The shootings in Plymouth recently will have given rise to many different emotions amongst us. The BBC headline asking the question, ‘Who were the Victims’ is raising an important issue. When acts of violence or terror occur, on any scale, there are direct victims and indirect victims. Beyond these people, others will have felt something or had their emotions challenged.
In verses 3 and 4 of the letter of Jude, we read:
Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Jude wanted to write about shared salvation, to rejoice in it perhaps, and revel in the moment of blessing attendant on understanding that we have a God who has deal with the problem of our sin.
In the Church in Jude’s day, as through the ages, there was an ever-present problem of those who would promulgate false teaching. An issue of the moment then was antinomianism, the contention that there is no requirement on a Christian to follow the moral law as a way of life. Carried to its irrational extreme, that teaching authorises any sort of abuse of others or violation of the way society works on the basis that God lifts us above all that.
Jude regrets, then, the need to write instead to urge the Church to promote the entire body of belief that has been passed to it by the Apostles, including Law, Prophets and Gospel and to warn that judgement and punishment by God have long been held up as a warning to all those who think there is no limit to the permissible extent of individual interpretation of what is expected of good citizens in a civilised society.
We may feel as though we have new and hitherto unheard-of problems to resolve. The scale and style of disregard for society and how to live alongside other people may flex in changing times but the underlying disregard for the moral code is unchanged. The responsibility to be faced by Christians today is that which people in ancient times were called upon to face; it is, ‘what must I do to defend the body of faith passed to me and that I must pass on?’
Who were the victims? Pretty much everyone involved, including us all who feel a sense of pain over a human tragedy. When will we get braver about extending a loving welcome to people who feel that they are hated or rejected by society and help them see a wholesome way of living and find healing in the salvation offered by our Crucified Lord?
A prayer
We find it hard to balance our sense of outrage at crime and the causes of crime with our calling to love and be loved by our Lord who was, himself, the victim of crime. We pray for Grace to accept we are loved and for wisdom to share that love in a way that makes a difference to those who feel rejected and hated. Help us to contend for the faith for Jesus’ sake. Amen.