GOD CHANGES THE COURSE OF HISTORY

During this season of Easter we are focussing on an event that was totally unexpected. Although it seems that Jesus did tell his disciples that he would die and rise again, it is clear that they didn't have a clue what he was talking about and so they were completely taken by surprise when Jesus did indeed rise again and showed himself to them on a number of occasions. It was an event so surprising and improbable that they would never have imagined it as a possibility.

One can say without exaggeration that the fact of resurrection changed the course of history. Without it, the sad remains of the Jesus movement would have fizzled out and left no trace, like many other movements within first-century Judaism. It was only because of the resurrection that the memory of Jesus survived and, as the Book of Acts shows us, went on to grow at an astonishing pace.

Today's readings tell of another totally unpredictable event with dramatic consequences. Paul, then still known as Saul, is on his way to Damascus, bent on extending his persecution of the new movement to Jewish communities abroad. Paul leaves Jerusalem “breathing”, as Luke puts it, “threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”. And then, just a few days later, we find him “proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying 'He is the Son of God'”.

It's a total turnaround, something so unexpected that it takes a great deal of courage for Ananias and the others to believe that Paul really has changed so dramatically.

And again, is an event which changes the course of history for it is this same Paul who takes the gospel to the Gentiles and enables the new Christian movement to break out of its Jewish confines. The result of that was that, over the next decades and during the first three centuries of the Christian era, Christianity transformed the face of the then known world until it even became the official religion of the mighty Roman Empire – something that would have been utterly inconceivable to the first disciples.

So God changes the course of history, and in ways which we would never have dreamt of.

This carries an important message for us all: we do not need to feel trapped by the past. So often we look at the course of events and we assume, consciously or unconsciously, that things will just go on along the same lines. We see how things have been in the past and we just extrapolate this course of events into the future. We assume that things will go on basically along the same lines in the future, that existing trends will continue. Now, as any statistician will tell you, the assumption that existing trends will continue is a very dangerous one!

The message of the Bible is that God can change all this. People can be transformed. Situations can be transformed. The future may therefore turn out to be different, perhaps very different, and not simply be a continuation of the past and the present.

Things do not always run on along a predetermined path. There is no such thing as historical inevitability. Things can happen that change the course of history in surprising ways, ways that we would never have predicted.

This means that we are wrong to write off some people and some situations as “hopeless”. However inextricably desperate some situations seem to be, however unlikely it seems that some people will repent of their ways and be converted, we should never rule out the possibility of radical change.

We have recently been celebrating one such radical change that no one would have predicted. I'm referring to the 50^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the main founding treaty of the European Union. As we all know, especially we who live in Alsace, France and Germany went to war three times in a century. The bitterness and vindictiveness born of each successive war sowed the seeds for the next war. The two countries were locked into a vicious circle of enmity and violence.

But then, in the 1950's, the French and German leaders of the time took a bold new initiative which made it possible to break out of this seemingly inevitable cycle. Together with a few other countries, they deliberately made their economies interdependent, and in particular they pooled their war industries, based then on coal, iron and steel.

All this was completely unexpected and it changed the course of history, very much for the better.

And now, very recently, we have seen another extremely surprising development that is changing the course of history for the better. This time I'm thinking of Northern Ireland, where Ian Paisley, the intransigent long-time leader of the Ulster Protestants, has agreed to sit down and share power with his arch-enemies, the Catholic Republicans. A new power-sharing government is finally going to be set up in a couple of weeks. This again is a major breakthrough which would have seemed quite inconceivable earlier on.

For years, we've been praying for peace in Northern Ireland and for years we couldn't for the life of us see how, in such an ancient and deep-rooted dispute, with intransigeant leaders on both sides, such prayers could be answered. Often, we must have wondered whether there was really any point in going on with these seemingly hopeless prayers. Now we see our prayers being answered.

It's very much the same with our prayers for peace in the Middle East, especially between Israel and Palestine. We've been praying for peace in this part of the world for as long as I can remember, and all that happens is that the situation goes on getting worse, enmity and hatred become more and more implacable and the situation looks more and more inextricable. So, as we pray yet again for peace in the Middle East, sometimes we wonder “what's the point? Is there any point in going on praying?”: the situation is hopeless, all it ever does is get worse.

Well, going by all the examples we've been thinking about just now, going by the Resurrection surprise and the totally improbable conversion of Saint Paul, the answer must be: yes, go on praying, even for things that seem impossible, go on praying for miracles. The message of the New Testament is certainly to go on praying and never give up.

This doesn't mean that Christians are starry-eyed optimists, blind to the harsh realities of the real world. We are aware that we may have to go on praying for a very long time. We have to persist in prayer, as Paul himself put it. We can pray even for a miracle, but we can't demand one, we can't just order one up. You can't rely on a miracle, you can't even expect one; it's just that you shouldn't rule one out.

For the time being, we have to cope with things as they are. We have to be prepared for the long haul, and we have to realise that there may be many more sufferings to be endured.

It's God's sovereign choice how and when he will respond to our prayers. The chances are that he will respond in a way we would never have thought of and at a time when we would never have expected it. But certainly the message of Easter is that we should never give up hope that God can and will respond, that God can and will create a way forward, even out of the most hopeless situations.

John Murray, Strasbourg Anglican Chaplaincy

22 April 2007, Easter 3, Year C

Acts 9.1-20 John 21.1-19