A Psalm for Recovery

Thanksgiving for Recovery from Grave Illness
A Psalm. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David.

Just a few weeks ago we celebrated Palm Sunday. I noticed that some of our young people sat down in one of the Sunday school classrooms and according to the ancient customs of the Christian church on Palm Sunday, took up some of those palms, and fashioned them into crosses.

Palms are used of course to commemorate the event of Jesus Christ's triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, and the people’s greeting Jesus as King.

In the reformed tradition, the empty cross, as opposed to the crucifix is also a powerful symbol, like the empty tomb, it symbolizes Jesus’ triumph, that neither the tomb a place for the dead, nor the cross, an ancient instrument of inflicting torture and death, could contain the power and grace of God. So the cross is an ironic symbol, a symbol of death and suffering and torture, come to signify victory and eternal life and God’s grace.

The palm cross is an even more ironic symbol, because it is used by the church to take the symbolic irony of the empty cross and add upon it the layer of truth that with the palms Jesus was greeted as King, with the Cross, he was crucified and slammed down into the lowest depths of human degradation and yet that cross was soon vacated as the was the tomb and it all culminated in the most ultimate victory one could ever imagine. In that one symbol of the Palm Cross, we have illustrated the grand scope of all that transpired in Christ’s final week, with all its promise, and suffering, all its victory and all its bitter irony.

We Armenians are proud that our nation is the first Christian nation and a few years ago celebrated the 1700^th 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 in villages and towns throughout Western Armenia 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. Christian Serbs had painted white crosses on their doors so that the oncoming Christian Serbian soldiers would know where the Muslim Albanians lived and torch only those 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, between Christians and Muslims in Kosovo, Jews and Muslim in Gaza, between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, between Muslims and Christians on a Spanish train, between Turks and Armenian in the Anatolian villages long lost to history, between Nazi Christian and Jews in Eastern Europe in 1941, between Baathist Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad, 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 often hide themselves in the claims and convictions of the otherwise peaceful, loving and nurturing religions of the world.

Yet look to the words of Psalm 30. What is God about? Is God about retribution and hatred and reprisal and revenge and hateful rejection?

The God of Psalm 30 is a God of healing, of restoration of new dawn and renewal and life.

And yet the irony of life is that it is fraught with death. Even as we live, we are steeped in sin, we are surrounded with death and our souls an hearts riddled and weakened with the power of sin.

You see, greed and hatred show forth their despicable faces in all humanity 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.

Says the Psalmist. In his prosperous days of strength and power, the Psalmist confesses that he forgets God ignores God’s direction and says, “I shall never be moved” and God turns his face in disgust and sadness. But it does not end there.

Despite sin and hatred, greed and violence that causes such destruction and suffering especially in the lives and souls of the destroyers, God is a God of healing and forgiving and loving and nurture. And he calls us to do likewise, to follow in the path of the Way the Truth and the Life.

We who have never tasted the violence of vengeance and heard the whistle of bullets in our neighborhoods who have freedom as a gracious gift from God, have the opportunity 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 even now happening, reconciliation between Palestinian and Israeli, between me and all those with whom I have issues, including Turks are the landmarks upon the path of Christ, upon the Way of Christ the way of truth and the way of life.

The grace of God and the example of his love demand that we too are called to forgive and to move in the paths of Christ himself.

The irony of the cross is that it depicts Jesus suffering and his victory, the power of sin and the power of God.

If we think anything of this cross, if we despise the suffering Jesus endure, if we believe in his victory over death and sin, we must over come the sin in our time, 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.

And yet justice cannot be forgotten either. Organized political denials and false re-fabrications of history are continuations of the original atrocities. Yet, 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 those made this past week, Armenians 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.

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.

[1] http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/20thcentury/99noimpeach.html

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/1999/Jun-23-Wed-1999/news/11425005.html

[2] Schreiter, R.J. Reconciliation: Mission & Ministry in a Changing Social Order 60