Since my last blog two weeks ago a war has raged in Israel-Palestine. It’s not the only part of the world that’s at war but it is a conflict which affects interfaith relations here in Scotland in a way that no other conflict does. This is because for four of the world religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha’i Faith the land is regarded as holy and often referred to as ‘The Holy Land’. 

For Jews it is the land that God gave them and offered them a place of safety after the Holocaust and hundreds of years of antisemitism in Christian Europe. For Christianity it is the land where Jesus was born, lived, preached, died and rose again. For Islam it is the place where Mohammed undertook his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and then ascended through the seven heavens to encounter the various prophets and meet God face to face.  For Bahai’s it is the land where the three central figures of their faith, the Bab, Baha’u’llah, and Abdu’l-Baha are buried and where the Baha’i’s global spiritual and administrative centre is to be found.

For all four faiths it’s a place of pilgrimage and many believers have an investment in and concern for this part of the world that’s not always recognised. I’ve often heard Jews question why people seem to be more interested and critical of Israel than any other area of conflict, even suggesting such interest could in fact be antisemitic. I’ve also been in a situation at a Council of Christians and Jews where someone from the Jewish community was disturbed that we Christians might think of Israel as our Holy Land while Jews obviously think of it as theirs.

This is a challenge and often the elephant in the room during dialogues between followers of the four faiths who see themselves as descendants of Abraham, which in fact makes them brothers and sisters. However, while we all agree that Abraham is our father, and hold that the land is holy there is much not to agree on. For Muslims, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the spot from which Mohammed travelled to the highest heaven during his night journey and received the revelation of the Qur’an. The Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam and the one to which the early Muslim community turned when praying until God directed them to pray in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca instead. Towards the end of Ramadan this journey of the Prophet is celebrated as the Night of Power and devout Muslims will spend the whole night in prayer and recitation of the Qur’an.

The Mosque is built on the Temple Mount and, within the shrine of the Dome of the Rock beside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, lies the place where Abraham was sent to sacrifice his son Isaac and the site of the First and Second Jewish Temple including the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site in Judaism.  This was the innermost and most sacred area of the Temple, accessible only to the High Priest who once a year, on the Day of Atonement, was permitted to enter the sanctuary to offer sacrifice to atone for his own sins and those of the priesthood. Within the Holy of Holies was kept the Ark of the Covenant, a symbol of Israel’s special relationship with God. And for many orthodox Jews it is the place where the third and final Temple will be built when the Messiah comes. So sacred is this place that many Jews will not walk on the Mount itself in case they unintentionally enter the area where the Holy of Holies stood, since according to rabbinical law, there is still some aspect of the divine presence at the site. What is left to Jews is what remains of the Western wall of the Temple which for them is a place of pilgrimage and prayer.

So, here we have, in a land troubled by concerns about nationhood and land boundaries, a holy site which is claimed by both Judaism and Islam. It’s one of the most contested religious sites in the world and a focal point for the Israeli – Arab conflict as we have seen in this most recent war. It’s not the cause of the conflict, which is much more political than directly religious, but it does reflect a little bit the different loyalties, narratives, histories, allegiances that come in to play when reflecting on Israel-Palestine - loyalties, narratives, histories and allegiances that can affect relations here in Scotland. Most attempts to speak about the situation leads to polarisation, a desire of both Israelis and Palestinians to tell their story, believing very often that the ‘other’ side’s story is heard more than theirs. I’ve stopped listening to these stories unless balanced by the story of the ‘other’ side.

Perhaps what we need is for those of us who call this land holy to reflect with one another on what that means, to feel together the pain of division, to recognise together the right of all to justice and statehood and above all pray together for a peace which shows that it is not ownership or even history that makes a place holy but a recognition of a common humanity under God that recognises all others as our sisters and  and brothers.

Mary Oliver has a poem, The Summer Day which ends with the question: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? This notion of a wild and precious life has been on my mind this week in the light of two deaths, the Jewish remembrance of Yom Hashoah and a television programme on a Benedictine Monastery in Leicestershire.
 
One of the deaths has been that of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth whose death now brings his life into focus. Being such a public figure Prince Philip was fair game for the media and he was associated with blunt embarrassing remarks that were not exactly politically correct. Now his achievements are being recognised and even his bluntness is being interpreted as a desire to be friendly and put people at their ease, often backfiring on him. He gave up a promising military career and made a life for himself in a situation where he always had to play second fiddle to the Queen whose role was clearly detailed and defined.  Now the media is acknowledging the difficulties he overcame, his decades of public service and commitment to issues such as the environment and the welfare of young people through the Duke of Edinburgh Award which has now been awarded to over three million young people. It was a life well lived.
 
Another controversial figure – at least as far as the Catholic Church is concerned – who died on 6th April is Fr Hans Kung. Fr Kung is one of the last theologians who attended the Second Vatican Council as an expert advisor to the Bishops. His work on infallibility brought him in to conflict with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the designation Catholic theologian was taken from him in 1979 which meant losing his job in the catholic theological faculty of Tubingen. What happened then was that he moved to the Protestant faculty of the same university where he continued his work, desiring more than anything the reform of a church he loved. He was also involved in interfaith issues and is responsible for the maxim, “no peace in the world without peace among the world religions, no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions and no dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions”. Later he added “no dialogue among the religions without global ethical standards” when he wrote the document on a “Declaration Towards a Global Ethic” which was presented and adopted by the 1993 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago.  Kung’s commitment to Global Ethics then became a lifetime’s work and the need for such an ethic was echoed last year at the Edinburgh Book Festival by the late Lord Jonathan Sacks in conversation with Amin Maalouf. Another life well lived.
 
Yom HaShoah, which also happened this week, is the moment when the Jewish community remembers those murdered by the Nazis. Unlike Holocaust Memorial Day, which is a political and national event, Yom HaShoah is a community affair. It is very moving to see displayed page after page the names of those family members related to the local community who died in concentration camps. For the Jewish community the Shoah is a family affair and a present reality. The two speakers this year were remarkable.  

Noemie Lopian grew up in Germany but knew nothing of the Holocaust from her family and unbelievingly asked her mother if such a thing could possibly be true when she was told about it in school. It was only when she was in her mid-thirties that she read her father’s memoirs and understood for the first time the suffering her father endured when as a teenager he was sent to a series of concentration camps and took part in a number of death marches. His parent and two younger sisters were murdered in Auschwitz. Noemie realised this was a story that needed to be told, translated her father’s memoirs “The Long Night” into English and committed herself to telling his story at events such as Yom HaShoah.  This she does with the second speaker, Derek Niemann and what is remarkable about their work is that he is the grandson of a Nazi perpetrator. Derek was brought up in Scotland and only found out about his grandfather when he and his wife decided to visit Germany and trace some family history. Looking up the address of the family home on the internet he discovered that his grandfather was SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Niemann, a former SS Officer and concentration camp overseer who had been tried and found guilty at Nuremberg for  crimes against humanity and use of slave labour. Derek too has written a book, “A Nazi in the Family”, and is determined that his family’s secret should be brought into the light. Speaking as he does with Noemie is really powerful and they are determined to use their precious life to work together to educate people about the atrocities of the Nazis with the hope that such a thing should never happen again.
 
My last reflection of a wild and precious life came from a television programme about the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire. Here was a community of monks who lived a very unadventurous life committed totally to praying for the world and honouring God away from the glare of publicity. Their genuineness, simplicity, dedication and love visibly showed a life well lived even if not understood by most. More on this another time but what more could we ask for in living our own wild and precious life? 

I recently took part in a dialogue with a small group of Baha’is. I was in fact the only Christian and more than a dialogue it was an account of the teachings of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith but referring to some Christian scriptures. I learned a lot in the process about myself and about interreligious dialogue. 

Dialogue can be challenging especially when you see your faith from another perspective. Sometimes it challenges your very identity. This is especially true when it comes to supercessionism which is also called replacement theology, that is when one religion believes that it has a revelation that replaces or develops that of a previous one which can suggest a superiority.  Christianity did it to Judaism. Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Hebrew scriptures; the Jews didn’t recognise him, so those who did and followed Jesus fell heirs to the promises given by God to the People of Israel. Christians had in fact replaced Jews as God’s Chosen People.  Islam then did it to Judaism and Christianity when Muslims, while respecting the prophets of Judaism, including Jesus, claimed that Mohammed was the final prophet and the Qur’an the true expression of the Word of God. And the Baha’i faith reflects this attitude in believing that Baha’a’ullah is a further revelation from God which is appropriate for the modern age.

While in no way explicitly rejecting previous revelations it did feel a bit like supercessionism as I listened to an interpretation of the Christian scriptures which Baha’u’llah reinterpreted to show how he understood them or fulfilled them. This being accepted by Baha’is as the correct understanding of the scriptures. It raised for me questions about how to accept the integrity of another faith when one faith develops from another or is influenced by another. How do we accept the integrity of a faith’s understanding of scripture when it is shared or used by another faith but understood differently?

I had an experience of this a few months ago when I was involved in a project to interpret a scripture story depicted on a medieval tapestry which was to be put on display in the newly refurbished Burrell Museum in Glasgow. The story chosen was that of the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son but being saved from doing so by an angel. The Christians and Jews shared the same text but interpreted it in different ways and even had different names for it. For Jews the story is called the Binding of Isaac or the Akedah and shows the total submission to God’s will of Abraham, the exemplar of faith. It’s because of Abraham’s obedience and willingness to kill his son that God tells him, “Because you have done this…I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:16–17). Isaac was saved and a ram sacrificed in his place and in memory of this a ram’s horn is blown each year at the festival of Rosh Hashanah to remind God of the Akedah and his promise to bestow blessings on God’s People and safeguard their future.

Christians on the other hand refer to the story as the sacrifice of Isaac and see in it a prefiguration of the death of Jesus on the Cross. They approach the same story from a different viewpoint, from their own theological understanding of seeing Christ at the centre of revelation. For one person in our group this was a bit disconcerting – another faith interpreting her faith, not only differently but in a way that could suggest the Christian understanding was the correct one. It was very obvious that we are standing in different places with different mind sets even when we read the same scriptures.  

This was the case with my interaction with my Baha’i friends which was enjoyable and friendly but used passages from the Gospels and understood them in a way that was alien to me. It was obvious that our whole approach to the Gospels was quite different. For me the scripture was saying something about Jesus and the reality of God’s relationship with humanity, while for the Bahai’s the same scripture was used to show that the Christian understanding was inadequate and replaced by a further revelation.  Do I have the right to say that this was wrong?  Not really because I don’t own my scriptures. The scriptures of the world religions contain a wisdom that is universal and available to all and as such are not the property of any one faith.  For the Baha’is or Baha’u’llah to interpret the Christian scriptures as proof of the validity of his own faith is an act of faith in itself and it’s this that has to be acknowledged by saying Baha’is believe that this ……… means……….. Christians too have to acknowledge that their understanding of these same texts is based on their faith, perhaps even foundational to it.     
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What all this says to me is that we need to be sensitive when using scripture within the context of dialogue. We need to listen and acknowledge different understandings, be sensitive to supercessionist texts and what impact they can have on our dialogue partners. We also need to face up to the challenges that a replacement theology poses as we acknowledge our respect for the integrity of other faiths – a respect which is foundational to interreligious dialogue.

I have to remind myself that the human race is very young if you compare it to what we know of the age of the universe. Taking the evolution of the world as one year homo sapiens only appeared at three minutes to midnight on 31st December. That’s no time at all so perhaps it’s no surprise that in spite of the great innovations and creations of history we are just not good at living together.  We are still learning how to do it and making many mistakes along the way. Perhaps it’s because we don’t trust one another, are afraid of one another and see one another as a threat. There seems to be a deep zenophobia and distrust that leads us to think the worst of one another.

​I recently read Rutger Bergman’s book, Humankind, in which he tries to give a positive view of human beings and show that on the whole human beings are decent kind of beings. He does admit, however, that we also seem to be attracted to stories that shows the opposite – stories like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that suggests children left to themselves on a desert island will deteriorate into animal and destructive tendencies. Bergman shows reality doesn’t support this but somehow it has grasped the imagination of people who seem to readily believe the truth behind the story.  It’s the same I think with the Christian belief in original sin which has also spoken to the imagination and influenced church attitudes for centuries.

Original sin, the story that at the beginning of creation human beings i.e. Adam and Eve disobeyed God resulted in the belief that all human beings are born in a state of alienation from God and in need of redemption. I should say that Judaism, which shares the same story in Genesis does not interpret it in this way and Islam which talks of Adam and Eve falling to earth from Paradise sees human beings as weak and to be tested but not in any way alienated from God. It only came into Christianity in the 4th cy and as far as the Catholic Church is concerned formalised in the 16th cy at the Council of Trent. It is associated with St Augustine who, while grappling with the problem of how sin could have come into the world when the world was created by a good God, devised the belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve was passed down biologically to future generations. Human beings could then only be saved by grace which came through baptism and belief in Jesus. Such a belief in the tainted nature of humanity lays the way open for control, a negative attitude towards the body and sex, forced conversions and baptisms, a rigid moral code which punished the sinner to say nothing of a lack of self -esteem and a poor self- image. It influenced the attitude of preachers and teachers and probably William Golding in writing the Lord of the Flies.

Of course, human beings are sinful and have tendencies towards greed, power, control. It’s very obvious in the world today and just this week I’ve heard stories from a Uighur woman about the genocide that it happening in China, from an artist who has worked  with the Rohingya in Myanmar and of the  antisemitism that stems from the very false but persistent reports about a fabricated document called the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. We are not doing well as human beings.

I’m glad to say, however, that as far as Christian theology is concerned there is now much more emphasis on the goodness of creation and the innate goodness of human beings, created as they are in the image and likeness of God. Religions are living traditions. They develop their understanding of faith in dialogue with the prevailing culture in which they live. That early story in Genesis is now understood as a myth, not to be seen as a fabrication but as a story which contains a truth and the truth is that human beings are created good as all of the created world is, that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, that we are made for fellowship with God and one another but we can also be sinful and determined to plough our own furrow ignoring the need to work for harmony among our brothers and sisters and forgetting our call to care for the created world. Is this not a much more positive  view of human nature and a good basis for transforming our attitude to one another?  What if we trusted that the men and women we met were essentially good and like us struggling to live as best a human life as they could?  Would we be more open to refugees, more concerned for the homeless, for those with addictions, those of our brothers and sisters without food, water, health care or whatever.  Would we be less likely to see those of other cultures and religions as a threat and different from ourselves? Would we be able to overcome the suspicion, racism and zenophobia that sets us against one another?
I would certainly hope so. 

Lent is nearly upon us. It begins this Wednesday with Ash Wednesday designated as a day of fasting and abstinence, at least for the Catholic community. I always feel a bit embarrassed when it comes to fasting in Christianity when I compare it to Ramadan or the 21 day fast of the Baha’i community. For these communities fasting means no food or drink for the hours of daylight. The discipline of Ash Wednesday is no meat and only one meal though even then two small repasts are allowed. Doesn’t sound too penitential. The whole point of lent, as with the other fasts, is conversion of heart, an opportunity to reflect on life, consider our pattern of living and open ourselves to personal and spiritual renewal.  While a whole scale fast is not envisaged there is a tradition of fasting from or giving up some comfort or obsession. As children we always gave up sweets for lent though we did save them to be eaten on Easter Sunday. Nowadays people might give up alcohol, meat, sweet deserts, social media, television or fill a plastic bag with an item a day that can be taken to a charity shop when lent finishes. All this in an attempt to gain some kind of inner freedom.
 
There’s no doubt that a bit of discipline is a good for us but this year in these days of lockdown there has been a lot of discipline and renunciation. People have suffered because they haven’t been able to visit loved ones, meet friends, enjoy their usual methods of entertainment to say nothing of working from home while home schooling children. I’m lucky because I don’t have to do any of this but the invitations that come in thick and fast for interfaith and other events show that for many people lockdown has been as busy if not busier than usual.  The cessation of a lot of our activities has not meant much of a breathing space. So perhaps this is the discipline for this lent – to take a bit of time to allow ourselves to breathe, to relax, to be happy just to sit and savour a cup of coffee. In the busyness of life this can seem to be a luxury and extravagance that doesn’t fit in well to a daily timetable. 
 
There’s a suggestion within Judaism that after death God will ask us ‘ What use did you make of the good things of life?. I think, or hope, the expected answer would be ‘enjoy them’.  For many people fasting and enjoyment don’t go together but there’s a way in which they do and maybe there’s a Lenten lesson in that.
 
  Recently I watched the film Babette’s Feast which incidentally Richard Gere says is his favourite film of all time. I had already seen the film a good number of years ago and it had imprinted itself on my imagination.  The film is about a small puritanical Danish Lutheran community living in an isolated part of Jutland. The small sect is ruled and guided by a pastor with two beautiful daughters who renounce a future of love and fame to remain by their father’s side.  On their father’s death they become the leaders of the sect, taking an unappetising gruel to the poor and sick, offering a simple supper to the community in their home when it meets for worship. It’s a hard life, lived as it is in an unforgiving landscape and poverty but the believers, who have by now greatly decreased in number, are staunch and faithful living a strict asceticism devoid of pleasure and comfort - and sometimes even charity as they bicker amongst themselves and remember past hurts and infidelities. The climax of the film comes when the community sits down to a dinner to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of their founder – a dinner cooked by a famous French cook, Babette, who had had to flee France fourteen years previously and had taken refuge with the sisters. Babette had won the lottery and spent all the prize money on ingredients such as turtle for soup, quails, blinis, china crockery, glasses and the finest of wines. It was a seven course meal from the finest of French chefs.

The community sat down to the meal determined to “eat as if we never had the sense of taste” to avoid falling into the sin of gluttony or indulgence.  The film is beautifully shot and while keeping to the promise of not commenting on the food the faces of the old men and women are transformed as they experience and obviously enjoy the exquisite taste of such good food and wine. They are in awe and wonder at the joy of this experience and it’s this transformation which I’ve never forgotten. I can see in my mind’s eye the closed, tight faces that relax into appreciation and wonder, the men and women who at the end of the evening join hands and dance round the fountain. It’s a miracle of sorts.
 
So what does this have to do with lent. Well, there is a belief that to really appreciate what we have is a way to simplify our lives. To appreciate the clothes we have and take joy in them would lead to buying less, to savour and enjoy the food we eat would lead to eating less, to be attentive to the beauty of the created world would lead us to care for it, to savour and enjoy each minute would lead us to stop our rushing about and to give thanks for what we have. Gratitude, wonder, enjoyment are spiritual values and practices which are appropriate for lent – not exactly penitential but I suspect as transforming as any ascetical way of life.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, that moment when the nation and indeed the world remembers the atrocities not only of the Holocaust that murdered 6 million Jews as well as Roma and people with disabilities but also the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan and Darfur. As always the memorial services have been very moving and inspiring. We are now at a stage, 76 years after the liberation of Auschwitz – Birkenau, when many of the survivors of the camps, who for years have courageously told their stories, have died. Now we hear their stories from their children and grandchildren and stories of those saved by the kindertransport which, while saving their lives, separated them from their families whom many of them never saw again.
 
One of the constant themes of Holocaust Memorial Days in ‘never again’. We remember for a reason – to reflect on the degradation that we human beings can sink to and to hope and pray that it will never happen again.  But it is happening again. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia happened after the Holocaust; the atrocities in Sudan and Dafur still continue; the world watches the discrimination and violence perpetrated against the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uighar Muslims in China; we see refugees and asylum seekers turned away by affluent countries. And I am implicated in all of this because the perpetrators as well as the victims are related to me in this one human family of which we are all members. This connection and realisation are painful.
 
Joanna Macey talks about honouring the pain of the world, the importance of opening our heart to it and not running away from it.  This means lamenting my own sinfulness and that of my brothers and sisters and determining that things should be different. But what can I do to make a difference when so many of these atrocities are politically motivated and organised. Can I make a difference? 
 
The late Lord Jonathan Sacks has a story that he tells in an interview about the Holocaust. He calls it the butterfly story and it goes something like this: there was a holy, wise and distinguished rabbi who could see into the reality of things. On a visit to a certain village two troublemakers thought they could catch him out. One said to the other, see I have a butterfly cupped in my hand: I will ask the Rabbi if he knows what is there and, if he indeed answers that it is a butterfly, I will ask him if it alive or dead: if he says dead, I will open my hands and it will be alive: if he says alive, I will crush the butterfly and it will be seen to be dead. So they approached the Rabbi and asked what was in the fellow’s cupped hands- a butterfly answered the Rabbi. And is it dead or alive? The Rabbi looked them in the eye and said ‘the answer is in your hands’. Life and death – the answer is in our hands. What a good way to illustrate the verse from book of Deuteronomy which says “I call on heaven and earth to witness against you today: I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants might live” (Deut. 30: 19).
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The theme of this year’s Holocaust events says the same thing in another way, ‘Be a Light in the World’ which we will do by always standing up for and promoting life wherever we are. In his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis encourages us: “choose to cultivate kindness. Those who do so become stars shining in the midst of darkness”. Kindness is within the reach of all of us. It “frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others, from the frantic flurry of activity that forgets that others also have a right to be happy……… (it) can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstanding can be overcome and conflict forestalled…….it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges” (FT 224).

The Holocaust and other genocides succeeded because people, our brothers and sisters, were seen as less than human, described as vermin or cockroaches, classified as ‘them’ and not ‘us’. It’s not a long way from this kind of thinking to active discrimination and hate speech which we know from experience can lead to violence and even extermination. Kindness can rescue us from this path. It may seem insignificant but it has ripples and consequences that can lead our human family towards life, hope, peace and reconciliation. 

​The future too is in our hands.