It’s all about story. It’s the story we tell ourselves that determines how we see and respond to the world in which we live. And it’s story that often divides us. We can see this in the present conflict in Ukraine. Putin has one story about Russia and its claims on Ukraine and Zelensky another. At the moment we are in the run up to local elections in Britain and each candidate has his or her own story, usually that they are better than other candidates or other parties. Sometimes there’s not much about the good each might do and could do together with cooperation between parties. Competition not cooperation is the order of the day. Many people think this is so with religions – each with its own competing truth claims. Others who are involved in interreligious dialogue see cooperation as the way forward, respecting the belief of others, while not assenting to them but refusing to let that difference divide us.
 
This week there will be plenty of storytelling in religions. For the first time in over 30 years several religions are celebrating significant festivals this week.  Christians are celebrating Easter, Jains are celebrating the birthday of one of their founders, Baha’is are remembering the day on which their founder Baha’u’llah declared his mission as a Manifestation of God, Sikhs are commemorating the birth of the Khalsa in the festival of Vaisakhi while Muslims are observing Ramadan.

For Christians religious services will focus on the last three days in the life of Jesus. On Holy Thursday the story is about the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples before going to his death. This Last Supper has become ritualised in eucharists/communion services celebrated in some denominations daily. On Holy Thursday there is an extra element – at least for Catholics. While the story of the Last Supper is read the priest will wash the foot of 12 parishioners in imitation of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Being conservative, the Church has in the past stipulated that the parishioners should be men, but Pope Francis has shown by example that not only can women have their feet washed but even people who are not Catholic. As has become his custom the Pope will say Mass in a prison outside of Rome and wash (and kiss) the feet of prisoners, displaying in action, the meaning of the story which is that service, compassion and love of others is at the heart of faith. For Christians this story should be the motivation for how they live and had this been the case throughout history a lot of conflict between religions and a lot of religious wars could have been avoided.  But for some people the washing of the feet was limited to followers of Jesus – leading to rejection of others and even denying them salvation. It depends then, not so much on the story but how you hear that story.

Good Friday focusses on the death of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities. Yes, he was brought to those authorities by some of the Jewish ruling group but not by ‘The Jews’. Unfortunately, many churches will read the account of Jesus passion from the Gospel of John, and it talks about ‘The Jews’ and if the person leading the service doesn’t explain that this does not refer to the whole Jewish people of which Jesus was a part, the listeners can come away with the wrong idea. This idea was so prevalent in the Middle Ages that Jews were unsafe during these three days as many Christians would attack them to avenge the death of Jesus, charging them with deicide. This reading of the story has been declared wrong by the Catholic Church in its document on its relationship with other faiths, Nostra Aetate as has any form of antisemitism. 

The story of Good Friday has been and can be read in different ways – focussing on how necessary it was for the salvation of the world. Another way of reading it is to see it as the first step in an integrated action that includes the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. In this way death and resurrection are taken together and reflect the reality of life. We live in a world where death in nature happens for new life to develop and evolve. Death and resurrection can be read as a spiritual practice – letting go of each moment, old ideas, to embrace the next and respond to what life calls us to.

While all this is happening in Christian churches the Jewish community will be celebrating Pesach/Passover with their families at home. It will take place at a family meal where the story of the People of Israel’s escape from the slavery of Egypt will be told and symbolically acted out through the readings and food that is eaten. Some Christians think this is the meal that Jesus celebrated with his disciples before his death, but it isn’t the same. The order of the service is one that developed in the first century of the common era and would not have been the one celebrated by Jews in Jesus’ time. Some Christians like to Christianise it and link it to Jesus Last Supper, but this is to deny it and Judaism its own integrity. As a story of redemption and salvation Jews will be remembering the injustices and conflicts, the crises from which humans need to be saved and praying that this might happen now as it did in the past to their ancestors. But to do this is also to commit to working to make this salvation a reality in so far as we can.

And the other festivals of new year and the story of religious founders that are being told at the same time as the festivals of Pesach and Easter, as well as  the intensive prayer and fasting of Ramadan, must surely give this week a powerful spiritual energy which I believe we can tap in to and harness in our own lives in our hopes and actions for a better world. 

 “We see things as we are not as they are” is an often quoted saying. Today it’s clearly illustrated in the story being played out by Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. President Putin has an idealised view of what he calls ‘Rus’, a Russia of the first millennium that included Ukraine, Belarus and Crimea and he seemingly wants to return to that and set himself up as Czar of all Russia, even if he doesn’t use the name. For him this is a sacred task and the land of Russia, as it was, is a sacred land. Those nations that disrupt this unity are not legitimate and are to be crushed. Ukraine on the other hand sees itself as a thriving democracy, with a strong sense of its own identity, wanting to be associated with the European Union and part of NATO. For them this present conflict is a war of aggression, and the world is looking on with horror at the destruction of cities in Ukraine, the wanton killings and the millions of women and children fleeing the country – women and children mainly because the menfolk are staying to fight and defend their country. Putin won’t even acknowledge that what he is doing is war – rather he calls it a special operation to rid the country of anti-Nazi elements and restore Russian unity. What’s to be done about it.

Protests, demonstrations, prayers, sanctions, show the breadth and depth of opposition to the war but this makes no difference to Putin who knows that his threat of using nuclear weapons and the fear of other nations that this present conflict could escalate into a third world war keeps the rest of the world looking on powerlessly. One of the saddest things about this war for those of us who are Christian is that the Russian Orthodox Church of which Putin is a member supports him wholeheartedly. Well, maybe that’s not quite true. An orthodox priest in Russia was arrested and fined for criticising the war; there have been anti-war protests in some cities and many of those protesters will belong to the Orthodox Church; the  Russian Orthodox clergy Amsterdam have separated themselves from the Moscow Patriarchate and asked to join the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; more than 280 Russian Orthodox priests and church officials from around the world have signed an open letter, expressing their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is the head of the Church, Patriarch Kirill who is firmly standing on the side of Putin. Kirill is Ukrainian and believes in the one nation of Russians, Belarusians, and Little Russians (Ukrainians). In a reply to the World Council of Churches he blamed NATO member states for what he sees is a strategy for undermining and weakening Russia which must be protected at all costs. We see things as we are not as they are. What’s to be done about it.

I don’t think I have felt just as despondent about the world as I do at the moment. We’ve come through, or hopefully are coming through, a pandemic which revealed to us our global fragility and need for cooperation. We have faced the growing threat of climate change, particularly at the last COP gathering in Glasgow, and our responsibility for the future well-being of our planet. We are now facing a war which could easily escalate into a world war and even lead to the use of nuclear weapons and the end of the world as we know it. There seems to be a desperation among people at government and local level to show Putin and Kirill how much they oppose the war and call for peace. No wonder people are afraid of the future which, at the moment, seems so very insecure. What’s to be done about it.

There are of course things that can be done – protesting, letting our voice be heard, supporting charities working on the ground to care for the people of Ukraine, welcoming refugees into our societies, making sure that Russians and Ukrainians citizens in our own land feel supported and respected for it happens so often that conflicts abroad can easily spill over to violence at home. Many people are doing this. What about prayer? Will that help? Will it change President Putin’s heart? Perhaps it can send good energy and hope to the peace talks that are taking place at the same time as the bombing and destruction continue. I’m not too confident about that but for many of us it may be the least we can do to feel we are doing something.

Perhaps the prayer that needs to be prayed is that which feels the pain of this suffering, the pain of the inability of our human family to live together in peace, the pain that those suffering and those perpetrating the violence are our brothers and sisters and because of this we are all implicated. And this is not the only war being waged by our brothers and sisters.  This war in Europe is at present dominating our media but there is also conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Perhaps these conflicts are more easily forgotten as they are further afield and don’t touch us in the same way. So too with refugees. Thousands of people in Britain are opening their homes to Ukrainian refugees but there are thousands of refugees from other parts of the world all trying to find safety and deserve equal treatment. Taking time to pray is to open ourselves to this pain. Will this then help us  to see our human family as one and commit ourselves to friendships and relationships that extend beyond definitions. Without that I doubt peace is possible. 

On 17th February Glasgow City Council announced its budget for the forthcoming year and plans for post-covid recovery. Included in that budget is the statement “ As well as confirming the funding to keep all local libraries open, it will also allocate more than £1 million to reopen community centres and public halls, and £650k to reopen the much-loved St Mungo’s Museum and Provand’s Lordship”  This feels like a victory for all those who campaigned tirelessly for the council to keep local libraries, museums and community centres open. Was this part of the budget the result of that campaigning, did Glasgow City Council listen to the voices of its citizens and realise how committed people were to their cultural and community centres, recognising the value they have in the ethos and development of a city.
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I was involved in the campaign to save St Mungo’s Museum or Religious Life and Art so that it would keep its interfaith and multifaith focus. Glasgow Life had indicated that its plan was to enter into an agreement with Historic Environment Scotland who own Glasgow Cathedral to revamp the Cathedral precinct to attract more visitors to the historic centre of Glasgow. This revamp would include St Mungo’s Museum and could mean a change in its focus to link more clearly with the history of the Cathedral. This has not yet been resolved but it is surely in keeping with the Christian origins of Glasgow to show its growth as the multifaith city, committed to social and interfaith harmony, that it has become.

The idea of a Museum of Religious Life and Art was the brainchild of Mark O’Neill, at that time Senior Curator of History with Gl. Museums. From the outset it was developed with a socially driven purpose, expressed in the mission statement:
to explore the importance of religion in people’s everyday lives across the world and across time, aiming to promote mutual understanding and respect between people of different faiths and none.  Mark and his team were convinced that if the museum was to live up to this vision stakeholders would have to be consulted and included in the museum’s development – even in the decision to call it The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. The stakeholders were the various faith communities in Glasgow as well as the Glasgow Sharing of Faiths, the first and, at that time, only interfaith group in Scotland.  All these groups were approached and involved – donating artefacts and giving suggestions about the layout. Once opened the museum became a centre for interfaith celebrations and dialogues and because of the involvement of faith communities from its inception the Museum felt very much like a home from home. It did indeed become a much loved venue and the thought of it closing was like a bereavement and loss of what was considered a safe and neutral space to conduct what were sometimes difficult dialogues.    

The Museum opened on 4th April 1993, one of only two Museums of Religion in Europe. Now there are more and many of those setting up similar museums came to Glasgow to learn from the St. Mungo experience. For these interfaith friends the thought of St Mungo’s closing or even changing its focus seemed incredible and many of them added their voices of protest to those of Glaswegians and the thousands of people who signed the petition instigated by Interfaith Glasgow. 

This is not the first time that there have been plans to close St Mungo’s Museum, nor the first time it has been saved. It’s as though Glasgow Council needs to be reminded from time to time of its significance and the important contribution it makes to good community relations. Hopefully that no matter what future developments there might be stakeholders from Glasgow’s diverse religious communities, interfaith organisations, and anti-sectarian organisations will be consulted.  

This weekend sees the end of the week in which we kept Holocaust Memorial Day and the beginning of the UN Week of Interfaith Harmony with its celebration of Human Fraternity Day which remembers the signing of the document on Human Fraternity by Pope Francis and Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University on 4th Feb. 1999.
 
There were Holocaust Memorial events all over Europe and I was privileged to be at the Scottish and UK events as well as the civic service at the Reform Synagogue in Glasgow. As always central to these events are the stories of survivors, some who experienced the horror of the extermination camps and others who escaped them because they were part of the Kindertransport.
 
The stories tell of the heroism of parents who were determined to save their children. Some did this, by going with the SS when they knocked the door, closing it carefully behind them leaving a child who felt abandoned and did not fully understand what was happening. Hannah Lewis remembers her mother doing just that and seeing her mother’s blood on the snow when she witnessed her murder while looking for her and not understanding why her mother did not meet her eyes. Others did what they could to ensure a future for their children, like the mother of Lily Ebert who asked her to exchange shoes when they were in the trucks headed for Auschwitz. Only afterwards did Lily realise that her mother had given her shoes in which some gold and jewellery was hidden in the heels of the shoes. To this day Lily’s most precious possession is a pendant that was hidden in those shoes. At the Scottish event Henry Wuga told of how his parents put him on the Kindertransport to Britain. He was one of 10,000 children whose parents made the supreme sacrifice of sending their children to safety because they sensed the horrors that were to come. Many of them did well but as children they did not fully understand what was happening and Henry remembers the tears of both children and parents as they separated.
 
The pain of these stories has stayed with me long after the event itself. Another moving story was that of a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Holocaust Memorial Day also remembers the genocides of Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur though we cannot forget the terrible plight of the Uighurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar as well as the suffering of so many of the Afghani people today. At the UK HMD Memorial Service Antoinette Mutabazi from Rwanda told how she was third in line to be executed when news came that the bank had been breached and her executioners left to see what they could get for themselves – saved in a way by other people’s greed.
 
These stories set well the scene for Interfaith Harmony Week and Human Fraternity Day. They show us how far we are from that ideal and how important it is that we work to overcome division, prejudice, hatred and ideologies that set ourselves, our group, our religion, our culture, our way of life as definitive for everyone. Someone who to my mind was an ikon of peace and fraternity and a shining example for all of us is Thich Nhat Hanh who sadly died on 22nd January this year.
 
Thich Nhat Hanh’s death was peaceful. He was 95 years of age, though during the last few years he had suffered the effects of a massive stroke which left him speechless. He died in Vietnam, in the monastery he had entered when he was 16 years old. For much of his life he was exiled by the Vietnamese Government for opposing the Vietnam War and travelling in the west, especially America, to speak of peace and encourage the US to withdraw from the war. Martin Luther King was so impressed by this gentle monk that he suggested him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I believe the reason he didn’t get it was because MLK broke the rules by revealing the nomination.
 
I was privileged to make two retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and to visit his monastery in the Dordogne region of France which was composed of several hamlets and called Plum Village. I shall never forget these retreats. Thich Nhat Hanh was an ikon of mindfulness and peace so that to see him walk into a room, sit quietly in the lotus position and teach with gentleness and kindness was a lesson in itself. I think he was a genius in that his teachings on Buddhism touched his listeners’ humanity and made perfect sense. This was religion at its best and I do wish I was able to do that for Christianity. Thay, as his disciples called him, had a great respect for Christianity, writing two books about their relationship, Living Buddha, Living Christ and Jesus and the Buddha as Brothers. He felt that Buddhism would allow Christianity to discover the spirituality behind many of its teachings. And it has done that as far as mindfulness and meditation are concerned.
 
Thich Nhat Hanh will continue to be an inspiration through his writings and teaching. He wrote "Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out…. So do not be afraid of death". His death was peaceful. The death of those remembered at HMD was violent but through these deaths and the story of survivors there is a message of resilience and hope and the memory of them all will live on as an inspiration to all of us and a motivation to promote human fraternity. 

 Some years ago, “The Shack” was a popular book in Christian circles. It’s a novel, written by William P Young and published in 2007. It became a bestseller and stayed on the bestselling list for years. It’s the story of a father who returns to a broken, tumbled down shack in a forest where four years previously police had found evidence that his young daughter Missy may have been murdered after having been abducted during a camping trip at the time when Mack, the father, had left her to go save his son who was in danger of being drowned after the canoe he was in capsized. This was a tragedy that brought on what Mack calls “The Great Sadness”. His return to the scene of his daughter’s possible murder is in response to a note in his mailbox from “Papa” asking Mack to meet him that weekend at the shack. Puzzled as to who Papa is but suspecting it is God (his wife always refers to and talks to God as Papa) he goes.  The shack is as he remembers it, broken down and abandoned but the blood-stained clothing of his daughter is still there, and he vents his grief in anger and tears. Just as he is about to leave, the shack and its surroundings are transformed, and he is welcomed into a warm, cosy home situated in and idyllic environment where he meets God – not just as Papa but as Trinity. So, he meets God the Father in the form of and African American Woman, Jesus a middle eastern carpenter and the Holy Spirit, a young Asian woman. Mack’s interaction with each of these persons brings about peace and acceptance.

My memory of reading the book over 10 years ago was that I didn’t like it and was rather dismissive of it, thinking it was a bit of nonsense.  Most people I knew liked it, because of its account of God, especially God being a black woman, but I thought and still think that its portrayal of the Trinity gave a wrong idea of God. It’s not that I don’t believe in the Trinity but the portrayal of the Trinity as separate individuals and one of them being Jesus does not resonate with me, nor fit with my theology. For me the Trinity is an analogy that says if God is about anything God is about relationships and if God is that Reality in which we live, move, and have our very being then reality itself is relational. But how does an author, an artist, express this reality apart from depicting relations between people?

What has brought this book back into my consciousness is that I was flicking through Netflix and discovered it had been turned into a film which I watched and enjoyed. It may be that I was able to take the story less literally than I did when I read it and was able to sit more lightly on the theological issue of God and the Trinity. What I was left with was the psychology behind it and the power of religion to bring about healing – not in the sense of simply asking for it but in the encouragement of facing up to issues of heart break and tragedy that can lead to transformation. The film, and the book, is a reflection on the problem of evil, of unjust and senseless suffering, a problem that leads many people to reject any belief in God for how can a good God allow such things?  I’m not sure that the film will answer that question satisfactorily for unbelievers but looking beyond the images and metaphors there is I think a lot of wisdom.

In the first instance Mack experiences an unconditional love which does not judge him but supports and encourages him in his heart break. Do we not all need this and is it not a blessing when we have it? It is this acceptance that helps him face up to his grief. He does this in the film by Jesus inviting him to take a rowing boat out into the middle of a lake. Jesus is standing by the shore, and I found myself thinking, ‘oh no, he’s going to walk on water’. And of course, he does. The boat begins to let in water, horrible slimy oily-like black liquid and Mack is in danger of sinking until he steps out of the boat and with Jesus walks to the shore. This is a depiction of the gospel story when Jesus walks on the water to save his disciples from a storm. Did it really happen? Who knows but looking beyond the literal story the wisdom is that we must face the storms of life and religion can be a support in this as can family and friends?  Another scene is when Mack meets wisdom who teaches him not to judge quickly without understanding something of a person’s circumstance and conditioning, whether that be his own father or the man who abducted his daughter.
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The film doesn’t have the same ending as the book though both allow Mack to bury his daughter and so move on, realising that while this all happened when he was unconscious from a road accident that happened on his way to the shack, it had brought about a personal and inner transformation. So, a book, a film, not to be taken literally – maybe a bit like religion itself. It’s not so much what it says but what it means that’s important and if we were to look beyond the literal I think we would find a great deal of wisdom, not just in The Shack but in religion itself.