When I was a lot younger I used to be really into the James Bond films. I can’t stand them now. From Dr no in 1962 with Sean Connery, to OHMS in 1969 with George Lazenby; to Live and Let Die in 1973 with Roger Moore, The Living Daylights in 1987 with Timothy Dalton; to Golden Eye in 1995 with Pierce Brosnan; to Casino Royale in 2006 with Daniel Craig and Bond 23 due to be released in November 2011.
The first of Ian Flemings novels was Casino Royale, made into a film in 2006. Bond’s mission to him to Madagascar to spy on a potential terrorist. He got involved in a game of high stakes poker in Montenegro with a villain who provided a money-laundering service to terrorist grops. If Bond wins the poker game he saves the world from future acts of terror. The plot is familiar – the same as every James Bond film. The actors may change, the locations may change, but you can always guarantee what you will get in a James Bond film.
There will be unique villains, outlandish plots, voluptuous women who fall in love with Bond, who also happens, conveniently to fall in love with them at first sight.
There are gadgets from Q, death-defying stunts, outlandish behaviour. The climax is always the same – Bond saves the world from apocalyptic madmen.
Somewhere the try to kill Bond with a death trap during which the villain reveals vital information. Bond escapes and uses the i9ntelligence to thwart the evil plot. Bond then often kills his opponent, or they die by someone else’s hand. Bond always saves the world, but he always saves it by using violence.
And this kind of plot is not unique to James Bond films. The idea that we can be saved by a super hero who overcomes evil and terror by force; that we can be saved by some act of violence is the plot of many a thriller. You find a common thread running through these films. There is a good person and a bad person. The bad person gains the upper hand and seems to be going to win but always, by an act of violence, the good person comes out on top and the world is safe again.
A final, violent act can save the world for us. It is of course a myth but it is believed not only in films but across society. Violence is part of modern society, almost the spirituality og the modern world, almost a religion.
It was Tony Blair and George Bush who thought inflicting violence on Iraq and Afghanistan would save the world from oblivion through terrorism. It is racists, members of far right parties who are happy to bring violence against people of other ethnic origins because, somehow, without them things will be better.
It’s why the Jews are happy to have illegal settlements, to breach UN rules because all will be better if Arabs are removed. That’s why the President of Iran threatens violence and annihilation against Israel because the world will be a better place with the Jews, he says. That’s why Hitler unleashed violence against Jews and others. Things will better if this or that person, group, race, nation are removed and we will use force and violence to do it.
But it’s always been the case. It’s nothing new. The idea of salvation by violence infects all cultures and all societies and all religions. Before Christianity, before Babylon, some of the 1st people believed in a story of a good god who created by brutally killing his mother. Evil came first and, by violence, good overcame it.
And this idea of salvation by violence offers is a way of thinking about the end times which brings us to the gospel reading for today in mark 13. It’s called apocalyptic literature, or millenarianism. It is the belief that society is going to be transformed and after this all will be well, better than now. The present is corrupt, wrong, evil and unjust and must be destroyed buy a powerful force that will bring in a new era. This way of violence is the only way that things will change.
Only a dramatic change will make the world a better place and that change will be brought about, or survived, by the devout and dedicated.
Mark 13 is one of the most difficult chapters in the New Testament for us to understand because it is so full of Jewish imagery, history and ideas. The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, that one day they would occupy the place in the world the chosen people deserved. God would intervene in a time of terror and trouble when the world will be shaken to its foundations and a new world created. And that idea and that believe is still held by many today.
Garth Hewitt, the Christian singer, songwriter and author also works for peace and justice especially in Israel and Palestine and South Africa. He talks about the need to steal Jesus back from those who thinks that it’s all right to use violence to achieve the aims of Christianity. It is of course based on a misuse of scripture and a misunderstanding of the message of Christ.
One of his concerns, from his middle east experience is Christian Zionism which supports the tanks and the bombs used by the Israeli government forces against neighbouring civilians because of the belief that Jesus will return when the people of Israel are all gathered in one place. It is of course
Jesus said ‘ Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say ‘I am he’ and they will lead many astray’. Jesus told those who were closest to him to pay no attention to those people who come claiming to be the Messiah, claiming to be some sort of saviour. By telling his disciples this Jesus was trying to get across that his own coming would not be like this at all. Jesus was not going to be coming like a Messiah, like 007.
We expect 007, or a Messiah to come when things are in crisis, when the signs of the times make us worried about the future, when the world seems under threat from acts of terror, from natural disaster. And when we look around the world today we see so many places, so many things that make us alarmed for the future – from wars and conflict and violence, to poverty, natural disasters of earthquake, changing weather patterns.
Many people see in the events of the present day signs that we are coming to the end. Many people have of course predicted that the end of the world was coming and they have got it incredibly wrong.
Jehovah’s Witness group that wanted a lease on a property belonging to the local council and wanted a 15 year lease. A perplexed councillor stood up at the council meeting and said he was surprised by the request for a 15 year lease as it was not long ago that some Jehovah’s Witnesses called at his house and said that the world would end in 10 years.
But notice what Jesus says in the passage in Mark’s gospel. He doesn’t say that these troubles are the end. What he says is this ‘when you hear wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come’.
Jesus says that we are not to be alarmed by the wars and battles, and violence and conflict, the earthquakes and floods. That is not God’s way of saving the world. God doesn’t deal in salvation by violence. We should not be tempted into thinking that violent events are acts of God. That’s wrong thinking and wrong theology.
The Old testament can be a very difficult book to read and at face value gives a strange image of God as someone who sends plagues, who brings trouble, who has people slain, who sends wars and conflicts. But dig a bit and you soon realise that it wasn’t in fact God who sent them. It was the people at the time looking for a reason for these things and the blame, the excuse, the reason was that God sent it.
So acts of terrorism whether in New York, London, Madrid, Nairobi, Bali, wherever are not God’s judgement, they were not sent by God because of any reason whatsoever for God does not bring salvation through violence. The invasion of Iraq and execution of Saddam Hussein was not God’s way of bringing about justice and peace for ordinary Iraqi people. AIDS is not the judgement of God on the morality of this world, despite some people claiming so. Eartquakes and floods are not sent by God because of something that people have done.
All these things are the way of the world in which we live. Jesus knew that these kind of things would happen. They always have. Jesus knew that there were always going to be wars and conflicts and natural disasters. He knew that nation would rise up against nation. It’s simply the way of the world.
But Jesus said also that this is not the end. He said the end is still to come. And through whatever faced the disciples Jesus wanted them to journey with love, not violence. For God is love. Jesus didn’t want his disciples to have anything to do with salvation by violence. What Jesus wants for all his followers is for us to learn to believe in another kingdom, a kingdom very different from the kingdoms that are founded on violence.
James Bond is a great hero. The books and films are entertaining. But they are based on a myth. The great questions of today – terrorism, violence, asylum seekers tend to get answered by people who work for a violent answer – lock them up, attack their countries, send them away. And those attitudes are based on the same myth as that of the James Bond stories.
As Christians salvation by violence is not the way. As Christians we don’t believe in rapid and dramatic solutions to the problems of the world. We bring good news about God, that his kingdom will come, but it will come slowly and almost unnoticed. In tiny acts of love, in living simple faithful lives where we encourage one another in our faith and in love and in care and in good deeds. Through these things the kingdom will come, slowly, almost silently. As we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus in the midst of the workings of this world, listen for his small voice in the clamour of life, and work for his glory in the world. Amen
