wfn.org | Episcopalians: Archbishop of Canterbury spends Palm Sunday with church in Jerusalem

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

April 14, 2003

2003-080

Episcopalians: Archbishop of Canterbury spends Palm Sunday with 
church in Jerusalem

by James Solheim

(ENS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spent Palm Sunday 
with the Christians in Jerusalem, issuing a pastoral letter to 
Christians in the Middle East and preaching at the Anglican 
Cathedral of St. George the Martyr in Jerusalem.

In his letter, presented to Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, the 
Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, during a dinner with church 
leaders, Williams said that "for the last few months, with all 
the suffering and fear they have brought, it has been so 
painfully clear that without peace and justice for all the 
peoples of the Holy Land there is small hope of lasting 
reconciliation in the wider world."

"Peace never comes without cost; so the deepest enemy to peace 
is always the spirit of grasping and clinging to what makes us 
feel safe while the truth is that we shall only be safe when 
others are not frightened of us, when others do not feel 
silenced, despised, or suffocated by us," Williams said in his 
letter. "Meanwhile, those who love violence continue to keep the 
wounds open. Disproportionate, indiscriminate force, applied not 
only by weaponry but by constant harassment; the insane butchery 
of terrorism, dressed up as heroism--these things serve only to 
keep the door firmly closed to any hope of taking away fear."

As believers and human beings "we stand at the gates of the 
city...where so many sufferers are silenced and where so many 
innocent on both sides of the terrible conflict are killed and 
their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry, selfish, posturing 
words." One must recognize that people share "the passionate 
longing never to be a victim again, the hunger for security 
expressed in the ownership of the land, the impotent 
near-mindless fury that bursts out in suicidal ways, and brings 
destruction to so many," Williams said in his sermon. 

"Jesus does not steer us away from the gates and send us back 
into the holy silence of the desert or the peace of the 
countryside. He keeps us close to him as we stand at the gates 
and he tells us that these are also the gates of heaven," 
Williams said. "If you recognize your involvement and prepare to 
walk with Jesus into the city, to the cross and the tomb, there 
is a joy and a mystery at the end of the path because it is 
inexhaustible divine love that walks with us. We stand not just 
at the gates of the city of wrong," as one great Muslim writer 
called it, "the great city where the Lord was crucified, as 
revelation says, but also at the entrance to the Garden of 
Eden."

"At these city gates we see the possibilities," Williams added. 
"We can enter with Jesus and walk with him to his garden of new 
life. Or we can enter and find ourselves caught up in the 
murderous crowds and, at the end of it all, find ourselves with 
hands both empty and bloodstained. Or we can stay at the gates, 
unwilling to commit ourselves because we know that as soon as we 
enter there sill be trail and suffering; but if we stay there we 
shall never reach the garden."

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(Texts of the pastoral letter and the sermon are available on 
the Anglican Communion News Service.)

--James Solheim is director of Episcopal News Service.