WCF works to develop better understanding, co-operation
and respect between people of different faiths
|
WCF works to develop better understanding, co-operation and respect between people of different faiths
|
     |
Marcus Braybrooke preaches at Westminster AbbeyAt the inauguration of the thirtieth Week of Prayer for World Peace, Rev Marcus Braybrooke, our President was invited to give the sermon at Evensong at Westminster Abbey on 17 October 2004:May my words and all our thoughts be in the name of the One God, who is the Lover of all people It is a special privilege to be asked to preach at this service to mark the 30th Anniversary of the Week of Prayer for World Peace. I am grateful to the Dean and Chapter and the organizers of the Week of Prayer for World Peace. I am glad too to pay tribute to the pioneers of this week, most of whom were valued friends, and to those who have sustained this important initiative. Hearing or seeing the news each day from Iraq, Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere, you might wonder if thirty years of prayer have done much good. I believe they have. Prayers have supported the victims, they have changed lives and prayers have unblocked the channels of God's love. Even in Iraq, an Iraqi Institute of Peace has just been created, which will have links with the Three Faiths Forum, and in Israel/Palestine interfaith and peace groups, despite all the set backs continue to build bridges of reconciliation and in every area of conflict, doctors and nurses and relief workers affirm the sanctity of life. Prayer supports the victims. Come with me in your imagination, if you will, to the distant mountain forests of the Chiapas region of Mexico. Just before Christmas 1997, a paramilitary group massacred some 40 women and children who were taking refuge in the chapel. The following November, members of the Peace Council, at the invitation of Bishop Dom Samuel Ruiz, made our way with him to the village. By the time we reached it, it was pouring with rain and we slithered down a muddy bank. At the service, an imam, a rabbi from Jerusalem, a Tibetan Buddhist monk and those of us who were Christian offered prayers for the victims and for peace. Afterwards, a mother, four of whose children had been killed, told the bishop, 'My suffering is not over ? but the prayers have given me hope.' A couple of days before the service, she had been talking about suicide. Prayer can help other people and is a way of expressing sympathy and support. When I hear of one of the many tragedies on the news I try at least to say 'Lord, have mercy on them.' Irina Ratushinskaya, a prisoner of conscience in Siberia, under the KGB, in one of her poems which were smuggled to the West wrote, In solitary cells, on winter nights A sudden sense of joy and warmth And a resounding note of love, And then, unsleeping, 1 would know A?huddle by an icy wall Someone is thinking of me now Petitioning the Lord for me. Prayer is a way of expressing our solidarity with those who suffer because there is no peace. Prayer can also transform our way of life. Mairead Maguire, a founder of the Peace People in Northern Ireland, tells how in the early seventies, some people were persuading her to get involved in the armed struggle. She decided to pray and ask 'What would Jesus do?' Going into a church, she looked at the figure of Jesus on the Cross ? and the words 'love your enemy, do good to those who hate you, do not kill' came to her with great clarity. And so, later, when family members were killed, she sought reconciliation not revenge And if you do pray for your enemy ? they cease to be the enemy, because in prayer we see the other as God sees them. Prayer allows us to separate evil actions which we oppose from the people who perpetrate them, who remain precious to God. Prayer breaks through the demonizing stereotypes. Leonard Wilson, who was tortured as a prisoner during the Second World War, said later, 'By the grace of God, I saw those cruel men not as they were but as they had been. Once they were little children, happy in their parents’ love... I saw them also not as they were, but as they were capable of becoming, redeemed by God's love.' Our prayer with people of other faiths has also for many of us transformed our attitude to people of other religions and different nationalities. We discover, as Jesus taught us, that our neighbour is anyone in need. Traditional exclusivism vanishes away when we are together in the presence of the Divine ? as I experienced very vividly when a Buddhist survivor of the atomic bomb showed me round the Peace Park at Hiroshima, and at the end all we could do was to be silent and sense the Compassion that is at the heart of Life. And those Israeli and Palestinians, who have lost children in the conflict and who have come together to seek peace, know that the grief which parents experience in their loss is the same for people of every race and religion. I believe also that prayer can change the course of history. Does it also change the mind of God? The purposes of the Merciful One are always loving and peace?giving, but, valuing human freedom, the Lord waits for us to open the channels through which the divine reconciling presence may be known. In prayer, the Eternal cries out to us through the agonies of those who are the victims of war and poverty, and pleads with the conscience of the world. Bono, the lead singer of the band U2, has said, 'God is on his knees, begging us to act, to get up off our behinds and take the fight against world poverty to a new level.' Every religion teaches peace, compassion and respect for the sacredness of life. It is time for us to be the change we want to see. Together we can create a more peaceful and just world, in which the hungry are fed and the environment respected, but only if we draw upon the spiritual resources at the heart of each of our faith traditions. Maha Ghoasananda, the Cambodian Buddhist who has been so courageous in his leadership of the campaign against land mines, reminds us 'that to create peace we must first remove the land mines in our hearts which prevent us from making peace: hatred, greed and deception.' May our prayers for peace, purify our hearts, deepen our compassion for all who suffer and be used by God for the healing of the nations. Marcus Braybrooke. 17 October 2004 |
News items Rev Ruth Scott is cycling to Jerusalem! Internet Discussion Group launched Ivy Gutridge Albert Friedlander The WCF Response to the World Parliament of Religions in Barcelona The First Interfaith Service in Celebration of Animals A New Centre for the Study of Religion AGM 2004 |
|
Registered Charity No. 244096 Contributions gratefully received. Gift aid welcomed.
|