We need to be conscious of the very essence of our nature. A Christian community is an inclusive community.  The process of revelation in the history of salvation has taken the long road to ensure that God’s chosen people are to be a blessing to all nations. Ethnically, culturally, socially, the definition of the people called Israel gradually enhanced and did away with the boundaries of ethnicity, race, nation, etc.,  The lineage of Jesus, as the  descendant of David, the messianic lineage clearly shows that the purity of the Israelites as a race is no longer in blood and  flesh or territory, but the purity of heart that can extend the love of God to each and everyone.  A love that comprehends and includes everyone.

This sense of inclusiveness  is manifested at the Cross. The son of man  is lifted   up draws so that all men will be drawn to himself. The nature of this inclusiveness is daily remembered in the recitation of  our Lord’s prayer. It  enlarges our possibilities  and vision beyond boundaries determined by our subjective inherited categories of identity.

As a Church we need to be Srilankan.  Our task is to give expression to this inclusiveness, affirming the security and dignity of every human being which becomes the basis for a new identity. An identity that moves away from self-centeredness to selflessness.

It is in our commitment to reject and condemn  all forms of violence, to work, serve, and toil to remove hatred, enmity and suspicion and to forge ahead a new basis for our identity, that which is inclusive, accommodative and accountable to each and everyone that we fulfill the task of transformation, where we are transformed and be a transforming agent.

Let us commit ourselves to the Mission of transformation and pray to God, “God in your grace, transform the world’.