There is an impression abroad that religious people are narrow-minded and hateful, and worship a God that they have imagined in their own image.
No doubt there are some religious people who are like that, and who by their confident assertion that God agrees with them encourage some among us to steer clear of churches and bibles and preachers.
However, all of you who have come to St Peter’s Cathedral this morning have just heard a very different message, read from the same Bible that some don’t like and which the Canadian government is now, in the interests of Multiculturalism, no longer allowing the Canadian Bible Society to present to new citizens at Immigration ceremonies.
“LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, DO GOOD TO THEM WHICH HATE YOU, BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU, AND PRAY FOR THEM THAT DESPITEFULLY USE YOU…”
I’ve just spent a week in New York visiting my nephew in his apartment in Lower Manhattan. He’s that close to the site of the World Trade Center that if its buildings had fallen over sideways on 9/11 instead of collapsing into the ground they could have hit his building. Today the WTC site has been mostly cleared. One of the skyscrapers across the street from the site that was badly damaged when the Towers collapsed is being rebuilt, and the work of reconstruction on the Trade Center site is soon to get underway.
But a remarkable thing has happened. When people come to see where the World Trade Center stood what they see is a hole in the ground enclosed in a wire mesh fence. There is very little to look at because it is gone, all gone. Very quickly people drift away across the street and into a beautifully kept old 18th century country churchyard with lovely trees and centuries-old tombstones. At the end of the churchyard is an old stone chapel built in 1766 that has become a kind of shrine, or place of pilgrimage, where the horror of 9/11 is remembered, its victims commemorated, and where the heroism and dedication of firefighters and searchers - and the volunteers who fed and rested and comforted them - is honoured.
The Chapel is dedicated to St. Paul. In the 18th century the English practice was to put a church dedicated to St Paul in the heart of downtown in colonial capitals - Halifax has one built in 1750 and ours in Charlottetown dates back to 1777. Today, St. Paul’s in New York belongs to the Parish of Trinity Church, Wall Street - a handsome Gothic Revival building whose rector during the American Rebellion was Charles Inglis, a Loyalist, who continued to pray for King George III even after New York fell to the rebels, with George Washington’s soldiers with muskets sitting in the front pews daring him to pray for the King. But Inglis, and others loyal to the Crown, were forced to flee, and in England he was consecrated the first Bishop of Nova Scotia in 1787 - the diocese into which we in Prince Edward Island have since been incorporated.
I would like to take you to New York and show you St. Paul’s Chapel: the home-made banners hanging from the galleries, the marks in the paint on the pews made by firefighters and workers as they slept off their exhaustion in the days and weeks following 9/11, the displays of photographs, the side altar covered with badges and homemade prayers and photos of people never seen again after the collapse of the towers, and the constant stream of people through the building. It is very moving.
I brought back a copy of the Information leaflet, and one copy of the Prayer leaflet provided for visitors in St. Paul‘s Chapel. The Prayer leaflet has Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jainist, Jewish, Muslim, Native African, Native American, Shinto, Sikh and Zoroastrian prayers for peace in it - sensitive to the multicultural nature of the religious affiliation of visitors and 9/11 victims alike.
IN EVERYTHING ONE SEES BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE ST PAUL’S CHAPEL, THERE IS NO WORD OR TRACE OF ANY KIND OF HATRED, OR THREAT OF REVENGE, OR EVEN OF ANGER. THERE IS NO HINT OF RELIGIOUS OR ETHNIC BIGOTRY, NO CRITICISM OF ISLAM, NO REJECTION OF ARABS OR OF MOSLEMS.
EVERYTHING IN WORD AND IMAGE RELATING TO 9/11 IN ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL REFLECTS HIM WHO SAID ‘LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, DO GOOD TO THEM WHICH HATE YOU, BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU, AND PRAY FOR THEM THAT DESPITEFULLY USE YOU‘.
The point is NOT that our world must become less Christian in order to be fully multicultural, as our Western governments seem to think; but that the Christianity of Jesus represents a genuine multiculturalism that encourages both freedom and peace - and the love and faith that takes away the fear and anger that lie at the heart of violent acts.
Sermon preached by Canon Robert Tuck at St Peter’s Cathedral, Charlottetown, 6th Sunday after Trinity, 2004.