All Souls: in our victim is our hope

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9, Romans 5:5-11, John 5:19-25

When we think about justice; when we think about the judgement we might expect, or deserve, as the prelude to our eternal fate, we very likely have a particular idea. Shaped by the Good wife, Ally McBeale, LA Law or Judge Judy, our vision of judgement takes a particular form. Most of us see ourselves coming before the throne of an almighty, all good, all powerful abstract Father who knows the secrets of our hearts, and will weigh our thoughts, words and deeds, setting us at the level to which we’ve achieved.

Justice is fair.  It’s even. We will get what we deserve.

Our legal system is based on a sort of top-down model. The complainants come before the judge, a senior, respected figure, ‘your honour’, and this expert, this untarnished figure, will with the power invested in him by the state decide the terms of your case. If it turned out your case was being tried by Chloe Steward or Jack the Ripper, you’d have some reason to be uneasy. We need upstanding figures like Charles Atkins or Amy Coney Barrett.

But justice does not fair well in the Gospel. Christ betrayed, Christ deserted, Christ crucified between two thieves, is the ultimate symbol of false justice.  The victim of human power. Except in the parables, you don’t find a good judge in our Gospels.

Later, when Saul, persecutor of the first Christians, hits the road to Damascusm blinded by the fierce white light, the voice he hears from the heavens says, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”  The risen Christ identifies himself with the persecuted.

And Jesus tells a parable in which the sheep are divided from the goats according to whether they have treated the poor, the naked and the hungry well or badly - because, as he says, “as much as you have done to these, you have done it to me.” Jesus identifies himself with the victim. 

Now we’re told in today’s Gospel: ‘The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son’ So our judgement doesn’t come from the top. From the Senior staff settling the disputes of the little people; Instead, Christian hope is to recognize our victim as our judge. It is to see in our victim, our hope.

Now the world is not populated by oppressors and victims. Would that it were so easy to tell the good from the bad. Oppressive behaviour is still everywhere, but playing the victim can also be one of the most outrageous forms of oppression. Parents not infrequently torment their children with guilt – not visiting, not calling. And how many relationships end because one party crushes another with the sense of always being wronged, or ignored, or not getting the attention they deserve?

And we’re becoming more and more aware of the oppression within society.  From Me too to Black Lives Matter, oppression is a rot throughout society. But, at the same time, we can also sentimentalise the marginalised, and suddenly every white man is an evil oppressor, to the innocent victims of the rest of society. Treating people as victims can also be an instrument of oppression. 

But Christ is in the world as pure victim.  He’s not passive aggressive as ‘oppressive victim’.  When he’s condemned he offers no resistance and does not even condemn his murderers.

We should not think of Christ as good and his accusers as evil, preferably to be wiped out. It’s important that his disciples betray and desert him, precisely because we cannot identify with Christ, but as men and women of violence ourselves we must identify with the conflicted humans who allow an innocent man to die.

But we’re told that “the Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son.”

Judgement, then, does not come down from on high like we expect, from the judge in his box; but comes from below, from the crucified victim.  We don’t ultimately stand trial before a great source of impartial, imperial power. Our judge is among us as the innocent victim who condemns no one. As we heard in Romans: ‘while we still were sinners Christ died for us’. 

What this tells us is that Christian justice is not about the punishment of evil people, still less about the overpowering of one group by another, nor yet is it about accepting defeat. Christian justice is about reconciliation, which asks us to look into the face of our victims and oppressors and speak the truth. 

To recognize that if our hope is in our victim we must recognize our own violence and our collusion in violence. Because unfortunately to be human is to be involved in violence. Mostly the sort of violence that is simply thoughtless in skipping over someone, or petty in diminishing someone because of our own insecurity, or absentmindedness. We usually prefer not to see it, or seeing it find ways of justifying it. It can easily become a consequence of our work, or a necessary sacrifice, “for the best”, it can be “them or us”, or “it’s not you, it’s me”.  But in all our failed friendships and relationships there is a mixture of violence and victimhood, and so often it’s easier to walk away than face your pain, or the guilt and pain of someone else, that you’ve caused. 

Every act of oppression, every hurt inflicted or sustained entails a diminishment, a loss. To be human is to be incomplete.

Now in celebrating a requiem mass we’re giving thanks for and praying for the dead, in the hope of the resurrection: we pray: “grant them rest eternal and let light perpetual shine upon them.” This belief in the resurrection, and the future hope of all people, in the significance of life after death, is the cornerstone of Christian belief.  It’s only in the resurrection of Christ, the pure victim, that judgement is handed over to him.  Only in the resurrection of the one on whom injustice has fallen, that we can hope for redemption. 

Christian hope is about having our victim returned to us precisely so we can be reconciled to them; precisely so we can rest in peace. If death is the end; if there is no resurrection then there is no forgiveness;  there is no reconciliation.  If there is no resurrection there can be no justice and no meaning to all the conflict we experience.

The resurrection is the promise that we will be made complete, reconciled to God and each other.  And while it’s anathema for some Christians to pray for the dead, sometimes this is the only way in which we are finally able to face up to some of the most conflicted relationships we have.

Life after death is not about floating away into the ether, nor is it about a total shrugging off of the past to something entirely new.  It is rooted in our valued human lives and is a redemption of the past as well as the future. Christ calls us, then, to reconcile ourselves to our past as well as our present; facing up to our more complicated relationships. Seeing our oppressive behaviour with ruthless honesty.

This is also a service of Holy Communion though. And as Jesus’s body was broken we acknowledge our own brokenness and broken relationships,  The church is the body of Christ. But that is a broken body awaiting its full reconciliation. And in the sharing of communion, and as we light our candles, we remember Christ’s resurrection and our own participation in that, partial as it may be now, but awaiting eternity.

Finally, as a Mass, which has the same root as the word “mission” and is literally from the word “sending” or “sent out”, we leave this place in peace, leaving behind past conflicts, our wounds and our losses, in the faith that we do ‘not come under judgement, but have passed from death to life.’ ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.’ In our victim is our hope. 

Grant them rest eternal, Lord our God, we pray to thee; and let light perpetual shine upon them.