Living sacrifice — Dying to Live

A lot of Lambeth has been about the hard reality of being a global church in the real world. Great joy of living together has entailed great pain arising from the demands of our conflicting cultures, in which we have received the gospel. Christ’s dark victory over this is not yet fully realised among us. Most of the time, functionally, we don't have to take other people as seriously as ourselves. These two weeks, we mostly did. We talk about living between warring factions as living sacrifice. Some Anglicans do that, literally.

The most moving part of the final service in Canterbury Cathedral was near the end. The Melanesian Martyrs of 2003 have been on many of our hearts and minds, partly because some of our chaplains were personal friends. For them, living between warring factions as a witness to peace, brought death. We were reminded of them in the opening Cathedral Eucharist, as their brothers brought us the gospel in a boat. Their names were read and we commended them to God at the end; an immensely haunting Litany of saints and martyrs was sung by fellow religious from Melanesia, carrying their names to the altar of the Chapel that keeps alive the names of saints and martys of our age at the West end of the Cathedral. As our brothers disappeared from sight, processing up the choir and past Augustine’s chair, the song hung high in the arches above us, and we were still.

May these brothers’ prayers, example and fellowship show us how to be people of peace in a world of warring factions. May they be a reality checkpoint, a sign of what it means to follow Christ, inspiration for our journey.

Demonic Buddhist Chant: Really?

All sorts of trenchant reaction has followed the news that the Bishop of Colombo’s sermon at the Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday concluded with a Buddhist Chant which one commentator described as “demonic.” Another ruled, quick as a flash,

The inclusion of this chant is unconscionable. The orthodox who are there should immediately vacate.

Among more reflective comments on this disturbing story, Bishop Robert Duncan said the inclusion of the chant was “very, very troubling” since it was an “invocation of something other than the God we know... to have a Buddhist chant at an Anglican sermon does not reflect the God we believe in.”

I strongly endorse Cardinal Dias’ rejection of syncretism in an Indian context. My Sinhala is not what it could be. The gospel says that if you have an issue with a brother you owe it to yourself and to your God talk it through calmly and directly with them first. Today I was able to discuss this chant with Bishop de Chickera. Much Sri Lankan culture is essentially of Buddhist origin, he explained. What did the words mean? I asked. Four verses:

I take refuge in God the Father
I take refuge in God the Son
I take refuge in God the Holy Spirit
I take refuge in the One Triune God.

I am surprised that the Bishop of Pittsburgh finds this a deeply troubling invocation of a God he does not know. I am sorry if it does not reflect the God he believes in. I rejoice to know, and better still, to be known through and through by this God, and to believe in him. Over fifty years he has been my creator, saviour, and sanctifier, and I know no other.

When we rush to judgment of others we do not know, like or understand, especially on the internet, especially on the basis of rumour, it is easy to make complete fools of ourselves.

Sufficient Grace. Power to change?

Joyce Kohl says “White signifies purity, joy and glory; red bravery, fire, blood, and charity.”

Combining the purity of white and the the passion of red gives us pink - the color of gentle love and desire... Pink signifies gentleness, and new birth.

Thank you for sharing that, Joyce. Gentleness and new birth may be tomorrow’s good news. Today, Canterbury Cathedral was a sea of red and white, paradise for Arsenal supporters, a world of languages and cultures, fears and hopes reaching out, as one, for the one true bread.

Like the liturgy, the Sermon was absolutely on the money. It didn’t not to duck the hard stuff, but invited us to break bread over it and gve it to God. Tomorrow we turn to the serious business of seeking a new way forward from God. The gospel principle is that if anyone has a problem with another Christian you talk it through with them, not at them or about them. Now we have the opportunity to talk directly together, exactly as Jesus told his disciples to do. In a broken world, perhaps working this way is a sign of hope. Duleep de Chickera, bishop of Colombo was speaking out of the experience of violence and intimidation, and Sri Lanka’s need to find another way.

The gospel for the day was the parable of the wheat and the tares — challenging the damaging fantasy of the “pure” church.

There can and there must be no uprooting, simply because if we attempt this game of uprooting the unrighteous then, my dear sisters and brothers, none of us will remain. We are all a mix of the wheat and the weeds. The wisdom of these words suggest that we stay together because we draw from a common soil, a common tradition, a common heritage. We are what we are regardless of our differences, because of our common life together and our origins. Transformation comes in this interaction, and transformation must come from within.

He left us with three practical challenges:

1. To be real about dsciplines of self scrutiny. I meet people who are tremendous experts on what is wrong with everybody else, and what is right about themselves. Away from here there’s been a lot of hostile terminology in the air — terms like “revisionist” and “fundamentalist” which people do not use of themselves voluntarily. Whenever you hear these terms you know the user is refusing to listen to the other person in their own terms, indulging in childish name calling. More significantly, there’s a great need to turn to where God is, whose authentic voice is characteristically heard in the silence than in the fire or the earthquake. We are all called to self-awareness.
2. To live unity in diversity, as symbolised in this liturgy. The world is dying of anger, party and faction. We are called to live the life of Pentecost in all its glorious diversity, not simply play the world’s game of faction, blame and spite.
3. To be prophetic. This means being real about things as they are, but refusing to give up hope God could remake them. It means being a voice for the voiceless, and not giving up. The key to prophecy is language that is God-inspired, not self serving.

So that’s the challenge. Time now to see if, as well as talk about this stuff, and be inspired by it, we can actually do it. God’s word says his grace is sufficient for us, and his power is made perfect in weakness.

Benedictine Roots, Christlike fruits

Canterbury Cathedral has deep Benedictine roots; Communities following the rule established and nurtured it, and the present management explicitly avow Benedictine principles of Christ-centredness and hospitality. This spirit has certainly come acrosss to many of us sharing their hospitality these two days. It’s been a joy to meet up with other bishops nurtured and inspired in the rule.

In a throwaway coment this morning Rowan described bishops’ calling to be “Christlike strangers.” Apostles, he suggested, are people on the road, needing to listen and be real about where they are, but never taking on the entirety of anywhere particular, for the sake of sustaining the greater journey. They need developing stereophonic hearing — one ear for the Word and one, my phrase not his, for the world. I found myself asking Benedict’s prime question: “how, then do I prefer nothing to Christ?” Benedict shows us, from his rich experience of community life, the futility and destructiveness of egotism, faction, malicious talk, and the primacy of conversion, stability and obedience (Rule cap. 58).

So here’s my lightbulb moment of the afternoon: To be doing the work of God, we need the kind of radical obedience that is willing to become the kind of community of people God calls us to be. So we are formed in Christ as a community, and Christ in us, that the world may believe...

Jesus reveals himself in... us?

Canterbury Cathedral’s community have been fantastically open and generous in making all the resources of the place available to us. Rowan has gven us two half hours of Bible teaching, to lead into a wandering, thoughtful, slightly arty, smorgasbord reflection and retreat experience in one of the most amazing holy places in the world.

In Galatians 1:15 Paul says God reveals himself not “to” me (safe option in most translations) but (Greek) “in” me. So every calling or vocation is an invitation to become, gradually, a place where God’s life is revealed, his promise and judgment. We sometimes meet fellow disciples who make us realise, with devastating clarity, how far we need to change. This is holiness. So we thank God for all who do this in their calling as Bishops, including (especially?) those unable to join us. The Christ we are all called to reveal is one whose body is real, in time and eternity, who gathers God’s Children from the corners of the earth into his kingdom. This is the prime vision we were called to represent and enact. II Corinthians 11:28-9 —

Besides other things I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for al the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I am not indignant?

So the only way of being a successful apostle is to be incapable of distancing oneself from the weakness of others. Bearing apostolic witness we have to speak of a new humanity in which we bear others burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. Represent Jesus Christ and your defences will be down, and you will share in the weakness and loss of all, and your assumed loss will be part of the pain God takes upon himself in his infinite love. Paul sees the Church as the body called to actualise the death and resurrection of Christ in the world.

Therefore bishops can never, however much they’d like to be, become the spokesperson of a single nation, or cause, or group, however worthy they may be. Some will call it dithering — we have to find ways to make it prophetic. It would be much easier to be turn the church into an association of people who sign up to particular ideas, or reflect the nation in some vague way. What we actually have to do is express in our living the whole new humanity that is being gathered up in Christ. therefore we can never simply be servants to one subgroup. We have been taken hold of by Christ. We may of course want to affirm this person or that, but we cannot without also some note of challenge as well as affirmation. Therefore bishops have to prioiritse living and proclaiming the life of a Christ who gathers lost humanity into one in himself.

So Unity is not just everybody feeling good about each other, a quantitative thing, but a qualitative thing — each person impoverished by the another’s loss, each person enriched by others’ holiness. This is what Church is for, according to Saint Paul; and we’re off with some homework to reflect on what it means in our own lives and ministries. This isn’t, of course, what Rowan actually said — more what I heard him say. So, it’s time to go away and reflect...
I am massively looking forward to tomorrow.