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ACC welcomed at opening Service at National Arena Kingston Jamaica

Posted On : May 4, 2009 11:51 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/5/4/ACNS4602
Related Categories: ACC

Few of the close to 8000 people who attended the opening Eucharist of
the Anglican Consultative Council will soon forget the incredible
mixture of colour flowers music and energy that was incorporated into
the Communion service.

The Service was a national event as all Anglican churches on the island
closed to enable their members to attend the service which was broadcast
live on television. The Governor General, political leaders interfaith
representatives and ecumenical guests were all part of the processions
that entered the National Arena to loud applause and welcoming shouts.
Numerous drummers and two young women dancing a welcoming ceremony
greeted the entrance of the Bishops of the Province of the West Indies
and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Music was another unqiue feature of the service. In the welcoming notes
The Right Reverend Alfred Reed, the Bishop of Jamaica and The Cayman
Islands stated, "I believe the gift of music in one of God's most
precious gifts to the Caribbean..." All of the music used originated in
the West Indian Church. A commissioned hymn to mark the visit of the
Anglican Consultative Council spoke of diversity, fellowship, listening,
arguments, respect and challenge. The peace was exchanged with the song
"One Love" being sung by a favourite son of Jamaica Bob Marley.

The Good Shepherd gospel from the 10th chapter of St John was an
integral part of the sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury the text and
the audio podcast which are below.

Photographs from the Service can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acc14

> Duration: 19:50 | File Size: 9.09MB

Download Episode:

http://www.aco.org/daily/podcasts/source/acc143509.mp3

Subscribe:

http://www.aco.org/acns/podcasts/display.cfm?category=5

Archbishop of Canterbury's Sermon at the Service on the Occasion of the
Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council at the National Arena,
Independence Park, Kingston, Jamaica Sunday 3 May 2009 at 1000

> The Lord is Risen Alleluia!

> He is risen indeed Alleluia!

Dear brothers and sisters, I greet you in the name of the risen Jesus
and I pray that my words and the thoughts of all our hearts will be
acceptable in the sight of our God and Father. Amen.

First of all, let me say on behalf of the Anglican Consultative Council,
your guests in these days, how profoundly grateful we all are, not only
for the welcome you have given us, but for the opportunity we have to
share this morning with you in the worship of Almighty God at his table.
Thank you for showing yourselves, brothers and sisters, to us in this
way. We give thanks to God for your witness, we give thanks to God for
the largeness of your heart, and we rejoice to be with you on this
occasion.

In this morning's reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard a
story that was very like the story of Pentecost. The Apostles are
gathered together and suddenly the place where they are is shaken by the
coming of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit renews in them their vision and
their courage - they speak the word of God with boldness. This story
reminds us that when the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit gives us the
power to speak in a way that changes the world we live in; to speak with
such boldness that lives are changed.

And as the story continues, we hear what the effect is of the coming of
the Holy Spirit and the speaking of the word. And the effect of this
great earth shattering gift of the Spirit of the word, the effect of
this is that a new kind of community is born. Immediately we have heard
about the coming of the Spirit, we are told something about how the
Christian community lived together. And we are told that among the
believers in Jerusalem there was not one needy person. Now that
immediately tells us something about what is at the heart of our life as
a Christian community. When the Spirit comes, when the word is spoken,
the human family comes into being where there are no needy persons; the
Church is a community where there are no persons in need. And because
the Church is a kind of hint, a foretaste of God's purpose for all human
beings, we can conclude from that that the world God wishes us to see is
a world in which there is no one in need.

We as a Church have to be the kind of community which shows what God's
promise is for the whole of humanity, and we shall do that by asking
ourselves day by day and year by year: "Is ours a community in which
there are still people in need?". Well, the answer sadly is "yes", isn't
it? In the Church and in the world there is need wherever we look. We
are still on the way to becoming the Church that God wants us to be, and
so we are still on the way to expressing the fullness of the gift of the
Spirit, and the fullness of speaking the word in boldness.

And the first challenge which this reading from the Acts of the Apostles
puts before us, is are we as a Christian community here in this island,
across the world, are we prepared for working to be a community where
there is no needy person? Are we prepared to be a community where we are
so attentive, so careful to notice the needs of others that our instinct
is always to go out to them, to ask what their hunger is and to meet it?
And in this way, and in this way alone, the Church will be able to
challenge the whole world and say, "God's purpose for the world is a
human family where there is no one in need".

God knows that in this island you have felt the effects of international
debt and the way in which the economy of our world seems to turn its
back on those in need. God knows that in many different societies
represented here in our Anglican Communion that experience is the same,
as if the world has turned its back on need. And so for us, as a
Christian family worldwide, this must be at the heart of our witness and
our message. Are we prepared so to be shaken by the Holy Spirit, so to
hear the word of God that we become a community where the need of all is
seen and understood, and felt and met?

So brothers and sisters, I ask your prayers for the meeting of our
Anglican Consultative Council this week, that in all we do we may assist
our Anglican family to become more deeply a community shaken by the Holy
Spirit, speaking the Word of God with boldness - a community where the
needs of the poorest are always before our eyes, where we seek to create
a community in which there is no needy person.

But as soon as we have said that, we may very well remember some other
words of Scripture. It is not by bread alone that human beings live. The
needs that are around in the Church, the needs that are around us in the
world are not only the need for material wealth, the need for food or
healthcare. Our needs go deeper. We need forgiveness, we need
reconciliation, we need justice; as Jesus himself says, "Those who are
hungry and thirsty for justice are blessed". And that is a reminder of
how deep that need is. We need to hear from one another words of hope.

And once again this is a challenge to us as a Christian family and a
challenge to us as a human family. Are we in our own context meeting one
another's need to hear words of hope, meeting one another's need for a
word of reconciliation?

In the Church we must constantly be asking: "Whose forgiveness do I
need? Who needs my forgiveness? Who is it who is hungry for a word of
hope from me? Who is it that I am hungry to hear a word of hope from?
When we look at the deep conflicts of our world, at the terrible
tragedies that divide so many countries - the anguish of Palestine and
Israel, of Sudan, of Sri Lanka - those are not situations where all that
is needed is bread or healthcare. There is, as the prophet says, a
hunger for the word of the Lord, there is a hunger for the word of hope
and of forgiveness. And so we, as Christians, must begin by asking
ourselves within our own community, "Who needs from me that word of
hope? From whom do I seek forgiveness?"

And once again, I ask your prayers, dear friends, for our meeting in
these days, that in our Anglican Communion too we shall find the words
and the prayers that will unleash, unseal the power that comes seeking
and offering forgiveness. That we may ask ourselves as an Anglican
family how we speak of hope to one another, how we meet that need, the
word of transforming mercy. Because at the heart of it all lies our need
for the overwhelming reality of love, which is God revealed in Jesus
Christ our Saviour. We cannot speak about that need for God unless we
also make it real in our lives in terms of the need for solidarity, the
need for compassion, the need for forgiveness and for words of hope. God
is there to meet that deepest need. God speaks the greatest and the
fullest word of hope and reconciliation that we could imagine. In the
Cross and the Resurrection of our Saviour, God offers himself as food
for our hunger, the hunger of Spirit and body alike. God does not simply
meet our needs by sending manna from heaven as he once did for the
Israelites. God meets our material needs now by touching the hearts of
his people so that they are moved to give and to serve. This morning as
we gather to be fed at this the Lord's Table we must let ourselves be
fed by a power that drives us to feed others, to see their material need
and to see their spiritual hunger.

And we must go from here committed yet again, renewed in the vision yet
again that God's purpose is a world where needs are met, where the
poverty and wretchedness of people is met by love and generosity of
neighbours, where the despair and the violence of people is met by the
transfiguring word of hope and reconciliation. By God's grace and
goodness we have so many stories in our Christian family that we can
share, of that powerful word spoken across the gap of hunger and fear
and despair. May those stories become our stories too. Because finally
the key to all this is given to us in the words of today's Gospel: God
has met our need by putting himself completely at our service. God's own
life in Jesus Christ is laid down so that we may live. God holds nothing
back in pouring himself out into the need of his creation. And God has
swept us into his action and his life so that our own love, weak and
frail as it is, is carried forward by the great action of his love into
the service of the world's need; into the act of mercy and the word of
promise.

The Holy Spirit comes upon us as a Church so that our actions, our
loves, our hopes, our feelings, are caught up into the action of God in
Jesus Christ; so that our weak power is overwhelmed in the power of God
to give and to serve. And we, caught up in that self-giving love of God
in Jesus Christ, we begin to understand that the hunger and the need of
this world is met not simply by policies, not by words, not by
documents, but by the gift of ourselves in prayer and in love. And to
give ourselves means a great risk - letting go of what makes us feel
safe. Sometimes, as we all know, it makes us feel safe to ignore the
needs of others. "They are needy, but I am safe." Sometimes, sadly, in
conflict with others, I can say, "I am right and that makes me feel
safe, so I have no need of reconciliation." God help us when we deny our
needs like that, because it is that refusal of God's act of
transfiguring love that holds us back from giving ourselves in and
through the love of God into the life of God's world. There is no needy
person in the company of Jesus' friends in Jerusalem.

There it is - a huge challenge for us as a Church, and a challenge that
we as a Church give to all our neighbours. A challenge to imagine a
world where poverty is not ignored and the needy are not forgotten. But
a challenge also to imagine a world in which we truly understand how
deep in human beings is the hunger, the passionate devouring hunger to
hear words of hope; to hear the possibility of reconciliation. We have
come here to be fed. To be shaken by the Holy Spirit and fed by the Word
of God. To share in the Holy Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood. And
as we go from this place, we go committed to feed others with that life
we have received. We go in the commitment to a world where there are no
people dying forgotten because of their hunger for food, and dying
forgotten because of their hunger for reconciliation. As we put out our
hands to be fed by Jesus Christ, so we take into our hearts the life and
the promise that is in him, our Good Shepherd, feeding and nourishing
the life of the whole world to which we are sent.

And now to Christ, our Good Shepherd, to his Father, and his
transfiguring Holy Spirit, in praise and thanksgiving, Glory and Majesty
forever. Amen.

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