Thought for the Week: The People of the Cross?
'The People of the Cross?' by Alastair McIntosh
The Cross today might seem obscure. Not so, in the so-called ‘Islamic’ State’s recent video of beheading twenty-one Coptic Christians. Its captions make two mentions.
The first proclaims: ‘A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.’ The red jumpsuits worn by the impending martyrs evoke Guantanamo Bay. They define the nation in question, its shadow side played out in cultic drama. They define our nation too, by special relationship.
Consider how militant Islam might see America and Britain. Historically, we have colonised them more deeply than almost any other part of the world. George W Bush launched his ‘war on terror’ as a ‘crusade’. Initially, the war in Afghanistan was codenamed Operation Infinite Justice – an attribute that usurps the place of God. Tony Blair reportedly felt these wars to be a duty of his faith. So does the British state. Dieu et mon droit. Lest we forget.
Fast forward to 2009, and it was revealed that Donald Rumsfeld’s top secret daily defence briefings on Iraq to president Bush were decorated with Bible verses. A year later, ABC News broke the story that Trijicon rifle sights – widely used by both the US and British forces – had Bible references coded into their etched-on model numbers.
Such idolatrous appropriation of the Christian faith by the god of war has left the Cross, itself, crucified. Islam, too, is in the dock, mangled in the violent spiral. The followers of Allah – that beautiful sense of God ‘the Beneficent, the Merciful… the Cherisher of the Worlds’ – yearn to be more faithfully heard. The Muslim Council of Britain could not be clearer. Since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, its website has carried this message:
‘Nothing justifies the taking of life. Those who have killed in the name of our religion today claim to be avenging the insults made against Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace. But nothing is more immoral, offensive and insulting against our beloved Prophet than such a callous act of murder.’
The second mention of the Cross in the beheading video speaks of Christians as, ‘the People of the Cross’. Well, there’s an accolade! Writing for a trending website, father John Parker points out that John the Baptist was just the first of many early Christians who were murdered by beheading. Other innocents were massacred at birth, crucified, stoned, ripped apart and roasted alive. And yet, this gentle Orthodox priest reminds us: ‘The saints prayed for their torturers, and relentlessly clung to Christ. To my knowledge, there are no recorded acts of violence returned for violence.’
From such a soil as this our Quaker Peace Testimony grew. Here is the Cross that radiates divine compassion – the cosmic karunā that absorbs and transfigures all the violence of the world. Hell shrinks before such love. Resurrection is intrinsic, for such is the reality that stands outside of space, of time.
A line left in a letter from Norman Macleod, an old lobster fisherman, a south Harris Presbyterian, echoes through my mind.
‘My God, Alastair, inhabiteth eternity.’
Imagine, if you or I were led along some lonely beach, its waves awash with martyrs’ blood. Single file. Jumpsuits. How might we plead before our executioners? What testimony might we leave, to echo and transfigure in their dreams?
Would we merely shiver? Or might we quake?
Whither our Peace Testimony today?
Let these beheadings be a wake-up call.
Je suis… the People of the Cross.
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