Coventry

The world changes, but one thing stays the same: we’re always arguing about something.

In the early Church, the main conflict was over whether followers of this new Way of Jesus needed to fully convert to Judaism. Eventually, the Church’s leaders concluded that they did not – Christians could follow Jesus without committing to strict dietary laws, circumcision, and so on.

Today’s reading from the letter to the Ephesians rejoices in that conclusion. The letter proclaims unity between Jews and Gentiles. Christ “has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall.” It talks about peace, and about reconciliation.

Peace has always been an aspiration of Christian life, but we haven’t always done a very good job of making it a reality. It sometimes feels like we get it wrong more often than we get it right.

I’d like to tell you one story in which I find hope. It’s grim at the beginning, but there’s light at the end of it.

On the night of November 14, 1940, German bombers attacked the city of Coventry in England. The skies were clear that night and the moon was full. The German raid was code-named “Moonlight Sonata,” a perversely pretty name. But there was nothing pretty about what happened that night. By the time the sun rose on the morning of November 15, more than 4,000 homes had collapsed, half the city’s houses were damaged, and the city center lay in ruins.

Coventry Cathedral was among the buildings destroyed. Only a few outer walls of the 14th Century cathedral remained standing. If you look online, you can find photos and videos of Churchill touring the ruins.

Think about how the residents of Coventry must have felt on that November morning. The English people of that time had a well-deserved reputation for a stiff upper lip, but this was more than many people could bear, at least in those first hours after the attack. News reports tell of people wandering the streets in a daze. They were traumatized, horrified, helpless. Water and food were in short supply. Fires still burned. The smell was overwhelming. The city population was small enough that almost everyone knew someone who had been killed.

And the German government was triumphant. The Nazi propagandists coined a terrible new term: to “coventrate” – to destroy a city by reducing it to rubble.

I wouldn’t expect peace and forgiveness to be on many minds in such a time.

But a man named Richard Howard, who was the priest in charge of the ruined cathedral, wrote these words in chalk on a wall that still stood behind the altar: “Father forgive.” He deliberately chose those words rather than “Father forgive them” as a reminder that forgiveness is something that we all need—and, although he never said so, maybe because “forgive them” was too difficult a prayer in that moment.

Six weeks later, the BBC broadcast a Christmas service from the cathedral ruins, and the same priest said this: “What we want to tell the world is this: that with Christ born again in our hearts today, we are trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge. We are bracing ourselves to finish this tremendous job of saving the world from tyranny and cruelty. We are going to try to make a kinder, simpler, more Christ-child-like sort of world in the days beyond this strife.”

That work took time. Thousands upon thousands more civilians would die in bombings of cities on all sides of the war. But the cathedral community remembered the lessons of that November night.

You can still see the ruins of the old cathedral in Coventry; the new cathedral was built alongside the old so that the old wouldn’t be forgotten. In the old cathedral, the words first written in chalk are now engraved in stone: “Father forgive.” If you’re ever in England, I encourage you to visit. It’s a powerful place, a powerful image of destruction and of resurrection, and a powerful image of peace and reconciliation.

In the years since 1940, the cathedral of Coventry has placed peace and reconciliation at the heart of its mission. They partnered with churches in Germany, Ireland, the United States, and other countries around the world to work for peace.

In 1958, the cathedral community began praying a Litany of Reconciliation. I’ll have some cards with the litany available as you leave church this morning if you’d like to use the litany in your own prayers, and we may use it occasionally in liturgy this year. It uses the framework of the traditional “Seven Deadly Sins” and the words “Father, forgive.” It’s prayed every weekday at noon at Coventry Cathedral and in other places committed to the work of reconciliation.

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” it begins.

“The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class, Father, forgive. The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own, Father, forgive. The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth, Father, forgive.…

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

It’s a powerful prayer, but to me its origin is more powerful still.

I thought of Coventry this week in part because peace and reconciliation seem so elusive in our own world. But also because of the message of unity that’s woven through today’s Epistle reading.

Perhaps ironically, the letter to the Ephesians is a letter that divides modern-day Christians. Scholars will tell you that Paul himself probably didn’t write it. Traditionalists will insist that he did. Portions of the letter have been used to limit the rights of women and even to defend slavery.

Whatever you make of the rest of the letter, though, I think the section we read today gets it right. Christ “is our peace,” the author says. Christ is the one who breaks down dividing walls. The one who creates a new humanity, making peace, reconciling all to God through the cross, putting death to hostility.

Christ “came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him [all] have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

In Christ “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

Peace to those who are far off and to those who are near. No longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints, members of the household of God.

That’s what the kingdom of God looks like.

May we come back again and again to this message of unity in the face of all that divides us today.

And may we pray, whenever and however we need to, Father, forgive.