Anglican Communion News Service

by the Rt. Rev. Samir Kafity,President-Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East.

You shall not make for yourself any other idol, for God is spirit, the spirit and the ground of all beings, which is love. The creation is an expression of his great spirit of love. We live in a world of love. Therefore you shall not dishonour the name of the Lord your God. God is the ground of our being. Our beings are grounded in love. God is love and love is God.

You shall worship him; worship God, give thanks to Islam, to the Muslims who remind us five times a day that God is great, that God is love. And they pray five times a day, wherever they may be, for God expects worship and praise for God. In the sixties some theologians declared the death of God in the streets of London. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, the very part of this Communion being a living Communion is to declare to the next millennium God lives, God loves. He lives. He loves. He is love. The basis of the commandments is love. In St Paul, in the 13th chapter of Corinthians he describes this as the greatest thing in the world. We need to trust the love of God in order to join it, and he is love, because it is in his love that we live, move and have our being. It's not automatic, it's not part of the future, it is the love of God, which is real.

I will place before you two definitions of love. One is very simple. It is given by the Lebanese professor, poet and philosopher, Khalil Ghibran, who wrote a great book with poems called "the Prophet". He says love is that spontaneous energy which gives itself and only draws from itself, not from somewhere else. This is real spontaneous love. An American hymnologist, John Oxenham, added more clarity to this definition when he said:

"Love ever gives, forgives - outlives.
And ever stands, with open hands.
And while it lives - it gives.
For this is love's prerogative to give - to give - to give."

And Paul ranks love as above all. It is even more important than to have faith in God, or belief, or doctrine. It is greater than belief. It is the background of hope and life. If we want to stay in the realm of belief and doctrine, we will arrive at what the ecumenical movement has arrived at after fifty years of academic debate in unity. We arrive in the season of winter, but now to experience Grace in God you don't need fifty years in the faith and order to speak about the unit of humanity. In India, they just did it. They didn't speak about it, they did it and there is a united Church in India.

The other definition of love comes from music. Otis Skilling, the American who wrote it, composed a piece of music called "Love". He said:

"The world is ablaze and burning with sin.
Life is a maze of searching within.
Amazing love can change all of this,
For love, love is a man.
The incarnate man. It is all man.
He came to the earth two thousand years ago.
He paid with his life sin's debt that we owe,
He rose again and lives today here in Panama.
For love, love is the incarnate man.
This man fulfilled God's plan;
When Jesus came true love began.
Because he came, we all can claim
A life of love today."

"Love can change attitudes
No matter how hard these are
No matter how superior, how academic people feel they are
Love can change the attitudes
Love can change the mind
Love can make us likeable
Love can make us kind
Love can make us break the barriers
Love can set us free
In other words, love can mould
A new life for you and me."

If this is love, then this is how we should relate to God and the world, to God and each other. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, not only partially or on Sunday or on the great festivals, with all your soul, your spirituality, like our brothers and sisters in Islam who pray five times a day and proclaim God is great. They pray five times a day anywhere - indoors or outdoors. They are not ashamed to declare their love to God. That is perpetual worship. The way to love is to worship God, not with our lips, and not by making idols that only do service for him. Not only by just honouring his words by name. Love is an ongoing way of life and one that can change attitudes and prejudices. It is by loving God, only by loving God, that the peace of the world can become a reality. It is only by loving god that the Middle East can attain and achieve peace by changing attitudes to become more human. It is when my people the Palestinians and my cousins the Israelis will love God in this way, when they do not politicise God and make Him an object of controversy.

We, in the Anglican Communion, recognise the depth, the breadth, the height and the width of this love. Love your neighbour. Do you know who is your neighbour? Do we recognise, as an Anglican Communion throughout the world, about 70 million adherents, do we recognise our neighbours, or are we living in a vacuum? Do we need to rehearse the story of the good Samaritan? It was not the priest, not the organised Church, the highly structured Church, it was not the Church who made new doctrine. It was not the Church with great and high degrees from academic institution, nor was it the Church that is hierarchical - it was a non-believer that became the neighbour to the man who fell among thieves. The Church was busy, maybe with the Mothers' Union, or with its other issues and concerns and forgot about that its true purpose was as a servant of humanity. Let us remember 80 per cent of the population of the world are living on 20 per cent of the resources of the world, and 20 per cent of the population of the world are living on the other 80 per cent of the resources of the world. What is our response? How can we say love God with all your heart and love your neighbour, exactly in the same manner and degree that you love yourself? The motto of the priest in the organised, highly academic Church in the story of the Good Samaritan was what is mine is mine. Mind my own business - my own agenda. What is mine is mine and I will keep it.

The motto of the Good Samaritan was what is mine is yours, no matter what kind you are or what nationality, or what degree you hold, or how little you have, you are the child of God, whatever is mine is yours, let us share it. Sharing, sharing and again I say sharing.

And now I want to come to the centre - Jerusalem. Bishop Kenneth Cragg of the United Kingdom and an assistant bishop in my Province wrote:

"The road to Jerusalem is in the heart; and whether present or absent, its passionate history absorbs the spirit."

It certainly does absorb the spirit, of all its past people, current residents, and all the pilgrims of all three monotheistic Abrahamic faiths. It is a peculiar spiritual focus, a symbol that could perhaps change the course of the present world. One cannot, and perhaps should not forget Jerusalem. At 2,500 feet above sea-level, the psalmist viewed this city as a unity in itself, as the abode of God, the abode of God, as the house of peace. When speaking on Jerusalem, the language of the heart supersedes the mind. The religious significance overrules its secular significance, the universal, local, multi-lateral, multi-cultural cannot be sacrificed for only one local ordinational rule. Perhaps this is what was conveyed by John when he spoke of a new Jerusalem. Paul in Galatians calls it the mother of us all, Jerusalem which is above, which is free. It is the motherhood of Jerusalem that reminds us of the religion of God. It's not the old Jerusalem, that city which was ignorant, and sometimes we feel it is still ignorant of the things that belonged to its peace. It was our goal, it was Jesus, the incarnate son of God, who wept over that kind of Jerusalem and he still lives. Perhaps to us it must become the symbol of God.

I always remind pilgrims who come to see us in Jerusalem that this is the eighth sacrament. Jerusalem declares there are eight sacraments. The eighth is to come and say your prayers in the footsteps of the land that God has chosen to enact the drama of salvation. It's not just another piece of geography. It's not just another country. It's the place of the incarnation and the resurrection of a new hope, a new providence, a new testament, a new relationship, a new world. The significance of the motherhood of Jerusalem, to Judaism, Christianity and Islam is that motherhood does not discriminate. Motherhood does not have preference. It will not prefer a Jew, or a Christian or a Muslim. It will cease to be central, it will cease to be a mother if it makes preferences. Yes, and all the children must attribute this marvellous love to their mother and not compromise the rights of the other two children.

This symbol of motherhood, of love, and of peace is what Jerusalem made offer to humanity. A translation of God's humanity. We pray that it may regain this eternal symbolism and may once again be the answer to the quest for peace, not to be negotiated as the substance of an agenda, but and answer to peace.

Christianity strongly affirms equality between people without discrimination. Therefore, we of the Holy Land, which is holy to our Jewish and Muslim brethren? plead in the name of the three key principles of love, of equality, of peace will contribute to a new situation not only in the Middle East, but in our world. This is what we mean when we say we love God and we must and should love our neighbour exactly as we love ourselves, and we call on the Anglican Communion to continue to become not only a liturgical Communion, and not just an academic Communion, but also a diakonal Communion, a Communion that gives and gives and gives until all our lives are reconciled and healed. Amen.