The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity runs each year from 18^th until 25^th January. Now you might be wondering why it’s these particular dates.

The 18^th January is when we mark the Confession of Peter when he was led by God’s grace to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” getting a variety of answers and then “But who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” You can read the full exchange in Matthew 16:13-20. 

The 25^th January is when we celebrate the conversion of Paul the Apostle and what happened on the ‘Road to Damascus’ when Saul who had been persecuting the early Christians became a follower of Jesus and was renamed Paul.

The theme of Christian Unity is reflected in the fact that Peter was Apostle to the Jewish Christians and Paul Apostle to the Gentile Christians. Aspects of this will be discussed in our Lent Study when we will be studying Paul’s Letter to the Galatians which was written to address divisions over such matters. Outline details of the Lent Study can be found later in the Newsletter.

Back to the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Each year the Christian’s from a particular country prepare service and daily reflection materials and this year’s service was prepared by an ecumenical team from the West African state of Burkina Faso (formerly French Upper Volta and then on independence the Republic of Upper Volta). The theme chosen was ‘You shall love the Lord your God… and your neighbour as yourself’ (Lk 10:27) the material being based on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

This parable is of course one of the best known passages of Scripture, yet one that never seems to lose its power to challenge indifference to suffering and to inspire solidarity with those who are marginalised or outcast. It’s a story about crossing boundaries and emphasises the bonds that unite the whole human family regardless of race, creed, religion, ethnicity and so forth.

In choosing this passage for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the churches of Burkina Faso invited us to join with them in self-reflection as they (and we) consider what it means to love our neighbour in a world riven with war and conflict, where there are many people displaced or persecuted. Communities in the UK may be less vulnerable to the sort of acts of mass violence that there have been recently in Burkina Faso, but there are still many living with the memory and/or the threat of serious violence, centred on issues of identity and belonging. 

Ecumenical services were held in St Finnbarr’s on Monday 22^nd and in St Andrew’s on Wednesday 24^th January, prayerful events that demonstrated a visible unity of local Christians. In these services people from across denominational boundaries reflected on the fact that there are also groups within our own communities, including people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people seeking asylum and others who for one reason or another are marginalised and who feel particularly vulnerable to misunderstanding, hostility and even violence.

Loving our neighbours as ourselves is something that we should all reflect on regularly, especially during Lent and in particular the question: “and who is my neighbour?”

Blessings
James