Rev. David Boyd

I remember the first time the reality of war sank into my consciousness. I was rather young, 6 or 7 at the time; every year we went to the Cenotaph in Kenora in NW Ontario. Dad was either leading the Legion Service or we were participating. It was usually cold, sometimes there was snow on the ground. Often it was clear. It was in this setting that one of the veterans of the First World War spoke of his experiences. It was an intergenerational event, so his words were chosen carefully so as not to expose us young children too much to the horrors of war, but this elderly gentleman's words sunk into the depths of my being, even though I was but a tender age. He spoke about what it was like to live in the trenches with rats and vermin as he called them crawling around. People lived with various degrees of aches and wounds. People would cry out at night from bad dreams. He didn't describe too much what it was like when the order was given to leave the trenches and charge the enemy, but what he did say left an indelible mark on my young heart. He also said that it was almost too difficult to speak about and that there were aspects to his time in France that he couldn't speak about and dared not think about. It was my first encounter with what war could be like.

I know enough today about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Shell Shock and Battle Fatigue theoretically to know that war and trauma can leave a deep scar in our psyches. I have spoken to many veterans who became jaded by their experiences in one of the great wars—so called—or in the peace-keeping campaigns or other wars in which Canada has participated. For some vets, their experiences have left them cynical and deeply pessimistic about human nature—and who can blame them?! And other vets came through the war, scarred and wounded like many, but with a gentler disposition to life and a hopeful outlook about human nature. Why the difference is a good question.

This week's chapter in our Thursday morning Christ of the Celts book group was a reflection on George MacLeod who started the Iona Community in Scotland and Tielhard de Chardin, the French scientist and mystic, both of whom served in the First World War. de Chardin was a stretcher bearer in France and MacLeod was a soldier. Both were deeply touched by the war, but in ways that made each of them, in their own uniqueness, active advocates for peace in the world and fervent optimists with respect to human nature. This is what Phillip Newell wrote in Christ of the Celts about de Chardin:

As he agonised over what was happening between the nations and personally despaired about the direction of the world, he heard himself being addressed by Christ, "Ego sum, noli timere." (It is I, be not afraid.) He experienced these words as coming not from afar or from above the anguished journey of the nations. He heard them within himself, as coming from the heart of matter and from the deepest place in the human soul. And these words set him free for the rest of his life to delve deeply into matter, whether that was the dark matter of the earth and its hidden secrets or the mysterious matter of the human soul and its eternal stirrings. And in both he looked for the Presence. (Christ of the Celts, pg101)

The Presence is simply God. Newell helps, through Celtic Christian thinking, to expand our sense of God's Presence to include many different and diverse experiences. We too narrowly define mystical experiences as ethereal or otherworldly. Newell would suggest that mystical experiences are very real and very material and we can all experience the Presence in deeply life-giving ways that can leave us hopefully engaged in the world seeking ways to constructively create life. Even in the midst of the horrors of war, we experience the Presence—or perhaps more so because of war.

This musing this morning stems from Jesus' story about the widow who dumped her last two coins into the Temple treasury.

Picture this scene: Jesus is gathered with his friends at Temple. They are watching people. The Scribes who interpreted the Temple laws were walking about in long robes and receiving greetings in the marketplace in the Court of the Gentiles.

Ched Myers, a Mark scholar, feels that instead of praising the widow, as we normally interpret this passage, Jesus actually laments that the Temple, instead of protecting this widow, has required of her all that she has to support her meagre existence. Jesus points to the widow not primarily as an example of love and discipleship but as an indication of how un-Torah like the Temple had become. It had become a place of exploitation, wealth, status and prestige, not a place of liberation, community, hope and well-being. It had become a place of tyranny in which all of what the poorest of the poor had was required.

Or, in words arising from Newell's book, the Temple, which was meant to be a symbol of the Presence in people's lives—poor and wealthy alike, had become a symbol for the lack of the Presence in people's lives. The Temple was meant to be a physical reminder of God's presence in the life of the people—it began as a tent in Moses' day and was built by Solomon and rebuilt by the Jews after being exiled in Babylon as a sign of hope and then retrofitted again by Herod. The Temple was meant to be a place of refuge in God's presence, a place of hope and liberation, a place to be inspired, a place to strengthen the sense of community and understanding that the poorest and most vulnerable among the people are to be cared for and included as family. (I'm using modern terms as I describe what the Temple was to be.) It was to be a place of empowerment, in which people left with a strong sense of God's presence being with them, that the tent of God's Presence would be there in their day to day lives. The Temple was meant to be a sanctuary where reconciliation could occur and forgiveness proclaimed.

And yet, in Jesus' day, the Temple was more a place of privilege and status; it was a place of exploitation and bondage. It had become, not a symbol of God's presence and the call to keep Torah, but, to use Jesus' words, "a den of thieves!"

How powerful it would have been for the Jews of the 1st century had the Temple been a source of the Presence. That widow would never have given the last of what she owned; she would have received and been blessed. The Scribes wouldn't strut about like they owned the place and the people who gathered there. The Temple would have been reassurance that with God and with the family of God, we can make it... we can overcome the oppression of the Romans, we can cope in this world of alienation and exploitation, of war and violence, and respond with hope and blessedness, like George MacLeod and Tielhard de Chardin.

The widow might then have been able to speak the words of de Chardin and be set free for the rest of her life to delve deeply into the mystery of living life abundantly and fully. The life of Christ for us, the teaching of Jesus, points to the Presence... "It is I, do not be afraid." The Presence calls us to lives of radical hope. The Presence calls us to open our eyes to see and experience life fully. The Presence cries out through us for war never again, for people to meet face to face to resolve differences by affirming our common humanity. The Presence claims us and while we will always face challenges and struggles in life, we learn that we are not alone, and that we are not defined by violence and war, but by peace and love.

And with this sense of peace and love, for example, we can seek the closure of the Tar Sands in Alberta because we need to embrace new, non-carbon based technologies. We can seek an end to the civil strife in countries like Zimbabwe because the Presence empowers us to bypass governments of corruption and make peace one person at a time. We can make a different in the life of a friend facing cancer or of a family torn asunder by abuse. We can because of the Presence that is deep within us and beats in the heart of the universe. The Presence shouts out through us that God is for us, for life, for a future bright with possibility.

Let me leave you with a modern version of remembering the cost of war. As I remember that first man who spoke when I was a child at a Remembrance Day service, he was advocating that this horror never happen again. Those who were present 20 years ago when the Berlin wall came down, celebrated union and the triumph of love over tyranny with the hope, never again. This video advocates the same thing. The Presence inspires us to be part of the change we want to see in this world. Here's the video and music. It's called "War, No More Trouble", and it was written by Bob Marley, before he died. It involves people from around the world playing on this video.

Amen.