wfn.org | The Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon to the Church of Ireland

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ACNS 3826     |     IRELAND	|     12 MAY 2004

Photographs to go with this item are available here:

http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/38/00/acns3826.cfm

The Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon to the Church of Ireland General
Synod

St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh

Tuesday 11 May 2004

Armagh is not the only city with two cathedrals facing each other from
two hills. If you go to Kampala, you'll see exactly the same phenomenon
- the great Anglican cathedral at Namirembe and the Roman Catholic
cathedral on the other side of the city, looking across at each other a
bit suspiciously. Yet in Kampala the presence of those two great
buildings affirms not only the separation of two Christian communities
but their common origins. For the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican
Church in Uganda began their work at about the same time - and began
with one of the most dramatic and heartrending records of martyrdom in
the whole of missionary history. Several dozen new Christians, mostly
young pageboys from the royal court, were butchered by the King with
every refinement of cruelty; Catholics and Protestants alike witnessed
to their faith in the most extreme circumstances, dying with joy and
courage. Some of the Anglican martyrs went to be burned alive singing
the hymn, 'Daily, daily, sing the praises Of the city God has made'; and
the story is that the night after their deaths, a young man made his way
in secret to the devastated and grieving CMS evangelist, Mackay, and
asked for baptism because he wanted to know how to die like that.

When Pope Paul visited Uganda in 1964 to pronounce the canonisation of
the Catholic martyrs, he generously paid tribute to those Protestants
who had shared their fate, recognising that the whole Church is built up
by such witness not just one part of it. And so it is that when you look
at the two cathedrals in Kampala, you sense not only the division but
the common roots of faith today. Catholic or Protestant, it all began in
a moment when the cross of Christ was made contemporary in the witness
of these young men, young in years and in faith, but mature in
commitment. Beneath the tension of the two great institutions (and it
has been acute and violent at times in the history of Uganda), lies one
fact, the cross, the death of Christ alive and at work in the death and
life of the martyrs.

The two buildings here in Armagh likewise remind us of a single origin,
the mission of Patrick. We do not have here a dramatic story of
martyrdom, like the Ugandan record; but we do look to one foundational
witness. To put it more vividly, all Irish Christian communities were
kindled from the one Easter fire that Patrick lit on the Hill of Slane.
Sometimes, in the face of all that has happened in this country, people
will say, 'We must forget the past and look forward', and I know why
this is said and how important it is. But there is a past that matters
and that we mustn't forget - the moment we share, the moment of
beginning: the Easter fire at Slane, the young Ugandans singing; the
cross and the resurrection.

As we meet here at Armagh on this great occasion, we might well try
looking into the depth of the past rather than the recent past, looking
towards the Easter fire. We're here to celebrate, among other things, a
new Book of Common Prayer, a new attempt to give us as Anglicans a
shared language for our worship; and good worship always takes us back
to the Easter fire, to the single act of God in Christ which makes us
believers and which makes us one. When we pray a 'common prayer', we
acknowledge that what God has done for each of us he has done for all:
we never pray as individuals, and the company of those we pray with is
greater and more surprising than we could have imagined. And when we
begin to hear the echo of this great polyphony of response to God's
action in someone who is a stranger, whose very existence seems to
threaten us and whose language we cannot at first understand, we see
hope. What did the Protestant and Catholic martyrs of Uganda think as
they looked at each other on the way to their deaths? Did they think -
and did their missionary teachers think - that the walls of division
were not as immovable as they had thought? That there was after all one
crucified Christ, one Easter fire, at the root of all their lives? It is
as if in the heart of a weary and deadly combat, your enemy suddenly and
unexpectedly spoke to you, using words you had learned as a child, words
you thought were your own intimate property.

And out of such moments trust is born - a trust exemplified by the
shared witness of the two archbishops of this ancient see, Robin Eames
and Sean Brady. Archbishop Brady, in a powerful and challenging speech
in London last week, spoke of Northern Ireland as cursed by distrust and
pleaded for all involved, on all sides, to make those extra gestures
that will make trust possible. But the deepest learning of trust comes
when we recognise the past we share, the story that is not yours or mine
but ours and God's - the cross and the Easter fire, the martyrs' blood
and the kindling of love. Across the valleys of alienation, two
communities can begin then to see in each other the image of the one
Lord - not the distorted image of their own fears and failures.

For years now, as Archbishop Brady has again reminded us, this has been
the gift that the churches have sought to bring to Northern Ireland; and
he is right to say, in spite of the way in which the conflict has so
often been presented in the media, that without the brave witness of the
churches and their leaders the conflict would have been immeasurably
worse. Archbishop Robin has been tireless in this work, and the courage
of his risk-taking for the common witness of the gospel has been a
beacon for countless others; as he celebrates forty years of priestly
ministry, we celebrate with him a history of true and costly priesthood
in Christ's name, a steady faithfulness of mediation and interpretation,
of patiently helping people listen to each other.

It is because Robin knows how to make people feel that they are taken
seriously that he has so often been charged by the Anglican Communion
with its most thankless jobs; and it is appropriate that I should
express the Communion's gratitude to this Province for its generosity in
sharing his ministry with all of us. He is currently guiding the work of
a Commission which, as you will know, is seeking to find what degree of
communion we as Anglicans can share when actions and attitudes across
the world differ so sharply. We are praying that the experience here of
mediation and the building of trust will bear fruit for our whole
Church, as we struggle to find ways of honouring both the reality of the
Body of Christ and the demands of fidelity to the Bible and the heritage
of belief. Please pray for Archbishop Robin and for the Commission, that
ways may be found other in the midst of conflict for us to recognise in
each other a language that we share, and to understand each other a
little better.

Real trust comes when we see in one another something of the history we
share with God as well as with each other, when we see the other in
their relation with the One who is their saviour and ours. But this is
also where the challenge to be converted to trust becomes a real
question to each of us. As we discover that we stand together before the
one Lord, there is a significant change in the question we ask. We may
begin by asking, 'Why do they not trust us?' - a question about the
other and their failure or sin; but inexorably the searchlight comes
round to us, so that we begin to ask, 'Why are we not seen as
trustworthy?' Growing in trust involves the repentant willingness to
look at our own history and search for the things that intensify fear in
others or that have generated hurt in others. It is not to deny our own
hurts and fears - and I know how terrible those hurts are for so many in
this part of Northern Ireland alone. But if we want to ask others to
repent and search their past, we must do the same, and try to understand
how we are seen and why we are hated or feared. It is a challenge
addressed to us all, and it is the hardest word that Christ can speak to
us. We so long to be only the innocent victim; we so shrink from seeing
that in differing degrees we are all involved both in receiving and in
causing suffering. From the relations of individuals to the conflicts in
the Holy Land, such acknowledgement is the deepest level of conversion;
yet without it we are all still trapped. It is one of the things that
the churches here have learned to say with conviction and power, and the
Church elsewhere must be grateful for this hard-won wisdom. In seeing
ourselves through the eyes of our enemies, we begin to stand where they
stand, to acquire compassionate understanding. Things are changed when
we see from within another's experience.

Put like that, this brings us close to some of the central convictions
of our faith. In a situation where God is feared and mistrusted by human
beings, God becomes human - to share the world of those who were his
enemies and to risk what they risk, temptation, rejection, death. It is
as if God says, 'I see the God you see, the God who is distant and
hostile or unpredictable; and the only way I can show you the truth is
by living in your midst a human life of such reconciled trust that you
will see God afresh and love him.' Our God has shown himself trustworthy
by standing with us in life and suffering and death.

Now if even the innocent and holy God must deal with false and hostile
perception, must win our trust by sharing our life, how much more is
this true for us human creatures, whose sins and fears have helped to
generate those hostile perceptions? Scripture tells us that God does not
stand on his innocence, so to speak, but humbly accepts the consequence
of our unjust perception, since the only way of changing anything is to
make the sacrifice that is needed for trust to be created by walking
with us and seeing with our eyes. So it is, in a lesser way, in the
relation of one group of sinful people with another: we must at some
point let go of the safety of being completely 'innocent' and simply
deal with the consequences of being seen by another as an enemy, as
someone who threatens. We must walk with each other, each trying to see
what the other sees. If we can say it without being too daring, we have
to undertake a kind of 'incarnation' in each other's lives and
experiences. We have to let the fear and suspicion that another is going
through be felt in our own hearts and minds; we have to let the world
appear to us as it appears to them, and to sense and share the risks
they believe they face. In some degree, this is the foundation for any
human act of reconciliation; for Christians, it is made possible in a
much more intense and transforming way precisely because rival groups of
Christians are still rooted in the one divine action, in the incarnation
and the cross and the Easter miracle, and baptised into one Body where
the fear of one is the fear of all, the diminishment of one is an injury
to all and the fulfilment of one is the joy of all. God has immersed
himself in the strange condition of humanity so that we shall learn to
trust and hear him - but also so that we may all come to live by
exchange, by entry into one another's suffering and one another's
healing.

Time and again we are returned to risk, it seems - the risks that church
leaders here have repeatedly taken by the mere fact of standing
together, the risks they have taken in speaking in defence of each
other's communities at times of violent hostility and ingrained
suspicion, and in denouncing the mafia-like behaviour of those groups
that terrorise so many communities today, the risks of working unseen to
keep open communications with paramilitaries and others committed to
violence in order to make possible just a little more negotiation and
flexibility - a point well made in the House of Lords two weeks ago by
my colleague and your countryman, Bishop George Cassidy. But the very
life of our Christian community is rooted in the courageous facing of
suffering so that life may be brought to birth - once again, the little
sparks flying from the one great blaze of Christ's offering and triumph.
And when we nerve ourselves for this, for the risks that bring life, we
proclaim what Christ has done more powerfully than any words can do. On
that terrible night at the royal court of the Baganda in June 1886, a
man came to ask how he could learn how to face death like that. Every
act of costly witness for Christ's sake, even the slightest, the most
prosaic and local, may prompt some small echo of that question.

One story, then, at the roots of it all, the one hill of Golgotha
reflected in the two hills of Armagh or Kampala; a story of the divine
power which alone can equip us to become strangers to ourselves in
penitence and faith as we seek to become brothers and sisters to those
we have considered strangers. So we echo the prophet's call, 'Tell the
nations what he has done!...Israel's holy God is great, and he lives
among his people' - and the apostle's promise, 'The God of peace will be
with you'; as we give God thanks for showing his glory as Christ
finishes his work in cross and resurrection. May his glory be shown
among us in this Synod, in the whole life of our Church and our
Communion, so that the world may believe.

The Most Revd Rowan Williams
The Archbishop of Canterbury

___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is
distributed to more than 7,500 journalists and other readers around
the world.

For subscription INFORMATION please go to:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/acnslist.html

To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your address, please click here:
http://mh.epicom.org/scripts/c.php?L=acns&E=gconklin@igc.org