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> Festive Service Closes ACC-14

Posted On : May 12, 2009 9:03 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/5/12/ACNS4631
Related Categories: ACC

The Archbishop of Canterbury was the celebrant at a closing Eucharist
for the Anglican Consultative Meeting (ACC-14) in Kingston Jamaica.

The Eucharist was held at The Cathedral of St. James in Spanish Town-
the oldest Cathedral in the British Caribbean. The first Anglican Church
building was destroyed by hurricane in 1712 and rebuilt in 1714. The
Cathedral is a mixture of many architectural styles with the tower
(added in 1817) having one of the few steeples found in the Caribbean.

During the closing service the members of the Standing committee
including Bishop James Tengatenga (chair) Mrs Elizabeth Paver (vice
chair) and the newly elected member of the Standing Committee were
commissioned in a colourful service. The music was sung with joy and
enthusiasm and included everything from the setting of Psalm 121 by
Walford Davies through to Three Little Birds of Bob Marley.

The preacher was the Bishop John Paterson, the Bishop of Auckland New
Zealand and the retiring chair who finished his long and distinguished
ministry with the Consultative Council with this service.

In his homily he reflected on his years of service and spoke directly
about ACC-14, "  Our meeting has been characterized by some rigorous
debates, but with respect and even affection across the floor of the
house. As your outgoing Chair, I have been deeply grateful for that. And
that surely is one of the many gifts that we can return home with,
knowing that the ACC has met well, and the renewed confidence we can
have in the strength and the life of the Anglican Communion."

He also had the privilege of announcing that the next ACC meeting
(ACC-15) will be held in his home province of The Anglican Church in
Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

A gala dinner concluded the evening with a heartfelt expression of
thanks from The Council to the Bishops clergy and people of the Diocese
of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands for their warmth generosity and
gracious hospitality.

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Address at the Closing Eucharist of ACC-14, Kingston, Jamaica, 12 May
2009

> Mark 16: 1-8

This morning the Bible Study for the ACC looked in detail at the Gospel
reading for this service, and the much-debated question of the abrupt
ending to St Mark's Gospel. Did Mark really finish in mid-sentence, or,
as the old Sunday School joke would have Eve saying to Adam in the
Garden of Eden is there a leaf missing?

Despite Janet's carefully crafted Bible Study this morning, I take the
view that the last piece of Mark's manuscript has gone missing, and that
he did not intend to leave the women trembling in fear and silence. Mark
makes the point that these same women witness the death and burial of
Jesus. These were strong, courageous, loving women who went to the tomb
at first light without their men, intending to see to the necessary
preparation of Jesus' body, expecting to have trouble with the massive
stone, but hoping no doubt that someone stronger would be around to
help. You see, they were not going there in order to witness Jesus'
resurrection from death. They had no idea that any such thing was even
thinkable. They were going to complete the primary burial tasks, the
anointing of his body as their one last act of service to him, sad but
necessary, leading to eventual permanent entombment.

And they got the shock of their lives. The stone was already rolled
away. 'The stone was rolled back' - an example perhaps of Mark's use of
the passive voice to avoid speaking directly of God. We are to
understand that the entire event is God's doing.

I like to ponder about that stone. Mark makes the point that it was
extremely large, yet when the women arrived, they found that it had been
rolled away. Are there any large stones in our lives? "Who will roll the
stone away?" the women asked. Who can roll the stone away from the
death, from the negativity that so easily causes us to stumble and even
to stop? Who will roll the stone away from those places where death and
decay have us locked in, have us trapped? Are we looking for the
experience of triumph or hoping for the experience of presence? Does the
empty tomb represent the assurance that God is present in our times of
limits and losses? Have we manufactured any large stones and are now
unable of our own strength to roll them away? Have we manufactured a
large stone called 'An Anglican Covenant' that will seal off creative,
faithful life in the Communion? I trust not. Perhaps there are other
large stones with different labels that we might wish God to roll away -
stones that might be labeled 'conservative', 'liberal', 'orthodox',
'Windsor', 'Gafcon' - are a few possibilities. Will God roll those
stones away in order to let new life, new light, new hope emerge.

The women enter the tomb and find a young man whose message is perhaps
the central message of Mark's entire Gospel - "he has risen, he is not
here". The message brings dramatic reversal to a tragic narrative, which
had seemed to end in the abandonment and death of the Son of God. The
tragedy though is turned upside down. Looking among the dead for the one
crucified, the women are assured that they are looking in the wrong
place. "The place where they laid him" Mark says is empty. In this
emptiness is expressed the futility of every effort to capture, to
contain, to possess the Nazarene, the frustration of every quest of the
historical Jesus. To see Jesus, the women and the disciples must look
ahead, as the second part of the message makes clear. He would see them
again in Galilee, and they are to go and inform the disciples and Peter
- the man who had missed Good Friday. Even after those catastrophic
denials, Peter was not to be regarded as being beyond redemption.

The falling away of the disciples and the denials of Peter are not the
end of God's plans for them. In this command to the women lies the
promise of forgiveness and restitution, a renewed call and a fresh start
for disciples chastened by failure but empowered by the resurrection.

One of the things that some of us have noticed about Mark's Gospel is
that people are often told to remain silent. Particularly people whom
Jesus has healed are charged with maintaining silence. But they seldom
take heed. For Mark the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth is not complete
until the resurrection has occurred - only then is the command issued,
and it is by the youth in the tomb - "go and tell". And the supreme
irony of the ending of Mark's Gospel is that they do just the opposite.
"They said nothing to anyone".

Overcome by ecstasy, fear and trembling, the women flee from the tomb.
Emotionally, they are overwhelmed with joy, but physically they are
shaking with the enormity of what they have learned. "And they said
nothing to anyone, for they were afraid". The revelation for Mark has
been completed, and at last the command can be given - 'Go and tell'.
The silence of the women, in Mark's abrupt ending, then for me is
inexplicable. Some scholars inform us that the real ending of this
Gospel is for the reader to write.

"But go and tell his disciples and Peter, that he is going ahead of you
to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you." At one level,
the mention of Galilee functions in both a literal and a geographical
sense. Other evangelists understood it in those terms, and Mark Chapter
13 presupposes that some such meeting must have occurred. A reflection
perhaps of a life setting in which restored disciples are engaged in
mission to all nations in the face of severe opposition and persecution.

As we celebrate the ending of this fourteenth meeting of the Anglican
Consultative Council, pack our bags to begin the journey home, perhaps
we could also reflect on a different reading, on a different
understanding of the significance of Galilee. Janet made this explicit
this morning. At the level of discourse between the text and the reader
could we not also understand Galilee as the Galilee of the Gentiles, the
locus of mission to the nations? For Galilee is the place from which the
disciples and the women came - Galilee is their home turf, the place of
their daily life, their daily routine. So the place where we as readers
of Mark's Gospel must write the fuller ending, is precisely there also -
at home, at our place of mission and ministry, and not simply here in
this historic Cathedral in Kingston, Jamaica.

There is much for us to process as we return home, much that we have
both contributed and learned in these eleven days together. For some of
us it is also the last occasion that we will be together in an ACC
gathering as members. Those whose ACC journey began in Hong Kong with
ACC-12, and continued through ACC-13 in Nottingham, have finished their
usual term of membership here in Kingston. In my case a journey from
ACC-8 in Cardiff through twenty years until Kingston Jamaica and ACC-14.

I have sat alongside three Archbishops of Canterbury in that time, and
three Secretaries General, during seven full meetings of the ACC. It was
one of those Archbishops, Robert Runcie, who spoke of the 'bonds of
affection' which used to hold the Anglican Communion together, and that
certainly was my experience of these gatherings, certainly up until our
meeting four years ago in Nottingham, when our holding together was
severely challenged. But thanks to our wonderful hosts here in Jamaica,
thanks to the magnificent way in which you have made us feel good to be
here, thanks to the outstanding manner in which you have made us feel
proud once again to be Anglican in your midst, in your worship, in your
hospitality, in the broad smile of a Caribbean welcome, those bonds of
affection are back in place. Thank you, Diocese of Jamaica and the
Cayman Islands, thank you Church of the Province of the West Indies.
That in itself is a gift of great value, perhaps another aspect of that
pearl of great price with which Archbishop Rowan began his time with us
ten days ago.

When the members of ACC-10 arrived in Panama in 1996 and checked into
the Hotel that was to be our home for the next two weeks, we were
confronted by a large sign which said "On checking in to this Hotel,
guests are required to leave their guns and weapons at the door".    Our
Jamaican hosts have helped us to do just that once again. Our meeting
has been characterized by some rigorous debates, but with respect and
even affection across the floor of the house. As your outgoing Chair, I
have been deeply grateful for that. And that surely is one of the many
gifts that we can return home with, knowing that the ACC has met well,
and the renewed confidence we can have in the strength and the life of
the Anglican Communion. In my own case, ACC experiences over 21 years
have provided me with wonderful friendships in many parts of the
Anglican world, and those will always be treasured.

As well as being part of the ACC for so long, I have also had experience
of two of the other "Instruments of Communion". Only the Archbishop of
Canterbury can have experience of all four Instruments, but some of us
are able to claim experience of three of those four bodies. I served a
six-year term as Primate, and attended a Primates' Meeting in each of
those six years. I have had the privilege and the pain of attending two
Lambeth Conferences. The fact that the ACC is the only truly
representative gathering under a Constitution agreed to by all the
Member Churches, the only one of those four instruments where laity and
clergy other than bishops can have a voice and a vote, is of lasting
significance.

Anglican polity has always held that it is bishops in synod, or bishops
in council, that are able to make decisions that guide the life of the
church locally. For the Communion, the Primates' Meetings cannot do
that, although we should be able to look to our Primates for wise
guidance and theological insights, but in my view that is quite
different from making binding decisions from which the rest of the
Church is excluded.

We have now moved to seeing what we have known as the Joint Standing
Committee of the Primates and the ACC become more simply the Standing
Committee of the Anglican Communion, possibly meeting more than once a
year, with the right balance of Primates, clergy and laity represented.
That is a significant advance in the tightening of our structures, a
significant advance in helping the four 'Instruments of Communion' work
more cohesively together, without taking anything away from any of those
Instruments.

So I wish Bishop James Tengatenga and Elizabeth Paver well as they take
up their new responsibilities as Chair and Vice Chair respectively. I
have occupied both of those positions, and so I know something of what
you will experience. When I was the Vice Chair I held Bishop Simon
Chiwanga of Tanzania in very high regard as the Chair of the ACC, but I
privately would address him as 'the Artful Dodger' because of the way he
very skillfully would get me to do most of the donkey work. So,
Elizabeth, be careful!

I look forward to helping to organise the hosting of ACC-15 in three
years time in the context of the Anglican Communion's best-kept secret -
i.e. the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. I will
not have to concern myself with the deliberations, the by-laws, the
Constitution, the Budget, nor the politics that have sometimes been all
too present in these meetings. But the major challenge, which will face
us as hosts, is to try and maintain the extremely high standards of
welcome and hospitality, which have been set here in Jamaica, and were
most certainly also set seven years ago in Hong Kong. Our hosts will
know that I mean the Black Caps batsmen face the challenge of the West
Indies fast bowlers. I know Anglicans in Aotearoa, New Zealand and
Polynesia, will gladly face the challenge of hosting the ACC but,
perhaps a barrel or three of Bishop Reid's rum punch would help, and I
need to talk to the Bishop about that.

The abrupt ending to Mark's Gospel invites readers to write their own.
Well- Here is one such attempt: 'The disciples - the members of the ACC
went out and flew home from Jamaica. Trembling and panic had not seized
them, other than going through Customs and Immigration. They told
everyone they met that Christ is alive and living in Jamaica, and they
fully expected him to accompany them on their journey, and to meet him
when they arrived home. And what is more, they said, the Anglican
Communion is alive and well, and functioning faithfully and effectively
in places right around God's world, in places of fear and strife, in
places of poverty, places of wealth, places of natural disaster.
Anglicans everywhere are following our Lord's beckoning to meet him
there in Galilee, in the places where they live and work, in the midst
of God's creation, which so badly needs our care. Alleluia, Christ is
risen! He is raised indeed!  Alleluia let us keep the Feast. Amen.

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