My father was a lawyer. We used to live in Gray's Inn not far from St Brides. After the War Dad was a prosecuter in the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg that defined crimes against humanity, the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts of persecution carried out against civilian populations.

Dad was a friend of the British barrister Peter Benenson, whose chambers were in the Middle Temple, half a mile from St Brides. 50 years ago he founded the human rights movement Amnesty International with an article in The Observer entitled The Forgotten Prisoners. It featured a number of Prisoners of Conscience - persecuted and imprisoned solely for their peacefully held opinions.

Today I work for Amnesty International. We have been busy marking Amnesty's half century. I helped to paint 50 banners we displayed in St Martin's in the Fields, one for every year of our existence, each featuring the face of a prisoner of conscience from a different country who we had campaigned for in that year. I'd like to introduce you to some of them.

Josef Beran, an outspoken Catholic bishop, survived incarceration by the Nazis in Theresienstadt and Dachau concentration camps. In 1949, as Archbishop of Prague, he was imprisoned in Communist Czechoslovakia for his words and beliefs. In 1961 Beran was one of the six prisoners of conscience featured in Benenson's Observer article. After an Amnesty campaign Beran was finally freed two years later.

General Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile in 1973. Young Jacqueline Drouilly, a student in Santiago, was one of more than a thousand people arrested in that period by the military police, who were "disappeared". Jacqueline's family believes her body, which was never found, may have been dropped into the ocean from a helicopter.

In May 1980 there was a military takeover in the Republic of Korea. A hundred thousand people protested against the coup in the southern city of Kwangju. The demostrations were brutally suppressed by the military. Hundreds of citizens were killed, and thousands arrested. One of those detained was the opposition politician, Kim Dae-Jung, who had survived death for treason.

The City and Tower Hamlets Amnesty Group (that meets in my kitchen, ) and hundreds of other groups sent appeal letters to General Chun Doo-Hwan against the planned execution of Mr Kim's sentence. It was later changed to one of life imprisonment, then to a year's jail and then he was released. Twenty years later that same Kim Dae-Jung had been elected President of Korea and had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I actually met him at a rally in Kwangju in May 2000 marking the 20th anniversary of the massacre. We shook hands. He said: "Oh, you're from Amnesty. You saved my life. I'd like to give you this wrist watch." still pleased to be wearing the watch.

I painted Ken Saro Wiwa, the Nigerian writer and TV producer, a peaceful campaigner against the oil industry's damage to his Ogoni homeland and an opponent of Nigeria's military ruler General Sani Abacha. In 1995 Saro Wiwa was arrested, subjected to a grossly unfair trial before a kind of military tribunal, sentenced to death for a crime in which he had no part and hanged in Port Harcourt.

Zarganar means "tweezers" in Burmese. It's the stage name of Maung Tura, ex dentist, poet and cross-dressing stand-up comedian of Mandalay. In 1988 he was arrested and jailed for "disturbing public tranquillity." In 1990 he performed a skit to thousands of people in a Rangoon stadium in which he mimicked junta leader General Saw Maung. Zarganar was arrested, and sentenced to four years solitary confinement in Insein Jail. He was banned for life from performing in public. He was arrested again in 2008 for speaking to foreign media about the lack of government action after Cyclone Nargis had devastated the Irrawaddy Delta and left a million homeless. He was sentenced to 59 years imprisonment for "public order offences" that normally carry a maximum sentence of 2 years. Zarganar has recently been released along with another 200 of Burma's 2000 political prisoners.

I made a banner about Helen Berhane, a gifted singer from Eritrea, a country where Pentecostal Churches, Jehovah's Witnesses and some other churches have been banned by the government. In 2004 Helen made an album CD of gospel songs. Shortly afterwards she was arrested and detained without charge or trial for nearly 3 years along with hundreds of other members of her church. Her head was shaved. She was held in a metal shipping container and in underground cells in the Mai Serwa military camp in the desert. She was reportedly beaten and tortured in an apparent attempt to get her to sign a document renouncing her faith.

Filep Karma, a civil servant from Papua, Indonesia, was present at a peaceful public meeting where he is said to have the banned Papuan Morning Star flag was waved. He was arrested and is currently in jail serving a 15 year sentence for sedition.

In the corner of this Journalists' Church is a photograph and small memorial to the Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya who worked on the situation in Chechnya and had written critically about Mr Putin. She had received death threats and survived attempted assassination. I met her when she came to London to receive a Global Award from Amnesty International for Human Rights Journalism. She was shot dead on the steps to her flat in 2006.

In 2004 Chinese poet and magazine editor Shi Tao used his Yahoo account to email a pro democracy chat room on the Internet to discuss a briefing for journalists from the Ministry of Propaganda that he had attended about the 15th anniversary of the "Tiananmen Square Incident." With Yahoo's assistance Chinese authorities traced Shi Tao, who was arrested, found guilty of 'illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities' and is currently serving a 10 years prison sentence.

Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Soutodeh has campaigned for women's equality, represented juveniles on death row and detained opposition leaders. She was arrested in September 2010 on charges of "spreading propaganda, conspiring to harm state security" and of not wearing hejab (Islamic dress for women) during a videotaped TV interview. She has been barred from practicing law and from leaving the country. Her 11 year prison sentence has now been reduced to 6 years.

This is a tiny fragment of the work of Amnesty International for human rights and against persecution.

Words memorably uttered by Kenneth Williams in one of the Carry on Films. That could also be the cry of the Christian Churches in this country, faced with the rise of militant secularism.

I picked up a Catholic Herald by chance the other day, and the front page consisted of embattled headlines such as ' Defend Marriage!' 'Prayer Ban is Intolerant!' 'Stand up for Faith!', and articles inside the paper about the dangers of this secularist age, with employees being banned from wearing a cross, or offering prayers for patients - all issues that have hit the headlines in the last two years.

So, are we entering a period of persecution? Should Christians begin to see themselves as potential martyrs? The answer in this country is no. We are still fortunate that we can practice our faith freely: what we face at the moment is discrimination, not persecution.

But there are countries in the world where people of faith, Christians included, are persecuted: And in our modern world there are other groups who face violence and a systematic attempt to oppress or intimidate or even wipe them out. This Lent we are looking at the theme of persecution: the intimidation of minorities, or those who are marginalized or vulnerable. We shall look at the work of Amnesty International, supporting those imprisoned for what they have spoken or written against repressive regimes, at the plight of asylum seekers, the place of women in societies where they are abused or oppressed, and of course the persecution of the Church, which is increasing, not decreasing.

Recently there were reports of bomb attacks on Christian Churches by Muslim radicals in Nigeria, part of an escalating campaign against Christians and Western culture. And attacks continue to be reported in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Coptic Church in Egypt is dwindling in numbers, systematically under attack by Muslims groups

At the end of last year The Daily Telegraph published an article headed 'How can we remain silent while Christians are being persecuted?' The article was unusual in that such persecution has not often been reported in the press/TV: it is almost as if it doesn't fit with our PC view of how things should be. It makes us feel embarrassed so we ignore it.

Primo Levi, the chronicler of the Holocaust, describes a recurring nightmare after his liberation from Auschwitz: in the dream he returns from the horrors of the concentration camps and tells his family and friends, but they don't want to know: they turn away in disbelief, or even worse through lack of interest.

For those who suffer persecution it is terrible to encounter a reaction of disbelief, denial, apathy or indifference about what they have endured or are enduring. This sermon series is a small attempt to confront that indifference and look honestly at these difficult and painful issues.

Above all, as Christians we should be able to confront suffering, not ignore it or be ashamed of it. Our Saviour is:

'a man of suffering and familiar with pain'

as the prophet Isaiah says. Our God is a suffering God, one whose heart of love can be broken. And Jesus himself in what we know as the Beatitudes said:

'Blessed are you when people hate you, slander you and reject you because of me. Celebrate because in heaven there is a great reward. '

And he adds:

'Woe betide you when everyone speaks well of you.'

A degree of suspicion, hostility, even active persecution is almost inevitable when we openly put our faith into practice.

So we must not deny, or dismiss or minimise the sufferings of our persecuted brothers and sisters, nor must we be afraid of it.

Persecution is in fact deep within the DNA of Christianity. The early church was persecuted and that's what gave it its identity. The Roman historian Tertullian said:

'The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of the church. Dying we conquer.'

That history leaves us today with a residual feeling that we are most authentic when we are most at odds with society, and in a country which is still very tolerant of the practice of faith, that means that when there are attacks from atheists and secularists, we can easily feel that 'they' are out to get us.

'Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me.'

Yes we do face a situation in this country where faith is under attack from certain quarters, where people feel much more able to mock our beliefs and where there is discrimination against people of faith in the name of a spurious equality, which could presage something more sinister in the future.

But this Lent, let us remind ourselves of those who really do suffer - some because of their thinking or writing, others because of their status or their sex. People who, on a daily basis, face real persecution and whose lives are often at risk. The preliminary to action is understanding. When the House of Lords debated the position of Christians within the Middle East at the end of last year, Lord Dopat, a Hindu, who fled Uganda when Idi Amin persecuted the Indian population in 1971, said:

'To witness persecution, then sit back and do nothing to stop it is a terrible sin.'

As we reflect on the suffering of our Lord this Lent let us resolve to take every opportunity to speak up for those who suffer persecution, who cannot speak for themselves. This Lent we seek to understand a little better how much different groups of people suffer in our sophisticated 21st century world, and as we do that we identify ourselves a little more with the Cross - God's open-hearted love which takes the pain of the world upon himself.

Christ our Victim, Whose beauty was disfigured And whose body torn upon the cross; Open wide your arms To embrace our tortured world, That we may not turn away our eyes, But abandon ourselves to your mercy.

In March 2007, I joined a pilgrimage to the Holy Land organised by the Coventry Diocese. We landed at Amman Airport late on a Sunday evening. Entry formalities were minimal and our coach was soon heading north along the King's Highway, where the modern road follows an ancient caravan route across high ground, running parallel to the River Jordan.

Our guide, a Palestinian Christian, pointed out clusters of city lights on the horizon, Bethlehem at 11 o'clock, Jerusalem straight ahead. Two thoughts struck me, firstly these cities, their names as familiar from the daily news media as from the bible, were real places, we were within sight of them and about to walk their streets; and secondly they were astonishingly close to each other and to us, despite the fact that we were not actually in Israel, but across the border in Jordan. Geographically these are very compact countries, hence the competing demands for land and natural resources, leading to ongoing conflict.

After a few days in Jordan, we entered Israel by crossing the Allenby Bridge, the original Bailey bridge that has served as a crossing-point between the two countries since the 1940's. Security is tight, much of it exercised by stern-looking young Israeli women in army fatigues. Each of us was asked the reason for our visit and how long we had known the rest of the group, giving the stock answers that we had come to visit Christian sites and that we had known one another for a couple of years or so, very "or so" in my case!

Two of our number, the Archdeacon leading the pilgrimage and one of its female members, perhaps significantly the one with the most eye-catching pink jacket, were taken aside to be questioned separately, an anxious moment for them and for the rest of us. Happily they returned within a few minutes and we were allowed to join our new guide and driver and go on our way aboard our new coach, "The Nazarene".
Jericho was our first port of call for lunch and a cable-car ride up the spectacular Mount of Temptation to the Greek Orthodox monastery clinging to a rocky ledge high above the surrounding plain. One of the few remaining monks kindly showed us round, but his manner changed abruptly when he saw a group of youngsters outside as we were about to leave and he yelled at them in no uncertain terms. It seems that local youths are making the monks' lives a misery, by ringing their door-bell and taunting them when they answer it.

It was dark when we arrived at our Jerusalem hotel, the Golden Walls, near the Damascus Gate into the old city. Bedrooms assigned, our hosts offered us a plentiful selection of dishes from a typical Middle Eastern buffet, leaving time for those who wished to walk into the old city after dinner and visit the Western Wall, no longer called the Wailing Wall since Jerusalem is occupied by the Israelis. This became a nightly routine for many of the group and felt safe, given the security checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers, through which we had to pass, offering our bags for inspection, before reaching the inner precincts of the city.

The next morning, our coach took us to the summit of the Mount of Olives and we retraced the route followed by Jesus as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, pausing to pray at the Dominus Flevit Chapel, where he wept over Jerusalem. The phrase "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" has never had greater resonance than at that moment, when we looked across to the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock Mosque, the spire of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre beyond it and the Golden Gate, sealed in the Roman wall below, only to be opened to admit the Jewish Messiah at his coming, the expression in one panoramic view of the rivalry between the three monotheistic world religions, for which Jerusalem is the Holy City.

Descending the Mount of Olives we reached the Garden of Gethsemane and Church of All Nations. The gnarled and ancient trees, some of them at least a thousand years old, if not two, were a poignant sight. Very little imagination was needed to picture the scene when Jesus came to pray in the garden on the night before his trial and Crucifixion.
Across the Kidron Brook, the Church and courtyard of St. Peter Gallicantu, set above an ancient dwelling with a dungeon built into the city wall and thought to be the house of Caiaphas the High Priest, where Jesus may have been held prisoner overnight after his capture, were equally evocative of the Gospel accounts of the Passion and St. Peter's denials of Jesus.

Things were less clear-cut elsewhere in Jerusalem, there being two purported Upper Rooms and two separate sites for the Resurrection, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb outside the city walls.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, provided unequivocal and harrowing evidence from the Holocaust, and helped me understand what can seem to be baffling intransigeance and wilful insensitivity to the plight of their Palestinian neighbours on the part of the Israelis, especially the ultra-orthodox groups, who are exempt from taxes and military service and whose thinking is based on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament regarding land ownership. United Nations resolutions carry no weight in their eyes.

It was a relief to leave the city behind and head for the beauty and tranquillity of Galilee. The Mount of the Beatitudes and the lake shore at Tabgha, where St. Peter was commissioned to "feed my sheep" were among the most untouched and compelling of the many places we visited.

On arrival in Bethlehem, we took some time to pass through a military check-point in the great wall built to cut off the Palestinians from Israeli held territory, including their own fields and olive groves, which become forfeit if not cultivated. Once through the wall, we climbed to the Shepherds' Fields, where the cave in which shepherds and their flocks have sheltered over the centuries has been furnished as an informal chapel in which we took communion.

Our next port of call was the store of the Palestinian Olive Wood Co-operative, where we spent a happy hour shopping for mementoes of our trip and gifts for family and friends, the familiar little olive wood crosses, which reminded us of dear Trevor Turner, as well as delicately carved crib scenes and Christmas tree ornaments.

On our way into town to visit Manger Square and the Basilica of the Nativity, we called at the Syrian Orthodox Christian School, to meet some of the "Living Stones" of the Christian faith and give them the stationery and crayons we had brought with us. We were greatly impressed by teachers and pupils alike, who learn both Aramaic and English from the age of 6. News from the school reached me only last week, reporting growing numbers of pupils, bringing the school roll to over 300, of whom 97% are Christian and 3% Muslim.

Looking back on my experiences as a pilgrim, I would hesitate to claim that I had been a peacemaker. Our group travelled in a spirit of peace and friendship certainly and tried to show a proper degree of respect at the sacred sites we visited and towards all the people we encountered and especially the local Christians, the "Living Stones" who have a hard time of it, both as Palestinians and as a religious minority, even though they are among the very few Christians who still speak Aramaic, the original language of the Gospels.

Hopefully we made a useful economic contribution as tourists in the places we visited, and all our dealings with local people were positive, but by far the greatest gain was to ourselves, through experiencing the places where Jesus lived, taught and died, enjoying the company of our fellow pilgrims and deepening and enriching our faith.

We were blessed in that we had excellent guides and were received everywhere with warmth and hospitality. We were not unduly hindered by border security and were able to worship freely at each Gospel site. I hope the same will be true for the St. Bride's Pilgrims. We have been asked to post a daily blog with pictures, which we shall try to do, so that those of you staying at home can share in our journey. Please remember us in your prayers.

I found what I was looking for.

In the space of two years I covered fighting between Christians and Muslims, Maronites and Druze, Israelis and Lebanese, Shias against Sunnis, Palestinians against Shias and finally Christians against Christians. There were probably more permutations that I have forgotten but you get the point.

With the exception of Terry Waite - peacemakers were very thin on the ground back then. But as a crash course in the workings of Middle East politics it was quite an education.

It was not until I was posted to Jerusalem for The Times in the early 1990s that I really became acquainted with the role of modern day peacemaking.

This is not just the actions of a few well-intentioned amateur mediators trying to resolve religious and ethnic differences. Today it is a global industry involving politicians, diplomats, special envoys, academics, journalists and human rights activists.

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of them focused entirely on this one subject - namely resolving the outstanding dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over control of land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. The wide held belief is that a solution to this problem will lead to an overall peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Failure to solve it will exacerbate tensions between the west and Islam.

I know some St Bride's Parishioners are currently on pilgrimage to the holy land and I am sure they will report back with their experiences.

But what struck me when I first arrived to take up my assignment was the glaring contrast between the geographical size of the problem and its international status.

The area in dispute is a tiny sliver of land. You can cover most of modern day Israel and the Palestinian territories in a few hours by car. Jerusalem - the heart of the conflict - is a city of less than a million people comfortably crossed by foot in an hour or two.

It is not strategic in any military sense. The land does not possess minerals riches or oil and yet it remains the heart of a conflict whose resolution has defied some of the best minds of the past half century.

Eritreans, East Timorese and Kosovans have all won their independence in the past few years - to be followed this summer by the people of Southern Sudan. Yet the Palestinians remain stateless and as a result the region unstable.
The failed peace efforts would fill an entire library of good intentions - the Madrid negotiations, the Oslo peace accords, the Taba agreement, the Road Map to Peace signed in Aqaba, Sharm el-Sheikh, Geneva, Wye River Plantation, Annapolis, Camp David and so on.

The latest statesman to devote his attention to the issue is Tony Blair who has spent three years residing in a suite of room's in Jerusalem's finest hotel - the American Colony.

He does not have a peace agreement to his name yet - but I suspect that he knows even his best efforts are unlikely to succeed.

It is easy for journalists to criticise. We are by our nature cynical. In the Middle East betting on failure is a wise option for any pundit.

I once played a small, accidental part in a minor dispute but it taught me a good lesson about the fraught nature of the conflict.

It was my first Christmas in Jerusalem and I received a call from George, a contact who was the private secretary to the Armenian Patriarch. He was a deeply conspiratorial character but he knew everything that happened in the old city of Jerusalem and he wanted to meet me at a café in the Christian Quarter.

When I arrived he explained that it was the turn of the Armenians to write that year's Patriarchs' Christmas message signed by all seven Christian leaders.

He handed me a dull Christmas message, no doubt handed down from him the year before. I sharpened it up for him, adding a few criticisms of the Israeli authorities for allowing Jewish settlers to seize Arab homes.

The patriarchs signed up the statement probably without reading it. I circulated it to my colleagues in the press on a slow news day. By the end of the week we had a fully fledged international incident on our hands.

The then Mayor of Jerusalem cancelled his attendance at the annual Christmas service. Diplomats and clerics became involved. I had unwittingly caused an international incident.

A fortnight later while interviewing the Israeli government's head of Christian affairs on a story I was working on, he retrieved the document from his files and slapped it on the table.

I thought I had been rumbled by the Israeli secret police and would certainly be reprimanded or expelled. Instead the official declared with a flourish: "you see this - I happen to know for a fact that it was written by the Vatican!"

The anecdote illustrates not only the absurdity of the Middle East conflict but how even the tiniest issue can be blown up out of all proportion.

Since I lived in Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians have endured the second Intifada, the wave of suicide bombings by militants, the construction of the security wall through the west bank and the complete breakdown in meaningful negotiations.

The Palestinians are deeply divided, with the population in Gaza under the control of the militant group Hamas. Israel is fixated on the threat posed by Iran, which the entire region fears is about to acquire nuclear weapons.

The term middle east peace process exists only as a phrase today but is otherwise meaningless.

And yet I can't in good faith leave you with such a depressing outlook.

I still have hope.

I was lucky enough during my time in Jerusalem to meet the late Yitzhak Rabin, a gruff former general, with a tough reputation among the Palestinians. He was the leader who came closer than any other Israeli to understanding that it was in the country's interest to do a deal with the Palestinians. He understood that Israel could not remain Jewish and democratic and hold on to the occupied territories. His handshake with Yasser Arafat in the white house rose garden should have signalled the beginning of the end of the conflict.

I remember how quickly the atmosphere changed when that peace deal was signed. Almost overnight Palestinians and Israelis discovered they had far more in common than they imagined. There was an economic boom in the west bank as Palestinian investors hurried to cash in on the peace dividend.

Precisely because he was a real peacemaker, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish militant and the peace process never really recovered.

Today I can't pretend to see any Yitzhak Rabins on the horizon, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong direction.

We are now in the midst of what is called the Arab spring. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt have been forced from office and with luck will be replaced by democratically elected leaders later this year.

Colonel Gaddafi is holding on to power in Libya by a thread. The president of Yemen is on his way out. The president of Syria has finally understood that he will have to reform or possibly face a similar fate.

If this is - as many of us hope - the equivalent of the Berlin wall coming down in the Middle East then there should be some real opportunities ahead.

For sure this is going to be a long and messy process but Arab dictators will no longer be able to hide behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an excuse for their failings. They will be too busy clinging to power to cause trouble elsewhere.

This is a real chance for Israel and the Arabs to find common ground.

When I lived in Jerusalem I would often receive calls from angry readers complaining about my negative coverage.

I remember one woman calling to tell me that I "always reported the bad news" and never the good things that happened.

I had to explain that that was the nature of my work. Good news by definition was not of much interest to my readers. I promised her, however, that one day when peace came to the land I would happily shut my office, pack my bags and move on, perhaps returning to cover Christmas and Easter celebrations in the holy land.

We are not there yet, but hopefully that day will come.

'Ten parts of beauty gave God to mankind; nine to Jerusalem and one to the remainder. Ten parts of sorrow gave God to mankind; nine to Jerusalem and one to the remainder.'

The words of the proverb may be a slight exaggeration - but not much. I know that a number of you have recently returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. I had the privilege to live in Jerusalem for five years and I have visited it on many occasions since. In spite of its familiarity, and in spite of the over-building that has blighted the landscape, each time I first catch sight of the old city my spirit somehow soars and I have a shock of surprise. I had forgotten how beautiful it is. I don't know if any of you had the same feeling when you were visiting the city last week.

Perhaps the most dramatic approach to Jerusalem is to travel up from Jericho cresting the Mount of Olives and then suddenly catch sight of the city spread out before you. This was the approach that Jesus himself took as he entered the city at the beginning of the last week of his human life. It is the story that we commemorate today - Palm Sunday. It is the story that we have just heard read as our Gospel, taken from Luke. Of course intriguingly, although we call today Palm Sunday, Luke - unlike the other three gospels - does not have any palms in his story. The cloaks are spread before Jesus, and the joyful shouts of praise of the disciples echo down the centuries, but there are no palms in Luke. Perhaps the palms spoke to this gospel writer too much of a simplistic triumphalism that he wanted to play down. But Luke does use a word in his account that none of the other gospel writers employs. It is a word that is central to the theme 'Blessed are the Peacemakers' that you have been exploring this Lent.

It is the word 'Peace'.

The disciples cried out 'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven.' It is Luke alone who incorporates the word 'Peace' into the acclamation of Jesus by the multitude. And then the same word comes again only a couple of verses later as Jesus agonises over the fate of the beloved city. 'If only you had recognised on this day the things that make for peace.'

Peace, its meaning, and the tragic lack of it, is at the heart of Luke's reflection on the city of Jerusalem, and on Jesus' final approach to it. I am sure that Luke, like us, was aware of the resonance and apparent association between the name of this city, Jerusalem, and the Hebrew word for Peace 'Shalom.' Centuries earlier the psalmists had played and punned on the link. 'Pray for the peace of Jerusalem' . 'Shiru shalom al-yerushaliyim'. For Jesus, for Luke and for us, it was a wry and tragic irony that this city called and named to be a vision of peace has so often become a theatre of war. Yet in this retelling of Jesus' approach and entry to the city , as told through the eyes of Luke, we are given both a profound insight into the nature of peace and of passion and the role of Jerusalem itself.

'Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven'. The words of praise shouted out by the disciples are a surprising echo of another chorus which was sung much earlier in Luke's story. For on the night of Jesus' nativity the heavenly choir also sang of peace - 'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours.' Notice the similarity of phrase, but also the difference. For while the angels had sung of peace on earth, the disciples now sing of peace in heaven. The difference may appear so slight that at first glance we hardly notice it, yet of course in reality there is a vast chasm, as vast as the gap between heaven and earth. Lulled by the beauty of the words we can forget to realise just how misguided the disciples' choice of phrase is - for in reality peace in heaven is none of our business, but peace on earth certainly is.

Oftentimes in the history of the church the followers of Jesus have tended to focus on 'peace in heaven' and perhaps our divided world is the result. We should rather be on the side of the angels and pledge ourselves to sing and strive for peace on earth. To do otherwise is to risk being sucked into the vortex of human anger and hostility of which Jerusalem, throughout its history, has so often seemed to be the sign.

Is this why Jesus' response to the song of his followers and the comment of the religious leaders is, according to Luke, simply to weep? I expect like me those of you who were in Jerusalem recently may have been fascinated and moved by the little church halfway up the Mount of Olives, the church known as the Dominus Flevit, the Lord wept, commemorating this particular moment of sorrow in Jesus' life.

When I lived in Jerusalem it was one of the special places where I loved to be. Shaped like a tear drop, it was already in process of construction when someone had the inspiration, daring for the 1950s, to situate it facing westwards, and then to leave the window behind the altar to be filled with plain glass and the outline of a chalice wrought in metal. It is a supremely appropriate place to stand and weep with Jesus over Jerusalem, and, as we approach Holy Week, the chalice also reminds us of the cost to God of the pain and alienation which Jerusalem symbolises and focuses , which means that Jesus' vocation will be to drink the cup of suffering to the dregs.

Listen again to those unforgettable three verses in which Jesus' sorrows over the tragedy of Jerusalem.

'As he came near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, 'If you, even you, had only recognised on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognise the time of your visitation.'

To understand what is being said here one needs to be aware just how well Luke knew his Old Testament, for the words in Jesus' mouth allude to one of the psalms, Psalm 137. In Psalm 137 the psalmist also weeps: for Jerusalem, but not in Jerusalem, because he is in exile in Babylon, six centuries before the birth of Christ.

'By the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept, when I remembered you, O Zion.'

The psalmist swears his fidelity to and love for the city... and he ends with a terrifying curse against the children of his oppressors - may they be crushed to pieces on the rocks. His impassioned love for the city had led him down the bitter and dangerous road of hatred. And Jesus wept because of all the Psalm 137s that have been prayed over Jerusalem throughout history, whether by Muslim or Christian or Jew. And that appalling curse - that Babylon's children may be 'crushed' to the ground - is actually echoed in Jesus' words in - only now of course it is Jerusalem's own children that will suffer the fate.

Unlike the author of Psalm 137 Jesus did not utter the words as a savage curse but rather as a sad recognition and a salutary warning that the kind of love that leads to the degree of hate expressed in Psalm 137 is destructive and dangerous - but ultimately most destructive to the party who is doing the hating. The curses of Psalm 137, Luke seems to be suggesting, fall back on those who are doing the cursing. What does this mean for this city, holy to three world faiths, which has so often been loved so hatefully?

One of the ways that Christians sometimes reflect on the Cross is to see it as the point in time and place where the cost to God of our human rejection of his generous and profligate love is made visible at a moment in history. As one of our Anglican prayers of confession puts it, 'We have wounded your love and marred your image in us.' We human beings continually wound God's love, but somehow the Cross enables - forces - us to look on the consequences of this in a way we usually seek to conceal from ourselves. Normally human beings cannot endure so much reality. The Cross is the moment when both the vulnerability and the transforming power of this, God's love, is revealed.

Yet one of the most exquisitely painful - and dangerous - ways in which we can reject love is by claiming to demonstrate its substitute - that sense of fierce possession of which Jerusalem itself has so often been the recipient, and of which Jerusalem's people have often been guilty. Jerusalem is indeed the place where God is crucified by the desires and aspirations and passionately held beliefs of men and women. Few things can be as dangerous as religion, or at least religion which has somehow got perverted.

But the attraction of Jerusalem also compels human beings, to surrender themselves to a vulnerable intimacy before God in which we can no longer avoid the examination of ourselves and our motives, no longer evade the searing of the Cross and its healing.

Jerusalem, I believe, is a sacrament of what it means to be human. By that I mean that Jerusalem shows up visibly and physically the best and the worst of the human condition. On the one hand it is a visible symbol of our longing, our highest and best desires, our love of beauty and our desire to worship God. But it is also a powerful reminder of how this best can go so tragically wrong - precisely because we find it so difficult to love without also seeking to possess. We want God on our own terms, housed in our own building, from which we will exclude all those who do not see things quite as we do.

Jerusalem is the place where this conundrum is squeezed into a sort of prism, so that it can be viewed in sharp focus. Yet there is a mysterious way in which Jerusalem does not simply unveil these realities about the human condition but also, I believe, challenges us at the same time to address them - to truly become the human beings God created us to be, in God's image and likeness, as God's partners in the creation and repairing of our world. And then perhaps one day Jerusalem will have earned its name - vision of peace.

Lord, teach us to weep
As Jesus wept
So that we can sow peace with tears
And reap with songs of joy.
Send us out weeping, Lord,
Carrying seeds to sow
And let us return with the fruits of peace.
So teach us to weep, Lord,
As Jesus wept.
Richard Becher

O Lord soften the stone hearts
of those who preach and practise
intolerance and bigotry;
as the sun's setting glow
softens the stone walls
of your Holy City, Jerusalem.
Lord, the rocky hills, the valleys,
the deserts and the sea shores
are filled with the echoes of centuries of pain.
Lord, bring peace to house and village.
Comfort the mothers who fret
and those who mourn.
Lord, keep strong the twisted old root
of the olive tree,
and protect the young vine.

Lord of water and stone,
of bread and wine,
Lord of the resurrection,
feed hope, and bring peace
to the wracked but beautiful holy land.
Gerald Butt

Richard Fyjis-Walker

First Warning

Second Warning

1. Peace comes not out of the gun but from the heart. Yet - first paradox already noted by our Rector in his introduction - security is a necessary condition for Peace - often needs armed protection. Hence Peace Keepers who nevertheless are rarely Peace Makers - not even UN Secretaries Genera.l
2. Peacemakers are blessed because without them the entire world - rather than as now just one half or more of it - would be mired in Enmity that, as the dissident Liu Xiabo puts it, incites cruel mortal struggles and destroys tolerance and humanity. Putting society at risk.
3. Fear, Greed and Human Nature are the three greatest obstacles confronting Peace makers. Fear begets fear - Governments fear people; people fear Governments and you have Libya - or China. Greed; coveting other peoples resources is the greatest cause of conflict and because of human nature has been with us from the beginning. It will not change until human nature changes - if ever.

1. The Peace in that most wonderful liturgical phrase; that passeth all understanding; essential for achieving the inner certainty that bolsters the fortitude often necessary for a peacemaker to persevere even to the end.

   THE TRAP: this peace is internal and by definition undefinable. Hence open to human interpretation and error. The certainty with which this floods a person can feed arrogance; be used for good or evil; Jihadists and Crusaders must be among those most at peace with what they are doing.



2. Peace in Our Time is External - what the entire world most keenly desires - since we certainly have only one life on this earth - and the immediate objective of the real Peace Makers.

   THE TRAP: The siren call of immediate peace can tempt ignoble compromise for instance Chamberlain in 1939

3. GW Bush or even Muammar Qadhafi peace: With it My friend; Against it My Enemy. A prescription for conflict and oppression.

Next three types Peace Makers : Negotiators; Builders; Impostors. All have their role.

1. Negotiators have the task at all levels from the international to the personal of peering through the fog of competing interests - as thick as that of war - Discerning opportunities for conciliation; distinguishing between justified compromise and Appeasement; persuading opponents that peace is in their mutual interests.
2. Builders are those who work on the ground to provide individuals with sufficient confidence to be able to live in peace and unenvious of their neighbours. Law for the lawless, water for the waterless, education for the ignorant, equality for the unequal, prosperity for the poor and so on.

   Incidentally Builders rather than Proselytisers make the best Missionaries. But most numerous of the builders are those who make daily breakfast for their families throughout the world. They fashion the building blocks of peace from the very beginning.
   



3. Impostors, who can have their limited uses, are those who pose as peacemakers but in reality seek to turn Clausewitz on his head and regard peacemaking as pursuing their war aims by other means. For instance Kissinger trying to snatch political victory from military defeat at the Vietnam peace negotiations. Most of the threatened regimes in the Middle East are Impostors But - another paradox - if they provide sufficient breathing space for the real peaceseekers to prevail the Impostors will have performed a valuable function.

Tools and Characteristics needed by Peace Makers

First the realisation that Peace is neither Punishment nor Retribution or even Justice - think of the misnamed Peace Treaty of Versailles. Peace is Truth, Forgiveness and Reconciliation.

Next needed are the qualities described in the Buddha's vision of the Bodhissathva;

" Always patient, is gentle, agreeable, never violent, never gets alarmed, not attached to anything, perceives reality in all things, not acting, not discriminating"

To these I would add Truth and accurate Information - vital for any peacemaking.

Empathy by which I mean understanding where others are coming from and as important, realising the effect of themselves, the peacemaker, on the others. This is vital for Negotiators and Builders alike. And indeed Diplomats.

Had Western leaders had better information about Afghanistan and been able to empathise with - not condone - the Pushtun Taliban they need not have made the mistake of conflating them with, and indeed forcing them on to Al-Qaeda. Negotiation might have been possible earlier. Think too of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and Indonesia and the Philippines.

Fearless Intellectual Clarity.

Rigorous Impartiality.

The ability to inspire Trust the essential glue of Reconciliation.

Perseverance.

Non attachment to the peacemakers own interests, especially economic and strategic.

Inventiveness.

And all the other characteristics of the perfect person...

Conclusion

Certainly there are few if any among our western leaders but there are some who are identifiable and a vast majority "for whom there is no memorial".

Of that majority are the myriad breakfasters who leave their tables, take up their brooms and go to sweep for peace as in Cairo.

Identifiable today, I would think of Mandela, Bishop Tutu, Liu Xiabo, Aung San su Shi Greg Mortensen - Builder of Schools in tribal Pakistan; the Gaza doctor Izzedin Abuelaish, author of I will not hate amongst others.

And among us, I would add as a builder; our Rector.

Gene Sharp
· Wikipedia article
· Download "From Dictatorship to Democracy"
(PDF at aeinstein.org)

Is there any conclusion ? Only that the Peacemaker's lot is not an easy one. But if we are ever to follow the most profound of Christ's exhortations to love one another- even a little - let alone as ourselves there must be no end of Peacemaking or Peacemakers - truly the Children of God.