Opening Service for New Parliament

Bishop of Copenhagen preaches to members old and new

Prior to the opening of parliament in Denmark a church service is held in Christiansborg Slotskirke. The preacher is chosen by the Minister for Church Affairs and the service is transmitted live by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

On 4th October an unusually large number of MPs were present, and many of the public arrived in vain a whole hour before the service, such was the interest. The sermon this year was preached by the Bishop of Copenhagen, Peter Skov-Jakobsen. Church News brings the sermon in translation below.

 

The sermon
“Trust, peace, mildness, self-control, and love. This is how faith manifests itself and sets humankind completely free. Right now there really is room to think thoughts of love and perform deeds of love. Right now there is room to give one’s life, fight one’s battles, engage in discussions, and move the times towards truth and justice. Plus one thing more that is important for faith but also very much for democracy too, namely to practise 'a well-developed ability to be attentive' (Knud Hansen).

 

The pious Rabbi Shushan has taught us that in the world to come no one will ask us why we were not Jesus or Socrates, Moses or Karl Marx; we shall only be asked why we were not ourselves. The world of imitation is a dead one.

 

To be human is to develop an attention to the other person – and to other people. It is to live up to one’s ideals and become oneself. It requires us to dare to love and to show trust. When we do so, we are also moved by our fellow human beings and we are ourselves moved towards them. A trust is created which can be turned into the patient conversation and the respectful opposition of democracy. For trust, love, and freedom are not a matter of course. And democracy is not a given.

 

We are used to the world seeing us, the Nordic countries, as models, and the admiration of others of course slips very easily into our hearts and minds. But we also know about being paralysed, and about being terrified. We shall never forget this summer’s carnage in Norway. That was an insult to our democracy which can only be overcome by a lasting joy, by a dogged desire for freedom and humanity.

 

We build sanctuaries – places that we think can accommodate what is true, everlasting, original, and what gives meaning – sanctuaries that we can enter and leave. They can be especially beautiful and testify to centuries of thought and hope. They are everyday houses, bearing the mark of our desire for beauty but nevertheless everyday houses that we can enter in order to be inspired to leave. We build a tower, a spire, or a minaret, and often we build a dome to arch over the sanctuary, or we extend the space with arched bays. We build houses that seek to make contact with the other space.

 

I should like to remind you today of the new parliament in Berlin. The old building from the 19th century has been crowned with a new dome, designed by the British architect, Norman Foster, which reflects in a huge glass cone the daylight from the parliamentary house below. The elected members sit just under the sky, and they are reminded that only the sky is the limit for freedom’s possibilities. They are not confined, but are open to the world and the shared reality. They are also reminded of another condition of democracy, namely that everything should be open to the light of day.

 

If you walk around up in the dome, you have a magnificent view of Berlin and you are reminded that the purpose of democracy is the sharing of a common vision. As you walk up and down, you can also follow everyone else on their journey in the hundreds of mirrors around you. These reflections reveal another condition: we look at things differently depending on where we are. No one sees the same thing in the same way. We all see fragments, or reflections of fragments. We are all in the same building, in the same society, but no one sees the whole picture. And so, we can try to put those reflections together as best we can.

 

This reminds us that when we are debating, we must trust that our opponent is saying what he or she actually thinks – and not make up word-traps and fantasies. Otherwise it is impossible to put the fragments together. We see things differently, experience differently, but we have an obligation to live together, to speak to one another with patience and honesty. We see the world in fragments, and that must make us want to talk to those who see other fragments than ours. For we all dream of a better society. That is how it is by day!

 

But it is not always daytime. The darkness falls as evening draws on. Whoever drives past the Berlin Parliament at night gains the particularly instructive experience that as darkness fills the city, light streams out of the parliament! For we know it can be dark, very dark, when the light of democracy is put out. The light of love, truth, trust, and freedom must stream from the highest assembly in every country.

 

You who have been elected by the people need to know that you have our respect, and that we trust you to tell us what you see, and to say what you mean. We trust that you will do your best for our community. Our respect will not lessen if you find it necessary to remind us that society is a complex dimension. Discussion, debate, and diversity challenge us not to listen just to our own supporters; in a democracy we must hold on to our opponents in respectful conversation.

 

When Vaclav Havel gave his New Year speech in 1990, he quoted the country’s first president, Tomas Masaryk, who said, ”Jesus, not Caesar.” He meant by this that his country had the opportunity to introduce something new into European and global politics. ”Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas.”

 

He introduced the idea that politics should be based on morality, namely a longing to contribute to the joy of the community rather than deceive or violate it. ”Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be not simply the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals and pragmatic manoeuvering, but that it can also be the art of the impossible, that is, the art of improving ourselves and the world.” (Havel)

 

So... Not Cæsar, but Jesus: “This is my command: You must love one another.”
If we follow this command, we shall not be taken prisoner by our prejudices!
We shall be made free to meet our fellow human beings.

Translated by Edward Broadbridge

Photo: the Danish Parliament, www.sxc.hu

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