SOUL SURMISE

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

I love the West Wing episode NSF Thurmont. It is one of the many defining moments of the Jed Bartlet’s Presidency in West Wing, the series that is perhaps God’s reason for giving humans the ability to create moving pictures. It gives me fuel to continue to work with my good friend Fr Martin Magill to make peace in Ireland.

The plot line is that congressmen have been killed in Gaza and the American people (over 80% a poll is telling us) are demanding revengeful justice.  It is of course a echo of 9/11 but Bartlet ain’t no George W Bush and so he is thinking the slower burn of peace that will bring security on a more long term basis rather than the fast knee jerk feel better response that perhaps makes people feel safer in the short term but leads to larger body counts.  

Bartlet sets out to find peace, the peace he read about when reciting the Beatitudes at the funeral of his great friend and naval expert Fitzwallace, killed in the same attack.  When a joint delegation of Washington’s most powerful politicians arrive, behind the speaker of the house, to demand immediate military response and tell The President he is going to go on television to announce such a strike he turns and says, “I am trying to find a way to make peace... and when I do you can go on television and explain why you were against it.”

It is an argument stopping phrase; like the simplicity of epiphany. What else would we be ambitious to do? Maintain hate and sectarianism? The Old Testament was built around the idea of bringing shalom to earth.  Shalom is a peacefulness that is also a wholeness, a harmonious relationship between human and human, human and the earth and human and the Creator.  It is about a restoration of all that was lost in the Garden of Eden.  

It is the redemption and salvation Jesus came to bring, tearing the curtain in two and breaking down the dividing walls (Ephesians 2). It is all about peace which is why it is so important to Jesus that he should say that peacemakers are children of God.  Yet for so long Northern Irish evangelical Christians actually disdained the peace makers calling them liberal heretics.  Perhaps on the day of judgement we will have an opportunity to hear before the living God why they were so much against it.

Speaking of judgement, I hear you ask about justice.  Justice is what the heavy politicians and American people wanted in West Wing.  It is an important player in the Scriptures too.  It has a role to play and perhaps its difficult but vital marriage with mercy will actually be an avenue to the peace that is sought.  Yet, when we stop to think about it, there will be no need for justice in the New Jerusalem that John sees in his vision that we get to read about it in Revelation.  

It is not justice that will fill the air of a new heaven and earth; it will be peace.  Peace is God’s goal. The angels sang about it at Jesus birth. Jesus won its victory at his cross and resurrection. If we are about his business then we are going to be called children of God in heaven even if we get called more disparaging vulgar names. I do not believe that it is a coincidence that “blessed are the peacemakers” comes next to “blessed are you when people persecute you” in the Beatitudes. The world wants vengeance not peace. 

The past twenty years has seen blessed changes in Northern Ireland.  It has been a real period of Divine intervention and grace. And yes, when grace plays its part then we have to experience some very uncomfortable relationships. We might find ourselves in the ludicrous, almost sickening scenario that Jesus was in when he declared he had not seen so much faith all of Israel as a Roman centurion who was crucifying Jesus own people at the side of roads! And if we haven’t been in such awkward situations, can we claim to be following Jesus?

Another scene in the same episode of West Wing has President Bartlet awake in the night pondering his dilemma.  His wife Abbey joins him and as he is telling her that it would be so much easier to please the people and authorise a military attack of vengeance and justice, leading to pictures of bombings on CNN and a few charred bodies, Abbey responds, “Do you want easy?!”  

Easy is not a word that takes up much space in a Bible Concordance.  Jesus never did easy.  Jesus never mentioned easy when he was describing what it would be like to follow him. Peacemaking is never easy.  

For the people of Jesus’ day it was not easy to live with the forgiveness granted to tax collectors, prostitutes, Roman centurions and a convicted criminal hanging on a cross.  Peacemaking comes with some pain.  

Reconciliation is at the heart of the Gospel and that reconciliation is vertical and horizontal. I have committed myself to that Gospel mandate. In the twenty five years since our Northern Ireland ceasefire we have had many fragile moments to our peace building project. 

There always seems much more to do to bring us what Jeremiah 29 calls us to pray for - “peace and prosperity”. Northern Ireland always needs sons and daughters of God to step up and boldly attempt peacemaking, to deny themselves, take up crosses and follow Jesus into reconciliation. I personally believe that God is asking Fr Martin and I to go on working for Shalom, a kingdom on earth that is like heaven which is peace filled. I find nowhere in Scripture where that call could be refuted. 

And when the vicious vitriol comes on social media or real life, then I am happy to paraphrase Jed Bartlet, “I am trying to help God to make peace and when there is peace I want you to stand before God and explain why you were against it!”

A FITZROY NIGHT ON RECONCILIATION AND FORGIVENESS - Brother Thierry and Calvin College Students

It was one of those combination of coincidences that worked an utter treat. It was a classic Fitzroy evening among many such.

My friends Ken and Gail Heffner had a group of students from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan in Belfast studying. Their final assignments were to be pieces of art. Gail suggested we might display those in Fitzroy on their last Sunday evening.

At the same time the Clonard Fitzroy Fellowship got the opportunity of having Brother Thierry speak on what was the Sunday in the middle of the Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity. 

What to do? In the end we did the mash up! Students from a Dutch Reformed College in the mid west of America mixed up with a Benedictine monk from Paris, now living in a monastery in Rostrevor. 

And oh my how it worked!

Those Calvin students really worked it up. There was painting, photography, sketches, poetry, music, song and even a children’s book. The exhibition fills the Living Corridor Gallery in Fitzroy for the next few weeks. It has a quality. It engages. It provokes. 

The secret to their art was their listening and the time they took to understand. How many young Americans arrive and hear about our woes and have simple clichéd answers within hours. There was a humility to the Calvin students’ listening. They caught the complexities.

In the end I think they took the advice of Colin Davidson, our very best artist. Colin believes that art should ask questions rather than being tempted towards propaganda answers. Again, these students listened. Again, the art benefited.

There was a sense that the Children’s Book with stunning illustrations should have a publisher and that the song should be released as a single. The mirror in The Future Starts With You was getting written on, stories were going inside the cups of Cuppa to be passed on. 

This was an evening all of its own…. and then… into the middle of all of these young Americans - a French monk!

In the first half of the evening Brother Thierry shared how, from almost out of the blue, he fell in love with Jesus and committed his life to him. It was a testimony straight out of a Ballymena Gospel Hall, apart from the habit he was wearing! Some might say that wearing that negated his testimony. It’s why we need weeks of prayer from Christian unity!

When Brother Thierry got up to bring his homily there was clarity, a prophetic punch with a very pastoral gentleness.

Taking his theme from the 4 Corners Festival 2019, Thierry unpacked the wisdom of Scripture on the theme of forgiveness. He confronted us with the stumbling blocks -

“… we identify ourselves with our wounds, we cling to them”

“To reduce ourselves to our wounds reduce the one who hurt us his or her evil deed is to dehumanise our self and the other.”

“… the main symptom of the refusal to forgive is the inability to move on in life… the refusal to forgive is a futile and desperate attempt to remain in control of our lives and it is a sure and sad promise of mere survival.”

I was particularly taken by the idea that refusing to forgive someone was a form of self harm. This is also the part of Thierry’s talk that touched most weightily on our social and political lack of forgiveness in N. Ireland.

“… the refusal to forgive and to be forgiven imprisons us and others to the past, it makes us connect to our past in a harmful way, it is a form of self harming.”

Thierry goes on to see lack of forgiveness as a form of idolatry -

“… to look at everything through the prism of one hurtful event, could be considered as an of adoration of the past, a form of idolatry, when in fact it is the present which requires our attention and energies.”

How that might change the inertia of the current Stormont standoff and how we deal with our past in this country.

Throughout, Thierry was using the stories of the Scriptures. Ultimately forgiveness is about being about the things of God. God teaches us through his own example to be those who move first as he did even back as far as Eden and later in Jesus. When we hit for the other to come and seek forgiveness before we give it, “we fence in grace at work within us”.

In the end what do we wish to add to the world. Atoms of hate, hurt and violence or “atoms of forgiveness”.

What a night! The complexity, the insights, the questions and the call to be like God - forgivers!

RICHARD MOORE'S STORY OF FORGIVENESS - 4 Corners Festival 2019 Prayer Breakfast

There was a story in Richard Moore’s powerful address to the 4 Corners Festival Prayer Breakfast. It was not long after Richard had been blinded by a British Army rubber bullet, while he was walking home from school. He was sitting in his living room in the Creggan and his mum was in the kitchen. He heard his older brother talking to his mother. 

“Mammy, they killed Uncle Gerry and now they have blinded our Richard. It is time to stand up and fight back.” 

Richard's mother had a different slant.

“Son, if you want to help your brother, he in the next room. Go and help him. You are not going to help Richard by going and doing harm to somebody else.”

It is profound wisdom from a woman who had every reason to want revenge or justice or whatever we might call a tit for tat response.

Our theme for the 2019 Festival is Scandalous Forgiveness and Richard was a well chosen speaker. He set the tone for the entire Festival absolutely beautifully. 

Richard Moore took his parents lead and instead of turning bitter about losing his sight has used it as a different perspective to look at life. Colour of skin and dress codes are key visuals for our prejudices. Being blind, Richard says that he only meets human beings. He also appreciates that being blind has led him into even brief engagements with strangers that are more deeply humane because they will touch his band, take his arm, help him off a bus.

Going further than letting go of his bitterness Richard sought to forgive. He speaks about sitting thinking about the man who fired the rubber bullet that blinded him. Richard wondered if that soldier ever thought about him. In the end he sought the soldier out and met him. He jokingly spoke of their first meeting as being like a nervous first date but went on to talk about liking Charles as he is called.

In some circles such a forgiveness and act of reconciliation might be seen as scandalous. Forgiving the Brits who blinded him and killed his uncle. Not for Richard. He made clear to us that forgiving Charles did not justify what Charles had done. The past remains after the act of forgiveness. The future is different though.

For Richard forgiveness is a gift that he was given for his own good. It very much begins within himself and is ultimately for himself. Even if Charles hadn’t wanted to meet him or accept his forgiveness that act of forgiving would have done its work in Richard’s life, allowing him to let go and move on.

The energy that Richard Moore found from moving on is evident in everything he does. A married man with two children, a musician and major singer in his Chapel’s Saturday Mass Choir. He played in bands and ran two pubs before selling them to set up Children In Crossfire.

Children in Crossfire works in Ethiopia and Tanzania to change the circumstances of children born and raised in poverty. They work in Ireland the UK also. 

Richard’s story is not about someone being made blind one afternoon coming home from school. It is the story of how someone dealt with that moment and moved on from it. it is a story of honesty, resilience, compassion, courage and vision. Vision seems an interesting word in Richard’s story but it is an accurate one. 

Richard Moore is a man of vision. It is easy to see why the Dalai Lama calls him a hero. This morning he set the tone of the 4 Corners festival 2019 beautifully. He was powerful, poignant, prophetic and pastoral. He is one of those we should be looking to as we try to give our wee country a better future. 

 

https://4cornersfestival.com

https://www.childrenincrossfire.org

 

TODAY, WE REMEMBER THE KINGSMILLS MASSACRE (THE DAY AFTER...)

Today (January 5th), we remember the Kingsmills Massacre

 

John Bryans 

Robert Chambers 

Reginald Chapman 

Walter Chapman 

Robert Freeburn 

Joseph Lemmon 

John McConville 

James McWhirter 

Robert Walker

Kenneth Worton

 

The day after we remembered the The Reaveys and O’Dowds

 

John Reavey

Brian Reavey

Anthony Reavey

Joseph O’Dowd

Barry O’Dowd

Declan O’Dowd 

Murdered just a couple of miles away.

 

People’s loved ones 

Murdered

Tit for tat

Of the heinous hate filled hell

We heaped upon one other

In our irrational inhumanity.

 

We remember today

The futile loss

The parental pain

The excruciating grief

The torturous trauma

The shots through the heart of our hope. 

 

God forgive us

Forgive us all

Forgive our histories

Forgive our holding of grudges

Forgive the twisted tamper to our causes

Forgive our gloating at the hurt we caused

Forgive our sectarian nurtured default

Forgive our excuses to not love neighbour… or enemy

Forgive our reluctance for forgiveness.

 

Today we remember Kingsmills

The day after the Reavey and O’Dowds

God help us remember forgiveness

And never forget the madness.

 

The theme for this year's 4 Corners Festival (Jan 30-Feb 10) is Scandalous Forgiveness... check the programme - https://4cornersfestival.com 

INTERVIEW WITH JONNY CLARK, DIRECTOR OF GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME

This week saw the premier of a new documentary film Guardians Of The Flame. It is powerful piece of journalism in which Jonny Clark takes us to the centre of the pain and grief of the Northern Irish Troubles through the eyes and hearts of three people who lost loved ones; Eugene Reavey, Beryl Quigley and Alan McBride.

It is a tender and poignant journey as they share their stories and then speak about their response, in the immediate aftermath and indeed until this day. 

I am not sure that it was scripted but in the end we are in a discussion on forgiveness and different approaches on how to move on after murder has smashed your heart into pieces. 

Guardians of The Flame is a hopeful, inspirational and insightful piece work. We are delighted to have a screening of the film as one of the events at this year’s 4 Corners Festival - January 30 - February 10, 2019. It is almost perfect for this year’s theme, Scandalous Forgiveness.

I asked Jonny Clark a few questions about the film… 

 

SS: Jonny, when did you first think about making the film? 

 

JONNY: This kind of film has been a day dream of mine for years, probably since the days when we lived in the lower Shankill from 2002-2010. During that time we would offer scholarships to young people from post-conflict nations to spend a year with us in Belfast. We had loads of Zulus from South Africa, Palestinians, Israelis, Rwandans, Lebanese, Syrians etc. What I was struck by were the similarities in the very different narratives of these countries. 

 

So my original idea was one film comparing the conflicts in each place and highlighting both the toxic and redemptive power of religion. 

 

In September 2017 I was running our annual YWAM reconciliation conference in Lebanon and met an English guy called Josh Eaves. He was passionate about peace building and had been working in Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon as well as with our partner project in southern Lebanon, the Foundation for Forgiveness and Reconciliation. He was also a film maker and worked for a company called Global Fire Creative. 

 

Josh felt that instead of one film we should make a series of films looking at each of these national conflicts with the Northern Irish conflict being the focus of the first episode. Josh was committed to partnering with me to make it happen. Josh is a great guy and a gifted film maker and so together we were able to turn a day dream into a reality. 

 

Why did you choose Alan McBride, Beryl Quigley and Eugene Reavey to concentrate on? 

 

I chose these Eugene, Beryl and Alan because their stories were all quite different. Firstly, they straddled three decades of the Troubles, the Whitecross killings were in 1976, Beryl's husband was killed in 1984, and the Shankill bomb was 1993. 

 

Also their reaction to the killings of their loved ones was also different. Beryl has a strong Christian faith and looks back on a powerful encounter with God moments after the attack on her husband Bill McConnell. She felt a strong compulsion to forgive and is certainly an amazing witness of the freedom that can come from forgiveness. 

 

Eugene's three brothers were killed while watching Celebrity Squares in their living room by the Glenanne Gang. I had met Eugene at one of Tommy Sands' Music of Healing events which we host in our centre in Rostrevor, An Cuan. I was struck by this salt of the earth man but also the stunning story of his Mum. 

 

On the night her sons were killed she lit a candle and said a prayer for the men who killed her sons. She would do that every night for the rest of her life, 30 years. To me I find that story just so excruciatingly beautiful and yet tragic at the same time. I said to Eugene on Sunday night that his Mummy is the hero of the film. 

 

I was keen to interview Alan McBride for the film because his wife, Sharon, was killed in the Shankill bomb, an area in which I had lived and worked for 8 years. I remember early on in my time living in the Shankill I met an old couple having lunch in the old Shankill Mission. They told me that many people in the area were still traumatised by the 1993 bombing. 

 

Alan explicitly says he has not forgiven the bombers because his mother-in-law would never forgive him if he did. But he describes letting go of the anger and hurt. He also details his work which he does along with Eugene Reavey and Stephen Travers of the Miami Showband massacre, with people from all sides of our community. 

 

So they all have unique stories and slightly different takes on reconciliation. They are all works in progress and we try not to create a one dimensional picture of them as saints, but as normal punters dealing as best as they can with the events of the past and each on the journey of forgiveness and reconciliation. 

 

Did the original idea for the film change at all during the making of it?

 

I think my original aim was to make a film that had a stronger critique of religious nationalism. In the age of evangelical support of Donald Trump in America it felt like this needed to be addressed.Trump-vangelicals are very similar to the church goers that supported Ian Paisley and his ilk, citing their faith as the reason for their devoted allegiance to Queen, Country and God. 

 

In the end however as we zeroed in on the stories of Alan, Beryl and Eugene it felt inappropriate to use their tragedies as a backdrop to taking shots at political leaders and faith leaders. We moved away from a narrative about good guys and bad guys, to a more gentle approach: hearing the stories of victims and allowing for commentary from various religious leaders. 

 

The quote we use for the title of the film comes from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' book the Dignity of Difference: "Religion is like fire and like fire it warms but it also burns, and we are the guardians of the flame". This is what we were originally building the film around. In the end we have focused more on these heroic guardians who are active builders of reconciliation today rather than critiquing those who are holding us to the sins of the past, of marrying allegiance to God with national or religious identity.

 

What are your ambitions for the film?

 

We hope the film will be picked up for TV, but in the meantime we will continue to arrange screenings and in a couple of months it will be available online to purchase or rent. We hope to start work soon on the next instalment of the series where we will look at Lebanon. We ran a Kickstarter to get this project off the ground so we also hope more investment will come in for it somehow.

 

Guardians Of The Flames will be screened as part of the 4 Corner’s Festival 2019 - Friday, February 8th 2019 @ 7.30 in Belvoir Parish Church of Ireland - full details https://4cornersfestival.com

UNDER THE SIMPLISTIC SECTARIAN SURFACE - OUR COMPLEXITIES

I met a man in a British Army uniform awhile back. As we shook hands shared names I was astounded. He had one of those Irish names that shouted Catholic. Knowing what we were both thinking, he laughed and carried on that his family were from the Republic of Ireland. it reminded me of the complexities.

I felt the complexities again tonight when soccer fans disrespected each other’s anthems in the friendly between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland team are a scattering of Protestants and Catholics, yet all being treated like the same. What if Liam Boyce scores! 

Brian O’Driscoll’s recent Shoulder to Shoulder documentary looked at those complexities in an Irish Rugby team that during our Troubles had Donal Lenihan, from Republican stock, sharing a room with Brian McCall from the British army! The complexities. 

Sadly, the complexities are hidden a long way from the simple sectarian surface that causes all of our division. This simplicity came out during the Titanic Commemorations in 2012. In the north it was a Protestant tragedy, ignored by most Catholics. In the Republic it was recognised that more Irish Catholics than Protestant were lost due to the final docking at Cobh. 

The Pope celebrating the Battle of the Boyne. The Presbyterians in the United Irishmen. The All Ireland Gaelic Football Cup is named after a Protestant. There are hundreds of Protestants learning Irish on the Loyalist Newtownards Road. Complexities.

I believe that if we could open up the complexities it might be an avenue for us to humanise one another and uncoil the spring of tension that our simplistic view of each other has been allowed to wind up. After centuries on the island we are more mongrel than the pure breed that many build their ideologies on. Recognises little bits of the other in ourselves might lead us to more empathy, understanding and respect. 

 

FR ALEC REID; PEACE AMBASSADOR - BBC RADIO 2 PAUSE FOR THOUGHT 24.10.18

This week's Pause for Thought theme was Peace Ambassadors

Nikki, when I became the minister of Fitzroy nine years ago I walked into a community of Peace Ambassadors. My predecessor Rev Dr Ken Newell had built a relationship with Fr Gerry Reynolds from Clonard Monastery, run by the Redemptorist Order, on Belfast’s Falls Road. They founded the Clonard/Fitzroy Fellowship still going strong today.

Early meetings of the Northern Ireland peace talks were held in Clonard and Ken with other members of Fitzroy were involved in the discussions. The work of Gerry and Ken and the Fellowship was recognised when in 1999 they were awarded the prestigious Pax Christi Peace Prize. 

Fr Gerry and Rev Ken however would recognise another Redemptorist priest from Clonard as the actual architect of the peace process. Fr Alec Reid got to a point in Belfast’s mid 80s where he could not reconcile his faith in Jesus with doing nothing about the violence going on in the streets around him.

One Saturday afternoon Fr Alec found himself in the middle of that violence. In a 14 day period where killing had gone viral, two British soldiers accidentally drove into an IRA funeral cortege. 

Fr Alec risked his own life in a vain attempt to save the soldiers. Minutes later he is photographed, with the soldiers blood on his face, having tried to give them the kiss of life. They died.

Unknown to everyone, Fr Alec was at the funeral to receive a letter from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The letter had the conditions by which Sinn Fein would enter peace talks with politician John Hume. That same afternoon Fr Alec drove to Derry and handed the letter to John Hume. It would be six years before we had peace but it started right there.

It is an unbelievable story of one man who had faith in a radical Jesus and who believed that peace making was at the heart of that faith. Believing was not enough though and he went into the very vortex of the violence to make connections that brought the peace we enjoy today.

Ken Newell describes Alec as the electrician of our peace. He brought the two wires together that ignited a long journey to reconciliation. 

EVERY SINGLE DAY - On The 25th Anniversary of the Shankill Bomb

She would have looked up and smiled

The light of Jesus shining through her

Warm words and those bright eyes

Known by everyone who knew her

Sensitive to something somehow  

She would charmed his nervous frown

Been a welcome calm to uneasiness

Before he set it down.

 

And he blew her away

Blew her away from you

Blew her away from her daughter

And everything she still had to do.

 

That mark across your heart

It wasn’t a scar that I saw

It was still a hurting open wound

Still bloody and raw

The preacher speaks forgiveness

You honestly do not know

But the bitterness will not twist your soul

So you let it go.

 

Today we will remember

You remember every single day

Wake up with her love on your mind

They can’t blow that away.

NEVER AGAIN - THE READING OF ALL THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO DIED IN THE TROUBLES

photo: Fidelma Carolan

Last night, in All Souls Church in Belfast, I sat listening to the names of those who died as a result of our Troubles. Name after name. Every name was read. Indeed I read some of the names myself. The event lasted four hours. I was there for just over an hour.

It was poignant. In the silence of the beautiful Church building, with a scattering of people in solemn silence. Name after name. We know the statistics and figures but when you hear the names, one after another it is harrowing. Even the number with the same surname has impact in the sheer magnitude of the loss. Most names I did not know but I listened. I tried to hear the pain behind the name. The loved ones, still suffering.

A few names dropped depth charges. I surmised the ripples. First, during my time, I heard names I knew. Two fathers of friends. 

The first was John Brian Martin. He was known as Brian and to his name “died 1983” was added as there were three John Martin’s killed in the Troubles. Brian’s wife Iris never got to tell her husband that she was pregnant with their son, John. John, is a dear friend, one of my former students, indeed one of my former interns. I have sat proudly as he has spoken about how his faith has helped not only dealing with never having known his father but how he has been able to be a peacemaker rather than someone seeking vengeance.

The other name was James McCallion. Jim’s son Stephen was in my class at Primary School. We loved football and Jim came to watch us, even managed a school team for Ahoghill Civic Week in 1972. I remember Jim on the touchline one night when I scored a cracking goal against Stephen’s team. I remember the smile he gave me. 

Jim was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time in July 1976. Out for a drive with his wife, they stopped at the Ramble Inn between Ballymena and Antrim for a quick drink. Minutes later Jim was dead in a hail of bullets, probably from a loyalist paramilitary group who shot more Protestants than Catholics that evening. I think of Stephen and his family every time I drive past that pub.

Brian and Jim’s names were so close that when I heard their names I felt my heart break a little. I was also thrilled that they were being remembered.

Then there were names I knew, more from notoriety than fame. They dropped depth charges too but of a different surmise. There were the hunger strikers Francis Hughes and Raymond McCreesh and paramilitaries Dominic McGlinchy and John McMichael. 

Some might wonder if these names should have been read at all. They caused the deaths of some of those that we were naming tonight. Should they have the dignity of being remembered in the same way?

The first thing to say is that the evening, organised by Rev Chris Hudson and Fr Martin Magill was never publicised as a remembering. This was an anti-violence event on the eve of International Day of Peace. The hope was that the reading of every name might have the effect of a Wilfred Owen poem, reminding us of the horror of conflict and urging us to never let it happen again.

Having said that, on the drive home, having just read John McMichael’s name, I did some serious reflecting. I started thinking of the McMichael and McGlinchy families. Whatever the choices their loved ones made, they too had hearts broken, tears to cry and grief to carry. The word “victim” is being kicked around like a political football, just now, but actually we are all victims of historical situations, injustices and bad decisions that had tragic consequences.

I found myself, in my surmising, asking about the dehumanising of those that we think might be “undeserved victims” because of what they did. I wondered what God was thinking when those tricky names were read out? How did the Creator see their humanity?

Suddenly I was at the cross. I was listening in to Jesus conversation with the thief being crucified with him. I wondered would the crowds see that thief much as we see the terrorist who killed "our" folk? He had it coming. Yet, the thief who died was a different person than the one that the world continued to judge. He found his God given humanity by an act of God’s grace. 

What of McGlinchy and McMichael? Who knows the strange ways of God’s grace? I remember being staggered and embarrassed when I heard that Liam McCloskey, another hunger striker, had read the entire Bible during his fast.

As I continue to surmise so much of what came out of last night, I am thankful for the chance to stop and reflect. To be saddened and shocked at the numbers. Never again indeed, please God!

PEACE... GOD'S PRIORITY FOR PLANET EARTH

The first time I heard Over The Rhine sing Another Christmas... 

 

“I hope that we can still believe

The Christ child holds a gift for us

Are we able to receive

Peace on earth this Christmas”

 

… something went off deep within me. It is not a new line. I have been living with this line most of my life. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I didn’t hear it at Christmas time. I heard it for years before I even believed that what it was talking about was any kind of reality. For the last thirty years I have worked the phrase annually. One of my other favourite bands U2 even had a song called this and I have written about that song.

However, this year, as my country’s peace process is unravelling and some of our politicians seem intent in speeding up its coming apart that near over familiar line, “Peace on earth this Christmas”, struck a chord as loud as any Jimmy Page strum and as spiritually powerful as an Old Testament prophet or actually a New Testament angel on the night God came to earth! 

“Peace, Steve, Peace” is what my soul kept repeating. It is not about justice or vengeance, it is not about proving who was right or wrong. It is not about us and them and us winning. The point of this mission that God had in coming to earth was peace. That peace was not just for my soul. It was about peace on earth. Anyone following this Jesus whose birth is heralded in this angel’s song should be all about peace. 

This of course is not an out of the blue declaration of a God reaching for some Plan B or C. The Old Testament was all about this peace; shalom is how the Jewish people said it. Shalom was God’s intention in the law given, for the King’s to achieve and for the prophets to critique the lack of. A favourite verse on the subject that I have blogged often is Jeremiah 29:7 “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” (NKJV)

Those who claim to follow the baby born when the angels sang need to find that priority of peace. That God’s people would seek shalom wherever they were was a way of being God’s holy nation, a people set apart, different, in all the right ways, from the other nations. We need to not blend in to the world’s intuitive response to seek to be proven right, in control and avenging all who would come against us. We need to be about that ministry of reconciliation that God told us we would be about just as we are connected to God himself through that same ministry of his peace making.

My own wee country’s peace has been unravelling little by little over that last two years. Our two main parties are refusing to meet, to talk, to compromise. They are putting no priority on peace. Our governmental void is being filled with sectarian, bigoted and graceless finger pointing. We need to see afresh this Gospel priority and commit to it with renewed courage, hope and all that grace that is intrinsic to the baby born and lacking in our current political climate.