wfn.org | Visit of Archbishop to Australia and New Zealand

[a.whitefield@quest.org.uk]

Aug. 20, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon James Rosenthal, Director of Communications, 
Anglican Communion Office
London, England

ACC  1307

Archbishop of Canterbury:Visit to Australia and New Zealand 25 July - 13
August 1997

Archbishop of Canterbury's address at the Provincial Sesquicentenary
Celebrations, Paradise, Adelaide Wednesday 30 July 1997 at 19.30 hrs

What a wonderful occasion this is.  How good it is to be meeting in
Paradise!  I am absolutely delighted to be with you this evening for
this great celebration of 150 years of worship, witness and devoted
service of Christ in South Australia.  Thank you, Archbishop Ian, for
inviting us to be a part of this.  I was especially struck this evening
by your National Anthem, which I have, of course, heard before, but I
found the element of welcome in it particularly heart-warming :  "For
those who've come across the seas;  We've boundless plains to share"

Well, I haven't had much opportunity to see many of the plains, although
I have seen a car park - what an excellent and imaginative project that
is at Warradale - and I have seen some of the wool which must come from
the plains.  Nonetheless, the welcome has been very warm, and I have
seen already signs of a Church which is very much alive and well.  So
this is a worthy celebration of your life over 150 years, but also, I
hope, of your life today.

Archbishop Ian was kind enough to send me some material which he
prepared on the history of the Church in South Australia.  From that I
have learnt that when Bishop Augustus Short arrived here in 1847 to
become the first Bishop of Adelaide, he was also Bishop of South
Australia, Bishop of West Australia and Bishop of the Northern
Territory, and what is more he did his utmost to visit the people all
over this huge region - although he never reached the Northern
Territory.  What an extraordinary adventurer.  Not perhaps an image that
one naturally associates with a Bishop, but I can think of no better
description of this man - a true adventurer for the Gospel.  Of course,
I'm sure the historians will be able to tell us about his weaknesses and
failings.  But it is clear to me that this man came to the Great South
Land of the Spirit, filled with a vision, and the energy to try to
fulfil that vision.  For that we should thank God, and seek inspiration
for our own mission and witness.

The story which unfolds from there, whilst not without its darker
moments,is one of extraordinary philanthropy, especially on the part of
Angela Burdett-Coutts - and as Archbishop Ian says,  "South Australia
was an absolute world leader in the whole concept of Synodical
government" agreeing a form of Government which has been called the
Consensual Compact of Adelaide.  So the Church quickly developed a way
of ensuring that clergy and laity had a proper involvement in the
affairs of the Church governance.

But equally important has been your Church's commitment to the
Aboriginal people of Australia from early days, a commitment which I
know remains today, with a number of significant issues still trying to
be resolved. That tradition of standing alongside those who have been
mistreated and disadvantaged is a very significant tradition, in which
Bishop Short clearly stood, and it is at the heart of the Gospel.  And
we should not forget the significant work in education and social care
which continues to this day, and which we have seen a little of over the
past couple of days; I would especially like to commend the venture at
St Columba College.  If ecumenical relationships have sometimes been
strained, then there can be no better place to begin collaboration than
with children of Primary age.  I hope these are the roots of real and
lasting collaboration in the sphere of education.

So from wonderfully committed and adventurous roots has sprung a Church
which has real cause to give thanks, as it looks back, and to ask "how
may we learn from our forebears as we seek to plan for the future?" 
Well, we have been doing that quite a bit in England this year, because
we are celebrating the 1400th Anniversary of the arrival of St Augustine
of Canterbury, and also the death of St Columba of Iona.  Augustine was,
of course, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and made a hazardous
journey from Rome to England at the behest of Pope Gregory the Great. 
He was a very human saint.  He and his followers lost courage along the
way, and Augustine returned  to Rome to plead with the Pope to allow
them to go home.  The Pope gave him short shrift : "My very dear sons",
he wrote, "it is better never to undertake any high enterprise than to
abandon it when once begun."  The mission continued, and Augustine and
his followers had an enormous effect in re-establishing Christianity in
parts of England which had been ravaged by successive invasions by
heathen tribes of Europe.

Columba was a different sort of person, but his mission, which had a
much more peripatetic style than Augustine's, had a remarkable effect on
Scotland and the North of England.  Indeed, the monks of Lindisfarne -
which was founded by St Aidan, one of Columba's missionaries - spread
out to cover a great deal of England, travelling on their own, 
teaching, baptising, living extremely simple and ascetic lives.  Bishop
Short would, I think, have found much in common with them.

Of course, Augustine and Columba, and may other heroic figures in those
early centuries were dealing with a very different world from today. 
There was little sophistication in post-Roman Britain, although, as you
know, some of the artwork and literature of that period is quite
exquisite. Travel was immensely difficult and dangerous.  Lone
travellers feared for their lives, and paganism was strong and
aggressive.  So, indeed, were some to the Christian missionaries.

But some things, perhaps, are not very different.  People are people.  
The Gospel is the Gospel.  Although we often talk about a spiritual
thirst out there in the world, it has never been any different, and the
Church has always struggled to find the right way of meeting those
needs.  Part of our calling, as our ordinal puts it, is to proclaim
afresh for every generation the faith which is uniquely revealed in Holy
Scripture and set forth in the catholic creeds.

So if from time to time we struggle to find the most effective way of
preaching the Gospel, we are not alone.  It has always been so.  But may
I be so bold as to offer some reflections on three aspects of our common
discipleship to which we all need to pay attention. And in doing so, I
would like to draw on that remarkable poem by Kevin Hart which has just
been read. Firstly, then, have confidence in God.  The Gospels reveal to
us over and over again a God who is with us.  That indeed is the heart
of it all.  That is the transformation which takes place from the Old to
the New Testament. Although the prophets kept trying to tell people that
God was with them, that he did not desert them, there are repeated
examples of loss of confidence.

In Jesus, God demonstrates his presence.  It is an unexpected presence.
It is an presence which truly transforms the contemporary understanding
of God.  Here is a king who is born in poverty, a king who sups with the
poor, a king who rides on a donkey, a king who is crucified amongst
thieves.  In the worst moments of English history, monarchs and
aristocrats were granted a more respectable execution than the common or
garden criminals.  But not Jesus Christ.  So this is a God who is not
only with us, but who goes to the ultimate extreme of human suffering to
express that love and commitment.

But there is more than that.  Solidarity without hope is of little
lasting use.  Love is all very well but to what does it lead?  The
Gospel story is just one example of the answer.  It leads to blessing. 
It leads to abundance from so little.  It signifies that we each have
the capacity to offer ourselves, and that that offering will be
transformed by God.

Kevin Hart's poem opens with those arresting words : "To Christ our
Lord, My only friend".  He goes on to express all the doubts, of course,
with which we are afflicted from time to time, but don't you get a sense
of how,just when he is wondering - almost withdrawing from his faith -
Christ makes himself known.  Jesus takes the initiative, but he needs a
willing partner.  In the Gospel it is a hungry crowd and doubting
disciples. In the poem, it is a sense of loneliness and morbidity :
"When I am alone in the cool of the evening you comfort me.  When I
think of all the Dead beneath you open your hand and show them as stars
beginning to rise".

This leads into my second point:  we must seek the transformation of the
Church.  Renewal begins with us and that means the Church.  It means
clergy for whose ministry I continue to give thanks.   There is never
effective Church life without faithful, spiritual, prayerful leadership
by the clergy.  I am not among those who knock the work of faithful
priests and ministers.  Clergy who are faithful for Christ; ministers
who have a vision for growth, a love of people and a desire to share the
faith with others are central to the Church's future.  We affirm them
today.

This applies to lay people too.  The ministry of the Church is too
important to be left to the clergy and each one of us is required to
share in the work of the Church.  I am probably not alone in saying that
if it were not for godly lay people in the Church I joined as a
teenager, I would not be here today.  And so, for us all the challenge
to attend to our own personal relationship with God is fundamental to
the mission of the Church. We need to be ready and waiting for his
initiative.  We must nurture our prayer life, our quiet time.  For
without that, how can we ever be ready to respond to the initiatives
which God is taking?  How easy it is for us to become completely
immersed in an endless round of meetings, meetings and more meetings.  I
do not want to decry good administration or indeed the importance of
keeping the institution running smoothly.  Indeed, I am sometimes called
rather dismissively in England, the Managing Director of Church of
England plc because I believe in good management.  But the Kingdom of
God is not going to come, I fear, in a meeting!  Let us not allow
ourselves to be seduced into thinking that to be eternally busy is to
come closer to God either as individuals or as a Church. Some people
misinterpret it when we take "time for God".  Be that as it may.  If we
haven't got our fundamental relationship with God on a strong foundation
then all else will fail.  We will neither be able to nurture one
another in our faith, nor will we be able to offer that transforming
vision to our thirsty world.

Thirdly, if we have confidence in God who is with us, and are nurturing
our relationship with him, then our own vision of the world will be
transformed.  You see, if we find God among us in the figure of Jesus
then it must alter fundamentally the way we look at the world, and
therefore the way that we engage in mission.  And this is where, to my
mind, Kevin Hart's poem leaves some questions.  He speaks of the Christ
who is always beyond - hiding behind a mountain, resting on the other
side of a desert - enticing him onward, yes, but never quite within
reach.

I want to say that we can, we do see Jesus.  He is knowable.  He is
within reach of everyone.  He can change the lives of those who seek
him.  But we also see him in the faces of those to whom we offer the
Gospel, those whom we seek to serve.  It is only when we realise that
Christ is already there, waiting for us to recognise him and name him,
there in the ordinary and the everyday, that transformation begins -
both within ourselves and within those whom we meet.

There have been times, and your own church history will throw up some
examples, when our evangelism and mission have been tinged with
arrogance, and disrespect for peoples.  This can never be a part of our
Gospel.  One of our former Bishops, John Taylor, wrote in his book 'The
Christlike God' :  "Civilisation is three-quarters reverence."  He went
on to say :  "It is the almost universal loss of the sense of being in
relationship with the otherness of persons and answerable to them as
part of one body, the almost total loss, in a word, of community, which
renders our present society and nation so inimical to a sense of God and
so incapable of prayer.  Restoring the realities of genuine relationship
wherever and however that may be achieved is possibly the one valid form
of evangelism left to us."

When Jesus took bread and fishes, in such small quantities and fed
thousands, he was, in effect, saying "You do not understand the Glory of
God in Creation.  What to you is small, insignificant, ordinary and
everyday, has within it the potential to speak of God's blessing."

In our evangelism we need to learn that lesson.  It is not our mission,
it is God's mission.  It is not by our power that people are brought to
God,it is God at work in them.  We simply help them to see that.  A
church which understands that will be on the road to growth.

Let me quote to you from an article written by an agnostic recently in a
secular journal.  The article is entitled "I'm not a believer.  So why
do I go to Church?" The author writes: "Years into this relationship,
the enduring motive for my regular pilgrimage is that the Church is the
only place in the neighbourhood where it is possible to meet a local
community from every conceivable background ... There is a genuine and
open acceptance of each person in the congregation.  Everyone is
encouraged to contribute what they can, whatever its nature.

Has she become a card-carrying Christian?  Apparently not, but she has
found acceptance and value, and that is about reverence, and she ends
her article by saying:  "Perhaps we need to look more closely at what
this institution, so beleaguered and little-valued by the majority, has
to offer for a new way forward." (Melanie Howard in 'Keeping the
Faiths', Demos 1997)

If that is not a statement of one who has caught a glimpse of the glory
of God, then I don't know what it is.  It shows the power of a Church
living the kind of sacrificial and living life that we are all called to
share.

So to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the Province of
Adelaide.  Thank you for your welcome.  Thank you for all you are doing.
Your celebration of 150 years of the Diocese of Adelaide is a marvellous
opportunity for you all to reaffirm your commitment and confidence in
God with us, to give thanks for all in your story which demonstrates
that; and confident in his presence and his love you are equipped to
call out, to proclaim the Good News of his Kingdom, and the
transformation which he offers.  How else could St Columba have set out
from Ireland in 563 in a rudderless coracle with nothing but a Bible in
his hand?  How else could Augustine have so impressed the pagan King of
Kent that Canterbury was the place to set up his Cathedral Church.  How
else could Bishop Short not have been completely overawed by the size of
the task which was laid before him. These were true Pioneers, true
adventurers in the Gospel, confident in the love of God.  And that too
is our calling.