Sermon at Memorial Service for those who died in the Istanbul Bombings

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN THE ISTANBUL BOMBINGS, ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS, HOLY CROSS DAY, 2004

"David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son:..."Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided...I am distressed for thee, my brother." (II Samuel 1.17,23,26)

Earlier, simpler, and less complex societies than our own were able to meet the horror of sudden and shocking death in a more direct way than we in our own times are easily able to do. Confronted with the death in battle of King Saul and his son, Jonathan, David laments. In a moving poem he both celebrates their lives and expresses the deep sense of grief, distress and loss that is both personal and corporate. Such poems of lamentation bring before God the unique grieving that each one of us feels and knows in the loss of those we love, and the hurt that is felt more widely in a community of work, a city, or nation. In Hebrew the psalms of lamentation are written in a halting rhythm which evokes and expresses our human disorientation at deep distress and sudden death and disaster. The deep pattern of our human grief emerges in these cries of the heart. It is from psalm 22, one of these psalms of lamentation, that the great cry of dereliction comes as Jesus in the darkness and agony of the cross cries out, Eloi, eloi lama sabachtani, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me! For Christians it is there that the God of aching compassion is found and known, the Christ who in Richard Baxter's words, "Leads us through no darker room than He went through before."

The same tradition of lament can be found in popular devotion in Islam, and in Surah 35 of the Qu'ran we find the words of God, which are almost a lament, "O the pity of it about my servants". The God who is merciful by nature becomes in action compassionate.

Our lament today is for those whose lives were so tragically cut short in the bombings in Istanbul last November. In a senseless act of terror and evil Roger, Lisa and Nanette from this country, and those many from Turkey who served our Consulate-General in Istanbul lost their lives. I was myself in Istanbul just a day or so before with the Archbishop of Canterbury. We had visited the site of another bombing outside a Jewish synagogue; and we enjoyed the hospitality of Roger and Victoria Short. And so I feel in a special and personal way the suddenness of this tragic loss. For all of you here, close family, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, wives and friends - whose memories are particular and personal - we pray for the transforming and sustaining grace of God, the Merciful and the Compassionate. We honour those who lost their lives, some members of the diplomatic service, others who, as in all embassies and consulates, serve that diplomatic work in so many ways.

As Anglican Bishop in Europe I am thankful that our chaplaincy in Istanbul, and our chaplain Canon Ian Sherwood, was able to respond pastorally in so many ways when the bombing shattered not only buildings but lives. Wherever we have chaplaincies such pastoral response is part of what we seek to provide, and we value our links with our embassies and consulates even while we minister to those from a wide community of nations.

The work of diplomacy, the task of representing nations to each other, is for the service of peace and justice. To be an ambassador or a diplomat is personal - Christians might say incarnational - for we recognise that the community of nations, and peace between them, requires personal presence; it cannot be anonymous. It requires the capacity to know and appreciate different cultures, the capacity to host meetings and receptions and social occasions when friendship and understanding can be built. In today's world, when fanatical distortions of religion can too easily be part of the violence we face, part of that understanding for diplomats must surely be a deep understanding of religions and their history and the way in which they have shaped the fault-lines of our world for much that is good and, sadly, sometimes for ill. The diplomatic service has of course important responsibilities linked to trade and economic opportunities; it reaches out also to those in prison. But at its heart it must be a personal vocation. In today's world, as the bomb attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta showed only the other day, the service of peace, justice and understanding, is one in which there is risk and danger. We cannot escape the vulnerability of diplomacy, and it is of course a contradiction that embassies which should be open and outreaching have to be increasingly secured and protected.

There is, we might say, an axis of good which we are called to serve, and a vision of peace, which is more than simply the absence of conflict, but the peace which is the deep belonging-togetherness of the human community, summed up in the Hebrew greeting, shalom, and the Arabic, salaam. It is in the end that "peace of God which passes all understanding" that we pray may keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and an understanding of that peace. As we commend to the Merciful and Compassionate God those who died so tragically, we ask that they may indeed rest in and be welcomed into that peace, and that that same peace may be known by all for whom this loss is personal. We honour those whose lives were so suddenly taken, and give thanks for their service. Indeed they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.