On the early afternoon of 15 March, not long after our meditation group
last met, a gunman entered two mosques in Christchurch and murdered 50
people. Many others were injured. Some are still in critical care.
I am sure you remember the Greek word kairos… a special time, God’s time, a time when change can happen. This past week has been a kairos for checking out hate and
fear. The well-known passage in
Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for
love and there is a time for hate.[1] Hate surfaces surprisingly often in the Hebrew
scriptures. Esau hated his younger
brother Jacob… But then, God also is depicted as hating various things, and hating
even the doers of evil. The Psalmist is
anxious to reassure God that he hates all those who hate God. Much of scripture sees hating as endemic,
part of our personal weaponry, seen by some even as a noble part of
religion. But hating is perilous. It can consume us. It can become obsessive, poisoning life for
ourselves and others.
In the Christian scriptures things change. Jesus is hated by the religious establishment
– and he responds, sometimes with anger, but with sorrow rather than hate. You
have heard it was said, “Love your brother, hate your enemy”, but I say to you,
love your enemy…[2] Later the early christian church became repeatedly
menaced by persecution and hatred. There
are people now in 2019 who nurse a virulent hatred of religion. As we know, hatred has many levels, degrees
of intensity. Someone hates brussels
sprouts… irritating and silly, but fairly innocuous. To hate Moslems is another matter. Or to hate gays. Hate is considered a virtue among the growing
ranks of white supremacists and their ilk… and others. I find it difficult to imagine hatred as a
way of life.
I have linked together hate and fear because it seems to me
they go together almost inevitably.
People hate what frightens them – it may be fear of difference, or fear
of change, or fear of a repetition of some past event. Helpless anger can transmute into hate. There are fundamentalist versions of
Christianity that encourage hatred of liberal attitudes, or of deviating
opinions.
In contemplative life and prayer we are attacking the roots
of fear in ourselves, and therefore any hint of hate. Of course there are and remain things necessarily
to be afraid of – we are taught this from childhood – it is simple prudence and
good sense. The fear in question is not
that. In the grace of our silence and
stillness we are learning to sit ever lighter to the ego and its need to
survive and to control. We are opening
more to change, and to difference, becoming more hospitable in our hearts, less
frightened and judgemental. It is a good
way to be… one of the rewards of senior years perhaps. One of Jesus’s more frequent questions was, one
way or another: Why are you afraid…?
Last Wednesday the Jewish communities met for the feast of
Purim. The NZ police had authorised the
opening of synagogues again. Purim is a
joyous feast – it celebrates how the exiled Jews in Babylon, condemned to
genocide by Haman the Persian Grand Vizier, were rescued by Mordecai and his
brave adopted Jewish daughter Esther.
Jews commemorate this annually with much food and noise. It is an ancient sign of faith and love
overcoming division and violence, hate and fear, exile, separation and sorrow. For
our Jewish community it came at a good time this year. Happy Purim…!
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