![]() The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.Īnd we see it in certain miracles. He doesn’t understand why this has been revealed or what it means, but goes along with it because it seems to him a political truth. As John’s Gospel moves to a close, it’s revealed to the High Priest that ‘it is expedient that one man die for the people’. It’s a theme that’s very clearly at work in the Gospel. And a vicarage is an excellent place to play hide and seek. Submitting to a group is something we do a little too easily. We are just naturally very sociable animals. Despite being very unsure about the game he went along with it. You could see this was very new to the 3 year old, but it was also exciting being with these older children. I was intrigued watching a 3 year old playing with some older children in the house yesterday. When the individual is crushed beneath the collective will, the powers that be, it is a crucifixion. And anybody who sits around and lets it happen, keeps silent about something he knows that happened, shares the guilt of it just as much as the Roman soldier who pierced the flesh of our Lord to see if he was dead. They better wise up! Taking Joey Doyle's life to stop him from testifying is a crucifixion… And every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion. When the mob who control the Waterfront in the Marlon Brando film start getting rid of those who threaten their control, Father Barry tells them: ‘Some people think the Crucifixion only took place on Calvary. This may be true even of politicians who have good intentions. ‘Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, and the idea of duty, are things which, by deceiving themselves, may become hideous, but which even if hideous remain grand… they are virtues which have but one vice, error… Nothing could be more painful and terrible than this face, which revealed what we may call all the evil of good.’ Think of Javert in Les Miserables, of whom Victor Hugo says: But it is true that when this is pursued most rationally and ruthlessly, it’s led to some of the worst human catastrophes. That’s a principle inherent in all politics. It’s not that having collective aims pursued at the cost of individuals is evil. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community - which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.’ One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. ‘There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. The novelist Arthur Koestler puts it concisely in Darkness at Noon, the book that signed him off from Communism. I’m sure, like me, most of you are very much looking forward to seeing which of the ‘statesmanlike’ figures, vying to be contenders, becomes our next Prime Minister. ![]() Decisions called ‘brave’, ‘statesmanlike’, ‘justified’. Economic or ‘tough’ decisions are made regularly that even with every effort to be fair, require politicians, commanders, anyone making large-scale decisions, to set the needs of the few to one side. The great unsentimental wickednesses of Fascism and Socialism made no excuses here, but it also becomes the embarrassment of our own politics. The evil of having to get up early every morning because the need of your partner to have half an hour more in bed, and your baby for his milk, outweigh your need to sleep. For when ‘as logic clearly dictates… the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’, we are in to the language of ‘collateral damage’, of ‘necessary evils’. That conflict is at the heart of most human tragedy. I bring this up because there’s a tension throughout history, but most clearly in the twentieth century between - paraphrasing Mr Spock - ‘the needs of the many’ and ‘the needs of the few’. It’s not that he failed - he never even got a chance. Against his conscience, against his pride, with no support, Brando has become a bum, a nobody. I coulda been somebody.” Not ‘I coulda been a champion’, but just ‘I coulda been a contender’. You may have never heard of the film but you’ll know the line: “ I coulda had class. The film is less famous than one particular line in it, spoken by Marlon Brando, a boxer who is convinced by his brother under pressure from the Mob to lose fights for money. Only this week moving from Taxi Driver to the superb 1954 film On the Waterfront. If you happened to be at church last week, you’ll be delighted to know that I’m sticking with the classic movie references. Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Greenīased on readings: Ezekiel 37.1-14, Acts 16.9-15, John 5.1-9
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