When I was looking at the various options for the readings this morning, I was a bit surprised at what I saw. One, taken from the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (1:13-15; 2:23-24), began with the astounding statement “God did not make death…” The next one, from Lamentations (3:22-33), which we actually had, included these words “For the Lord will not reject for ever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion…” Well which is it, I thought. Did God make death or didn’t he! If God causes grief, then he is responsible. If we are not going to get caught up in some kind of weird dualism - that is where you have two gods, a good one who is responsible for all the nice stuff and an evil one who goes around being sadistic, then I think I will go with Lamentations. God causes it, but will have compassion. There is good reason for the Apocrypha having being down graded in its authority.

I don’t want to go down the dual line because I find it makes no sense and is a cop out from the difficult questions which religious belief brings with the solutions it also offers. Even if you want to blame all evil on someone other than God, call it Satan or whatever personification you care to choose, the problem still remains that if God is God, then God allows it space to manoeuvre! So we are back where we started, God causes grief but has compassion too.

A weekend like this, is one in which we naturally think about where all the killing and evil comes from. This weekend is the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the battle of the Somme, during the First World War; a battle that has become synonymous with the senseless slaughter of warfare. The numbers stack up with spine-chilling power: 20,000 British dead in the first day; 1.2 million casualties on all sides over its course and only 5 miles gained after 5 months of fighting! People who would today be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder were instead shot as deserters.

There was no post-war counselling in the two world wars and I have often wondered just how many from the generations that fought in the two world wars have lived with deep traumas and who knows what else since. I frequently hear their descendents telling me that they would never talk about what they went through, only the jokey stories, none of the gruesome details or fear or horror at what they had seen and even done. I heard a general recently say that it is relatively easy to teach someone to kill, but not to live with having killed. There are something like a 1,000 British service personnel who have returned from Iraq from the current conflict suffering from traumas requiring counselling.

We seem to be almost witnessing a growing industry in battle commemorations: Trafalgar, end of the Second World War, there are plans being made for a drum top service to commemorate 25 years since the Falklands next year. I am left wondering how we really are supposed to commemorate these anniversaries. Just marking the days, even dressing up and re-enacting the conditions of the trenches seems to miss something important.

There is a quote in the Royal Armouries in Leeds, that “war is the pursuit of policy by another means”. Another definition might be that war is what happens when policy or the politics behind policy breaks down. This seems to open a gateway to what commemorating should do. It should make us ask how did we get into this mess and how can we avoid it in the future. Here a number of topical themes come together.

There is a debate emerging about the place of human rights in our laws. Is the Human Rights Act serving the purpose it was intended to do? What happens when competing rights conflict? Added to this we have the parlous state of politics and the public discourse. We can take the plight of asylum seekers as a case in point. For some their presence in this country at all causes annoyance; for some they are out of sight, so out of mind; for some their plight is deeply disturbing, but feel their voice won’t be listened to; for some there are just so many issues to pick up and they can’t take them all up; for some this is the issue they will campaign for. There are so many stories emerging now about the destitution and injustices that we have to take notice and should be ashamed.

For all the multiplicity of media channels and vehicles that there are, we are not very well informed about what is going on. We are sceptical to spin and yet believe rumour and conspiracy theories; we are vulnerable to those who peddle distorted pictures and don’t have the ammunition or desire even to challenge them. It is a sign that there is a profoundly disturbing alienation at multiple layers of our society.

Peace comes when we can heal the bonds that unite and remind us of our common humanity; that we are brothers and sisters sharing a place in the same human family. It comes when we realise that each member of that family has a dignity and worth that must be honoured. It comes when we realise that honouring one dignity must not be at the expense of diminishing another. There are times when that is obvious and times when the balancing takes some careful thinking through.

This balancing and honouring doesn’t always happen because there is a flaw running through the world as it is. We call this sin and it is what happens when God makes a world that is temporal and temporary. It is not permanent and does not last forever. Added to this, it has the freedom of choice too, which opens up the possibility of good and ill. The presence of death, with which I began, is fundamentally linked to this. We live with both the existence of death and the knowledge that the world is not perfect, and yet at the same time with the call to anticipate the justice and honouring of God’s kingdom to come here on earth. God causes death, through the transitory nature of the world, but also shows tremendous compassion through the hope he holds out to us. That hope was mentioned in brackets in our first reading, strangely while having your mouth in the dust! Sounds about right, that: hope and a mouthful of dust together!

This mystery can fill us with hope, but also leave us battle weary. Like the soldiers returning we may need some counselling to bring us back up to strength, we know we need the grace of God to sustain us. God causes grief but has compassion too. Hope is mixed with our faces in the dust! That God causes or allows the circumstances where evil can arise to occur is more hopeful than the dualistic approaches because passing the blame diminished God’s power and ultimately his salvation. Facing what I call ‘the darkness of God’ is paradoxically more helpful, even if it leaves you scratching your head for a while. It means the call for justice, for rights and peace, is not futile and even has an imperative to it. Rooted in the God who causes all in the first place. This means the context in which we commemorate is the imperative for justice and this is also an expression of God’s compassion that accompanies the grief. ‘Although God causes grief he will have compassion too’.

© Ian Black 2006

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