All God's people

Isaiah 64.1-9, 1 Corinthians 1.3-9, Mark 13.24-37

Service of introduction, St Andrew's Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem
Rev Praic Ramonn, Church of Scotland

In the great high-priestly prayer in chapter 17 of John's gospel, Jesus of Nazareth God's word made
flesh, as John sees it prays that we may all be one; so today I want to talk about division.
In 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on indulgences to the church door in Wittenberg and with a
hammer stroke split the Western church. In 1054, the Latin church of the West and the Orthodox
church of the East formalized their divorce. In the run-up to Nicea, in 325, church fathers fell out over
whether Jesus Christ was more appropriately described as one in substance with the Father or similar in
substance to the Father. In Greek, these two terms differ by only a jot, or an iota: Christians were
divided by the smallest letter in the alphabet.
But the earliest and most important division in the people of God, the people that trace their source and
origin to Abraham, is the schism between Christians and Jews that crystallized during the first centuries
of our common era a schism in the inheritance of Abraham still further complicated when, in the 7th
century, the prophet Muhammad began to preach.
*
In December 1917, General Allenby, whose portrait hangs in our guesthouse, entered Jerusalem
humbly and on foot, the Turks having abandoned the city without a fight. Straightaway he issued a
proclamation in which he reaffirmed the Turkish status quo governing the holy sites, since, as he told
the inhabitants, "your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of
mankind and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of these three
religions for many centuries"
Back home, less irenic voices were heard.
At a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh two days later, the moderator rejoiced (to applause) that
the Holy City, which had so long been in the hands of the infidel, was once again in Christian hands.
The following March, drafting an overture from the presbytery to the general assembly that led to the
building of this church, Ninian Hill, who was to become its first minister, wrote that "the city of
Jerusalem, hallowed as the scene of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord, has again, through
the blessing of God and the valour of our troops, been wrested from the Muslim after a continuous
occupation of nearly seven centuries" He added that so "memorable an event should be signalized in
some worthy manner by the Christian church in Scotland."
Ten years later, in a booklet soliciting funds for the building of St Andrew's, William Ewing struck
what seems at first a more conciliatory and even modern note: "The victory of our arms has led to a
unique situation as regards the three great religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sprung from
the one root, and nourished in soil watered by the same streams of divine revelation. No doubt their
differences, and accentuated and embittered through centuries of alienation, are neither few nor small;
but there are vast breadths of common ground among them, where surely some foothold may be found
for a movement towards mutual understanding."

2
But then Ewing goes on: "The position seems to be that the Jews in their forward march stopped short
of Calvary; and that the Moslems in the inspired dawn of their day of might, passed Calvary in their
stride. The problem is, how to persuade the Jews to resume the march, and the Moslems to return, until
they meet where the Christians wait, under the reconciling influence of the Cross."
Well, perhaps; but perhaps that is not the problem.
I glean these details from Walter Dunlop's newly published book, Faith Renewed: The Story of St
Andrew's Scots Memorial, Jerusalem, copies of which you can purchase at a specially reduced priced at
our reception tomorrow. (I'm not sure whether it's against church law to advertise during a sermon; but
happily there's no one here from Edinburgh.)
*
The cross I wear on my breast was presented to me at my commissioning in Scotland two weeks ago.
Originally worn by Ninian Hill, it passed to a more recent minister, Bill Gardiner Scott. Through the
kindness of Bill's daughter Tanya, it now passes to me; and it will be handed on to each of my
successors in turn.
I wear it with a sense of responsibility to those who have gone before me and to those who will come
after; but I wear it also with a deepened understanding, for which I'm grateful to Walter, that the history
of this church is as ambiguous as anything else in this land.
Talking to a Jewish visitor to the church yesterday morning, I apologized for the mess the British made
of the mandate something I can do more easily since I am in fact Irish. But he demurred. Don't blame
the British too much, he said. The people here, Jews and Arabs, are trapped in ancient stories going
back centuries; but above all these is our common story, since we are all children of God.
Indeed, but the tension between this common story and our particular stories is not readily resolved.
*
When John Knox lay dying on his bed, he asked his wife to read to him from the Bible that passage
where he cast his first anchor, and Marjorie read to him from John chapter 17, the chapter with which I
began. "And this is eternal life," she read, "that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom you have sent."
This is the heart of Knox's faith and doubtless the heart of our faith too. But we are often tempted to see
it as the whole of Christian faith: trust God, trust Jesus, live a life of grace and gratitude; and go to
heaven when we die.
But this was only part of the gospel preached by Knox, who the whole of his adult life was embroiled
in politics and who withstood a young Catholic queen to her face.
And it is only part of the good news preached by Jesus of Nazareth, who before he calls on us to repent,
to turn again to God and be saved, tells us that the kingdom of God a political term if ever there was
one is at hand.

3
When Jesus walks ahead of us to Jerusalem, as he does beginning in Mark chapter 10, he knows that he
will be killed, and he believes that he will be vindicated. He knows he will be killed, because he is
going up against the structures of what John calls the world, the structures of power in Judea and the
Galilee, the structures of domination in the Roman empire. He embraces his death at the hand of these
structures of sin and offers his death as a sacrifice for all God's children, even those who crucify him.
And he believes that the one he calls Father will not allow this death to stand. He believes that his
Father will bring in the kingdom he has so passionately proclaimed.
But how this will play out he does not know, because no one knows, "neither the angels in heaven, nor
the Son, but only the Father."
*
And neither do we.
But there is this difference between Jesus and us. He, facing the cross, living before he died, thought of
one final sequence of tragic and cataclysmic events followed by divine vindication.
We, living on the other side of Easter, must think of two. For the Father has raised Jesus from the dead
as one untimely reborn, as the first fruits, with the full harvest lying still ahead. The present age is in
many ways manifestly evil, creation is still unrepaired, and the kingdom has yet to come in its fullness.
To those who think that we are living in end times, Mark and the whole New Testament say that we
have been living in end times for 2,000 years.
And to those who are fascinated by end-times chronology, Mark and the whole New Testament say that
it is not our task to forge fantastic timetables but simply to be faithful: in the words of an Old
Testament prophet, to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
If we do that, we shall one day walk into the kingdom of God, clothed in all our differences, and God
will smile on us; and we shall understand even as we have been understood.