Blog
07.January 2017 - 15:31
Dinner speech for Ukrainian church leaders in FSF Annual meeting in Tbilisi 2017
I want to confess that my heart is rejoicing when I have the honor to speak to spiritual leaders of Ukraina. God loves this country, it is in the prayer of many people. And I dare to say that you are in a pivotal role in the future of Ukraina.
Twenty years ago I worked for the church of Finland, in their development aid giving body Finnchurchaid. Very often at that time, when I was looking at the problems of the world, I said to myself, this world would be a far better place if only the politicians would do the right things.
Quite soon after those years I became a politician myself. I have worked in the European parliament for 15 years and after that in the Economic and Social committee of the EU. I wanted to serve Christ with my political work. Very often, I have to confess, I found myself thinking: if only the church would do the right things, what it is supposed to do.
Why did I think so? I know we are all needed. But in my work as a lawmaker I noticed that there are so many areas, important areas, where I have no access as a legislator. The areas where hope and faith are needed. Where the basis, the ethical and spiritual infrastructure of our country is build. I realized how badly it is needed. How badly this world needs Jesus Christ and the message of him.
Now that we live in an increasingly multicultural world and in the growing interaction between different religions, it might be good to look at the grand narrative of our own tradition with fresh eyes.
Church history tells us that the early Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of being atheists. The perception of early Christians as atheists may be surprise today but was not uncommon. Since the Romans worshiped many gods, the Christian refusal to worship the deities of their communities attracted attention and offenses. Christianity seemed to be non-religion, because it did not act like a religion. It must have appeared confusing. Christians had no sacrifices, nor clergy or temple. Strangeness led to persecution of Christians in a polytheistic society where deities were believed to bring good fortune to a town, and slighting them might bring down their wrath. Understandably, outbreaks of persecution often coincided with natural disasters.
But equally the content of the Christian faith angered even where there was faith in one God. Before Roman times the persecution came from Jews. The reasons are not hard to find. The Church was a threat to Jewish identity, already threatened by the Hellenistic world. Christians dispensed with the distinctive signs of circumcision, kosher food, and the temple. But their worst offence in Jewish eyes was the worship of a man as God. Christianity’s idea of God who became a man, was an insult to Abrahamic faith.
However, here is the foundation of Christianity: it is based on the idea that the Creator of the Universe was born in a human figure, in our limitations, in poverty and exclusion, in order to make his message understandable for his creatures.
Pope Francis describes this as a scandal: The “scandal” of a God who became man and died on the Cross. Christianity claims not only that Jesus was singularly transparent to God. It claims that God – he who carries the universe and to whom no name is fitting because he transcends everything we can imagine – is identical to a human being.
Powerless child is God. God was given the name, face, address and profession. He has a mother, a grandmother and a grandfather, and other relatives. The infinite agreed to become finite, the invisible and intangible becomes visible and tangible. “That God has crossed the threshold of history and entered our existence is totally incomprehensible. On our own, we would never have thought that anything like this were possible. Yet, the incarnation of God is the central truth of Christianity,” writes Carmelite father Wilfrid Stinissen.
This is the most precious treasure of the Christian faith. It makes it a love story.
People in almost all cultures have understood to worship the majesty of the Creator in his height. But after nights of Bethlehem and Gethsemane this unreachable becomes so low, that
Trappist Monk Thomas Merton described the incarnation this way: God is not a Nazi. God agreed to become weak, so that people can choose freely what they are doing. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described again, that same God, “the Omnipotence which can lay its hand so heavily upon the world can also make its touch so light that the creature receives independence.”
Fedor Dostoevsky praise this heavenly shyness in Brothers Karamazov as “miracle of restraint (or abstinence)”: God will fully adhere to human freedom, and refuses to submit overwhelming evidence, even though it could do so at any time.
He gives us the freedom to live as if he would not exist because he wants voluntary lovers, not bulldozed people. God wants love and goodness in us to grow inside us – you can’t pour it in from the outside. Freedom is only possible breeding ground for the good that God desires.
Merry Christmas. Raise a toast to freedom and goodness.
I want to confess that my heart is rejoicing when I have the honor to speak to spiritual leaders of Ukraina. God loves this country, it is in the prayer of many people. And I dare to say that you are in a pivotal role in the future of Ukraina.
Twenty years ago I worked for the church of Finland, in their development aid giving body Finnchurchaid. Very often at that time, when I was looking at the problems of the world, I said to myself, this world would be a far better place if only the politicians would do the right things.
Quite soon after those years I became a politician myself. I have worked in the European parliament for 15 years and after that in the Economic and Social committee of the EU. I wanted to serve Christ with my political work. Very often, I have to confess, I found myself thinking: if only the church would do the right things, what it is supposed to do.
Why did I think so? I know we are all needed. But in my work as a lawmaker I noticed that there are so many areas, important areas, where I have no access as a legislator. The areas where hope and faith are needed. Where the basis, the ethical and spiritual infrastructure of our country is build. I realized how badly it is needed. How badly this world needs Jesus Christ and the message of him.
Now that we live in an increasingly multicultural world and in the growing interaction between different religions, it might be good to look at the grand narrative of our own tradition with fresh eyes.
Church history tells us that the early Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of being atheists. The perception of early Christians as atheists may be surprise today but was not uncommon. Since the Romans worshiped many gods, the Christian refusal to worship the deities of their communities attracted attention and offenses. Christianity seemed to be non-religion, because it did not act like a religion. It must have appeared confusing. Christians had no sacrifices, nor clergy or temple. Strangeness led to persecution of Christians in a polytheistic society where deities were believed to bring good fortune to a town, and slighting them might bring down their wrath. Understandably, outbreaks of persecution often coincided with natural disasters.
But equally the content of the Christian faith angered even where there was faith in one God. Before Roman times the persecution came from Jews. The reasons are not hard to find. The Church was a threat to Jewish identity, already threatened by the Hellenistic world. Christians dispensed with the distinctive signs of circumcision, kosher food, and the temple. But their worst offence in Jewish eyes was the worship of a man as God. Christianity’s idea of God who became a man, was an insult to Abrahamic faith.
However, here is the foundation of Christianity: it is based on the idea that the Creator of the Universe was born in a human figure, in our limitations, in poverty and exclusion, in order to make his message understandable for his creatures.
Pope Francis describes this as a scandal: The “scandal” of a God who became man and died on the Cross. Christianity claims not only that Jesus was singularly transparent to God. It claims that God – he who carries the universe and to whom no name is fitting because he transcends everything we can imagine – is identical to a human being.
Powerless child is God. God was given the name, face, address and profession. He has a mother, a grandmother and a grandfather, and other relatives. The infinite agreed to become finite, the invisible and intangible becomes visible and tangible. “That God has crossed the threshold of history and entered our existence is totally incomprehensible. On our own, we would never have thought that anything like this were possible. Yet, the incarnation of God is the central truth of Christianity,” writes Carmelite father Wilfrid Stinissen.
This is the most precious treasure of the Christian faith. It makes it a love story.
People in almost all cultures have understood to worship the majesty of the Creator in his height. But after nights of Bethlehem and Gethsemane this unreachable becomes so low, that
Trappist Monk Thomas Merton described the incarnation this way: God is not a Nazi. God agreed to become weak, so that people can choose freely what they are doing. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described again, that same God, “the Omnipotence which can lay its hand so heavily upon the world can also make its touch so light that the creature receives independence.”
Fedor Dostoevsky praise this heavenly shyness in Brothers Karamazov as “miracle of restraint (or abstinence)”: God will fully adhere to human freedom, and refuses to submit overwhelming evidence, even though it could do so at any time.
He gives us the freedom to live as if he would not exist because he wants voluntary lovers, not bulldozed people. God wants love and goodness in us to grow inside us – you can’t pour it in from the outside. Freedom is only possible breeding ground for the good that God desires.
Merry Christmas. Raise a toast to freedom and goodness.