“They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” (Isaiah 2, v4)
I first heard about the Throne of Weapons through Neil MacGregor’s wonderful radio series and book “A History of the World in 100 objects”. It is a chair made entirely of real weapon parts. It was made in Mozambique by an artist named Kester from weapons used in the civil war which took place following the country’s independence in 1975. The back of the chair is made of two G3 rifles from Portugal, Mozambique’s colonial master for nearly 500 years. The rest of the chair is made from dismembered guns from communist bloc countries; Soviet AK47 rifles, and others from Poland, Czechoslovakia and North Korea.
The chair tells a tale of bloody conflict between competing military groups with competing ideologies. It tells a tale of over a million who died, millions who were made refugees and 300,000 war orphans left in need of care.
But the chair also tells another story – a story of hope. As part of a peace project following the civil war, former combatants were invited to surrender their weapons under an amnesty. In return, they received practical tools to help them build a new life; hoes, sewing machines, bicycles, roofing materials. The weapons were decommissioned and turned into works of art like this.
This project was started by Bishop Dinis Sengulane of the Christian Council of Mozambique. Bishop Sengulane saw that so many of our monuments glorified war. Why not, he said to local artists, use your skills to glorify peace? As inspiration he cited the above well-known passage from Isaiah, saying that the “purpose of the project is to disarm the minds of people and to disarm the hands of people.”
Bishop Sengulane was supported in this project by Christian Aid. This is one of many peace-building projects that Christian Aid, and many other humanitarian agencies, support on an ongoing basis. It can be easy to forget that in order to build a fair and just society, we need a solid and lasting basis of peace. As anyone with experience of communities trying to rebuild following times of conflict can testify, peace-building is a continuous process. It is also hard. It demands the best of us; our tolerance, our creativity and flexibility, our persistence, our hope and most importantly, our forgiveness.
So, in this Christian Aid Week, let us pray to Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to uphold the work of all humanitarian agencies who are finding creative and new ways of building peace. Let us give thanks for Bishop Sengulane, and for Kester and other artists who bring their talents to inspire us with works of art such as this. And let us pray for all those working to build lasting peace throughout our world.
We pray for those lives,
made in your image,
damaged by violence.
We pray for those in authority
that they may use their power
to bind wounds, heal relationships and find common ground.
We pray for a transforming peace,
turning fear into trust,
pain into hope
and doubt into confidence
for a better future.
We pray for world leaders
that they may establish structures for justice,
protecting human dignity,
enabling reconciliation
and building God's kingdom.
Amen
A prayer for peace from CAFOD.
Philip Clarke
[Picture: Throne of Weapons by Kester, British Museum]
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