True to God’s Name
As a very young child, my first hero was someone called Tom Mix. He was a cowboy in the comics that I read as a small boy. Growing up in the 1950s, the drama of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ was the first great story we heard, our first great struggle of good and evil, and it came to us courtesy of the comics we read, and the Saturday afternoon Children’s Matinee at our local cinema – Cowboys good, Indians bad.
Such simplicity obviously blurred as I grew up, but it was only in the 1970s that the other side of the coin was seen and the other side of the story told. First came the film, Soldier Blue, and its violent portrayal of cruelty by the American cavalry. Until then the U.S. Cavalry were always the people who came to the rescue of beleaguered travellers.
Then came a book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, written by Dee Brown. This told the story of the ‘West’ from the viewpoint and the feelings of the Native American Indian. The author himself said, ‘Americans who have always looked westward when reading about this period should read this book facing eastward.’ (Brown, Dee, 2007, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC. p. xvi.)
The stories that we tell one another are very important. They are meant to be carriers of truth. They paint the pictures for us through which we see and interpret the world. The stories we hear and which we tell are instruments for justice and injustice, and they powerfully affect and influence the way we see and treat one another.
When the apostles began their great mission of telling the Gospel story of Jesus to the world, one of their first deeds was to recruit to their number, to the Twelve, a replacement for Judas, who had betrayed the Lord. It was important to restore the body to its full complement, symbolically as representing the twelve tribes of Israel, but also to recruit to that first body a faithful witness to the Lord. Matthias, in joining the Twelve, became a faithful storyteller to the world, witnessing to Jesus, to his life, to his death and to his resurrection. This is the saving story that the whole world needs to hear. It is the story that fully and faithfully reveals to us the way of our world.
The story of Jesus holds all the drama that we could ever wish for or imagine, and its resolution in the miracle of Easter day is beyond anything we could ever have conceived. In the telling of this story, we bring to people the remedy of all ills, the righting of all wrongs, and the reward of every faithful soul.
As Jesus prepares himself for his final agony, he prays to the Father for his followers, and his prayer is very defined, very specific. ‘Keep them true to your name.’ This is our consideration today. Jesus goes on to say what he is not asking for. He does not want his followers to be removed from this world. This world can be a very dangerous place, a very stressful place, but Jesus does not want his followers to be removed from those experiences. The big issue is to be protected from the evil one. That is what really matters.
The evil one can lure people into very wicked ways, and once in the grip of the evil one, it is a very slippery slope that takes people precipitously into deep trouble. Children, who are neglected and not loved, can find themselves becoming very hard in attitude and very hurtful to others, because of the hurt they themselves feel.
People who indulge in pornography can fall very quickly into sexual assaults and even murder. People, whose experience of injustice has gone on too long, can find themselves converted to the path of violence as the way out of their oppression. Violence, most of all, personal and political, can easily lead us into becoming trapped in the hell of war. Once violence has started it is very hard to stop. The depth of our pain fuels the ferocity of our vengeful anger.
I think now of Ireland, the land where I have spent so many blissful holidays over the course of my life. In the west, especially, I am familiar with beautiful highways and byways and stunning landscapes. I am always captivated by the sight of red fuchsia growing along the lanes in Mayo, and yet those same places ran red with blood a hundred years ago during a war of Independence and an even more, bloody Civil War.
Those times were replicated with even more bloodshed when the ‘Troubles’ broke out again in Ireland’s north, and people there suffered thirty years of murder and mayhem.
These memories, and others like them call us who are followers of the Lord, to be clear about what it means to ‘be true to God’s name’. We are being called to the road of patience and suffering whenever this world is tempted to descend into violent action. Those who refused to fight in World War One, the conscientious objectors, suffered greatly for their stance, and even now are often disapproved of. But ‘My country, right or wrong,’ is no stance for anyone to take.
By the gift of faith, we see the world through eyes different from our own. The stories that Jesus tells us, his parables, show us a new way of seeing the world and of acting in it. But the greatest story he told was the one he lived out in his own body. It has all the ingredients that any child, wanting a hero, could wish for. Honesty, kindness, love, bravery, adventure. Jesus went out into the world, and he calls his followers to do the same. Go out to the whole world and tell the good news.
Do not be afraid. Keep away from the evil one. Be true to God’s name.
Erris Poetry 