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| Before the start of the service |
On Monday 6th January, at 2.00pm, members of St David's C-in-W church and St Mary Magdalene Catholic parish came together to pray for an end to war and violence in 2025.
Rev. Roland presided and Fr Ian offered a reflection taking this passage from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as his starting-point:
"Clywsoch fel y dywedwyd, 'Llygad am lygad, a dant am ddant.'
Ond 'rwyf fi'n dweud wrthych: peidiwch â gwrthsefyll y sawl sy'n gwneud drwg i chwi. Os bydd rhywun yn dy daro ar dy foch dde, tro'r llall ato hefyd.Ac os bydd rhywun am fynd â thi i gyfraith a chymryd dy grys, gad iddo gael dy fantell hefyd.
Ac os bydd rhywun yn dy orfodi i'w ddanfon am un cilomedr, dos gydag ef ddwy.
Rho i'r sawl sy'n gofyn gennyt, a phaid â throi i ffwrdd oddi wrth y sawl sydd am fenthyca gennyt.
"Clywsoch fel y dywedwyd, 'Câr dy gymydog, a chasâ dy elyn.'
Ond 'rwyf fi'n dweud wrthych: carwch eich gelynion, a gweddïwch dros y rhai sy'n eich erlid; felly fe fyddwch yn blant i'ch Tad sydd yn y nefoedd, oherwydd y mae ef yn peri i'w haul godi ar y drwg a'r da, ac yn rhoi glaw i'r cyfiawn a'r anghyfiawn.
Os carwch y rhai sy'n eich caru chwi, pa wobr sydd i chwi? Onid yw hyd yn oed y casglwyr trethi yn gwneud cymaint â hynny?
Ac os cyfarchwch eich cydnabod yn unig, pa ragoriaeth sydd yn hynny? Onid yw'r Cenhedloedd hyd yn oed yn gwneud cymaint â hynny?
Felly byddwch chwi'n berffaith fel y mae eich Tad nefol yn berffaith.
~~~
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
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| During the service |
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Christ the light shining in the darkness
At this time of year, in the calendar followed by many of the Christian churches, we’re coming to the end of the Christmas Season.
One of the major themes that comes out during the Christmas season is the conviction that all of the hopes entertained by the mass of ordinary men and women - hopes of being liberated from the tendencies of greed and violence and deceitfulness and cruelty, and so on, that mark our human nature and can dictate our behaviour towards each other - those hopes have been fulfilled now, with the birth of Christ and the incarnation of God’s Son.
One of the most familiar passages from the Old Testament that the Church applies to Jesus’ birth is the passage from the prophet Isaiah:
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.
And it’s true that the gospel message of salvation is a message of hope, and Christian life is a journey of hope. The life of Christian discipleship, as we get to know God better and learn more about what our relationship with him entails, is a journey out of any kind of pessimism or cynicism, or any sense of despair that human beings are powerless and helpless in the face of the malicious motives that easily dominate our relationships with each other.
The land of the shadow of death
But maybe when we look around the world today, at the start of 2025, we could be forgiven for thinking that the coming of Christ hasn’t actually made a lot of difference.
We’re here this afternoon to pray an end to the huge number of military conflicts and acts of terrorist violence that are taking place in the world today because it seems that so many of the people with power in the world today, including many of our own political leaders, have become very fond of resorting to war and killing as the way to solve disagreements or achieve their goals.
And when that happens inevitably we get a kind of never-ending spiral of violence, with warring parties retaliating against each other and retaliating against the retaliation. We’ve seen that happening especially perhaps over the last two or three years, and it’s still happening today.
The virtue of Christian hope
There are a few important points that are worth making about all that. First, for Christian believers hope of course doesn’t mean a naïve optimism that ignores the realities of human nature.
It also doesn’t mean that Christians hold the optimistic belief that that we, as human beings, have the ability, by our own resources and talents, to raise ourselves up morally and spiritually and get rid of all our sinful and vindictive tendencies.
Hope is a Christian virtue because we believe that God has the ability to do all that, to rescue us. It’s only with God’s grace, which has come to us through the mission and message of his Son, that we can make progress and become better people and loosen the grip of sinful motivations like greed, anger, pride, desire for revenge, and so on. And without God’s grace it’s impossible.
The freedom to say ‘no’ to God
Christian hope means that we know and we trust that God’s grace is always available to us. It’s there for the taking, he never withholds it from us if we want to open ourselves up to the influence that he has on us and co-operate with it.
But of course God’s grace also comes up against the limits that we impose on our response to him. We can always say ‘no’ to God, and God won’t force his influence onto us.
So I might want people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Putin and Zelensky, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leaders (and let's not leave Keir Starmer out of the picture either) to fill up with peace and love towards all mankind and commit themselves to the values that Jesus put forward in the gospel passage we listened to a minute ago. But as we know from Jesus’ own life people are always free to reject the appeal of the gospel and stick to a radically self-seeking path, even to the extent of committing violence against others.
That’s one of the reasons, I think, why Jesus said that we have to be very persistent and persevering when we pray to God and ask him for things.
At this time of year, in the calendar followed by many of the Christian churches, we’re coming to the end of the Christmas Season.
One of the major themes that comes out during the Christmas season is the conviction that all of the hopes entertained by the mass of ordinary men and women - hopes of being liberated from the tendencies of greed and violence and deceitfulness and cruelty, and so on, that mark our human nature and can dictate our behaviour towards each other - those hopes have been fulfilled now, with the birth of Christ and the incarnation of God’s Son.
One of the most familiar passages from the Old Testament that the Church applies to Jesus’ birth is the passage from the prophet Isaiah:
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.
And it’s true that the gospel message of salvation is a message of hope, and Christian life is a journey of hope. The life of Christian discipleship, as we get to know God better and learn more about what our relationship with him entails, is a journey out of any kind of pessimism or cynicism, or any sense of despair that human beings are powerless and helpless in the face of the malicious motives that easily dominate our relationships with each other.
The land of the shadow of death
But maybe when we look around the world today, at the start of 2025, we could be forgiven for thinking that the coming of Christ hasn’t actually made a lot of difference.
We’re here this afternoon to pray an end to the huge number of military conflicts and acts of terrorist violence that are taking place in the world today because it seems that so many of the people with power in the world today, including many of our own political leaders, have become very fond of resorting to war and killing as the way to solve disagreements or achieve their goals.
And when that happens inevitably we get a kind of never-ending spiral of violence, with warring parties retaliating against each other and retaliating against the retaliation. We’ve seen that happening especially perhaps over the last two or three years, and it’s still happening today.
The virtue of Christian hope
There are a few important points that are worth making about all that. First, for Christian believers hope of course doesn’t mean a naïve optimism that ignores the realities of human nature.
It also doesn’t mean that Christians hold the optimistic belief that that we, as human beings, have the ability, by our own resources and talents, to raise ourselves up morally and spiritually and get rid of all our sinful and vindictive tendencies.
Hope is a Christian virtue because we believe that God has the ability to do all that, to rescue us. It’s only with God’s grace, which has come to us through the mission and message of his Son, that we can make progress and become better people and loosen the grip of sinful motivations like greed, anger, pride, desire for revenge, and so on. And without God’s grace it’s impossible.
The freedom to say ‘no’ to God
Christian hope means that we know and we trust that God’s grace is always available to us. It’s there for the taking, he never withholds it from us if we want to open ourselves up to the influence that he has on us and co-operate with it.
But of course God’s grace also comes up against the limits that we impose on our response to him. We can always say ‘no’ to God, and God won’t force his influence onto us.
So I might want people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Putin and Zelensky, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leaders (and let's not leave Keir Starmer out of the picture either) to fill up with peace and love towards all mankind and commit themselves to the values that Jesus put forward in the gospel passage we listened to a minute ago. But as we know from Jesus’ own life people are always free to reject the appeal of the gospel and stick to a radically self-seeking path, even to the extent of committing violence against others.
That’s one of the reasons, I think, why Jesus said that we have to be very persistent and persevering when we pray to God and ask him for things.
In the Christian tradition there are three aspects of that kind of prayer. Very briefly, we know from experience that:
[1] there are things that God gives us without asking. Hopefully we can look back over our lives and see the occasions when God was active in our life, leading and guiding us, without our asking him.
[2] There are things that God will never give us no matter how much we ask, because God knows us better than we know ourselves and he has a far more accurate idea of our real needs than we do ourselves. And
(Luke 11.5-8 and 18.1-8).
So if we want large-scale peace in the world, I think that probably falls under the last category! I’ll finish off by suggesting very quickly what are the most important things we should pray for this afternoon and for a lot longer after that as well.
One: Jesus says we have to love our enemies and pray for them, so we have to pray, I think, for the men of violence in the world today, for their conversion away from anger, racial hatred, or the greed for territory and material resources, which is perhaps the kind of motive that more often than not is the real reason for most recent wars.
Second, let’s pray for a kind of awakening of the ordinary populations of the world, the mass electorate of citizens who can pressure their political leaders to change direction.
In the period after the Second World War an Anglican clergyman Canon Collins and Bertrand Russell, probably the the most famous atheist at the time, worked together to form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, to mobilise the population of Britain against the threat of nuclear war.
It was a mass movement for peace, and it does seem that we’re back in a situation where we need another mass movement to rein in our trigger-happy politicians, who're quite happy to chuck billions of pounds around to keep up the spiral of violence and killing.
And the last thing we need to pray for, I would say - and it's maybe the most important thing to pray for, from our standpoint as Christian believers - is for a renewal of the Church’s witness to the values of the authentic Gospel, including Christ’s radical refusal of violence, revenge, retaliation – not just when it’s easy, but precisely when it would be very costly not to resort to violence and retaliation because of the danger of losing face or being perceived as weak, or whatever.
Of course Christians should always pray for peace, but we need to do more than pray.
And the last thing we need to pray for, I would say - and it's maybe the most important thing to pray for, from our standpoint as Christian believers - is for a renewal of the Church’s witness to the values of the authentic Gospel, including Christ’s radical refusal of violence, revenge, retaliation – not just when it’s easy, but precisely when it would be very costly not to resort to violence and retaliation because of the danger of losing face or being perceived as weak, or whatever.
Of course Christians should always pray for peace, but we need to do more than pray.
All Christian communities, I would say, need to come together more, on a global scale, to witness together to the gospel message as the only way to be liberated from the destructive instincts that lead to thousands of innocent people being killed, or injured for life, their societies and their futures destroyed.
So of course we could say a lot more on the subject, and this won’t be the only time we’ll be coming together for prayer and reflection. But I think I’ve gone on for long enough, and it’s more important for us to pray than it is for me to talk. In a moment we’ll all make a few prayers of intercession to God, asking him to help make 2025 a more peaceful and less violent year than we’ve seen in more recent times.
So of course we could say a lot more on the subject, and this won’t be the only time we’ll be coming together for prayer and reflection. But I think I’ve gone on for long enough, and it’s more important for us to pray than it is for me to talk. In a moment we’ll all make a few prayers of intercession to God, asking him to help make 2025 a more peaceful and less violent year than we’ve seen in more recent times.
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