When I was asked to give this lecture, it was suggested that because it takes place close to the anniversary of the attack on the twin towers, and because my book Glimpses of Hope is about Christian faith's response to 9/11 I might reflect on that. But since then two events have occurred which make me want to focus more topically on them. There have been the bombings in London with considerable loss of life and even more injury. And there has been the devastation wreaked on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Suffering caused by human action, and tragedy caused by the forces of nature.

Billy Connolly's film “The man who sued God” might have been based on an actual incident which was reported in the New York Times in the late 1960s. A man, whose house in Florida was destroyed by a hurricane was told by his insurance company that they would not pay out because the hurricane had been “an act of God” So the man sued the American Council of Churches “acting as sole agents for God”.

Is there any sense at all in which we believe that natural disasters are directly caused by God? Well, some Christians do, like the Free Kirk minister who said God had caused the tsunami because of the life-styles to be found on the Thailand coast, but I suspect those who take that view are in a minority of Christians. But certainly those who are critics of Christian faith assume that the God we believe is the cause of natural disasters. To go back to the tsunami, I was very forcefully struck by two articles which appeared the week after the tsunami struck.

Here is Muriel Gray, in the Sunday Herald
”All the post-tsunami talk about how a loving God could deal such a cruel blow seems particularly cock-eyed. The debate, all over the press and internet, seems to rest on the testing of faith of those peculiar people who believe in a God sufficiently hands-on to respond to their prayers ………The tsunami would only have been a test of faith to a person believing in the interventionist God of the Old Testament, the crazy guy who regularly smote down chaps for not paying him enough respect”

Where in all of Muriel Gray's invective, is the God who is known in his impotent vulnerability?

Of course that understanding of God is not in Muriel Gray's experience at all, because the only God she has been introduced to is the God who causes things to happen; the God who, she once explained to me in a radio programme, she had been told handicaps children “in order to test people's faith”.

Here is the Herald's columnist Jack MacLean, praising the Editor of the Sikh Messenger on Radio 4's “Thought for the Day”, who, says MacLean, “comes across as a dashed sight more thoughtful than any of the prattling priests who appear on the show, especially those who try to claim that natural disasters are not God's fault. I don't think they are either, but then I'm not the one with an omnipotent God.”

And neither am I, or those like me, who, Sunday by Sunday, by Sunday, conduct public worship.

I believe there are things God cannot do. I don't believe in a God who caused hurricane Katrina, nor in a God who could have prevented it but chose not to.

On the day the twin towers in Manhattan were attacked, Rowan Williams, then the Archbishop of Wales, was in New York . Afterwards he wrote about an encounter he had very early on September 10 th . “I was stopped in the street in New York by a youngish man who turned out to be an airline pilot and a Catholic. He wanted to know what the hell God was doing when the planes hit the towers. What do you say? The usual fumbling about how God doesn't intervene, which sounds like a lame apology for some kind of ‘policy' on God's part, a policy exposed as heartless in the face of such suffering? Something about how God is there in the sacrificial work of the rescuers, in the risk they take? I tried saying bits of this, but there was no clearer answer than there ever is…….In the street that morning, all I had was words. I wasn't surprised that they didn't help. He was a lifelong Christian believer, but for the first time it came home to him that he might be committed to a God who could seem useless in a crisis”.

Its one of the oldest problems for people of faith: if God is all powerful, why does he not prevent bad things happening to the world he loves. The only answer to that which has ever made sense to me is to acknowledge that God is not all powerful.

Those of us who believe that there are things God cannot do (like stopping a hurricane in its tracks}, can articulate that understanding of God within the community of faith.

Those of us who believe that God has been revealed to us in Jesus as a God who is vulnerable can talk about God's vulnerability within the fellowship of believers.

Those of us who believe that faith is what copes with the absence of the presence of God can share that with those who have also known the absence of the presence of God in coping, within their own faith, with the ache of that absence.

But I wonder whether it is possible today top talk about a vulnerable God outside the community of faith which believes in a vulnerable God.

When I joined the BBC in 1987 I argued that church services were incomprehensible to most viewers and listeners, and that to make acts of public worship the main focus of religious broadcasting was to tie religious broadcasting to an ever diminishing audience: not something any broadcaster willingly does. I now want to go much further. I want to say that expressing what many Christians believe about God is actually dangerous to the Church's mission: not only because people misunderstand it but because they cannot possibly understand it at all.

I said at the outset that the effect of hurricane Katrina on New Orleans was an example of a tragedy caused by the forces of nature. Writing in the Sunday Herald on September 4 th this year, Ian MacWhirter called what happened in New Orleans “ America 's tsunami. The scenes of devastation were uncannily familiar. Much of the suffering could have been avoided is flood warnings had been heeded, just as in the Indian ocean if there had been proper earthquake alerts. But there is one important difference. In the supposedly backward societies of the Indian ocean we did not see the violence and looting we have seen in New Orleans .”

Ian MacWhirter is, of course, right in that the violence and looting is an important difference between the tsunami and New Orleans . And I want to come back to that. But he is wrong to say that it is the one important difference, for there is another. The effect of the tsunami was indiscriminate: it attacked the poor like the fishermen of Sri Lanka as well as the comfortably off who could afford to holiday in Thailand . The brunt of Hurricane Katrina was borne by the poor, the old, the sick, the vulnerable, those who because of poverty or infirmity were unable to escape from the city.

What Hurricane Katrina revealed was just how insubstantial is the American dream, and how superficial is the idea that the United States is a land of equality and prosperity. And as I watched television pictures of the vulnerable trapped in a drowning city, I was reminded of a story in the Book of Exodus. When the people of Israel were on their way to the Canaan, with most of the problems of the trek through the wilderness behind them, singing songs of expectation, marching to the promised land, suddenly, the writer of Exodus says “then Amalek came”; and all the grand hopes and proud boasts and confident tomorrows were threatened.

Just when Exodus has recounted how the children of Israel had overcome their fears, and just as Exodus is about to record that dreams became a reality, “then Amalek came”.

Is it too fanciful to see a parallel with an American nation, recovering from 9/11, which has confidently flexed its muscles in the so-called war against terror, and then Amalek came. Because the book of Deuteronomy goes into a bit more detail than Exodus, and records that when Amalek came, the Amalekites attacked those who were lagging behind the rest on the long trek through the desert: those in the rear, in other words, the weakest, the old, the sick, the lame, those with young children.

Don't get the idea that this ancient story is about two nations. Its about two notions: the notion that a community is judged by god by how it cares for the weakest, not how it defends the most prosperous; and the notion that the weakest can be attacked because they are the most vulnerable. The mayor of New Orleans , Ray Nagin, put it like this “God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price.”

As if the suffering of the weakest wasn't enough, New Orleans has had to endure the lootings, the violence, the assaults. And it is that which links the two events which I said I wanted to draw out lessons for faith from: New Orleans , and the London bombings in early July. For me they both illustrate the flaw in a superficially optimistic view of human progress.

There was once a famous rabbi who illustrated the problem like this. “When I was a youth” he said “I lived with my father-in-law, a watchmaker. I desired greatly to visit a great rabbi, but had no money for the journey. I said to my father-in-law ‘If you will give me a few gulden, I will repair the little watch with which you have had no patience to bother' He agreed, and I took apart the watch, to discover the cause of the difficulty. I soon saw that nothing was lacking, but that a tiny hairspring was twisted. This I soon made straight, placed everything together, and the watch began to keep time once more. Does this not teach” said the rabbi, “that a slight twist of the heart often halts the normal moral feeling. A little adjustment and the heart beats properly again.”.

That rabbi spoke for liberals everywhere! I want to suggest that the violence in New Orleans , and the violence in London in early July indicate that there is a dysfunction much more radical than optimistic beliefs about progress take into account.

Just as after 9/11, so after the London bombings, there was much talk of evil. And it's a word I am reluctant to use, though I say that hesitantly, because I recall that the great American theologian Reinhold Neibuhr once said that the symbol of theological liberals ought to be three monkeys: “se no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”! I am reluctant to use the word “evil”, not because I don't believe in it but because I think it is far too easy a word to use: too easy and too deceptive.

Let me explain what I mean.

I think the a too casual use of the word “evil” allows us to avoid the truth which Edmund Burke was pointing to when he said that the line between good and evil does not run between people but runs through people. We can all too readily convince ourselves that evil is something which exists elsewhere, in others.

A few years ago I was in London at the time of an exhibition of paintings by Italian masters, and one picture from that exhibition has stayed vividly in my mind. It was by the sixteenth century artist Caravaggio, and it was of the betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane . Jesus is there, of course, and Judas Iscariot, wearing yellow, the symbolic colour of betrayal; and as always with Caravaggio, the use of light is critical. In this painting the scene is lit from a lantern held by a young man. And the face of the young man is Caravaggio's own face. Saying, in effect, we are all involved.

I was once taken to a memorial in Berlin , commemorating the day the Nazis ordered all the books critical of them to be burned. It's a strange memorial. Its on the ground, and at first sight it looks like just a piece of glass, a meter square, set into cobbles. If you stand on the cobbles and try to look down you see nothing. Only when, rather gingerly in my case, you stand on the glass and look down, you see rows of empty bookshelves with yourself, in reflection, standing beside them. Again to say: you are involved

And mention of the Nazi years leads me to a second reason why I think the term “evil” is a deceptive and distracting term. After the second world war, a group of German theologians was discussing the rise of Hitler and the years of Nazi rule. The word “evil” was used a lot, and how the power of evil had been at work. The great theologian Karl Barth eventually broke in. “Why all this talk about ‘the power of evil'? Why don't we just admit we were political idiots?”

It is sometimes too easy to objectify evil when in fact that enables us to avoid facing up to harsh questions ourselves. And maybe talking about the evil involved in the violence in New Orleans could enable American society to avoid hard questions about a city where, according to President Clinton, when he visited New Orleans with former President Bush, 75& of the population lived below the poverty line. And maybe talking about evil in relation to the London bombings could distract us in this country from asking hard questions about the policies and attitudes which are part of the context in which the bombings took place.

That is not in any sense to excuse, or justify the bombings, but rather to ask what might be necessary to change the context in which such violence is thought to be justified.

One of the things which made me decide to include the bombings in London in this lecture was something I read just before I started preparing for this evening. It was in the latest issue of the journal Theology , and it was the text of a sermon preached by the New Testament scholar Graham Stanton, who is the Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge . He and I were students together in the nineteen sixties in Cambridge , when he was working on his doctorate and I was studying theology. His sermon was entitled “Terrorism and Reconciliation”.

“If we take the Lord's Prayer seriously” Graham Stanton said, “we dare to ask for God's forgiveness only as we forgive others. And there should be no limit to who those ‘thers' are, for Jesus taught us to love our enemies, whoever they are”.” The text for the sermon is the statement Paul makes twice in the 5 th chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians: “God has enlisted/entrusted us with the ministry of reconciliation”. And Graham Stanton said “If we take Paul's words in our text to heart, we must seize the initiative in seeking reconciliation. And we must do that not only in our individual relationships, but wherever there is a perceived enemy.”

I think these words are not only true, but brave and prophetic. And Stanton went on to describe two levels at which the way of reconciliation must be pursued. Firstly in urging our political leaders to place aid, fair trade and education at the top of their agendas because inadequate education in some countries is one of the reasons why terrorism is seen by some to be the way to right perceived wrongs. And the second level is by encouraging every move in the direction of Inter-faith dialogue, and he pointed out that there is good historical precedent for this: in the eighth to tenth centuries Syriac Christians helped Islamic theologians by transmitting and translating Greek philosophical texts into Arabic.

Only a few days ago I heard the former moderator of the General Assembly, Findlay Macdonald tell of how, when he was in Damascus, he was welcomed to the principal mosque by the mufti as “a cousin in faith”, and who asked that he deliver a specifically Christian message.

There are small groups of Jews, Muslims and Christians meeting in Israel regularly, in each other's homes to share the joys and hopes associated with each other's feasts and festivals.

So it is within the context of the inescapable commitment to reconciliation, and to taking the initiative in reconciliation that I welcome the fact that the Bishops of Sheffield and Newcastle have said that when a service is held in St Paul's Cathedral on November 1 st to commemorate those who lost their lives as a result of the July 7 th bombings, the families of the bombers should be invited to that service. I understand why some families of the dead have resented the suggestion, and I am not surprised that the government has opposed the plan, but I cannot see that an act of commemoration within a Christian cathedral has any option but to pursue that way of reconciliation to which the Gospel commits us.

I am reminded of something said by the widow of the British ambassador to Dublin in the early 1970s, who was murdered by the IRA, when asked if she was bitter replied “It was bitterness which killed my husband; bitterness on my part would only continue the cycle”. Which is why Jesus said “Father, forgive them”.

One final word.

I have argued here for reconciliation with those whose faith is different from ours, and for much more contact with them too. On occasions when I have done so in the past, I have been tackled by Christians who wanted to quote to me the words attributed to Jesus in St John's Gospel. “No one comes to the Father, but by me”. Does that not commit Christians to the conversion of those of a different faith? Does that not dictate how we must approach those whose faith puts them at a distance from us?

Well maybe. But let me describe to you a moment in the Kirk's General Assembly. It was during a debate on some big issue or other, and on all sides people were claiming that what they were saying would have had the support of Jesus. Professor Tom Torrance got up, and said, very simply, “Whatever the Christian Church has to say, it must believe could be said out of the mouth of the crucified Christ”.

So I want to say that whatever Christians say about those whose faith is different, and about their attitude to them, must be capable of being said out of the mouth of the crucified Christ.

Which means, does it not, that when we talk to people of faiths other than our own, there can be no hint of imperialism or domination, because Jesus died recognising he had been abandoned. It means there can be no hint of aggression or compulsion, because Jesus died with words of forsakenness on his lips. It means there can be no sense of superiority or criticism because Jesus died saying to those he had every right to criticise “Father, forgive them”.

One final story. It's a parable. I had a teacher at university called Willie Frend. He died a few weeks ago. He taught church history and he was also an archaeologist who spent a lot of time working in North Africa . He used to say that the church in North Africa used to be the strongest church in Christendom, but if you wanted to see evidence that it existed, you had to use an archaeologist because the evidence that the Christian church existed in north Africa was now buried deep in the sand. Why? Because during the sixth century a young man wanted to enquire about the Christian faith, and so he went to the local church. And he found it so loveless, so judgmental and so harsh that he left, vowing never to have anything to do with Christian faith again. The young man's name was Mohammed. And Islam is the result of his disillusionment with Christian faith.