5 January 2005 

Statement from the Archbishops on the Asian tsunami emergency: www.cofe.anglican.org/news/tidalwave.html

Statements from the Bishop of Winchester and the Bishop of Basingstoke

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester:

I was glad to be among so many people, from every Christian tradition and perhaps from none, who chose to keep this Europe-wide three minutes silence in the Cathedral (January 5), before God and in a context of simple prayer and worship. I remembered some of the shocked and grieving faces, the terrifying scenes that television had brought into my living-room. We prayed for those so deeply affected, and for those in the front lines offering assistance and Aid – and for deeper generosity and compassion for ourselves. 

But for many it is just those words “before God” that raise powerful, urgent questions. The awesome power of the earth-quake and the tsunami wave, the numbers killed and injured over so large an area, the communities and the livelihoods destroyed – these all press the question “Why?”. “Where was God, the God of Love, whose birth among us in Jesus many of those killed and injured had celebrated, like many of us, just the day before?” 

The first part of a response to these natural questions was excellently made last Saturday in The Times by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks: “Natural disasters have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. Then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement, freedom, virtue, creativity, vulnerability and love.” The very beauty of the natural world that we enjoy was itself formed through vast geological upheavals; and could we learn courage and self-sacrifice, could we develop into mature human beings, if we were not shaped by risk and danger and suffering as well as by love?

As a Christian for whom God’s and the world’s defining moment is Jesus on the Cross and then raised from the dead, I believe that God is especially alongside whoever is suffering, present and compassionate and bearing our pain with us, one way and another seeing us through even if he does not rescue us. Millions in every age have found this true, found God reliable whatever horror or tragedy they are experiencing.

And I believe that God calls us to join him in this compassion, to be shaped into his character of care and generosity and of “being there” for those in every kind of need or sadness. So in the present situation it is right for us to give generously and to pray; and right too for us to ask for help to be at God’s side not only in such a natural disaster as this one, and when loved ones are sick or in difficulties, but when suffering, grief and destruction are caused more by our human, political, sinfulness.

This, very briefly, is how I continue to believe, with the writer of the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, that “God saw everything that he had made; and it was very good”.

The Rt Revd Trevor Willmott, Bishop of Basingstoke:

Many of us today will have paused in silent prayer and reflection for those in the Indian Ocean region whose lives have been so cruelly shattered by the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami. Many of us will also have responded to national and local initiatives to donate money to aid those who have lost their livelihood and homes.

Shocking though the events of this past ten days may have been, what might we learn from them? And what might we learn about ourselves?

“No one is an island entire of himself” wrote the poet John Donne, “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. The world as global village has long been part of our vocabulary but the events of Boxing Day 2004 have brought that realisation home with a startling and challenging reality. Here in North Hampshire we know of communities and individuals whose lives have been touched by the disaster. 

And yet, the suffering of Iraq, of Palestine, of Africa continues unabated. My own prayer is that in our collective grief we renew the covenant of human solidarity. Renew our commitment to ensure that every human being has the dignity which he or she was given as a child of God. Let the money and the resource which we have given this week be not a one off but a determination to care more about the rest of humanity than about ourselves. While we cannot change the way the earth has been formed we can learn the utter futility of war and hunger. Let us also be thankful for all that we have, not out of selfish gain, but out of an understanding that true happiness is to be found in giving and not in receiving.

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, writing this week suggested that the Asian tsunami might help us to see how small are the things that divide us and how tragic to add grief to grief.

These are worthy learnings of what it is to be human.