Faith & Persecution
Reflections from travels along the Turkey-Syrian border
Romans 5.12-19
Excerpt from Andrew White’s Faith under Fire
Luke 13.31-end
Preached in St Edward’s King & Martyr Cambridge Sunday
18th February 2015 (Meditative Eucharist)
Preached in St Andrew’s Northwold Evensong 15th March 2015
@ES: Ps. 148
Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our
hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
“I only knew that Jesus was all I needed when he was all I
had left.”
Those haunting words that the vicar of Baghdad, Andrew
White’s, wife, Caroline, wrote in her bible and that he shares
with us in the excerpt we heard from his book Faith under
Fire.
In it we hear of violence which is beyond tragedy.
Persecution which is literally beyond our imagining.
1
If there were not people like Andrew White who were willing
to serve amongst it, willing to share even a pale reflection of
the experience with us, we would have no real concept of the
extent of the suffering of our Christian brothers and sisters in
Iraq and Syria.
This is equally true of any suffering or persecution throughout
the world. We sit, here in this country, in this city, in a
position of great privilege. We need help to see the suffering
of others throughout the world, not because we are blind as
such, but because their experience is so far removed from our
own, it is difficult to comprehend.
I do not say this to belittle any of our own suffering, or
persecution that we have suffered. I am sure that everyone
here knows the experience of suffering in one way or another.
I am also sure that a number of us gathered here have felt
the effects of persecution of one form or another – perhaps of
a far more subtle and insidious form than the direct and
violent attacks on their lives that many persecuted
throughout the world suffer.
Still, on the whole, our lives are not in danger and we are, for
the most part, free to practice our faith, free to be who God is
calling us to be. At least we seem to live in a society that is
2
trying to give equal worth to all people irrespective of sex,
gender, sexuality, ethnicity, education, upbringing, faith…
even if the Church is sometimes running to catch up…
Certainly in terms of our faith, we are more likely to suffer
embarrassment in the face of opposition, than we are loss of
life.
But what is true of persecution, however strong, is that it has
a crystallising effect on us and upon our faith.
This is something we see Jesus alluding to in our gospel
reading this evening. Jesus is travelling through towns and
villages, teaching and healing. The Pharisees come and tell
Jesus of Herod’s plotting against him, and it causes Jesus to
focus his thoughts on Jerusalem and his journey towards that
place where he knows he will be killed for his faith:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and
stones those who are sent to it!” Is Jesus’ lament.
A lament we could continue to echo two thousand years on as
we think about the melting pot of religious fervour which is
the Holy Land and the continued struggles there between
Jews, Muslims and Christians.
3
And Jesus expresses his desire for Jerusalem in one of the
most wonderful images in the New Testament:
“How often have I desired to gather your children together as
a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
And Jesus laments that they are not ready to receive him.
Despite the struggles there, they have not yet come to terms
with those words that we started with:
“I only knew that Jesus was all I needed when He was all I
had left”.
These words couldn’t be truer.
They were true for the early martyrs of the Church.
We can see it in the clarity of the defence of Stephen, the
first martyr, in his speech before the High Council in Acts
chapter 7, when he narrates salvation history from the time
of Abraham, through Moses, to the coming of Jesus. Just
before he was stoned around 34AD.
We can see it in the writing of Ignatius of Antioch, martyred
around 107AD, who wrote letters to his Churches, as he
journeyed to Rome for his martyrdom. He wrote to
encourage people towards belief in the divinity of Christ,1 the
1
Letter to the Ephesians 7
4
universality of the One Church, 2 he spoke of the Eucharist as
the ‘medicine of immortality’.3
He placed Jesus at the centre of his life and faith as he
approached his death, and used the time to educate others to
same end.
We see the same effect of persecution in the nascent Church
of England in the reformers and counter-reformers of the 16th
Century. We can think of figures from each side of the
struggle who were all the more adherent to their beliefs
because of the persecution they were suffering. From
Nicholas Ridley, Thomas Cranmer or Hugh Latimer (whose
pulpit I’m standing in) to Thomas More, John Fisher and
Elizabeth Barton.
It is true for the community Andrew White serves at St
George’s in Baghdad. He tells us: “This is the one thing that
everyone at St George’s can agree on: even if they have lost
everything, they still have Jesus.”
It was true for the Syrian Orthodox communities I visited in
South-eastern Turkey in the region of Tur Abdin, not far from
the border with Syria.
2
3
Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8
Ignatius to the Ephesians 20:2
5
I, by no means, have experienced anything like the events
that Andrew White relates to us. But I was fortunate enough
last September (2014) to have the opportunity to go on
pilgrimage to Istanbul and to Tur Abdin and stay with and
visit a number of Syrian Orthodox (or Suriani) monasteries
with a group from Corpus Christi College (Cambridge).
Istanbul, a little like Jerusalem, is itself a melting pot of
different faiths and different denominations. It is a place
where centuries of struggle, particularly between Christianity
and Islam, has produced some of the finest architecture and
religious art in the world. As can be seen in the designs of
the grand mosques and the ancient Church of Hagia Sophia
(the largest in the world for a millennium), it’s beautiful
Christian mosaics partially restored since being converted
from a mosque to a museum in 1935.
Whilst travelling from Istanbul to the southeast we learnt
about the history of the Armenian genocide of 1915. How
Armenian Christians were gathered up, firstly in Istanbul, and
then from the rest of the country and sent on death marches
to camps in the Syrian dessert. The government of the time
encouraged independent vigilantism and militias, who would
frequently round upon any ethnic minorities. In the region of
Tur Abdin this was the Syrian Orthodox community and we
were able to visit one particular fortified dwelling in the town
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of Hah with our guide, who was a Suriani monk, whose
grandfather had survived, along with several families, being
besieged at that house in the time around the genocide.
These events still not officially recognised as genocide by the
British government because of the effect it might have on
relationships with the Turkish government, who themselves
still do not recognise these actions of the then Ottoman
empire as a genocide.
In the Suriani monasteries themselves we joined in with the
life of prayer and with the communities around meal times.
Whilst we remained a safe distance from the Syrian border
itself, these communities were very much affected by the
events happening to their brothers and sisters just across the
border. The country borders are modern inventions
compared to the Suriani communities spread across this
region of the world, which date from the fourth and fifth
Centuries – some of the earliest Christian communities in the
world and a place where Christianity in the region predated
the existence of the now-prevalent Islam.
Historically the Syrian Orthodox Churches have been
separated from the West since the Council of Chalcedon in
451AD over the issue of the ‘two natures of Christ’. That
Christ is fully human and fully divine and that these two come
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together in the Person of Christ, but are not mingled together
to make a new ‘third’ thing.4
The Syrian and other so-called ‘oriental’ orthodox Churches
were labelled as ‘monophysite’ – believing in one nature in
Christ.
If you get a Suriani Christian to tell you the difference
between our Churches, they will talk about this difference and
cheerfully tell you that you’re a heretic.
But in reality, the language barriers are sufficiently complex
that it is not really clear to me that we really have much
difference in our beliefs. It seemed, on the occasions when I
was able to probe into this difference, that the reasons we in
the West have for wanting to talk about Christ having two
natures, were the same reasons that the Syrian Orthodox
wanted to talk of one nature. We were both concerned with
emphasising both the divinity and humanity of Jesus.
It makes me want to stop and reflect about how often
perceived difference and the persecution which can arise from
it, arise out of misunderstanding and ignorance. Out of not
taking the time to understand the other person. Rather than
out of a genuine need to violently differ in opinion.
4
tertiam quid
8
In reality those Christians we met, did think that we too were
Christian.
What they couldn’t understand was not how we could believe
in two natures of Christ, but how we could hear of the
persecution happening to our Christian brothers and sisters
and do nothing about it.
In particular, at the time, the West had done almost nothing
to aid Christians in Iraq and Syria and the Western media was
delighting in giving endless details about the trials of minority
religions such as the Yazidis and were reporting almost
nothing about the wide scale persecution of Christians, as if it
were an embarrassment to mention anything to do with
Christianity in the press.
Though to be fair, this is something the press has become a
little better with of late, such as reporting the recent
massacre of 21 Egyptian Copts by ISIS militants working in
Libya,5 though their grieving family and friends are convinced
that the Egyptian government did less to help than they could
because they were Christian.
The Suriani perceived us in the West as Christian countries,
with lots of power who were unwilling to lift a finger to help
them as they were being systematically wiped out. We know,
of course, that the situation here in the West is slightly more
5
News article 17th February 2015, The Independent
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complex. It is no longer true to call us ‘Christian’ countries.
But we do have plenty of history of sticking our oar in to in an
attempt to stop persecution in other sovereignties. So what
was the real problem now?
As you can imagine, the situation lead to some extremely
uncomfortable after dinner conversations as we were being
asked to account for the action (or inaction) of our whole
country. But that minor discomfort was as nothing compared
to the suffering we knew that was happening 60 kilometres
away over the Syrian border.
With all the subtle (and not so subtle) differences between
the Syrian Orthodox Church and our own. The persecution
that the Suriani were experiencing certainly had a
crystallising effect on the faith Archbishop of the region,
himself having received a death-threat and being advised not
to leave the monastery. He spoke of the most important
thing between us being a love for Jesus. That really we were
one faith. One Church. That we needed to realise this and
learn to work together quickly, being passionate about our
faith, if we wanted to survive. No longer worrying over our
minor differences.
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I think that it was true of him, and many of the Suriani,
refugees included, that we met that Jesus was all they had
left.
So what does this all teach us for our own faith?
Particularly as we enter this season of Lent.
Andrew White drew us to a phrase used by Pope John Paul II,
paraphrasing the 4th Century St Augustine of Hippo’s
exposition on Psalm 148: “We are an Easter people and
alleluia is our song!"
Like all Easter people, our symbol is the cross. A symbol of
immense pain, suffering and death. But also a symbol of
hope, life and resurrection.
Being an Easter people is about transformation.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans put it thus:
“If, because of the one man’s [that is Adam’s] trespass, death
exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will
those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of
righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man,
Jesus Christ.”
When we learn to put our trust utterly and completely in
Jesus Christ, we are transformed, from death to life.
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In the season of Lent when we refrain from using the word
Alleluia liturgically and when we are encouraged also to
refrain from food through fasting and to the taking up of
prayer and spiritual and scriptural reading as disciplines, we
do so to be fully reminded of what it means for us to be an
Easter people.
A people who are transformed by Jesus’ love for all of us.
What Lent reminds us, what our persecuted sisters and
brothers, throughout the world, are able to remind us, what
we will know if we have any experience of persecution
ourselves is that the thing that matters most is that we are
an Easter people.
Our task is to do what we must to take this truth to heart, so
that we can share this joy with others. The joy of hope from
despair, peace from conflict, light from darkness. The joy of
love to be found in Christ Jesus.
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Readings
Luke 13.31-end
The Lament over Jerusalem
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get
away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them,
‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons
and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third
day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day
I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet
to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the
city that kills 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! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you
will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’
Romans 5.12-19
Adam and Christ
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,
and death came through sin, and so death spread to all
because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before
the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet
death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over
those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam,
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who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died
through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the
grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man,
Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not
like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgement
following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free
gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because
of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through
that one, much more surely will those who receive the
abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness
exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for
all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification
and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the
many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the
many will be made righteous.
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