World Interfaith Harmony Week: February 1-7, 2021

Dear friends in faith and siblings in humanity,

As leaders of Canadian churches in ‘full communion’, we wish to encourage your observance of the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW) from February 1-7, 2021.

Begun in 2010, the annual WIHW has today become a preeminent opportunity for raising up the imperative of dialogue between religions and spiritual communities of all kinds for the sake of greater understanding, peaceful coexistence, and mutual collaboration for the common good. Its basic premise is that regardless of religion, faith, or system of belief, there is a common affirmation shared by many: that our highest convictions about life and meaning impact not only ourselves, but also compel us to love of our neighbours.

In 2012, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) endorsed a request to encourage the local observance of WIHW each year among people and congregations in their personal and communal prayers. Though in a less formalized way, members of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) have also engaged in the week for several years through local events, services, and celebrations of various kinds. Our mutual commitments to www.acommonword.ca, made last year at this time, include lifting up WIHW. We have come to understand that WIHW is in agreement with the original vision of Indigenous elders for this Land, and we are happy to show respect to them in the respect we show to others.

We feel it is highly significant that WIHW takes place at the end of the liturgical season of Epiphany. Each year on January 6th we are reminded of a meeting between the child Jesus and some Seekers of Wisdom from a far away land. As followers of Christ in a religiously diverse time, we hear a call to cultivate encounter and relationship with neighbours who journey along different spiritual and religious paths. Histories and incidents of hostility and violence between faith communities amplify the significance of cultivating relationships as a contribution to the work of making peace.

The urgency for interreligious awareness and cooperation to respond to the many challenges facing the one human family continues to grow, and we believe it is a critical part of Christian discipleship today to commit ourselves to the way of genuine encounter and peacemaking with people of other faiths and beliefs. Together we therefore wholeheartedly endorse the global celebrations of WIHW, and encourage the members of our churches to embrace its vision and aims as a faithful expression of their love of God turned outward into love for all others.

We offer the following list of possibilities for people and congregations to explore together when looking for ways to learn more and to get involved, not only during WIHW itself but throughout the year:

Finally, as Christian leaders, we invite the members of our churches to consider praying with us daily, in both their private and gathered prayers, during the week of Feb. 1-7, 2021, using these or similar words:

O God, Creator of all, you have made us in our great diversity out of the abundance of your love. For the sake of that same love, you invite the whole of creation into your welcoming embrace through your beauty and wisdom made manifest in the world – the same beauty and wisdom made known in the person of Jesus Christ. Grant that those who seek to draw closer towards his humble and hospitable way may also draw closer to our neighbours, that together we might share more fully in the peace and harmony that is your will for each one. Amen.

[signed] +Susan C Johnson
The Rev. Susan Johnson
National Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada

[signed] +Linda Nicholls
The Most Rev. Linda Nicholls,
Archbishop and Primate, Anglican Church of Canada

[signed] +Mark MacDonald
The Most Rev. Mark MacDonald
National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop

Matthew 10:40-42

Rewards

40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

John 15:12-17

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

John 21:15-19

Jesus and Peter

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Luke 11:33-36

The Light of the Body

33 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel basket; rather, one puts it on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but if it is unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. 36 But if your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.”

Matthew 8:1-4

Jesus Cleanses a Man

8 When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him, and there was a man with a skin disease who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be made clean!” Immediately his skin disease was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”