FOOTBALL NOT WAR
Matthew
5:1-12
Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
I am not sure whether any of you watched
the final match of the Football World Cup between Germany and Argentina on
Sunday night, but I was one of the billion people across the globe who did. Having spent the previous day and night
travelling home from Jersey and London, I could gladly have joined Isobel and
gone to bed; but there was no way I was going to miss this grand football fest
finale. And it was only close to our midnight,
that Germany scored the goal that made them world champions. The Argentineans were devastated and in
tears; the Germans delirious with delight.
But when all is said and done, football was the winner, uniting millions
of people around the world even though divided into opposing nations. I thought about that while I watched the
game because in other places, at that very moment in time, notably but not only in Gaza, Syria and Iraq, another
game was being played. A much older game
in which nations and groups sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god of
war who is never satisfied and always demands more.
But even as I thought of this contrast between
football and war, another image appeared on the TV screen. High above the city and its magnificent
stadium stood the enormous floodlit statue of Christ the Redeemer, only now with
the golden sun hovering behind Christ's head like a halo as it sank into the
western horizon. It was a glorious
sight. The TV commentator was so overwhelmed
that he declared only the most insensitive of people would not be deeply moved
by what they saw. For a brief moment in
time a billion people were dramatically reminded of the outstretched arms of
the God we know in Jesus seeking to embrace and reconcile a world that is too
often at war.
In a report on the Football World Cup in
the UK Independent newspaper the comment was made that while winning at football
is not the most important thing in the world, it is the most important of the
less important things! Yes, indeed, there
are more important things than winning the world cup, but it is surely much
better for nations to fight it out on the sports-field -- even if some get hurt
-- than doing so on the battle-field.
The fact that Argentineans and Germans could embrace each other after
the game suggests that sport, despite the ugly side to much of it, is a far better religion than war, and yet it is
war that too often gains the upper hand in the name of God and under the guise
of religion. Football might lead to punch ups on and off the field; but war is
murder sanctioned by governments, ideologies and religions.
A hundred years ago this week the so-called
Christian nations of the West began what became the bloody four years of the
First World War. Germany took to the
field to do battle with England, France and their allies, all claiming that God
was on their side. and most of their respective churches and theologians
justified them doing so. The war, they
declared, was just, it was God's will they even said. I was reminded of this last week when
visiting the parish church of St. Brelade in Jersey and seeing the memorials to
the many young men of that small Island who had died on the battle-field, both
then and a few decades later in the Second World War. Their sacrifice is rightly honoured, but was it
really the will of God that their young lives were wasted, and in such a way?
No one better expressed the horror of the
First World War and its meaningless suffering than the English poet Wilfred Owen,
himself a soldier who died during the last week of the war. He ended his most famous war poem, Dulce et
Decorum est, in which he described the
terrible conditions in the trenches and the slaughter of men before his eyes,
with these words:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the
blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori. (It is sweet and right to die for your country.)
Owen is absolutely right. War is based on
lies. And the worst lie of all is the
claim that it is the will of God! We rightly remember and honour those who die
in the course of duty and acknowledge their deeds of courage, bravery and
self-sacrifice. But war itself is
anything but glorious; war destroys everything in its path. That is its game
plan. War is the very opposite of the
God revealed in Jesus whose outstretched arms seek to embrace the nations in
peace.
Of course,cynics say that wars are
inevitable, and they seem to have history on their side. War seems programmed into our fallen human
nature. It is also true that God is
often depicted as a God of war in the Old Testament. There are two reasons for this. The first is that nations not least Israel
use the name of God to justify their acts of aggression and conquest and this
is written into the biblical text. The second is, as the prophets remind us,
that we live in a moral universe and God is a God of justice. So if nations and peoples oppress others,
they act contrary to God's will and therefore are liable to suffer the
consequences, punished, as it were, by God.
But that does not justify war in the name of God. War is the result of the lust for land and
power, it is the consequence of greed and the abuse of resources. We may have to resist tyrants, but only in
the pursuit of justice and peace, and therefore in ways that end the cycle of
violence not perpetuate it.
Yet the makers of peace, the real children
of God as Jesus calls them, not just those who like all of us love peace, but those
whose lives are dedicated to peace making, always have an uphill battle and
sometimes are crucified for their efforts.
That is why, despite its faults and failings, we should always give
thanks and pray for the efforts of the United Nations to make peace, and for
all those who serve in peace making operations at considerable risk. Likewise we give thanks and pray for all those diplomats who give so much energy, time
and effort to finding solutions in war ravaged place despite the ugly truth is
that their governments spend trillions of dollars more on weapons and the
waging of war than they do on peace- making and training people to make peace. And we need to pray, too, that the church
remembers its calling to be a community of justice, reconciliation and
peace-making. For the will of God is peace
not war, redemption not damnation. This
is the good news of Christ the redeemer
with outstretched arms encouraging and blessing all those who are peacemakers,
even footballers, for they are children of God.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 17 July
2014
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