Jerusalem is the holy city. It is holy to Jews, to Christians and to Muslims. The words of Jesus; ‘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 are not willing!’ How those words accuse us as we absorb the news from Christchurch and brace ourselves for the potential for further violence this Sunday.
Many people have condemned the violence and have expressed solidarity with all those who have suffered; not all of those people have taken responsibility for things they have said over the years that has fed this hatred and has harnessed its power for their own ends. So some of these expressions of solidarity have been insincere in that respect and repentance is required.
But alongside these insincere statements there have been some incredibly powerful statements. In this country, individual Christians have gone to their local mosque with signs saying things like ‘I will keep watch while you pray.’ Although these people are standing there alone, their loneliness merely serves to underline their courage and their courage gives us hope.
Then there are the words of the first man who was killed in Christchurch. As the killer approached the mosque with his gun his hand he was greeted by a Muslim man with the words, ‘Hello, brother’. The last words that man spoke were to address his killer as brother.
God is at work in this suffering. Those who suffer, those who are vulnerable, have powerful things to say to us. They are calling to us. They call to us to re-examine our language, re-examine our priorities, re-examine our assumptions about people who are not like us. The call to Christians is specifically to listen harder to the call of the minaret. It is the call that brings God into the lives of believers throughout the day and across the world. We, who believe that nobody comes to the Father except through the Son, need to ask ourselves whether we have really come as close to God as the man who looked at another man carrying a gun and said, ‘Hello, brother.’
God is at work in this suffering. We can be sure of this because God suffered himself on the cross. As we gather round his table, let us bring before God our need to repent and our faith that he is at work in the suffering of the world because he gave his Son to die for all our sins. Amen.