Palm Sunday - 9th April 2006
Our series of Lent talks this year has proved to be very interesting. We have aimed to get behind the headlines of some major current issues. These have ranged from schools to the NHS, from asylum seekers to sexuality. The last two on health service and asylum matters have opened my eyes to the political process with depressing clarity, and I thought I was reasonably politically aware.
On Thursday evening I was just shocked at the way we treat people seeking asylum. The process dehumanizes further those who have been dehumanized and we heard stories of due processes of justice being ignored. By Friday shock had turned to anger at what is nothing short of a disgrace. I was even more angry at our press who pollute the political discourse with their vile invective calling people ‘bogus’ and ‘illegal’. Neither phrase is really valid when we go deeper into the issues.
I find myself asking why this is the case? Why don’t we take to the streets in protest? I wonder would we do it if concentration camps were created? What if people just started disappearing, would we notice or care? The asylum issue is live just a few miles away from here and yet it feels like it could well be 100 miles away; it just doesn’t impinge on us here. There is something very sobering and worrying about this.
A few things are beginning to come together in my mind. I have also recently heard local and national politicians saying that it is not their place to get involved in moral debates. Excuse me! If they are not concerned with morality then how do they decide what is just and right? How do they make decisions about what is or is not in the public interest? If decisions are not made by moral criteria then what criteria is guiding our public policy? I find that very worrying indeed.
Enter stage left Pontius Pilate questioning Jesus in the Praetorium. He asks quite topically and poignantly “what is truth”? We have learned so much about how things look differently to different people, we call this relativism: morals can be relative to the situation. There is much in this. But there is a point where relativism becomes abdication from responsibility and that abdication leaves a vacuum that darker forces will fill.
I understand why politicians can be reticent about making moral pronouncements. But they need to employ moral criteria for their decision making, otherwise the common good goes out of the window and we will have a society built on the agenda of those most equipped to exploit, which is ultimately in no ones interests.
Palm Sunday shows us where moral vacuums can lead. They lead to crucifixions of the innocent. They lead to betrayals. They lead to the events of Holy Week where the dark clouds gather and threaten, even seem, to overwhelm all that is good. Much of this starts with our complicity, our reticence and our abdications of facing the responsibility we have for the common good and the moral outlook on which that is built.
© Ian Black 2006