What are our Crosses for?
Several weeks ago so many of us in our Armenian churches celebrated Palm Sunday. We took palms, which commemorate the event of Jesus Christ's triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, and fashioned them into crosses, to symbolize the irony of the suffering he endured, despite being greeted as a King.
Our lives and our history are saturated with irony.
We Armenians are proud that our nation is the first Christian nation and have just finished celebrating the 1700th anniversary of Armenian Christianity. We profess to be Christians, people of Christ, who believe and hope in the reconciliation and forgiveness for which He and His cross are symbolic.
Yet of what kind of forgiveness, reconciliation and peace are we Armenians capable? Of what kind of reconciliation and peace are we Christians capable?
A young man escaped the village of his birth and his home, fortunate to be alive. The soldiers had come firing weapons and attacking the villagers of only one of the ethnic groups of that village, from one side of the village driving men, women, children, the youthful and the elderly alike out the other end town, only to meet them there with sheets of gunfire, and a hail of death. In those same neighborhoods, mothers trying to save their children were shot before the innocent eyes of their little ones, a ten year old boy whose parents were already gone had to leave his two year old sister behind in a burning building because his arm itself had a bullet lodged in it, and longtime neighbors took up arms and disguises, which didn't disguise anything, to take part in the atrocities of the soldiers.
The young man who witnessed all of these things, was not an Armenian. He was not a member of the first Christian nation. He was a Muslim Albanian. The date was not 1898, 1915 or 1922, although the circumstances were peculiarly similar throughout villages and towns throughout Western Armenia in on those dates as well. The date of this atrocity was 1999.
One thing that this young man couldn't help but notice as he escaped his home and left his innocence and hope behind, were the crosses. The Christian Serbs had painted white crosses on their doors so that the oncoming Serbian soldiers would know where the Muslim Albanians lived and torch only their homes, leaving the homes with white crosses intact.[1]
We Christians around the world, hold up the cross as an example of how we hope to defeat death and uphold life. Yet it seems horribly ironic, impossibly incongruous and downright obscene to think of the hatred and destruction even Christians are able to inflict upon others in the name of so-called faith.
Whether it is between Muslims and Jews on a Jerusalem bus, Christian and Muslim in Kosovo, Jews and Muslim in Ramallah, between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, Turks and Armenian in the Anatolian villages long lost to history, Nazi Christian and Jews in Eastern Europe in 1941, Baathists Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad up till last month, between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir or in any other clash between races and religions today or in the past, violence and hatred which finds its ultimate form in genocide and holocaust must not be tolerated and must be set aside.
In the midst of all this violence, which in these forms, seem so far away to us on the free American land on which we stand today, two things are clear.
First, greed and hatred show forth their despicable faces in our human form regardless of race, creed, religion, age, economic status or any other minor shade or variable of our human form. The greed that causes one nation to brutally expel another from their lands is the same greed that causes a little boy to throw his little brother to the floor over a toy. The hatred that causes one person to shoot another in cold blood because of their race is the same emotion that causes someone to gossip about an individual she cannot stand. The only differences are the degrees involved. The roots of evil are common in all human beings. Given different circumstances of time and location, we are all capable of the most egregious and frightening atrocities simply because all such acts take root from the same place, deeply seeded within all humanity.
The second point that we must embrace when we are faced with atrocities occurring around the world is that we who have the freedom to do so, have got to work for justice, for redemption and for reconciliation. Redemption and reconciliation between Christian Serbs and Muslim Albanians, between Catholic and Protestant Irish, between Whites and Blacks in South Africa, which many people actually report is now happening, reconciliation between me and all those with whom I have issues, including Turks must be accomplished.
My grandmother was orphaned in 1915. She lost three brothers and sisters. She witnessed her parents killed before her very eyes. At the age of six, she was forced to abandon her infant brother on a death march across the countryside. She survived and lived to grow up in a French orphanage. Many in my father's family saw their church burned to the ground, their neighbors killed and their community smashed, in the destruction in Marash in 1922. I have hated Turks in my lifetime.
I have pictures of myself from before I was a teenager. I held a toy gun at a rally much like this, on the steps of the Massachusetts state house. Anyone who asked, I told them that the gun was for the Turks. At that early age, I didn't know the hatred such words and actions represented and bred, but I can and I must say now, that I reject it.
If we think anything of this cross, we must forgive. We must work toward reconciliation and we must work toward building up all Armenians and all Turks in a common community of restoration and renewal.
Justice cannot be forgotten however. Organized political denials and false re-fabrications of history must be ended once and for all. Truly these ends and ultimately justice may even have a better chance for success, if first we first forgive. One Roman Catholic theologian writes, "forgiveness precedes repentance."[2] In our sister faith of the Roman Catholic church, one does not go to confession, unless that person knows that there they will find forgiveness and hope through the act.
We must be magnanimous, we must lift ourselves up out of the mire of hatred and violence that is such a real potential in each of us. Instead we must move with strength to forgiveness in our own hearts, in our own public statements through our cultural organizations, our churches and our political structures. Forgiveness for the goodness of our own souls, for justice, for reconciliation and for ultimate goal of rebuilding a future worth living, for our children and for all Armenians.
I have a vision, that someday instead of genocide commemorations such as this one today. We will stand hand in hand with Turks all over the world, in the Diaspora, in Armenia, and in Istanbul. We will openly and honestly look back to our common and painful history, with sorrow and with resolve, never to allow such things to happen among us again. Then and only then can we build a stronger Armenia. Then and only then can we attract our young people back to our cultural roots and build for a hopeful tomorrow. Then and only then, will we able to stand up and embrace our Christian heritage and faith and uphold this cross of Christ.
Someday I hope we will be able to say, "I am an Armenian. I am not hated by any in this world. I am not consumed with hatred for any in this world. I am ready to meet the future and build a better world for my children and all Armenian who will come after me." I hope that we might all give ourselves to such a future and find ourselves not only dreaming, but living in such reality in this lifetime and in this era.
Amen.