A young woman, Jo Cox, was stabbed and shot to death on Thursday in Birstall in West Yorkshire outside the public library where she helped her parliamentary constituents with their problems. The public grief at her death is deep and I can’t ever remember such heartfelt and genuine affection in the tributes which we’ve heard over the past few days. The word ‘unbearable’ was used several times by those who knew her and ‘senseless’ has been repeated time after time. Why the grief is so deep is easy to see: a genuinely lovely, caring, hard-working, happy, approachable woman, a mother of two young children, brutally killed while doing her job helping others. Each of those words: ‘unbearable’ and ‘senseless’ seem accurately to describe aspects of this tragedy.
I’d just like to stick with ‘senseless’ because, I think, it’s a natural instinct to try to make sense of a loss; to account for it: to organise it into a category in order to be able to cope with it. In the hours after Jo Cox was killed I know I was straining to hear some explanation. Eventually it transpired that the killer may have spoken some words of political allegiance and this seemed at first to help with this categorisation. But of course it doesn’t. It doesn’t even begin to make sense of the deliberate death of a young mother that the killer might hold different political views to hers. Nowhere near. We need to look elsewhere in our attempts to organise this into some kind of category.
Now I’m a regular commuter and those of you who do the same will be familiar with the regular announcement to the hundreds of peak time travellers on platform 3 at St Albans station telling them that the train they are expecting is just about to arrive on platform 1. Result, hundreds of people sprinting or struggling with luggage the length of the platform, up the steps, over the bridge and back down in a frantic attempt to catch the train they arrived early for.
Reactions vary in temperature. The mildest reaction is irritation and that’s where I generally am. The next is quiet anger, the third is vocal anger and the fourth is aggressive anger. Like all stations, ours has notices saying that station staff are entitled to work without fear of violence and it’s in incidents like this that you can understand why the train company feels the need to say that. If ever I’m experiencing reaction 1, I can be sure that there will be people on the station showing worrying signs of reactions 3 and 4.
What do these trivial irritations have to do with Thursday’s tragedy in Birstall? Two points:
First is the one which has repeatedly been made since the killing. If we tolerate in our political discourse a disrespect for each other – for it to be acceptable to use inflammatory language and to play the man and not the ball – then the climate which it creates will generate reactions in all four of the grades which I’ve just described. You say something which, were it to have been said to you, would have provoked a mild level one reaction (irritation) then you can be absolutely sure that in some others it will provoke reactions in each of the other grades. In the febrile atmosphere of the referendum debate, we’ve lost sight of that and as many people have said over the past few days, we must draw back. We must stop our disrespect for each other. That’s especially true when discussing immigration, as the Archbishop of Canterbury commented weeks ago.
The second point is a more theological one. Why do human beings resort to violence in thought, word or deed? Why do we fail to treat each other with respect? Why do we just shout at each other and, in extreme cases, physically attack each other? The answer is that, in differing degrees, we are all in need of healing. That’s the nature of the human condition and that’s what our Gospel reading is about today.
Jesus has made his only recorded visit to the lands of the Decapolis, a largely non-Jewish area spanning the River Jordan. He is immediately met by a man who doctors would, these days, diagnose as suffering from mental illness: naked, violent and living in a graveyard and chained up to prevent him damaging himself and others. Jesus heals the man and as a result of his healing, the man wants to become a disciple. Usually Jesus tells people whom he has cured to keep it secret (perhaps because Jesus doesn’t yet want the Jewish authorities to take action against him – his time had not yet come), but on his occasion Jesus tells the man to return to one of the Greek cities of the Decapolis and to spread the word, which he does.
The story is, of course, given enormous further interest by the way in which the healing is accounted for by the first century Gospel writers – as an expulsion of demons who escape into a flock of pigs who then stampede into the sea. Since Gesara is 40 miles from the Sea of Galilee some bible translations say that the place was Gadara instead, but that town’s 6 miles from the sea itself. So one looks for some explanation for these striking details. Our Dean, Dr Jeffrey John (The Meaning in the Miracles, pp 84-97), has convincingly traced the Old Testament patterns for a man living among the tombs to Isaiah and the Psalms (Isa 65: 1-4, Ps 65: 7 and Ps 68: 6) and these patterns are woven into the story. And when Mark and Luke were writing this account, Gerasa had recently been the site of a slaughter of 1000 Jews by the Roman army, so the expulsion of the ‘Legion’ via pigs into the sea seems to have distinctly political overtones. But these details are not really the point for today’s purposes – it’s the healing.
Humankind – each and every one us – is in need of healing and that is what Jesus does. He offered healing to the naked man and the result of his cure was that he became a follower of Christ. The man spread the good news and that extended the cure to others.
The terrible and senseless death of Jo Cox, which has so moved people that hardly anyone is able to discuss it without tears in their eyes, is a symptom of a broken world: a broken system of political discourse, a broken sense of togetherness and a failure of respect for each other. And so are the notices at train stations telling us not to abuse staff symptoms of a broken world. Society needs to be cured, to be healed, and it is the meek who will inherit the earth. Jesus is able to heal us and the God who loves us yearns for it. His Kingdom on Earth will not be complete until it happens.