Reflection by Mette Juul, held at an international service for peace in Ukraine march 9th 2022.

The beautiful song – Amazing grace – which we just have sung was popular during the American Civil War which took place in the 1860's. It had great popularity among both factions in the war.

I remembered the history of this song when I visited the war museum in Paris where I spent this weekend.

At the museum I saw collections of all kinds of war material and war equipment.

From the late middle age there were amours made for both men and horses, there were cannons, lances and there were beautifully decorated guns and uniforms (how paradoxical as it may sound).

From the first and second world wars there were more advanced weapons, and it was clear that priority had shifted from beautifully decorated equipment with the purpose of also making impression on the enemy to efficient equipment produced for mass destruction only.

Knowing the history of Amazing Grace and having seen the war museum in Paris, it strikes me that human beings have been to war so often during history that it seems to be a human condition that humans go to war. History repeats itself.

The exhibition was in my opinion incomplete. What it did not show – despite its enormous size – was the human disaster that follows every war. There were no memories of graveyards, widows, fatherless children, destroyed cities, broken dreams. The exhibition did not show that war robs people of their lives and dignity, because war causes people to treat each other in monstrous ways for which no one will ultimately take responsibility.

That war is not just something that you can study at a museum and that war has such terrible human costs we clearly see documented through the daily war reports from Ukraine. We see bombed-out cities. We see young men fighting and defeating their brother people and we see heartbreaking farewells when wives and children are leaving their husbands and fathers, and when we see mothers giving their sons a goodbye kiss for perhaps the very last time.

It fills us with fear and horror. Some of us may be worried for friends and family being in the war zone of Ukraine. Terrified we realize that war makes humans act inhuman.  We are scared about the possible extension of the war. And we have compassion for those who suffer because of the war.

We feel disgust for the war.

We are all hoping that this terrible war will soon end but we cannot help asking ourselves whether that is a realistic hope. Is there a basis for seeing light in the darkness?

The answer to that question is yes!

Spending my weekend in Paris gave me reason for hope. No matter where I went: visiting the Palace of Versailles, sitting at cafés drinking café noir or walking at Champs-Élysées all I saw was people giving me hope. People of different nationalities, religious convictions, political observances, colors, sexuality, ages, etc. All those people do not want war. They enjoy being together in the Parisian melting pot of diversity. They enjoy living in peace and they want to continue living together in peace.

And that is also what Christianity is all about. Jesus shows us that to live is to live in relations. In relation with God and with other people.

Desmond Tuto, the anti-apartheid activist and former archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, who died shortly after Christmas expressed this essential relation with the term ubuntu. Ubuntu can be captured by the idea of “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am" and the term was a central peg of Tutu's own philosophy and theology.

He explained:

We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.

Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for we are made for togetherness, for family. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.

I have gifts that you don’t have, and you have gifts that I don’t have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent.

I also feel like quoting the famous Russian author, Fjodor Dostojevski. To the question "What is Hell?" he answered: "I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

In this difficult time, we must insist on our humanity – on our ability to love.

This is what Jesus commands us when he says:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But he also commands us – which is radical – "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

We might find that extremely difficult – especially in a time of war – and therefore I want to send us home tonight with the word from David's psalm. It says:

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

In a short while we will sit here in silence. You may sit and pray with your eyes closed or you may cry for your losses or your anxiety. You may also come up here and light a candle. When you are lightening a candle, you may think of Jesus' words:

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life."

May God be with the victims of Ukraine. May God be with you.

Amen.