wfn.org | ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S SERMON

[a.whitefield@quest.org.uk]

March 27, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon James Rosenthal
Director of Communications, The Anglican Communion
London, England

ACC 1179

SERMON BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 
CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL EASTER DAY 1997

Embargoed until 30 March 1997

Shalom. Salaam. Peace. "Peace be with you". The greeting is not mine,
although I gladly extend it to you this morning. It is the greeting of
the risen Christ when he met the fearful disciples on the evening of
that first Easter Day.

"Peace be with you". What an extraordinary greeting to give to a group
of so-called friends who had let him down so badly. They had done very
little to justify the gift of peace. The last he had seen of most of his
disciples were their backs turned as they fled in terror in the garden.
The last word he has heard from Peter was "I do not know this man". And
now he confronts them. He could  so easily have said: "You cowards. In
spite of all your boasting you ran away. Where were you when I needed
you most"?

Yet he said nothing of the kind.  Instead he came and stood among and
said "Peace be with you". "Shalom". That was the word he used or
something very close to it. It is a Hebrew word rich in meaning. It is
not negative, denoting the absence of something, as a tired mother might
say after the children had gone to bed: "Now for some peace". Rather, it
denotes the well-being and wholeness that are generated when the
fragmented parts of our existence become one. Here, with this one word,
we are close to the heart of the Christian faith; to encounter that
peace is to look into the face of God and to see there his longing for
his world to be reconciled to himself, and to itself. A longing that
extends far beyond the rules and rituals that have sometimes threatened
to engulf the Church's life - what E M Forster ironically described as
"Poor, little, talkative Christianity". A longing that shows his deep
love for his creation and his desire that we should experience the
fullness of that love.

Here, in this one word, everything that is dear and precious about the
faith which this historic building has preserved is summed up; peace
between God and humanity, peace in our hearts; and peace in our
communities.

First, it speaks of peace between God and humanity. Easter is the
culmination of the life and death of Jesus. "He died that we might be
forgiven, he died to make us good". The haunting words of the old hymn
tells us that the peace given came with a price attached to it-the
agonising, brutal, shocking and sacrificial death of God's son. That is
why Jesus confronts his disciples with this greeting of triumph because,
in some mysterious but nevertheless real way, the cross brought a holy
God and sinful, fallible and ignorant people together.

People today often say that they cannot understand how the death of
Christ could achieve this. I sympathise with the difficulty of
describing precisely how it happened. After all, how can his sacrifice
bring about such a reconciliation? It is indeed a mystery to wonder at.
Yet the power of sacrifice is still a potent and understandable force in
our world. We encounter it in family life in the love of parents that
will sacrifice everything for their children. We see it in husbands and
wives who live out their promises to be loyal to one another "in
sickness or in health till death us do part". We know it too in the long
term sacrificial care given by many to disabled relatives. Such love, we
recognise to be very costly and deeply creative. These are all examples
of the huge, redeeming power of the love that goes the second mile and
beyond in the service of others. That is the love shown supremely in
Christ's self-sacrifice, risking everything for others. The Cross and
resurrection proclaim to our broken world that God has absorbed all
human error, and peace is his gift.

Shalom. But such a gift has to be accepted and made part of our confused
lives. It has to be taken up and used. A Middle Eastern saying is "if
you wish to walk in someone else's shoes, you have to take off your
own". If you and I wish to know the peace of God we must follow the
peace-giver and walk in his way and bear his cross.

Secondly Christ's gift is one of peace in our hearts. As he came to
those disciples that first Easter Day, so he offered them not only peace
with God, but peace within themselves.

Go into any bookshop. Look along the shelves and it will not be long
before you will find a series of titles offering help to their readers
to discover an inner peace built on self acceptance and inner
reconciliation.

The search for such a peace is one of the most powerful forces affecting
this generation and I do not doubt for a moment that there is something
gained from such books. There are wonderful capabilities within each one
of us which, if exercised properly, can result in considerable inner
healing.Yet the tragedy is that so many of us spend so much time seeking
to find such peace within ourselves - whilst at the same time ignoring
the one who offers us his gift of peace. Take, for example, the question
of forgiveness. No doubt we should acknowledge our faults, analyse and
share any feelings of guilt and try to be more aware of our own good and
bad points. But what self-analysis cannot bring is a knowledge of true
forgiveness. For that forgiveness and that reconciliation can only come
as we receive it as a gift from another.

For that is part of the richness of shalom. It is a gift to be accepted
and to be integrated into our confused lives. And by the same token, we
can then seek to offer it to others. It is not something to be kept to
ourselves, but to be shared.

Thirdly Christ's words speak of peace in our communities. If "shalom"
means "wholeness" and "making fragmented pieces one" we need only to
think of the divisions in our communities to see the urgent need for
such a peace - for God's peace - to prevail in our churches and our
world. Our task as a Church is to share Christ's peace with his world
and the world will look more to our actions towards one another than to
our words in judging the significance of our message. Only in a fierce
commitment to that "shalom of God that passes all understanding" will we
be able to overcome the fragmentation that brings into disrepute the
mission of the Church in many parts of our world.

And in the wider society, the need for God's "shalom" is as great as
ever. Perhaps this is most obvious in those parts of the world
disfigured by violent community conflicts. But there is excessive
fragmentation within our own society too. Despite its richness and its
many other virtues there are still too many people who are excluded from
a proper share in its resources and opportunities. Too many people -
especially young people - feel rejected and undervalued. There is too
much cynicism - too much suspicion, blame and envy. Racism lurks in the
corners of our national life. The high level of crime causes distrust,
anxiety, and pain. There is, I believe, a weakened sense of what binds
us together despite our differences. There is also profound confusion
about the moral rules which underpin a just and good society. Yes, we
need the healing power of God's shalom.

Moreover, many people in different sectors of society feel that their
life chances are tossed around by powerful, technological, economic and
social changes over which they have no control. As Charles Handy put it
recently: "the trouble is that the more I see of the world the more I
seem to be only a pimple. What difference can I make? Let me just be
busy with my own little life. But, even there, there is no certainty".

But there is no need to give way to such despair. For we know the
difference God makes to each of us. We know the difference we can make
with his help to those near and dear to us, and we know how the
culmination effects of what individuals and families do can add up to
the tide of Christian love which can transform the world.

And this is where Easter faith still has the power to change our world
and transform our hopes. "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will
come again". We shall exclaim in a short while as we recall his death
and passion. This is not a wish; it is the heart of the Christian faith.
Easter is the banner of the Church's faith, proclaiming that God values
each one of us and wants us to join his never-ending task of
reconciliation. To be sure this task may seem, at times, hopeless and
futile when we look at the world's problems. But no Christian gives up
hoping, believing and working for God's peace to prevail. "Peace be with
you" and yet God's peace is no sedative. He does not give it to us to
take away from the conflicts of the world. Rather those who enjoy that
peace find themselves pitched into the centre of the fiercest battles
for the soul of humanity. That was true for Jesus as had walked the way
of the Cross. It was true for Peter and his fellow disciples as they
went to share the Good News. It is true today for many of our fellow
believers as they suffer for their faith, whether in the Sudan or
elsewhere.

In a short while, as we go from this place, the invitation will be given
"to go in peace, to love and serve the Lord". Let us hear them afresh
from the Risen Lord. Let us hear them as a cry of victory - for the
peace he has won for us. Let us hear them as a cause for rejoicing - for
the forgiveness he alone can bring. Let us hear them as a challenge to
service - as we go out in the power of his Spirit. Shalom. Salaam.
Peace.