The Church=s Message, in the Jubilee Year 2000, Deconstructed

This happy day of resurrection unfortunately this year once again sees our people continuing on the path of Golgotha. The call that "Christ is risen" will once again no be heard in our enslaved towns and villages.  Golgotha is the hill in Jerusalem where Jesus was hung. It is used here as a symbol—i.e., that the Greek Cypriot people, like Jesus, are being crucified.

The "high priests" of unfairness, the modern-day Pharisees still plot and conspire against our people. They continue to maintain the ongoing crucifixion of justice and freedom in our land. The Pharisees were a Jewish sect in Jesus’s time who were more "liberal" interpreters of tradition and scripture. The word has come to be associated with insincerity. The use of the word in this context is peculiar, since it was not the Pharisees who ordered that Jesus be executed, but their rivals, the Jewish hierarchy with the full complicity of the Roman rulers.

Others, who say they have been illuminated by our Greek Christian civilization, ignorant and ungrateful for everything we have offered, and just like the mob of Judeans against Christ, are calling for the crucifixion of Hellenism and the acquittal of the thief.  It’s not clear precisely who the Archbishop is referring to in this and the previous paragraph, but both seem to refer generally to those in the diplomatic community and the major powers like the U.K. and the U.S. which, it is often alleged, tilt toward Turkey. The substance of this paragraph also seems to contend that these equivocators in the West profess to admire and benefit greatly from Greek Christian civilization, an assertion that would likely surprise most people in Britain or America---in contrast to the admiration for ancient, pre-Christian Greek civilization.
     The "mob of Judeans" is a veiled reference to the Jewish people. The "blood libel"—the insistence that the Jews murdered Jesus—is a traditional basis of anti-Semitism in Europe. Even the reference to Hellenism is bumptious, identified as it is with the cause of enosis. The "thief" (Turkey, of course), was one of the other two men crucified with Jesus on Golgotha, and Jesus forgave him his sins and ushered him into heaven, something that the Archbishop would probably not accord to Bulent Ecevit.

Our soul is pained and saddened by the unfairness, rape, deceit, ingratitude and abandonment. Alone, abandoned and without any help, we lift the cross of our burden and continue the uphill journey to Golgotha. To say that Greek Cyprus has been abandoned without any help in its struggle with Turkey is simply false. The international community, particularly the United Nations, has provided an enormous amount of material and political support throughout the last four decades.

Let us not allow the weight of the cross to crush us, the Lord loves his children. Let us not allow our defeat and desperation to lead us to a fatalistic acceptance of injustice. Here again, the Archbishop is identifying Greek Cypriots with Jesus, a very provocative metaphor for a man of the cloth to use.

Let not the indifference and hypocrisy of the modern day Pontius Pilates weaken our resistance, they who believe they define how things on earth occur. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of ancient Israel, and, following the injunction of the Sanheddrin, executed Jesus. Here again one wonders precisely who the Archbishop refers to—probably the U.N., U.S., et al, by whom he feels abandoned and betrayed. The Greek junta of 1967-74, who brought on the disaster of 1974 with the Church’s complicity, apparently deserves no opprobrium from His Beatitude.   Let us not forget that above the powerful of this world is the fair and just God, who knows how to crush the arrogant and enforce justice for those who were wronged. He who loves and blesses all who fight for justice is here.

There can be no compromises with injustice, no betrayal of honour, no passive acceptance of the crucifixion.  Again, a very odd thing for a cleric to say, since ‘passive acceptance of the crucifixion’ is precisely what Jesus did, and did so intentionally. The crucifixion was the consummation of Jesus’s mission: he fulfilled prophesies of the Old Testament and essentially claimed his divinity by sacrificing himself and then rising from the dead (i.e., without a crucifixion there could be no resurrection). This is one of the paradoxes of Christianity, and it’s why the day Jesus was executed is called "Good Friday."

But on Golgotha we must stand tall, not on our knees, without souls fighting for the resurrection to come. And resurrection will come only if we believe and if united we fight for it, if we cast off the lethargy that has sunk us.  And what does he mean by the "lethargy that has sunk us"? There are references throughout this homily to the absence of fight in the Greek Cypriots. Just how are they supposed to display their gumption? Attack the Turkish north? This emphasis on violence has bedeviled the Eastern Orthodox Church throughout their domain—in Serbia, in Russia, and in Cyprus---and undermines Jesus's most compelling message as "the Prince of Peace."

The resurrection is today, Greeks of Cyprus: in celebration and in joy, let your thoughts turn to the enslaved part of our land.

Think of our churches there, dumb and plunged in darkness, ruined and desecrated. Think of our enslaved towns and villages, streets, houses, gardens, and our memorials, and let the tears of nostalgia run down your cheeks, receive their voice and their memory into their souls. The Cyprus Mail reported that the Archbishop said "it was the obligation of every Greek Cypriot to fight for the liberation of his country." What that means precisely could be open to many interpretations, few of them very comforting. Chrysostomos then said: "Let us always keep this message alive within us, so that all Cypriots—Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots—can return to their homes safely and freely."  This last bit of legerdemain could be viewed as progress, since the Church never expressed concern or remorse for Turkish Cypriots living in enclaves and denied their homes during the 1963-74 period.