Ahmed said ‘One of the Americans survived the first volley of gunfire but was pulled from his disabled vehicle by a gathering mob. He was shot in the chest’ Ahmed said. ‘The people killed him by throwing bricks on him and jumping on him until they killed him. They cut off his arm and his leg and his head and they we cheering and shouting God is great God is great. The mujahedeen shot those two cars and killed everybody. If you go to the bridge you will find them hanging there, just like slaughtered sheep. They hung those two bodies for a long time and there was dancing and cheering. They were throwing stones and beating them with sticks.
Then the bodies were cut down, placed atop a pile of tires and set afire.’ he said

I’m sure you would prefer me to read from the bible – its somehow more palatable to read of the killing of Jesus the Christ rather than read of the killing of Jerry Zovko 32, from Willoughby Ohio.
Incidentally, I’m reading from last Thursday’s Argus – April the first – and of course its no April fool. 4 US citizens slain mutilated and strung up on a bridge over the river Euphrates – by those who feel that their actions are totally compatible with their religious beliefs. God is good he will reward us!

My immediate concern is of course that there has been greater outrage around the violence portrayed in the Mel Gibson film than is ever expressed in response to such an outrage -  the real life day to day violence carried out upon innocent victims in the name of religion.
Those who find the violence of the Passion to be offensive say nothing about the sado- masochistic violence being carried out in many countries of the world, by those who again feel that their actions are totally compatible with their religious beliefs, God is great, God is good he will reward us.

These are scary times and we need to reflect deeply on this Good Friday – yes on the death our Lord and Master, but perhaps more on the reasons for that death and ask what have we leant, why have we perpetuated such acts of religious violence for the last 2000 years?
Lets face this head on today.
Blaise Pascal said: ‘Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from a religious conviction.’

My concern is that the church has over the years glorified the massacre of Jesus in a way that legitimises both religious sacrifice and religious execution. Intricate layers of theological interpretation have built a veneer around the whole event that somehow makes it all right even admirable to fight or to die for your religious beliefs. We have a secret admiration for those who can blow themselves up for their belief in God.
Don’t we sing:
The noble army of martyrs praise you
The holy warriors of suicide bombers praise you

Please note that Jesus said nothing about laying down your life for your belief systems – he simple said lay down your life for your friend -no greater love has any one than this.

My concern is that by lifting a raw incident of religious violence to a life saving event – through years of clever Pauline and ecclesiastical theology – we risk losing the reality of the event and in so doing give an unspoken approval to those who kill in God’s name and those who die in God’s name.

Let us be clear as to why Jesus was killed.

Jeshua ben Joseph (at least Mel Gibson got his name right) was killed because the High Temple priest, whom we know as Ciaphas, based his religious beliefs on his holy books which included the book of Numbers,
which said – and still says,
only the son of a Levite was entitled to become a Rabbi, a teacher, holder of the Law.
And only the first-born son of a Levite was to be given over to become a son of God.

Those of you who know your bibles well, will know that this law in fact overruled an earlier law in Exodus 13.2 which claimed that the first born from any of the tribes and of either sex was to be given over to become sons or daughters of God.

Jesus of course was not from the tribe of Levi he was from the tribe of Judah.
So this Ciaphas, this educated holy man, this high priest, was absolutely right.
He knew his God given sacred texts.
Any one other than a first born son from the tribe of Levi, who claimed to be a child of God, was guilty of blasphemy
And should be put to death.

That the non-Levite Jesus even had the audacity to teach in the temple precincts only exacerbated the situation.

Jesus was killed because he broke a Levitical law.
Jesus was killed because his teaching of love, tolerance, human kindness, understanding and charity, was in direct opposition to the unforgiving laws found in Leviticus.
(You can have an amusing time reading them and trying to work out how many of your friends you really should stone to death!)

So Jesus was a victim of religious literalism, religious fundamentalism, religious extremism – all of which threaten today, the future of our world civilisation.

I believe that an alternative cry should go up every Good Friday and it’s a familiar one, an ANC slogan, a District Six slogan – Never, never again.
At the memorial service on this years Human Rights Day, of 15 year old Christopher Truter from Bonteheuwel who was shot in the head by the South African Police in 1976 these words were said:
We remember all those hanged assassinated injured, tortured and maimed. And we say; Never again shall we allow infringement of human rights in South Africa.

When will Christians stand up at the cross of Jesus and say never, never again will we allow religious killings to take place in our world.

What I’m suggesting is that Jesus’ death together with the death of Jerry Zovko and all other deaths , killings and war are created by the beliefs we hold about God.

For religious people like ourselves this is a scary thought.
It is our beliefs that are killing the world.

But we are right and they are wrong!

We are the believers and they are the infidels! (as the old prayer book used to remind us on this day)

We are from the tribe of Levi – you are from the tribe of Judah

We base our belief on our holy book

Which of course is more holy than your holy book

We are chosen – because we have a unique revelation of who God is – so we know the truth, our way is the only way

Thanks be to God, Allah aqbar, God is great.

But further:
We know this to be true because this is our belief about God.

God chooses who he will reveal himself to.

God separates nation from nation.

He blesses those who do good

and punishes those who do wrong,

because there is only one way and that’s God’s way.

It is really not surprising that that kind of belief will easily legitimise, separatist, apartheid behaviour, religious intolerance ethnic cleansing, suicide bombers and the rest.

Let me be brave enough, and maybe blasphemous enough, to suggest that we must have a new thought about God, we must open up the space for a new kind of belief, a new revelation, a new idea about God that will dramatically effect our religious belief.

Could we entertain the possibility that God – who is supremely revealed in Jesus, the innocent victim bleeding on the cross today – is a God who does not need crisis, violence, killing or war in order to meet his requirements- in fact he may not have any requirements at all.
He doesn’t deal out these things on those who have seemingly disobeyed certain commandments enshrined in certain religious books

He doesn’t separate

He doesn’t choose

He doesn’t demand

he doesn’t condemn

Entertain the possibility of a God

Who is all in all

Who communicates with all of us all of the time

Whose nature is goodness, kindness, mercy and unconditional love

Who is despairing at the atrocities that are carried out in his name in the name of religion.

Mel Gibson has powerfully displayed the full extent of the atrocities carried out on one Jeshua ben Joseph – and we must be offended.
Every killing, every human violation carried out in the name of God, is an atrocity, a blasphemy, which must offend us and revile us and stir us to think differently.
How long O Lord how long?
How long will we allow our religious beliefs to separate and divide and legitimise human destruction?
Jesus said on the cross – father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing – I would like to think that he was right – but do we still not know what we are doing?
My friends, we’ve had nearly 2000 years to find out what we are doing.
To learn about God
To learn how religious beliefs can be used for ultimate evil
To learn how religious beliefs can be used to create peace and harmony – all those things that we pray for,
We’ve had 200 years to get the message and yet somewhere on the banks of the Euphrates lies the charred remains of one Jerry Zorkov, 32 from Willoughby Ohio.

On the cross today Jesus carries humanity’s sacrifice of its own people, in the name of the small God, the one we have made in our own image – the one who has only ever existed in our imagination.

My friends in the name of the big God,
The father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
The father of every living creature,
In the name of that one God
And for the sake of that one God
Let us let us check out our own beliefs,
Let us grow up, seek some maturity in our faith and stand up against all religious violence of our day.

If Christ’s death could inspire us to reform our worn ideas about God, if we could grow our beliefs in such a way that they would support life on this planet,
then, we could truly say that Christ died to save the world.

Amen.