, Samson and many others. In the Jewish text, the Wisdom of Solomon, receiving the Spirit is the key to receiving

Wisdom. Wisdom means trusting in God with sincerity of heart and loving all that is righteous.

In today’s world there is a great need for wisdom. How do we live with difference? How do we protect freedom of speech? Is there a trade-off between free speech and responsible, respectful speech?

G K Chesteron said, ‘It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it’ but ‘Would I draw or mock the Prophet if it offended my neighbour?’ No. The French magazine mocked the

Prophet: what if they ran offensive articles against women, Jews, people who are gay, coloured or disabled? Would that be

5 acceptable? How do we engage politically with violent regimes?

A conservative interpretation of faith can be oppressive, but so too can secularism.

On one level, the story of the Baptism of Jesus is about His anointing as king. On a deeper level, it is about encounter with the

Spirit of God in the midst of life. The purpose of the religious life, the inner life, is to become present to the Presence, to be touched, transfigured and transformed by the Sacred. We need to be alert to the gifts of grace that come our way: the unexpected words of kindness, an act of generosity, the beam of sunlight through the clouds or the opportunities that open up for us. God is a God of surprises and we need to be switched on to that. Are we alert to the Presence? At its very best, there is nothing imperial about religion at all: it does not seek to impose itself. It is the very antithesis of Islamist terrorism. In a sense, religion is not worldly at all.

The twentieth century, mystic monk, Thomas Merton, said that the real prophetic voice is the virtue of hope. He described himself as one of the ‘burnt men’, that is, seared by staring into the furnace of divine love. That searing, that gazing, helped him to love

6 unconditionally. He was able to love others without caring for their status, wealth or power. It is said of Merton: ‘His property at his death amounted to a Timex watch, zero rated by US customs.

He had died the death we all have to die before dying.’ He was able to love across all divisions and across the tribalism of world religion. As we enter more fully into God, the greater our freedom from the constraints of the world. The spiritual truth which

Merton embodied was ‘abandonment of self’. Contemplation of

God freed him from the trappings of this world, including the trappings of each religious tradition. Merton heard the voice of

God in the words of the Sufi mystic, the Hasidic rabbi and the

Vietnamese Buddhist. Rooted in the world, we need a path on which to walk, a religious tradition, but we are not to make that tradition an idol, an absolute truth. The deep truth of a religious tradition is that it frees us from this world.

Merton spoke of prophetic hope: that hope will come to fruition when the faiths of the world are able to sit alongside each other, respecting one another as different paths on the same mountain.

The Baptism or anointing of Jesus is about the wisdom of God, the sincerity of the heart and the love of righteousness. In contrast to

7 the wickedness of the terrorists, people of faith all over Europe, including in Edinburgh, including us, have expressed their unity and solidarity, and affirmed their respect for others. This is a sign of hope, an act endowed with quite different values from those of the killers. Whether members of EIFA know it or not, their statement is a prophetic voice offering hope.