Ambassadors
of Peace
Notes
by Hon. David Kilgour, P.C., M.P., Edmonton Southeast and
Secretary
of State (Latin American and
Africa)
at
the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast
Holiday
Inn, 1 Princess Street
Kingston,
Ontario
April
25, 2001
It is a pleasure to
be in Kingston for many reasons.
First, your mayor,
Isabel Turner, a participant
of this breakfast, is from
all indications a remarkable
leader of this historically
important city, the first
capital of Canada.
Second, Kingston was,
of course, the home of Sir
John A. Macdonald, our first
Prime Minister.
For our purposes today,
I'd like to say a brief word
about his spiritual life.
Years ago, a friend
told me that his second wife,
Agnes, had a strong influence
on this side of his personality.
Donald Creighton's
book, The Old Chieftain,
indicates that Sundays the
couple "would go to church…."
Soon after they moved
to Ottawa for the first Parliament
of Canada in late 1867, she
expressed the "wish for
a law forbidding Sunday politics"
(p.48, Agnes – The
Biography of Lady Macdonald
by Louise Reynolds). Her prayers that John A. would give up his
habit of working Sundays were
soon answered because he gave
up business meetings on the
Sabbath.
The
couple usually attended St.
Albans Anglican Church in
Ottawa, but sometimes went
to services of other denominations.
According to Joseph
Pope, Macdonald’s authorized
biographer, while he was a
"firm believer in the
truths of Christianity, (he)
cared little for external
forms of worship, and was
at times ready to accept the
ministrations of the Presbyterian
and Methodist churches."
Some years later, according
to Lady Macdonald’s own
biographer, John A. began
to conduct family worship
personally.
Third,
Peter Milliken, our new Speaker
of the House, is very proud
to be from Kingston.
If one - or preferably
all of you - tell him I was
here and said positive things
about him, it will no doubt
help me get more than the
35 seconds government ministers
now have to answer the most
complicated questions (e.g.:
What is the best way to cure
the economic problems of South
America?").
Seriously, I have no
doubt that if everyone here
were to plead with him, it
would make not the slightest
difference.
Peter and I worked
together around the Speaker's
chair two Parliaments ago.
You should be very
proud of him.
I
propose to speak briefly about
the upcoming National Prayer
Breakfast in Ottawa on May
10th and serving
Jesus in our respective communities.
National Prayer
Breakfast
The
speaker at the National Prayer
Breakfast this year will be
retired General Romeo Dallaire,
who is, of course, a national
hero for his work during the
Rwandan genocide of April
– June 1994.
As far as I can see,
he was one of the very few
officials who acquitted himself
in Rwanda without fault throughout
the entire ordeal, although
he still insists on blaming
himself.
There are others and
one was Father Pinard of Shawinigan,
Quebec.
Not far from the parish
church in rural Rwanda where
he was murdered while giving
communion stands a beautiful
church centre overlooking
a lake. A nun at that centre told me last summer that
when hundreds of persons from
the district arrived with
machetes, etc. to kill her
during the genocide period
because she was a Tutsi, Father
Pinard confronted them and
they miraculously left.
Tragically, he survived
the genocide only to be killed
later.
Dallaire
has been quoted as saying,
"There must be God because
I have shaken hands with the
devil."
The $20 tickets for
the breakfast are selling
very well, but if any of you
are prepared to go to Ottawa,
please speak to me afterwards.
I'll do my best to
get you in.
The pre-breakfast speaker
on the evening of the 9th
will be Mavis Ettienne, who
was on the other side of the
barricade from Dallaire at
the Oka crisis because he
was in charge of the Armed
Forces on that occasion.
Please consider coming
to that too.
Kim
Phuc
The
speaker of the National Prayer
Breakfast two years ago was
Kim Phuc of Ajax, Ontario,
and I'm quite certain many
of you have heard her speak
personally or on television,
To
honour her commitment to us,
she flew home early from Tokyo,
where I gather some international
body decided that the photo
of her at age nine as she
ran naked after she was hit
by napalm in South Vietnam
was the most important photo
of the entire 20th
century.
She spoke on reconciliation
and how after she became a
believer she was able to forgive
all who had caused her grief,
including the American who
authorized the Napalm bombing
in her district.
After the breakfast,
she shook hands with or hugged
many of the 400 or so who
came to the event. What a deep impression she made on all of us.
Last year, her biography,
The Girl in the Picture,
by Denise Chong was published.
Some copies of my review
of it for a newspaper are
at the back of the room, so
I'll not use the short time
left to speak further about
it.
Suffice to say that,
while Kim thinks Chong did
an excellent job, she doesn't
think it caught the importance
of faith in her life.
I wish you could all
meet her too.
Hopefully you will
– perhaps at a future
prayer breakfast here.
Reverend
Dale Lang
Last year's
speaker was Rev. Dale Lang
of Taber, near Lethbridge.
His 17-year-old and
well-liked son, Jason, had
been shot and killed approximately
a year earlier at his high
school by another student.
Lang
and his wife, Diane, were
praying at the hospital emergency
ward that their son might
be saved when the attending
doctor gave them the news
that Jason "didn't make
it."
Soon,
authorities were asking the
devastated couple to prepare
a statement for the media
arriving from just about everywhere.
When they did so, the
RCMP told them the force's
lawyer had said the police
couldn't read it. Dale therefore read the statement, which incredibly
forgave the 14-year-old accused
in the murder and called for
the community to embrace the
accused's family.
As he told the prayer
breakfast, Dale began only
then to realize that we Canadians
are not used to forgiving.
He and Diane gave credit
only to God as a healer for
having the strength to forgive.
He then told us that
when his first child was born
something happened to him.
His wife insisted that
they baptize their baby.
He spent the next eight
months reading and talking
to people about Christianity.
Deciding that Jesus
was exactly who he said he
was, he decided to become
a Christian.
Faith began to grow
in him and he became a youth
pastor.
Later he studied for
the ministry and became an
ordained minister.
St. Theodore's in Taber
was his first congregation.
You might be interested
in some of the things Rev.
Lang told us last year.
On why the tragedy
occurred, he offered a number
of possible explanations:
-
As
a culture, we Canadians
glorify violence in movies,
music and video games,
etc.
- As
a society, Canadians often
denigrate what it means
to be a human being.
We must all be more
responsible about things
like pornography and violence,
-
Many
Canadians need healing
from various injuries
as he has discovered in
speaking in about 45 junior
and senior high schools
about what happened in
Myers High School, Taber,
On where to look for
healing, he doubts if it is
stronger economies that will
provide it.
He refers to II Chronicles:
"If my people will humble
themselves…I will forgive
them."
“All of us, especially
believers, need to be humble,”
Lang said.
The last words he said
to Jason were, "Have
a good day."
He thought afterwards
how important it was that
they parted as the best of
friends.
He referred the audience
to Ephesians, "Don’t
let the sun go down on your
anger.”
In his travels across
the country, Lang finds that
many young people are turning
to God because they need solid
ground.
In short - and my brief
summary does him no justice
- everyone who heard Lang
was deeply moved.
Living
our Faith in Communities
What does it mean to
follow Jesus at work, in school
and in the home today?
Having observed Christians
over many years, I’m
constantly struck by how varied,
yet essentially similar, their
answers to this question are
likely to be.
Women, men and older
children everywhere who have
a personal relationship with
Jesus/God read the Bible,
pray and attempt in their
daily lives to be points of
light for our faith.
People
with whom we rub shoulders
ought to see in us God’s
message of kindness and unconditional
love for humankind.
As Paul put it in his
letter to the struggling new
church at Corinth, no letter
of introduction is needed
for a believer.
On
a visit to South America and
South Africa, I discussed
this question with a number
of individuals.
A leader from Central
America indicated quite spontaneously
that God has been good to
her and her family.
God, she added, gives
talents to everyone;
the more one has the
greater the ability to be
a “beacon” for Him. Whenever she feels herself to be in God’s
presence, which I took to
occur frequently for her,
she wants to use all her abilities
to advance His will.
A
Canadian colleague on the
same flight to Uruguay offered
another perspective.
For him, Jesus offers
every believer a sound basis
for salvation because He came
into the world to help the
marginalized and suffering.
He loves every human
being and does not judge individuals
in the foolish way the world
does so often.
Love and redemption
are His promise to believers.
South
African Faith
Several
days later in Johannesburg,
I met an old friend from Canada,
who now works there with a
lay ministry.
He and some others
were invited to conduct a
“spiritual wellness”
forum for employees of a large
utility company.
Its management, deeply
worried about the HIV/AIDS
pandemic in southern Africa,
asked Christians to speak
to employees on faith,self-esteem,
family breakdown under apartheid
and promiscuity.
Not
long afterwards, I found myself
on the rocks and sand of Robben
Island off the shores of Cape
Town for an unforgettable
day of listening to former
political prisoners of the
erstwhile maximum security
facility. Beforehand, we 600 or so visitors, mostly from
North America, were given
a tour, beginning with the
lime quarry known as the ‘birthplace
of reconciliation’ because
there Nelson Mandela and many
leaders of the new South Africa
first reached out in friendship
to their guards.
The
personal humiliation and natural
human desire for revenge they
had to overcome to do so became
clearer as we listened to
Robben Island ‘alumni’.
The white wardens at
Robben Island tended to be
bitter men who were often
assigned to the island as
punishment.
Beatings of prisoners
were common, but in such rocky
soil the ‘miracle of
South Africa’ took root.
Desmond
Tutu
Desmond
Tutu spoke of reconciliation
during a visit to Canada earlier
last year.
Emerging from 27 years
in prison, said Tutu, Mandela
“urged his own people
to be ready to forgive and
to work for reconciliation.
He has preached his
gospel of forgiveness and
reconciliation a great deal
more by example than by precept.
He invited his former
jailer to attend his presidential
inauguration as a VIP guest.
Who would have imagined South
Africa would be an example
of anything but the most awful
ghastliness?
And now we see God’s
sense of humour, for God has
chosen this unlikely lot and
set up as some kind of paradigm…that
just might provide the world
with a viable way of dealing
with a post-conflict, post-repression
period.”
In
a session on reconciliation
and the future, we heard from
an Anglican priest, Michael Lapsley, who as a New Zealander
was expelled from South Africa
for working as chaplain to
both white and black students. Shortly after he returned to Africa from a
national tour in Canada, he
received the letter bomb which
destroyed both of his hands.
For him, Jesus looked
to individuals at the bottom
of society and offered the
form of compassion which liberates
rather than merely pities.
He thinks believers
today must also attend the
poor, widowed and orphaned
with a similar message.
In his own case, he
has gained much from his faith
journey, in part by refusing
to accept the “harvest
of hatred” of which he
is one prominent survivor.
Christians
in Community
But
let me return to workplaces
and homes in Canada.
How are we to interpret
what Jesus says in the Gospels
in our daily lives today?
Those who prefer rules
– ‘rule takers’
– assert that living
for Jesus means, for example,
no stealing, no lying, no
padding expense accounts,
etc. at work. The ‘rule shunners’ say that Jesus
is love;
those who accept this
need not be obsessed with
rules, although in practice
their conduct would probably
not differ appreciably from
that of the first group.
One
can certainly be successful
and a committed Christian;
the one need not exclude the
other. A young South African
woman noted, “People
are attracted to Christianity
as a place where the soul
comes to rest. It should be
a refuge and a way of life
– not a label that places
one apart from others. People
today are still asking the
same questions raised by the
Greeks: Why am I here? Why
do I find myself at this specific
time in this specific place?
Do I have something special
to accomplish?” Faith
provides sound answers to
such questions."
On the issue of believers
and leadership in society,
consider the monk in the third
century AD who felt called
to visit far-away Rome. He finally arrived to see a huge crowd going
into a coliseum; curious,
he followed.
Inside, he watched
gladiators killing people
with swords.
He soon entered the
field himself, shouting in
Jesus’ name at the gladiators
to stop, but was ignored.
Before long, he was
killed too, but thereafter
a silence slowly descended
over the crowd.
One spectator, then
others and finally all of
them left the coliseum.
Never again did such
an event occur in Rome.
More recently, take
Rosa Parks of Alabama, who
changed American history when
she refused to give up her
bus seat to a white man in
December 1955 and was arrested.
In a book written long
afterwards, she noted, “I
felt the Lord would give me
the strength to endure whatever
I had to face.
God did away with all
my fear.”
Her book, Quiet Strength, explains how religion shaped her life
and has been a central part
of the American civil rights
movement from the ’50s
to the present day.
Things
don’t always turn out
as well for Christians as
they did for Rosa Parks.
The war against us
in various parts of the world
today is creating an estimated
160,000 martyrs per year,
probably greater than at any
time in our 2000-year-history.
Don’t all of us
have an obligation to show
solidarity with victims of
religious persecution whatever
their faith?
If our neighbours of,
say, Muslim faith know that
we Christians of all denominations
denounce the persecution of
Muslims in Kosovo or Bosnia
by self-proclaimed Christians,
they will be more supportive
when we raise our voices against
the persecution of Christians
in, say, Sudan or Pakistan.
C.S.
Lewis
The
late C.S. Lewis noted frequently
about Christians that our
faith “asserts that every
individual human being is
going to live for ever…
There are a good many things
which would not be worth bothering
about if I were going to live
only seventy years, but which
I had better bother about
very seriously if I am going
to live for ever.”
Elsewhere,
this great mid-20th
century advocate for our faith
reminds us that Christ taught
us not only to be “as
harmless as doves”, but
“ as wise as serpents.”
Believers are required to
practise justice and honesty,
give and take, truth seeking,
keeping promises and having
‘guts’, which for
Lewis includes the kind “that
faces danger as well as the
kind that ‘sticks it
out’ under pain.”
Without these qualities, or
at least their beginning,
inside us, nothing could constitute
a “heaven” for us
after death.
Another
Christian giant, Francis of
Assisi, noted in 13th
century Italy: “Christians
witness by the way (they)
walk across the town square.”
Each of us encounters colleagues
and strangers daily.
Are we attracting them
to Christianity and our denomination?
Acts of kindness in
an increasingly distracted
world are probably the best
way to catch another’s
attention.
For example, a friend
of another faith of origin
in Burma (Myanmar) noted that
the individuals who had assisted
him the most at key moments
in his dangerous life were
Christians. He is precisely
the sort of person who might
wish to join if someone would
only make an effort to open
a door for him and his family
at a local church. Christians
have an army of other believers
out there in the world during
the past 2000 years whose
good deeds can help us to
win others to Christ.
Friendly Believers
I’d
argue that believers of all
faiths have a duty to be happy
and positive individuals.
Nothing is more off-putting
than a sour workmate or colleague,
whereas someone who is serene
and friendly is magnetic.
If we are to be effective
witnesses for our faith in
our workplaces, much is demanded
of us. Good interpersonal
relations must be under constant
re-examination in case we
are hurting someone’s
feelings by thoughtless words
or deeds.
Grace
– God’s love for
all humanity even though undeserving
– deserves the final
word. It is the one thing
that only the church can provide
in a world which craves it
the most. Grace can bring
transformation and hope.
As
Philip Yancey, who is probably
the most persuasive writer
in English for the Christian
cause alive today, put it
in his book, What’s
So Amazing About Grace?,
it is hunger for grace that
brings people to any church.
“I rejected the church
for a time because I found
so little grace there,”
he writes. “I returned
because I found grace nowhere
else.” In a world full
of too much ‘ungrace,’
we believers should seek to
dispense grace in every city,
town and village of Canada.
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