Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative

This week is a Holy week for Christians of all traditions. As Orthodox Christians move through the solemn liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Great and Holy Saturday, Protestant and Catholic sisters and brothers are captivated by the joys and celebration of Easter week – the week of resurrection. Throughout the history of the Church these joys have risen over the atrocities of wars, persecution, and suffering that have characterised the lives of so many of God’s people. Together we hold in tension death and life, pain and joy, despair and hope, the rich tapestry of life which we all negotiate on our journey with Christ.

This year this tapestry of pain and joy is made richer, and so more difficult to bear, by our experience of war in Ukraine, in the heart of Christian Europe, in the mission lands that bear the fruit of the devotion of St Cyril and St Methodius. Our brothers and sisters in Yemen, DR Congo, Syria, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia have known the horrors of war for much longer but every new war reminds us of the eternal sacrifice of the Prince of Peace.

As participants in the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative we are continually learning to live with, indeed even to rejoice in, difference. To know that being Orthodox or Evangelical does not deny our unity in Christ, for there is one Lord, one Saviour, one Jesus Christ and he has only one Body on earth, in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church – a broken body, as it was at Calvary, but nevertheless one Body. Within this one Body, we celebrate the diverse ways in which faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has transformed diverse cultures without annihilating their identities and affirmed that we can celebrate diverse national identities within this one Body.

As this new war breeds hatred, violence, and death we celebrate the diversity of nations and cultures that have received the Good News of the

Lord Jesus Christ and say with Paul of Tarsus that as there is no Jew or Gentile so also there is no Russian or Ukrainian but one family of God. Hard as it is, we must live with difference, to learn to love the stranger, to sacrifice ourselves for our enemy for these are the ways of Christ.

As LOI we stand in solidarity with every one of our Ukrainian and Russian sisters and brothers, whether Evangelical, Orthodox or those of any other faith tradition or of no faith at all, and we pray daily for peace. We feel the pain of fleeing mothers, of frightened conscript soldiers, of starving grandmothers hiding in basements, of imprisoned anti-war protesters, and we speak against political inaction and any leaders who affirm rather than condemn the war. But we must do more, we must also work for peace, work against the warmongers and fight for justice. This means resisting evil acts, proclaiming truth to power, and suffering with those who suffer. We stand with the WCC Acting General Secretary, Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, who has been part of our LOI fellowship, in asking Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to raise up his voice and speak on behalf of the suffering brothers and sisters in Christ in Ukraine and Russia. We pray that God will guide us through this, our Gethsemane.

Our experience within LOI is that those we once regarded as a threat and a challenge to our faith have become our friends, our fellow pilgrims, our closest bonds in the Body of Christ. We do not just love them, we love them for their difference, for the ways in which their tradition complements and completes our own. Our work now is to help others, especially in Russia and Ukraine today, to discover this same unity in transformation, dare we say this same sanctification, which is none other than the gift of God.