[Washington Post] Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Primate of Southern Africa and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, delivered a millennial sermon at Washington National Cathedral on New Year's Eve 1999. He received a standing ovation for his address to the congregation of 1,800 people.

Introduction

In his sermon, Archbishop Tutu contrasted the "unending vista of pristine days" that stretches out ahead of us into the future, with the failures, atrocities, exploitation and abuses of the past. He recalled the suffering and injustices of slavery, apartheid, Nazism, fascism, communism, conflict and war.

"Human beings created in the image of God," said the Archbishop, "have had their God-given dignity trodden carelessly under foot and their noses rubbed in the dust, heartlessly, by those who claimed to be superior beings by virtue of their skin colour, their ethnicity."

He acknowledged that religion had often "fuelled and exacerbated sectarian strife" and adopted extreme and exclusive positions that had given religion a bad name. He also referred to the preventable disease and hunger that stalked the world, and the environmental devastation that has been a feature of the last century.

Peace a real possibility

"The catalogue of woes is devastating and would be overwhelming had it been the whole story. Mercifully, wonderfully, exhilaratingly, it isn't," Archbishop Tutu told his listeners, as he outlined some of the successes of civilisation. Slavery had been abolished, freedom and democracy established in many countries, totalitarian regimes had been overcome, and apartheid in South Africa ended. "The world has marvelled that someone could be in prison for 27 years and emerge unscathed by bitterness, to become an icon of magnanimity, forgiveness and reconciliation, as Nelson Mandela has."

Moves towards peace had also been made in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, and other areas of human achievement in music, politics and sport were also to be celebrated.

The Archbishop recognised the enormous positive contribution of science in fighting disease, improving communication, and helping us to understand "what it means to be responsible stewards of the good Earth."

God believes in us

"God has brought us to this place and this time," Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminded those gathered in the National Cathedral, "because God believes in us. It's fantastic! God gives up on none of us."

"We have - all of us - an extraordinary capacity for evil. And each one of us ought to keep saying: 'There but for the grace of God go I.'" The Archbishop continued, "But that's not the whole truth about us. The most important truth, the one that God holds onto, is that we have an extraordinary capacity for good."

God has a dream

Suggesting that the turn of the century, the start of a new millennium was the opportunity for a new start in life, the Archbishop saw a fundamental part of that new beginning should be the realisation of God's dream for us to be one family.

"But that's the one lesson God wants us to learn: You are fam-i-ly. Not as a figure of speech, but as the most real thing about us. That we're members one with another. In this family there are no outsiders," said Archbishop Tutu. "All, all, all belong: black, white, yellow, grey, rich, poor, educated, not educated, beautiful, not-so-beautiful, lesbian, gay, straight."

The Archbishop challenged the church that if we really believe that we are one family, we would not tolerate the expenditure on "budgets of death and destruction, when we know just a small, small fraction of that would enable God's children everywhere to have clean water, enough to eat, adequate education, accessible health care, safe home environment."

Encouraging his listeners to discover that we are one family, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on Christians to realise their potential. "God has no one except you and you and you and you and me to have God realise God's dream..."

Archbishop Tutu concluded his sermon with the words of St Paul: "And if God be for us, who can be against us?"