Surely it cannot be all that difficult to understand what Norman Kember is about. The man is a witness. ‘Witness’ is a Christian technical term of very long standing (Greek: martyr). The witness simply goes, watches and speaks out about what he sees. He is a witness when he observes the brutal grind of life in much of the world, for example, at the Israeli checkpoints that blight life in the West Bank, and then comes home after a couple of months to tell us about them. He is a witness when in Iraq he hears about people’s experiences, and is seized and held hostage, and afterwards is able to come home to tell us about it. And he is a witness when he is seized and put to death, as one of Kember’s colleagues was.
The witness just takes the knocks he is given. He witnesses to his master’s victory by not being frightened of violence and death, or of the incomprehension and derision of the on-looking media.
In terms of family and of his own career as a doctor Norman Kember had made his contribution already. In the UK, if you are over seventy years of age it is thought that you can have nothing more to contribute, and can only hope not to become a burden. But a man with grandchildren might well decide that is something that he can do for his grandchildren’s generation. He can point towards an alternative form of politics, of truth and peace, by witnessing the violence in Iraq. At the same time Kember’s was also an act of witness against the our attitudes towards older people.
Obviously the media do not understand how there could ever be anything worth dying for. But I think we owe it them to explain, and we could do this in terms of peace, truth and justice. Or, to baffle them completely, let us tell them that Christ compels us.
