Sunday 18 February 2024

Lent Week 1 Sunday Year B

Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; Psalm 24; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Most people had never witnessed brutality like what we saw the Islamic State engage in during the years in which they controlled parts of the Middle East. It does not mean that such things were not happening before. What was different was that they were happening for all the world to see. They were happening on our computer screens and television sets, and that means in our living rooms, in our bedrooms, in our offices, in our gardens. We came face to face with great evil - except that very often this evil had no face. When conquered it disappears back into the landscape of ordinary life.

The Egyptian Christians who were murdered by them some years ago were given the grace, it seems, to be pure martyrs. The word 'martyr' has been hijacked by people who kill themselves, or have themselves killed, in the process of killing other people. But that is not what the word means. A true martyr is one who dies as a victim of violence, not one who dies carrying it out. A true martyr is one who does not return evil for evil but seeks to return good for evil. And a pure martyr, in the Christian sense, is one who dies for his faith in Christ. It seems that the Egyptians killed by Islamic State were given the choice, either to deny Christ or to die. They chose to die rather than deny Him, and that makes their martyrdom pure.

A striking thing in the photographs of that event was that the ones who were killed were human to us. We could see their faces, we could have some idea of their personalities, we could wonder what their thoughts and feelings were in those last moments of their lives. The men standing behind them had their faces covered. Even their bodies were camouflaged within long black robes. They were anonymous agents of a terrible evil loose in the world. An evil ready to kill but afraid to show its face. It is true of so many martyrdoms - the ones who die are remembered long afterwards, their killers remain unknown. It is such a contrast to how things must have seemed at the moment of their death, the martyr feeling powerless with his or her life being consigned to dust.

Often in these first days of Lent we hear about living in the light and living in the darkness. We are children of the day when we belong to Christ, we do not belong to the night or to darkness. Good deeds are brought out into the open, there is no need to hide them, and no need to fear. Wickedness prefers the night and the darkness, the furtive shadows, places cold and cruel. In Lent we seek to bring evil also into the light, to look it in the face, the evil in ourselves and in others, and to try with all our might to neutralise it.

The Egyptian Copts died in a desert place, something like the place where Jesus was tempted. He was tempted by Satan, and was with wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. It must be that the angels ministered also to those young Christians being put to death: how else could they have persevered, kept their eyes on the goal, endured what was done to them? Christ too was put to death in the flesh but was brought to life in the Spirit. And in the course of that journey from death in the flesh to life in the Spirit he descended into hell.

Hell is a place where spirits are in prison, and Jesus went to preach there. What did he preach there? He did not need to tell them that they were in trouble, that they were imprisoned, that they were lost. He preached to them the good news of his victory, told them of the shedding of his blood, taught them about the redemption of the world through that blood soaking into the dry sand to plead more insistently than Abel's: innocent human blood, crying out to heaven, from the beginning of the world.

Many people declared 'Je suis Copte' following on the martrydom of the 21 young Egyptians nine years ago. There have been many 'Je suis' moments since then. To say 'Je suis Islamic State' will sound like a perverse joke, but we must try to stand beside these spirits in prison and try to understand what brought them to such inhumanity. What humiliation, what fear, what mocking of their religion or nationality, what exclusion or rejection, what unnecessary pride, what distorted thinking, what sadness, what evil working in them - what is it that closes the heart and cauterizes the conscience so that people end up doing such things to other human beings? Too easy to say they are animals, less than human, barbarians and monsters.

Lent calls us to remove our masks, to show our true faces, to come out into the light of truth and goodness and love. Lent reminds us that human nature, in each and in all of us, is capable of profound distortion and cruelty. All too easily we can turn away from the kingdom announced by Jesus to pitch our tents in the regio dissimilitudinis of which the Christian saints speak, a place of confusion and fear, of distortion and cruelty.

But the very same human nature is capable of extraordinary heroism and fidelity, of love and enduring compassion. Today's psalm points to where our strength really lies: 'the Lord guides the humble in the right path, and shows His way to the poor'. Those who belong to him, and remain faithful to him in this life, humble and poor, grow radiant in the light of God's face, they flourish, and blossom, and bear fruit in eternity.

All you martyrs of the Lord, pray for us!

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