Easter People Living in a Good Friday World

Reflections on Sri Lanka's Religion-based Violence

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

The Easter Sunday horrific attacks on Christian worshippers in Sri Lankan churches and hotels shook me to the core, as my wife, Glory, had spent her childhood in that country. Her relatives are still living there. When the news broke out about the blasts on Easter morning, she waited in abated breath to hear from some of her relatives. The shutting down of all communication by the government, including social media, was a time fraught with anxiety.

When we decided to worship that morning in Mt. Kisco United Methodist Church, standing a few feet from the front pew where three generations of Clinton family were seated, Rev. Joanne Utley, pastor of the church gave a brief reference to the unbelievable attack upon Christian worshippers in Sri Lank and said, “We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.” A poignant and powerful summary of Easter message, I said to myself.

Practicing costly faith

The violence against Christians in Sri Lanka is another reminder of how Christians in some parts of the world pay with their lives for their faith in Jesus Christ. Bombings and shootings during the Holy Week and Christmas season, when churches experience their highest attendance of the year, have become almost a common occurrence in South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

As a minority group, Christians in these countries regularly face various forms of oppression and discriminations but to pay with their lives is becoming a regular occurrence. In that part of the world, aside from religious extremism and political sectarianism, Christianity is often misconstrued as a hangover from colonial era, and an attack against Christians is an attack against the “Christian West.”

A traumatized church

Church services across Sri Lanka have faced some sort of disruption during the past few months, according to Ruki Fernando, a human rights activist. On last Palm Sunday, an extremist group pelted stones and rocks at a Methodist building in Anuradhapura which trapped the worshippers in fear inside the building for hours. But this Easter Sunday’s bombings were unprecedented, and it will leave an indelible scar on the minds and memory of the Christian minority in Sri Lanka. The visual image of the shattered church bombings, slumped bodies over wooden pews, and babies and their mothers strewn all over the nave will not find healing in the near future.

There is no template for grief, especially for those who have lost their dear ones violently. Grief is a long-term project. It has its own topography – jagged and unpredictable. It is circular. Recovery may appear to occur but it is always partial. Life may continue as normal – what else can they do? But loss endures.

Fear in small spaces

This unprecedented tragic event calls for a concerned response from all of us Christians and adherents of other religious faiths to redress the problem. Violence, injustice and persecution of followers of any religious faith should make everyone at least a teensy bit nervous. Undoubtedly, there is no simple solution to this horrific tragedy.

We live in a world where religion is increasingly seen as divisive and extreme. Mere legislation alone cannot defeat violence, injustice, and evil. They can barely contain it. Despite the advancement in secularization, social media and globalization, more and people are becoming religiously conservative and fundamentalist. Religious fundamentalism is steadily on the rise in all parts of the world.

I firmly believe, political response alone will not disentangle religious violence. Politicians, legislations, and NGOs may offer frameworks, structures, and respites — but these are no substitute for the inner work that our loved ones and spiritual advisors can offer us.

Jonathan Sacks, a former Grand Rabbi from the United Kingdom writes in Not in God’s Name that violence against others is a “politicized religious extremism.” While diagnosing this malaise, Sacks says, “The 21st ­century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning. Religion has returned because it is hard to live without meaning.” Given that “no society has survived for long without either a religion or a substitute for religion,” and believers are bourgeoning, he predicts that the next 100 years will be more religious than the last. He arrives at the conclusion that any cure for violence in God’s name must work with religion as a fact of life. Only religious leaders who have a care for community as a whole can bring a safe place not only to live but to worship freely as well.

Prayer and Activism

Extreme violence against humanity today is increasingly religion-based, fundamentalism- informed, globally-connected, and locally-grounded. It is trapped in self-inflaming conflagrations that could easily burn on for decades to come. No amount of dialogical catharsis can subdue the dark roil of violence and trauma.

Religious leaders of all persuasions ought to nurture their adherents the elemental teachings that bind all religions that they must “see the image of God in one who is not made in their image;” not to raise their children to kill somebody else’s children; respect the places of worship as sacred and holy.

This Easter Sunday violence shook millions of people around the world. Although my wife’s family members were OK, the news was not something that made us blissful. I only dream of a day when two selves from Christian and Islamic background genuinely meet in more mystical sense of an unscripted encounter in which they cross the abyss separating self from self and meet in the inter-human or intersubjective, where one searching heart meets another and finds grace and peace. Neither attempts to change the other but both are changed by the very act of reaching out as fellow pilgrims on a spiritual path. In the final analysis, all humanity is connected beneath the surface like the giant colonies of aspen trees in Colorado that are actually all one organism.

Let us also remember, in the Body of Christ, there is no "us" and "them." There is only "we" and "us." May the bombs that broke the hearts of our sisters and brothers in Sri Lanka break our hearts too in order to stand in solidarity with one another, and work for freedom for all to worship and practice their faith without fear. It is not law that changes us but the divine light that transforms us.

This tragedy is just another reminder that religion indeed plays a vital role for peaceful co-existence. Hans Küng, a Roman Catholic theologian of the past century, aptly summarized this sentiment when he said, “Peace in the world is not possible without peace among religions.”

The Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj, Ph.D, is a retired clergy member of the New York Annual Conference and serves as a member of the denomination’s Connectional Table.