21 February 2024 A Candle in the Window Peter Millar
Words to encourage us in these times.
I read in a book that a man called Christ went about doing good. It was very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with just going about.
Kagawa (1888-1960), Japanese campaigner for justice.
The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known for his opposition to National Socialism. His ties to the July 20, 1944, conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime led to his execution in 1945. His theological writings are regarded as classics throughout the world. The kind of ‘mistrust’ to which Bonhoeffer refers to here in these words is common today, yet it was in a time infected with mistrust that he discovered genuine trust.
Words for our time:
The air in which we live
is so infected with mistrust
that it is almost bringing us to ruin.
But wherever we broke through
the layer of mistrust,
we found the experience
of a trust that we had previously
never even dreamed of.
We have learned to put our lives
into the hands of those we trust.
Against all the ambiguity
in which our acts and lives have had to stand
we have learned to trust unreservedly.
We know now that we can really live
and work only in such confidence,
which always remains a risk,
but a risk that is gladly assumed.
Trust will always remain for us
one of the greatest, rarest and happiest gifts
of human life in community,
and it can only arise against the dark background
of a necessary mistrust.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers from Prison”
(This well-known book is still available and highly recommended)
Engaging with Justice:
I wrote parts of this reflection twenty years ago in my book The Surprise of the Sacred: Finding God in unexpected places, Canterbury Press, ISBN: 978-1-85311-594-3. I began the reflection with these words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu – “If we are to take the coming of God into our world seriously we must be concerned about where people live, how they live, whether they have justice, whether they are uprooted and dumped as rubbish in resettlement camps, whether they are detained without trial, whether they receive an inferior education, whether they have a say in the decisions that affect their lives most deeply...”
The Iona Community’s Wild Goose Resource Group has done a huge amount over many years for the renewal of church music in several countries. In the worship in Iona Abbey many of their hymns are sung and cherished by literally thousands of people each year. When Dorothy and I worked at the Abbey we often sang with people from many nations in the beauty and peace of that ancient, famous building a hymn written by Jorge Maldonado, with music arranged by the Wild Goose Resource Group. It is a song of empowerment for all of us as we seek in our own ways to work for peace and justice in these hurting times.
The message of this hymn touched my heart many times and as we think of our world today may we sit quietly and read these words which contain both challenge and hope. I believe it is truly a prayer for us all.
Sent by the Lord am I; my hands are ready now
to make the earth a place in which the kingdom comes.
The angels cannot change a world of hurt and pain
into a world of love, of justice and of peace.
The task is mine to do, to set it really free.
Oh, help me to obey; help me to do your will.
Even if we are as frail as I am now, we can still have our voice and vision for justice and peace in God’s world, perhaps in the smallest of ways. The visionary Rowan Williams once said in relation to challenging homelessness...”It is I hope and trust not just because we would like to see people tidily housed and taken care of. It is because we sense someone living with deep breakages in their relationship is someone whose deprivation and suffering is something that eats away at and compromises our own humanity as well”.
*When will lasting justice come? Justice will come when those of us who are not injured are as indignant as those who are.
These words may come from an old Greek saying but I am not sure.
