In John 17:21, Jesus prayed for the Church, that we may be one just as He and the Father are one. The bond or relationship that He prayed about is of such depth that just as the Father is in Jesus, so is Jesus also in the Father. This is the kind of the bond of love that we as the Church and the Body of Christ are created by God to have and, in Jesus’ own words, “so that the world may believe that You have sent Me”.
In 1908, Paul Wattson proposed January 18th-25th each year as the week when churches in the Northern Hemisphere come together as one Body of Christ in celebration, thanksgiving, and prayer for Christian unity. This event commemorates not just prayers and unity, but extends to the love that Christ has called us to have for one another and is a very much looked-forward to prayer service at the start of every year.
The tradition of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in Malaysia went back many years, with the Catholics, Council of Churches Malaysia (CCM) denominations or members (such as Anglicans, Lutherans, Mar Thoma, Methodists, Presbyterians, Syrian Orthodox, Salvation Army, Malaysian CARE, etc) and National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF) congregations, all taking turns in hosting an ecumenical prayer service where the diverse denominations, members or congregations, the different parts of the Body of Christ that is the Malaysian Church, come together in one corporate prayer service and worship. For this year, it was the turn of the Lutheran Church to host again, with the Malaysian Church taking up this year’s calling in Matthew 22: 37-40 – “to love God with all our hearts, and souls, and mind, and to love our neighbours as ourselves”.
The tone was set for the whole celebration through an emulation of a tradition that has been practised in Burkina Faso for a long time, where a calabash is used to share water with guests who arrived tired from their long journeys. The practice expresses welcome, hospitality and fellowship. After the visitor has been refreshed, conversation can begin and the purpose of the visit can be expressed.
As the Congregation gathered and entered into the prayer service, water from a jug to symbolically represent the calabash was shared by Bishop Steven Lawrence, as a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malaysia host community, with the representatives of the other churches present as they walked in at the end of the procession. All were welcomed in the same way as Abraham welcomed the three visitors and provided water for their refreshment in Genesis 18:1-8. The Processional was accompanied by the hymn “All Hail the Power of Jesus’s Name” in recognition of the Lordship of Jesus over the Church.
Bishop Steven Lawrence as the host for the celebration then opened the prayer service with an Invitation to Pray, followed by the hymn “O Love” led by the Cantus Musicus with Rev Balan Moses as the master of ceremony and Rev David Devapirian as the pastor of the local church.
At various times throughout the prayer service, Cantus Musicus (performing the songs “O Love” (video below) and “The Meditations of My Heart”, both by Elaine Hagenberg, a Lutheran) and the Myanmar Children’s Choir (“Pie Jesu” Merciful Jesus by Jenkins and “Cum santo Spiritu” In The Power of the Holy Spirit by Johann Sebastian Bach) led the worship.
A Litany of Praise and Thanksgiving was led by Rev Richard Tok Kee Meng and Elder Lim Kar Hor, General Secretary of Gereja Presbyterian Malaysia, representing the Presbyterian Church, and Prayers of Confession were led by Rev Fr Andrew Manickam, Kathleen Ponnachan, Kevin Chung, Tianne Pereira, and Christina Susan Augustine from the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Kuala Lumpur.
Many passages from the Bible were reflected upon. Among these was the aforementioned hospitality of Abraham towards the three guests. Genesis 18: 1-8 was read and led by Bishop Dr T Jeyakumar from the Methodist Church in Malaysia, a Responsorial Psalm based on Psalm 138 by Rev Dr Vijendra Daniel from St Paul’s Anglican Church, and a reading of Luke 10: 25-37, the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan, by Bishop Thomas Low from the Lutheran Church in Malaysia.
The Sermon was delivered by Bishop Steven Lawrence. Bishop Lawrence spoke on the injunction from Matthew 22: “You Shall Love the Lord Your God and Your Neighbour With All Your Hearts, Souls, and Minds”.
The sermon expressed three main points:
- We cannot love God by our efforts or please Him by doing good work or through our own strength. Our ability to love comes from experiencing God’s love and we must allow God to love us first (John 3:16). We must first surrender ourselves to God and allow Him to love us as we are; in our brokenness and woundedness, and in our imperfectness. Remember; God loves us despite our imperfections.
- Only the love of God in Christ enables us to love others. Without experiencing the undeserved love of God passively in our lives, we cannot love our neighbours actively. Without Christ in us, we will never look at the woundedness or brokenness of our neighbours. Experiencing the love of God, we can love others.
- We are called to look beyond our close circles (family, church, denomination, etc), and to live scriptural lives. “Let us love one another” (1 John 4:7-12; John 17:21). We are to live so that we may be one in loving God and our neighbours.
The sermon was followed by a moment of reflective silence before an Affirmation of Love was led by The Very Rev Cor Episcopa Philip Thomas from the Orthodox Syrian Church taking turns with Rev Mathew Punnoose from the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. A RM2000.00 offertory was collected for Malaysian CARE in respect of their ministry with the HIV patients in Malaysia. It was handed over to Elder Frederick Foo, a representative from Malaysian CARE, after the prayer service.
Each year, the Prayers of Intercession has been a highlight where it is conducted as a corporate initiative with the participation of every denomination member or congregation present. This year, Captain Andrew Lo from the Salvation Army, Rev Andy Chi from NECF, Rev Ronald Yap from the Methodist Church in Malaysia, Rev Caleb Santhosam from the Lutheran Church, Elder Frederick Foo from Malaysian CARE and Rev David Devapirian from the Lutheran Church all took turns to lead the prayers. Archbishop Julian Leow of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur then sealed the service through the Lord’s Prayer.
Bishop Steven Lawrence closed the service with a prayer and all the Bishops and Heads of Churches conducted the Benediction and Sending. The jug to symbolically represent the calabash of water was then brought forward and held up before the Congregation as they blessed the Congregation with the following words:
“Refreshed by the water of life, let us go forth to love God, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, united in Christ and enlivened by the Holy Spirit” and everyone responded: “Everything we can do together, let’s do it! Amen!”
The closing hymn was “One Voice”. As it is with every year since its inception, the Ecumenical Prayer Service was a powerful and encouraging time of worship, prayer, and fellowship among the various Christian denominations members and congregations in our nation; the different parts of the Body of Christ that is the Malaysian Church. It brought together many heritages from the various Christian denominations members and congregations in a common worship as one Body of Christ, and there was much fellowship at the time of refreshment that followed the service which transcended every denominational line.
Members of the Organising Committee were: Bishop Steven Lawrence, Rev Balan Moses, Rev David Devapirian (Lutheran), Maria Yan (Catholic), Diana Tham (Methodist), Elder Lim Kar Hor and Elder Steven Fung (Presbyterian).
The full service can be followed through the YouTube video below:
Christianity Malaysia would like to thank the organisers of the event, and in particular Elder Steven Fung, for their hospitality and kind assistance throughout the production of this report article. All photos kindly contributed by Elder Fung. More photos – including video recordings from the event – can be found at CCM Youth Network’s Facebook Group page ( http://tinyurl.com/5d7fzmrx ; http://tinyurl.com/bdzyuhs8 )
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