Sermon for Trinity Sunday, May 26 2013 by Rev. James Murray. Text: Romans 5:1–5

It’s been quite the tragic week. On Thursday we witnessed a brutal murder in London England. Two men in a car ran down a British soldier just outside of the army barracks. They then got out of the car and hacked the soldier to death with butcher knives. The two men told onlookers that they did it to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world. They blamed the British Army for killing Muslims in Afghanistan.  

On Monday a Class 5 tornado ripped through the suburban town of Moore Oklahoma. The tornado was a kilometre in width. It destroyed over a thousand homes. It caused $2 billion in damage. The tornado killed 24 people, including 9 school children. The next day one of the pastors of the Westboro Baptist Church said the storm was God’s punishment because basketball star Jason Collins has come out as a homosexual. The pastor sincerely believes God killed 9 school children to punish Jason Collins.

Both Christianity and Islam share a world view where the enemies of God need to be punished. Like us, they believe they are the centre of enlightenment and wisdom, and the world outside of Islam is corrupt and godless.  Ever since Islam was born in the year 632 there has been a competition between these two global religions. For the next thousand years, it was Islam which grew and Christianity which retreated. At its peak in the Ottoman Empire, Islam controlled southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa. At different times they controlled parts of Spain, France, Italy and Greece. What the Muslims call their golden age where they were the dominant political power, we Christians call “The Dark Ages”. The Christians tried to fight back during the Crusades, but those were a humiliating defeat. Christianity only began to grow in influence in the 1600’s as the Reformation and the Enlightenment moved the European economy ahead of the Ottomans. After a thousand years of being pushed around by the Muslims, the Christians in Europe started pushing back. The Muslims were driven out of Spain and Italy. The First World War was what finally ended the power of the Ottoman Empire. Their empire was broken up into the Middle East as we know it today. This left the Christian West as the only real religious super power in the world.

As far as the West is concerned, the religious war between Christianity and Islam ended a century ago. We think the current conflict in places like Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to do with that ancient history. We feel there is a separation between our religious and political actions. The Muslim world still believes the religious and political spheres are still united. The enemies of God are the enemies of the state. This may sound odd to us, but it is not far from what we still believe as Christians.

After Hurricane Sandy hit New York last fall, the American televangelist Pat Robertson said it was God’s punishment against the Mormons. Hurricane Sandy killed 285 people and caused $75 billion of damage. Robertson said Hurricane Sandy was God’s way of stopping Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, from becoming president of the United States of America. Many Christians today sincerely believe the enemies of the state are the enemies of God.

Because of their long history as a great empire, and their humiliating defeat, the Muslim states still resent the ongoing political, economic and military domination of the Christian West.  Most of us Christians are unaware of these roots of Muslim rage. We are blind to the ways which we are rubbing salt in a very old wound. The brutal murder of the soldier in London England is one more example of this rage. We have seen it expressed in the recent Boston Marathon bombing. We have seen it closer to home in the plot to blow up a VIA passenger train in Toronto.

Hans Kung is a renegade Catholic theologian who has challenged the Christian church to better respond to the challenges we face in the world around us. Kung presented to the Parliament of the World’s Religions a document he calls A Global Ethic. Kung argues that there cannot be peace in the world without peace between the world’s religions. Kung calls for a world-wide commitment to a culture of non-violence and respect for life. He notes that many conflicts happen because of economic exploitation, so we need to be committed to a culture of solidarity and a just economic order. Kung recognizes that many conflicts are based on ethnic differences, and the lies we tell about the people who are different from us. Kung says we need to be committed to a culture of tolerance and a life of truthfulness. And lastly, there will only be true human flourishing when everyone gets to participate in in all aspects of society. For this reason Kung says we must make a commitment to a culture of equal rights and partnership between men and women.

Saint Paul says that by trusting in God, we find peace with God. By faith, this gift of grace is with us even when we face troubles. Paul reminds us how our troubles can develop character. By facing difficulties we learn to cultivate passionate patience and a sense of virtue to guide us. A sense of character makes us stronger. But this sense of character is not simply there to teach us how to fight back with more force.  The presence of God’s Holy Spirit is there to guide us in a different way.

In most of the places where Christians lived under Muslim rule in the Ottoman Empire, Christians and Jews were accepted. They were not forced to convert, because they were considered to be ‘people of the book.’ All three religions were viewed as teaching the way of peace and tolerance. It was only when religion and politics and money intertwined to exert control over others that conflicts arose.

The way of Jesus teaches us to love our neighbours. To pray for our enemies. To forgive wrongdoers. The way of Jesus encourages us to see how God’s Holy Spirit is working in the lives of those around us. The way of Jesus teaches us to be a blessing so others might give praise to God our heavenly father for what we have done.

The great physicist and philosopher Albert Einstein once said that “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We have to be willing to change if we want to solve our social problems and end our political conflicts.

When we learn from our sufferings, when we learn from our past, we have the chance to grow, and become something new. When we are willing to change how we face our problems, we can be part of what God is seeking to be in this world. And this presence of God “produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5 :5)

So where was God in all of this? God was in the rubble with us all along. And so even if this has been a terrible week, we will still have hope.

(The sermon ends with this news clip being played)

Source: Hans Kung – A Global Ethic http://www.kusala.org/udharma/globalethic.html