Terror
As you are no doubt aware, Christchurch has been yet again under attack, and we are all in shock and grief. I'm not finding it easy to think straight or do much. My morning at Cashmere High School yesterday left me so sad for all the kids and teachers and all their families. I was not here 8 years ago, but they were, and the shootings reopen wounds and undo healing that was hard-won.
From the depths: a prayer of the Open Sidha Project
Dear God,
From the depths
we call to You.
Our broken hearts,
shattered like glass,
like a windshield,
or a child’s glasses,
or a sanctuary window…
This wounding moment – there, here,
to every ‘us’ imaginable,
Divine reflections fractured and bloodied
again and again, like a sick dream.
Dear God,
how do You endure this madness?
How do we?
Look what Your children
are willing to do to each other…
We collect these hard, cold, things,
glorify them like treasured keepsakes
forgetting their purpose is pure: to kill.
Holy One, we’re devastated. Again.
It’s really hard to remember a world
without bulletproof backpacks and armed guards
outside of every sanctuary.
Help us remember a world
that felt lighter than this one.
Fill our torn hearts with Your spirit
as we do the impossible work
of burying our dead,
cut down during prayer.
Again.
Remind us to show up at our neighbors’ mosque’s today,
with flowers and tears and outstretched arms.
Help us heal.
Help us heal each other
and fix the very broken world you bequeathed us.
We need You. We really need You.
Amen.
Dear God,
From the depths
we call to You.
Our broken hearts,
shattered like glass,
like a windshield,
or a child’s glasses,
or a sanctuary window…
This wounding moment – there, here,
to every ‘us’ imaginable,
Divine reflections fractured and bloodied
again and again, like a sick dream.
Dear God,
how do You endure this madness?
How do we?
Look what Your children
are willing to do to each other…
We collect these hard, cold, things,
glorify them like treasured keepsakes
forgetting their purpose is pure: to kill.
Holy One, we’re devastated. Again.
It’s really hard to remember a world
without bulletproof backpacks and armed guards
outside of every sanctuary.
Help us remember a world
that felt lighter than this one.
Fill our torn hearts with Your spirit
as we do the impossible work
of burying our dead,
cut down during prayer.
Again.
Remind us to show up at our neighbors’ mosque’s today,
with flowers and tears and outstretched arms.
Help us heal.
Help us heal each other
and fix the very broken world you bequeathed us.
We need You. We really need You.
Amen.
01 Paper Cranes
May 2019, Cashmere, by Silvia Purdie
100 paper cranes arrived last week
from Allegheny, Pennsylvania
in a courier box that felt
empty
but was full of colour.
A letter introduced
“a handmade mobile of cranes to symbolize peace and healing”.
“In case this letter is too serious”, she wrote
“let me take a moment to share the fun we had in making paper cranes.
The first ones we made were not symbols of peace and healing –
more like monsters from the Jurassic Period! –
but we persevered.
These cranes were made in the chaos that goes on while living,
sent with our hope for peace and healing
and with all the laughter that comes
from continuing to move forward in life.
Receive these cranes in the spirit in which they were folded.”
I held a pure white paper crane yesterday
in a young friend’s bedroom.
She found it on a desk at Uni
a gift left by a stranger
a gift which gave her strength on a bad day.
Squares of paper folded in and folded out
squeezed and pinched tight
then opened out, suddenly a bird,
stately, intent, about to fly.
Made in the chaos
as a sign of peace.
Made with love
to speak into pain -
empty but full of spirit.
May 2019, Cashmere, by Silvia Purdie
100 paper cranes arrived last week
from Allegheny, Pennsylvania
in a courier box that felt
empty
but was full of colour.
A letter introduced
“a handmade mobile of cranes to symbolize peace and healing”.
“In case this letter is too serious”, she wrote
“let me take a moment to share the fun we had in making paper cranes.
The first ones we made were not symbols of peace and healing –
more like monsters from the Jurassic Period! –
but we persevered.
These cranes were made in the chaos that goes on while living,
sent with our hope for peace and healing
and with all the laughter that comes
from continuing to move forward in life.
Receive these cranes in the spirit in which they were folded.”
I held a pure white paper crane yesterday
in a young friend’s bedroom.
She found it on a desk at Uni
a gift left by a stranger
a gift which gave her strength on a bad day.
Squares of paper folded in and folded out
squeezed and pinched tight
then opened out, suddenly a bird,
stately, intent, about to fly.
Made in the chaos
as a sign of peace.
Made with love
to speak into pain -
empty but full of spirit.
This through from Alpine Presbytery. I feel it was worth sharing, with thanks to Andrew Nichol and Murray Rae.
From Rev Dr Andrew Nicol, Deputy Moderator of Alpine Presbytery
Dear people of Alpine Presbytery,
Please continue your prayers and practical support for the multitudes of ordinary people thrust into the frontlines of horror and loss. Let us keep the Muslim community of New Zealand, and indeed our immediate neighbours, at the forefront of our attention.
As you orient yourself amidst the noise and distress may the Spirit grant you sound bearings. One of the major challenges we face at this time, as leaders in our churches and communities, is the cultivation of a responsible and theologically robust narrative. Amidst an array of voices, we are required to listen well and if needed supplement our account of things because people are influenced by our interpretation of events. Of course, the way we tell this story will continue to be influenced by who we listen to. Who are we listening to?
It seems entirely understandable that the first waves in our public speech and social media reflected the distress we feel—that this terror has happened in our precious home. Kiwis are very proud of this beautiful country, and Cantabrians who have endured so much, have spoken passionately of their horror. We want to be clear that that this should not happen here, that we are ‘not like this’.
However, a second wave of reflection alerts us to the fact that there are other stories we need to listen to—stories that fill the gaps in our public narrative, stories that challenge our blind spots, stories that daringly pose the question as to whether we might in fact be ‘like this’. I commend to you the wise words of Murray Rae below as he reminds us that this sort of thing has in fact happened here before and that “hatred takes root in the soil of indifference, and in fields of complacency”. Some New Zealander’s are telling us that this home has never been a safe place. I commend to you his full script below. God bless you as you embody our Lord’s narrative of compassion, justice and mercy. Let us see and acknowledge the incredible goodness, bravery, and generosity of the people of New Zealand and have the courage to name our darkness for what it is. Let us have the courage also to challenge and supplement the narrative, and the tenacity to change.
Andrew Nicol
(andrew@stmargaretschurch.org.nz)
Some very thoughtful words shared on Sunday by Professor Murray Rae:
Psalm 58
Luke 13: 31 -35
On Friday we were exposed once more to the unfathomable depths of human evil. We may have believed that it couldn’t happen here. But we were mistaken. In fact, while some have spoken of this event as unprecedented in New Zealand, tragically it is not. Wayne reminded us down at Araiteuru marae yesterday that in 1864, during the land wars in New Zealand, about 100 Māori women, children, and the elderly took refuge in Rangiaowhia in face of Governor Grey’s attempts to conquer Māori settlements in the Waikato and seize their land. The women, the children and the elderly took refuge while the men prepared to engage in battle elsewhere. Bishop Selwyn was told, and was asked to convey the message that Rangiaowhia would be a place of sanctuary. But on a Sunday morning the crown forces went to Rangiaowhia and slaughtered all those who had taken refuge there.
The massacre on Friday was not unprecedented in New Zealand. Atrocities like that have struck us before. We have been exposed before in this country to the depths of human evil, and it is probably the case that we will be again. Hatred takes root in the soil of indifference, and in fields of complacency. It grows there undetected until it unleashes its terrible violence and destructiveness. We cannot pretend that New Zealand’s soil provides no nourishment for the seeds of hatred and evil. We cannot pretend as some memes on social media have put it, that this is not us. Racism, intolerance and hatred are nourished here too. The man who drove past the mosque in Linwood on Friday and yelled out the window, ‘I’m here to celebrate’, or those who watched the live feed on facebook of the killer at his work and cheered him on, are people in our midst, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, in this place that we thought was immune to all this.
We are not immune. So what are we to do?
Many of us will have started out already to embrace our Muslim friends, to try to assure them that this is their home too. Sadly, for now, they have good reason to doubt it. We may try to reach out to ethnic minorities in New Zealand and try to assure them that they are welcomed and their culture is respected. But sadly, their everyday experience frequently tells a different story.
We ought to reach out in these ways wherever we can, but we also have other work to do; it is the work of confession. We are not, as a country, as hospitable, as welcoming, as compassionate as we imagine ourselves to be. The seeds of hatred, nourished by indifference and complacency, can grow here too.
Our gospel reading this morning is a reading for the season of Lent. It continues the story of Jesus making his way toward Jerusalem. Jesus knows what he will face there. He did not need the warning some Pharisees brought to him that Herod was seeking to kill him. Jesus already knew of the darkness and evil that lies ahead. And yet he continues on.
But for a moment he pauses, and utters a lament for the city toward which he journeys. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’, Jesus says, ‘the people that killed the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’
A little later, when in sight now of the city, Jesus pauses again. This time, Luke tells us, Jesus wept over the city, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognised on this day the things that make for peace!... Indeed the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave you with one stone upon another.’
This is Jesus’ lament for the city. He is speaking of Jerusalem, of course, but we can claim it also for Christchurch today. ‘Your enemies will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you.’
Where do we belong in this story of lament? We want to stand with Jesus of course, joining in his lament for the city, shedding our own tears, longing for the city that it might be comforted, and that it might find a path to peace. It is right that we should stand with Jesus offering our lament.
But we are also those who are lamented over. ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together’, Jesus says, ‘as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ We are among those lamented over, and we must confess our resistance sometimes, to Jesus’ way of love. For all that we do in seeking to follow Jesus, we could do more. We, I’m afraid, take time off now and again, let our own prejudices show, tire of the work of compassion, and harbour intolerant thoughts. We belong also with those for whom Jesus laments: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ We have work of confession to do.
In a third place of belonging in this story, we may hear a lament for the Muslim community. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you…’ Not only children, but brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers have been crushed by the gunman in Christchurch. We can claim Jesus’ lament for them, and for us wherever we stand in solidarity with them.
We have also read this morning from Psalm 58. It is a Psalm of bitter anguish cried out to God in the face of atrocity. It is not a Psalm we read often in church, for in crying out for vengeance, the psalmist expresses sentiments that don’t seem to fit very well with the way of Christ. Jesus calls us to love our enemies. We are enjoined to respond to evil with love. Can a Psalm like this, crying out as it does for vengeance, have any place in Christian worship?
I want to suggest to you this morning that it does have a place. Psalm 58 is a Psalm of outrage, and outrage is exactly what we should feel in the face of what went on in Christchurch on Friday. Approval is unconscionable and indifference is also a failure. In the face of such terrible evil, we should feel outrage alongside our sorrow. What is more, this is precisely the place where that outrage should be expressed — before God, in worship and lament.
But it is important for us to recognise what we are doing in bringing our outrage here. The psalmist pleads that God will bring vengeance upon his enemies, and in doing so, in placing the outrage before God, the Psalmist waives the right to seek vengeance himself. To place our outrage in the hands of God is to offer it up for God to deal with.
‘O God break the teeth of the wicked in their mouths', cries the Psalmist, 'tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!’ The Psalmist has witnessed terrible atrocity and he brings his outrage to God. Outrage is the appropriate thing to feel, but having prayed a prayer like that, the Psalmist must leave his bitterness and anger in the hands of God. And then he must wait upon God’s answer to his prayer.
That brings us back to Jesus and his journey toward Jerusalem. Jesus goes to Jerusalem precisely to face the suffering and the evil of our world. Despite the warning of the Pharisees, he does not turn away. He faces the evil by bearing it himself. “Vengeance is mine says, the Lord, I will repay.” In Jesus we find that the Lord repays evil by taking its consequences upon himself.
How are we to respond to the atrocity that has taken place in our midst? Outrage is an appropriate response, but we must bring it here and place it in the hands of God. And then we must seek to be faithful to the God we discover in Jesus who does not return evil for evil, but responds to evil with love. It is our Muslim brothers and sisters who need our love most of all just now. We must be diligent in offering our love and our support.
But there is another job for us as well. When we see the evil of racial intolerance appearing among us, or among our friends and acquaintances, when we see the evil of hatred and prejudice manifesting itself in casual remarks among our peers, or in attitudes embedded in our communities, we followers of Christ must call it out and answer it with Jesus’ way of compassion, and kindness, and love.
I sympathise with the thousands of people who have posted on social media and protested before television cameras that the evil unleashed in Christchurch is not our way. But we cannot take that for granted. Compassion cannot be taken for granted. The overcoming of racial prejudice cannot be taken for granted. The removal of religious suspicion and intolerance cannot be taken for granted. We have to work at it, and in that work, we desperately need God’s help.
Let us pray.
Lord we are deeply saddened by what has taken place in our midst. We acknowledge our feelings of anger that an evil man has wrought such destruction among us and brought us all so low. We come before you with our anger, with our sorrow, and also with our confession that we have work to do ourselves to overcome those feelings of intolerance and suspicion and mistrust that we find at times within our own hearts and minds. We need your help, O Lord. We need your help. Do not delay we pray in bringing your aid to all of us, and especially to the Muslim community with whom we mourn today. Amen.
Copyright © 2019 Alpine Presbytery, All rights reserved.
From Rev Dr Andrew Nicol, Deputy Moderator of Alpine Presbytery
Dear people of Alpine Presbytery,
Please continue your prayers and practical support for the multitudes of ordinary people thrust into the frontlines of horror and loss. Let us keep the Muslim community of New Zealand, and indeed our immediate neighbours, at the forefront of our attention.
As you orient yourself amidst the noise and distress may the Spirit grant you sound bearings. One of the major challenges we face at this time, as leaders in our churches and communities, is the cultivation of a responsible and theologically robust narrative. Amidst an array of voices, we are required to listen well and if needed supplement our account of things because people are influenced by our interpretation of events. Of course, the way we tell this story will continue to be influenced by who we listen to. Who are we listening to?
It seems entirely understandable that the first waves in our public speech and social media reflected the distress we feel—that this terror has happened in our precious home. Kiwis are very proud of this beautiful country, and Cantabrians who have endured so much, have spoken passionately of their horror. We want to be clear that that this should not happen here, that we are ‘not like this’.
However, a second wave of reflection alerts us to the fact that there are other stories we need to listen to—stories that fill the gaps in our public narrative, stories that challenge our blind spots, stories that daringly pose the question as to whether we might in fact be ‘like this’. I commend to you the wise words of Murray Rae below as he reminds us that this sort of thing has in fact happened here before and that “hatred takes root in the soil of indifference, and in fields of complacency”. Some New Zealander’s are telling us that this home has never been a safe place. I commend to you his full script below. God bless you as you embody our Lord’s narrative of compassion, justice and mercy. Let us see and acknowledge the incredible goodness, bravery, and generosity of the people of New Zealand and have the courage to name our darkness for what it is. Let us have the courage also to challenge and supplement the narrative, and the tenacity to change.
Andrew Nicol
(andrew@stmargaretschurch.org.nz)
Some very thoughtful words shared on Sunday by Professor Murray Rae:
Psalm 58
Luke 13: 31 -35
On Friday we were exposed once more to the unfathomable depths of human evil. We may have believed that it couldn’t happen here. But we were mistaken. In fact, while some have spoken of this event as unprecedented in New Zealand, tragically it is not. Wayne reminded us down at Araiteuru marae yesterday that in 1864, during the land wars in New Zealand, about 100 Māori women, children, and the elderly took refuge in Rangiaowhia in face of Governor Grey’s attempts to conquer Māori settlements in the Waikato and seize their land. The women, the children and the elderly took refuge while the men prepared to engage in battle elsewhere. Bishop Selwyn was told, and was asked to convey the message that Rangiaowhia would be a place of sanctuary. But on a Sunday morning the crown forces went to Rangiaowhia and slaughtered all those who had taken refuge there.
The massacre on Friday was not unprecedented in New Zealand. Atrocities like that have struck us before. We have been exposed before in this country to the depths of human evil, and it is probably the case that we will be again. Hatred takes root in the soil of indifference, and in fields of complacency. It grows there undetected until it unleashes its terrible violence and destructiveness. We cannot pretend that New Zealand’s soil provides no nourishment for the seeds of hatred and evil. We cannot pretend as some memes on social media have put it, that this is not us. Racism, intolerance and hatred are nourished here too. The man who drove past the mosque in Linwood on Friday and yelled out the window, ‘I’m here to celebrate’, or those who watched the live feed on facebook of the killer at his work and cheered him on, are people in our midst, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, in this place that we thought was immune to all this.
We are not immune. So what are we to do?
Many of us will have started out already to embrace our Muslim friends, to try to assure them that this is their home too. Sadly, for now, they have good reason to doubt it. We may try to reach out to ethnic minorities in New Zealand and try to assure them that they are welcomed and their culture is respected. But sadly, their everyday experience frequently tells a different story.
We ought to reach out in these ways wherever we can, but we also have other work to do; it is the work of confession. We are not, as a country, as hospitable, as welcoming, as compassionate as we imagine ourselves to be. The seeds of hatred, nourished by indifference and complacency, can grow here too.
Our gospel reading this morning is a reading for the season of Lent. It continues the story of Jesus making his way toward Jerusalem. Jesus knows what he will face there. He did not need the warning some Pharisees brought to him that Herod was seeking to kill him. Jesus already knew of the darkness and evil that lies ahead. And yet he continues on.
But for a moment he pauses, and utters a lament for the city toward which he journeys. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’, Jesus says, ‘the people that killed the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’
A little later, when in sight now of the city, Jesus pauses again. This time, Luke tells us, Jesus wept over the city, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognised on this day the things that make for peace!... Indeed the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave you with one stone upon another.’
This is Jesus’ lament for the city. He is speaking of Jerusalem, of course, but we can claim it also for Christchurch today. ‘Your enemies will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you.’
Where do we belong in this story of lament? We want to stand with Jesus of course, joining in his lament for the city, shedding our own tears, longing for the city that it might be comforted, and that it might find a path to peace. It is right that we should stand with Jesus offering our lament.
But we are also those who are lamented over. ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together’, Jesus says, ‘as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ We are among those lamented over, and we must confess our resistance sometimes, to Jesus’ way of love. For all that we do in seeking to follow Jesus, we could do more. We, I’m afraid, take time off now and again, let our own prejudices show, tire of the work of compassion, and harbour intolerant thoughts. We belong also with those for whom Jesus laments: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ We have work of confession to do.
In a third place of belonging in this story, we may hear a lament for the Muslim community. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you…’ Not only children, but brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers have been crushed by the gunman in Christchurch. We can claim Jesus’ lament for them, and for us wherever we stand in solidarity with them.
We have also read this morning from Psalm 58. It is a Psalm of bitter anguish cried out to God in the face of atrocity. It is not a Psalm we read often in church, for in crying out for vengeance, the psalmist expresses sentiments that don’t seem to fit very well with the way of Christ. Jesus calls us to love our enemies. We are enjoined to respond to evil with love. Can a Psalm like this, crying out as it does for vengeance, have any place in Christian worship?
I want to suggest to you this morning that it does have a place. Psalm 58 is a Psalm of outrage, and outrage is exactly what we should feel in the face of what went on in Christchurch on Friday. Approval is unconscionable and indifference is also a failure. In the face of such terrible evil, we should feel outrage alongside our sorrow. What is more, this is precisely the place where that outrage should be expressed — before God, in worship and lament.
But it is important for us to recognise what we are doing in bringing our outrage here. The psalmist pleads that God will bring vengeance upon his enemies, and in doing so, in placing the outrage before God, the Psalmist waives the right to seek vengeance himself. To place our outrage in the hands of God is to offer it up for God to deal with.
‘O God break the teeth of the wicked in their mouths', cries the Psalmist, 'tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!’ The Psalmist has witnessed terrible atrocity and he brings his outrage to God. Outrage is the appropriate thing to feel, but having prayed a prayer like that, the Psalmist must leave his bitterness and anger in the hands of God. And then he must wait upon God’s answer to his prayer.
That brings us back to Jesus and his journey toward Jerusalem. Jesus goes to Jerusalem precisely to face the suffering and the evil of our world. Despite the warning of the Pharisees, he does not turn away. He faces the evil by bearing it himself. “Vengeance is mine says, the Lord, I will repay.” In Jesus we find that the Lord repays evil by taking its consequences upon himself.
How are we to respond to the atrocity that has taken place in our midst? Outrage is an appropriate response, but we must bring it here and place it in the hands of God. And then we must seek to be faithful to the God we discover in Jesus who does not return evil for evil, but responds to evil with love. It is our Muslim brothers and sisters who need our love most of all just now. We must be diligent in offering our love and our support.
But there is another job for us as well. When we see the evil of racial intolerance appearing among us, or among our friends and acquaintances, when we see the evil of hatred and prejudice manifesting itself in casual remarks among our peers, or in attitudes embedded in our communities, we followers of Christ must call it out and answer it with Jesus’ way of compassion, and kindness, and love.
I sympathise with the thousands of people who have posted on social media and protested before television cameras that the evil unleashed in Christchurch is not our way. But we cannot take that for granted. Compassion cannot be taken for granted. The overcoming of racial prejudice cannot be taken for granted. The removal of religious suspicion and intolerance cannot be taken for granted. We have to work at it, and in that work, we desperately need God’s help.
Let us pray.
Lord we are deeply saddened by what has taken place in our midst. We acknowledge our feelings of anger that an evil man has wrought such destruction among us and brought us all so low. We come before you with our anger, with our sorrow, and also with our confession that we have work to do ourselves to overcome those feelings of intolerance and suspicion and mistrust that we find at times within our own hearts and minds. We need your help, O Lord. We need your help. Do not delay we pray in bringing your aid to all of us, and especially to the Muslim community with whom we mourn today. Amen.
Copyright © 2019 Alpine Presbytery, All rights reserved.