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Dear friends, sisters and brothers,
I thank you for inviting me to greet you in the name of the World Council of Churches, that large fellowship which, like yours, represents a profound and prolonged commitment to deeper unity and real communion for the sake of the gospel and the world. This yearning for visible unity unites us.
I welcome very much that you have chosen for this meeting to focus especially on war and violent conflict. Our hearts are broken by the violence that we see in Ukraine, in Israel and Gaza, in Sudan and all those too many places in the world where wars, deadly injustices and oppression generate so much human suffering.
We keep the countless victims in our prayer. The most persistent barrier against ways to peace are the walls we build to limit our empathy to our own reference group. In so many cases people are touched by human suffering and show authentic empathy but somehow this empathy does not reach those who are on the other side. The algorithms in the internet that make you always only see the videos with the suffering of those you are close to, even strengthen the gap. We must be a powerful counterforce. I believe that prayer is the most powerful force to widen our empathy.
As we said in the WCC’s 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, “The calling to dialogue, encounter and the pursuit of mutual understanding is the very essence of ecumenism and central to peace-making. It is the role of churches to embody ‘Christ’s love [that] moves the world to reconciliation and unity.’” This conviction has been at the basis of our intense and protracted engagement in both arenas and elsewhere.
As Christians and as churches, we present a credible witness to the world only when we are also willing simultaneously to face and address our own shortcomings, failings, and patterns of inauthenticity. That is, in part, what the ecumenical notion of Transformative Discipleship is telling us: we need to transform ourselves—that is, to open ourselves up to conversion —not before we transform the world but as we do so through our concrete surrender of our own prerogatives and privileges to the all-too-evident needs of others. Addressing the conflict, coercion, and violence implicit in ourselves, our relationships, our churches, and our institutions is a catalyst for addressing the overt violence and war around us. We must model a better way to deal with our differences. A way that overcomes violence.
So as you begin this important gathering, I want to praise and encourage CPCE’s robust and ambitious agenda, particularly your focus on addressing war and violence and your search for hope in these trying times.
For more than 50 years, you have been seeking ever-deepening communion as churches, as Europeans, in witness and service to all, even as multiple crises challenge your plans and test your hope. Maybe the most important dimension of being church today, being a mission church today, is not only speaking about the love of Jesus Christ but radiating it with our lives as persons and institutions. This is how we can actively listen to Jesus’ beautiful assurance that we are salt of the earth and light of the world and that he will be with us always, to the very end of the age.
May God bless all your debates and decisions!
Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
WCC Moderator
