wfn.org | ACNS3408 Sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3408     |     MIDDLE EAST     |	  14 APRIL 2003

Sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams at the Cathedral
Church of St George the Martyr, Jerusalem

Palm Sunday, 13 April 2003

At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of a
city. We know that once we have entered we shall be swept up in events that
we cannot control and that will bring us to the very edge of what we can
bear, as we walk with him to Calvary and the tomb. This week tells us that
God is able to change everything about us - our fear, our sin, our guilt,
our untruthfulness. But to receive that change in the actual circumstances
of our lives asks of all of us such a revolution in our hearts that we are
stunned and frightened at the thought. 'In his death is my birth, in his
life is my life', as the song says; but the new birth is for us a kind of
dying too. Remember this morning's epistle: 'Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus.'
As believers and as human beings, we stand at the gates of the city - a
'city of wrong' as one great Muslim writer called it in the title of his
fictional meditations on the last week of the Lord's life; a city where so
many sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the
terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry,
selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in. We know that
in this city, trying to live by faith, hope and love leaves us looking
pretty helpless. And we also know in our hearts that so much of what fuels
the violence is in ourselves too: the passionate longing never to be a
victim again, the hunger for security expressed in the ownership of the
land, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally suicidal
ways, and brings destruction to so many. We know the urge to defend what
can't be defended because we can't lose face; the urge to make a dramatic
gesture that destroys the future because we need to feel that we can do
something. We too are citizens of this city of wrong.

Jesus does not steer us away from the gates and send us back into the holy
silence of the desert or the peace of the countryside. He keeps us close to
him as we stand at the gates, and he tells us that these are also the gates
of heaven. If you recognise your involvement and prepare to walk with Jesus
into the city, to the cross and the tomb, there is a joy and a mystery at
the end of the path, because it is inexhaustible divine love that walks with
us. We stand not just at the gates of the city of wrong, the great city
where the Lord was crucified, as revelation says, but also at the entrance
to the Garden of Eden.

Some of you may recognise the title of an extraordinary and heartbreaking
book by the Israeli journalist, Yossi Klein Halevi, in which he describes
how he, initially knowing almost nothing about Christianity and Islam, and
fearing or loathing what little he did know, discovered ways of speaking of
God and worshipping God in a quite unexpected fellowship with those of other
faiths, without abandoning his deep Jewish commitment. In surprising and
challenging words, he says that it was only as an Israeli, not a diaspora
Jew, that he found the confidence to engage compassionately and acceptingly
with his neighbours - a profound testimony to the true, confident Jewish
commitment to the stranger, the minority, the other. He describes how he
absorbs the teaching of Sufi masters into his own Jewish devotion, how he
overcomes his fear of the Christian Holy Week, which he had always seen as
the focus of violent anti-Judaism. He brings us with him to stand at the
gates of the garden, sensing the ways in which those who call themselves
Abraham's children might live together in some kind of humility and
willingness to learn. It is a book full of wonders - not at all
sentimental - here too there are corrupt and lazy souls, here too there are
good men trapped by prejudice; but overall a real glimpse of the hope that
might be.

The Epilogue, written in June 2001, begins, 'And then the madness came'. He
can no longer travel and keep connection with the Palestinians he has
befriended; they are at deadly risk, and some disappear. One of his children
narrowly escapes a suicide bombing. The roads are literally blocked. 'I had
stood at the entrance and glimpsed the garden, but that was all.' It's as if
he is forced to stand instead where we stand today, looking through the
gates into a city where we cannot as yet see the light of the garden, where
violence seems to reign, and death waits for us.

Yet, as we have seen, that city of wrong where we are citizens is the place
where, if we are willing, God works transformation. At the end of this
week's story is the garden of resurrection, where our wounds are healed but
not hidden away. Are we willing to move towards that garden, learning the
mind of Christ? We, Israeli, Palestinian, British, American, Iraqi? It
probably means an infinity of small gestures that won't be noticed, tiny
personal admissions that we cannot live forever in isolation, pride or
unforgiveness. Even at the end of Halevi's book, he is able to affirm the
all-importance of such gestures, insisting, as he says, on reverencing the
other's dignity before God. That is the insistence that will finally bring
reconciliation. Yes, faced with threat and oppression, we must insist on the
dignity due to us as fellow-humans; but Halevi reminds us that we must
insist to ourselves on the dignity due to others.

'It is precisely at times like these', he writes, 'that the beautiful
teachings of faith become either real or mere sentiment. More than ever, the
goal of a spiritual life in the Holy Land is to live with an open heart at
the centre of unbearable tension...The best I can say is that I'm
struggling, and that maintaining a painful awareness of the gap between what
I've been taught and my inability to embody those teachings defines my
spiritual life.'

At these city gates, we see the possibilities. We can enter with Jesus and
walk with him to his garden of new life. Or we can enter and find ourselves
caught up in the murderous crowds, and, at the end of it all, find ourselves
with hands both empty and bloodstained. Or we can stay at the gates,
unwilling to commit ourselves because we know that as soon as we enter there
will be trial and suffering; but if we stay there, we shall never reach the
garden. How much do we want to be there, where God walks with us again in
the cool of the day? Halevi takes his title from a story of one of the
rabbis, who related how Abraham was given a vision of 'an opening to the
Garden of Eden' in a mysterious cavern; and it was so wonderful that
'Abraham yearned to dwell in that site; his heart and will focused
constantly on the cave.'

Today we reaffirm our desire to live there, whatever the cost. We pray that
God will raise up leaders, on all sides, whose vision of this is clear.
Halevi quotes a Muslim friend saying: 'There are enough politicians in the
land of the prophets. But where are the prophets in the land of the
prophets?' Prophets arise when there is real, hungry openness to the healing
Word of God; perhaps things have to be very dark indeed for such a hunger to
be felt. But we look to One who is more than a prophet, who has cleared the
way for us not just back to Eden but forward to the new city, new Jerusalem,
in which the nation are healed and strangers live gratefully together. This
Land was touched by God so that it would be forever a sign of our hope for
the commonwealth of heaven. The gates are open. Let us with Jesus prepare to
go through, to walk with him to his cross and his resurrection.

+Rowan CANTUAR

[A photograph to accompany this article is available from
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/: Archbishop of Canterbury with the
Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Revd Riah Abu El Assal for Palm Sunday
at St Georges Cathedral and College. Jerusalem. Photo must be credited:
Anglican World/Dinsmore for free use]

__________________________________
For details about the Enthronement of the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Most Revd Rowan D Williams, visit http://www.anglicancommunion.org/

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