POSTSCRIPT

Hind Rajab, a girl of six years, was discovered dead in a burnt-out car near Gaza City, where twelve days ago she pled for help to her mother and the Red Crescent to come and rescue her. Members of her family also in the car had already been killed, so that she was left the only one alive. The Red Crescent negotiated access to her with the Israeli Army, but when their ambulance approached her, it was targeted and its two paramedics killed. Her mother has said that on Judgement Day she will question God about those who killed her and those who let her die, among whom she numbers all who continue to support Israel in spite of the thousands of murders they have committed in Gaza.

Has the gospel of Magical Matthew got anything to say that might count with Hind’s mother?

1. It lives in the same world as Hind.

It begins with a massacre by Israeli troops ordered by King Herod to get rid of babies that might grow up into competition for his own offspring as rulers under Rome. The soldiers have nothing against these families but good government means their babies must die. Jesus’ family escape by the skin of their teeth, making their way to Egypt as many Gazans do now. The evil of power and the power of evil are not underestimated in Matthew’s story: God is not blind to the evil of the world.

Well great, but does he do anything about it?

2. God is on the side of defenceless children.

God sends his prophet John the Dipper, and his dear child Jesus, to offer people the Rule of God, the implementation of God’s love and justice in the real world. But God will not use force or violence to support his Rule. Rather his son brings about that Rule, by imitating his father’s ceaseless suffering creativity, which knows sadness as well as joy. Jesus often takes the side of children, taking them in his arms and proclaiming that the Rule of God belongs to them; teaching that those who hurt little ones are the worst of sinners; defending their noisy approval of him in the Temple, teaching that human behaviour will ultimately be judged by what is done or not done for the least important, which certainly includes children.

But the violence still happens.

3. God knows the anguish felt by a parent at the mortal violence done to their child.

Not just Hind but Jesus also, asks why a parent is not saving him from terror and death

We should not spoil this mystery with clumsy words but we should say that God is not free from suffering; rather, as the one who relates to all creatures, he/she is affected, indeed changed, by the suffering of all creatures, and therefore by the suffering and death of Hind.

So God loses along with us, but can He/she win with us?

4. As God joins him/her self to every creature in the suffering of death so every dead creature is joined to God in the joy of divine life. Those whose hearts are filled with hate will find this exquisitely painful like living in a fiery rubbish pit. But as Jesus lives, so Hind will live, in a love that incorporates the love of her parents but goes beyond it, forever. If her parents wanted to make a sign for her it could be of a shining messenger who comes from heaven to sit on top of her gravestone saying clearly that she is not there.

The magic of Jesus resurrection is expressed in Matthew by an empty tomb, a shining messenger and a stone rolled away. Its reality can only be fully known by those who trust the message of Jesus’ pupils and meet the Risen One.

*The murderous soldiers of Hamas will meet the same God as the murderous Israelis.

BUT

Many decent people feel that the gospels ask them to put their trust in fairy tales that no serious person would use to guide their behaviour in the real world. They also point to the fact that similar fairy tales have led to killing sprees by adherents of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in modern times, and in the past, by Christians. However interesting or beautiful such tales are, they lead to exclusive dogmatism which is one of the causes of violence.

Also, if you can believe that Jesus is coming to meet you in the sky, you can also believe that Donald Trump is other than a jumped-up playground bully-boy.

I have characterised the miraculous elements in Matthew as magic, but there are many believers who think they are plain fact. This has brought Christianity into disrepute with people untouched by the church, who think that faith is simply daft.

I am sympathetic to this scepticism. I don’t think that Jesus walked on water, or healed lepers with one touch, or multiplied five loaves and two fish, or floated about a Jerusalem road or a Galilee hilltop after his death. If Matthew wants me to believe these are facts, I would have to say, no. If that’s what he wanted, I would have to call every miracle in his book, a lie, so that I can also call every dangerous bit of dangerous hocus-pocus in Islam or Judaism or Hinduism a lie also.

I think Matthew, and Jesus also, was challenging the way the world works, especially the way life is ruled by worldly powers of wealth, power, violence and death. Walking on water is no more magical than loving your enemy. Taking your fierce life into the body of a leper no more magical than taking it on to an execution stake. A messenger of God descending and sitting on a rolled-away tombstone is no more magical than real human beings deciding to let Jesus guide their lives, after his death. But believers should be able to admit that he didn’t walk on water, didn’t instantly cure anyone, didn’t have his mortal body zoomed out of a tomb.

Let Hind Rajab be one of our tests of reality as long as Jesus is another.