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Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas sermon 2008

Posted On : December 25, 2008 11:46 AM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2008/12/25/ACNS4552

> Related Categories: ACO  Lambeth

> Thursday 25 December 2008

In his Christmas sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, the Archbishop of
Canterbury says that one of the lessons of the coming of Christ is that
people shouldn't waste time waiting for larger-than-life heroes to bring
comprehensive and total solutions to the ills of the world.

'There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus'; we've very likely heard
those words many, many times in carol services, like an overture to the
great drama of the Christmas story. The emperor Augustus would have been
delighted, I'm sure, to be told that his name would still be recalled
after twenty centuries - but more than a little dismayed that it would
be simply because he happened to be around at the time of Christ's
birth. There were all sorts of things for which he would have wanted to
be remembered, and many of his contemporaries were not slow in telling
him about them. And in fairness he had quite a good claim to fame: he
had, after all, restored order to the Roman state and consolidated its
global influence as never before. For many decades, a kind of peace
prevailed from Germany to Syria - enforced by typical Roman brutality
when any signs of dissent appeared, but still probably better than the
chaos of the Roman civil war that had been going on before. It made
sense to hail him as restorer of peace, and to look forward to a long
period of stability and prosperity.

It didn't turn out quite like that, of course; but Augustus's reign was
for many people a sort of golden age. In later generations, new emperors
set themselves the goal of bringing back something of that stability and
confidence, and they would describe themselves on their coins and
statues as the rescuers of the world's good order - as 'saviours':
something that had already been common among the kings of the Middle
East in earlier centuries.

So if you'd asked people of Jesus' day what the word 'saviour' meant,
the answer would be pretty plain. It was someone who would bring back
the golden age, who would put an end to conflict; you could almost say
it was someone who would stop things happening. Salvation was the end of
history, brought about by one unique charismatic leader.

Curious that, all these years later, the same language still survives.
Twentieth century totalitarian systems looked forward to a state of
things where all conflict was over and change and struggle stopped. On
the other side, after the end of the Cold War, some scholars were
writing about the 'end of history', and an American President spoke of a
'new world order'. In recent weeks, we've seen some of Barack Obama's
advisers and colleagues warning about the level of messianic expectation
loaded on to the President-elect - wisely recognising the risks involved
in tapping in to this vein of excited imagination always just below the
surface of even the most cynical society. We have certainly not, as
human beings, grown out of the fascination of saviours who will restore
the good times. The Lord has bared his arm and is once and for all
returning to Zion; surely that is real salvation?

And as always the gospel comes in with a sober 'Yes, but...' The saviour
arrives, but goes unrecognised. He is hidden in the form of poverty and
insecurity, a displaced person. Instead of peace and the golden age
restored, there is conflict, a trial, a cross and a mysterious new dawn
breaking unlike anything that has gone before. He was in the world and
the world did not know him. Yet to those who recognise him and trust
him, he gives authority (not just 'power', as our translations have it)
to become something of what he is - to share in the manifesting of his
saving work.

So what's happening here to the idea of a saviour? The gospel tells us
something hard to hear - that there is not going to be a single
charismatic leader or a dedicated political campaign or a war to end all
wars that will bring the golden age; it tells us that history will end
when God decides, not when we think we have sorted all our problems out;
that we cannot turn the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of God
and his anointed; that we cannot reverse what has happened and restore a
golden age. But it tells us something that at the same time explodes all
our pessimism and world-weariness. There is a saviour, born so that all
may have life in abundance, a saviour whose authority does not come from
popularity, problem-solving or anything else in the human world. He is
the presence of the power of creation itself. He is the indestructible
divine life, and the illumination he gives cannot be shrouded or
defeated by the darkness of human failure.

But he has become flesh. He has come to live as part of a world in which
conflict comes back again and again, and history does not stop, a world
in which change and insecurity are not halted by a magic word, by a
stroke of pen or sword on the part of some great leader, some genius. He
will change the world and - as he himself says later in John's gospel -
he will overcome the world simply by allowing into the world the
unrestricted force and flood of divine life, poured out in
self-sacrifice. It is not the restoring of a golden age, not even a
return to the Garden of Eden; it is more - a new creation, a new horizon
for us all.

And it can be brought into being only in 'flesh': not by material force,
not by brilliant negotiation but by making real in human affairs the
depth of divine life and love; by showing 'glory' - the intensity and
radiance of unqualified joy, eternal self-giving. Only in the heart of
the ordinary vulnerability of human life can this be shown in such a
way, so that we are saved from the terrible temptation of confusing it
with earthly power and success. This is, in Isaiah's words, 'the
salvation of our God' - not of anything or anyone else.

For those who accept this revelation and receive the promised authority,
what can be done to show his glory? So often the answer to this lies in
the small and local gestures, the unique difference made in some
particular corner of the world, the way in which we witness to the fact
that history not only goes on but is also capable of being shifted
towards compassion and hope. This year as every year, we remember in our
prayers the crises and sufferings of the peoples of the Holy Land: how
tempting it is to think that somehow there will be a 'saviour' here - a
new US president with a fresh vision, an election in Israel or Palestine
that will deliver some new negotiating strategy...It's perfectly proper
to go on praying for a visionary leadership in all those contexts; but
meanwhile, the 'saving' work is already under way, not delayed until
there is a comprehensive settlement.

This last year, one of the calendars in my study, one of the things that
provides me with images for reflection e very day, has been the one
issued by Families for Peace - a network of people from both communities
in the Holy Land who have lost children or relatives in the continuing
conflict; people who expose themselves to the risk of meeting the family
of someone who killed their son or daughter, the risk of being asked to
sympathise with someone whose son or daughter was killed by activists
promoting what you regard as a just cause. The Parents Circle and
Families Forum organised by this network are labouring to bring hope
into a situation of terrible struggle simply by making the issues
'flesh', making them about individuals with faces and stories. When I
have met these people, I have been overwhelmed by their courage; but
also left with no illusions about how hard it is, and how they are made
to feel again and again that they come to their own and their own refuse
to know them. Yet if I had to identify where you might begin to speak of
witnesses to 'salvation' in the Holy Land, I should unhesitatingly point
to them.

In any such situation, the same holds true. In recent days, I have been
catching up with news of other enterprises in the Holy Land, especially
from the Christian hospitals in Bethlehem and Nazareth, struggling with
all kinds of pressure on them from various sources and with the chronic
problem of desperately small resources, yet still obstinately serving
all who come to them, from whatever background. And last week I spoke
with someone helping to run a small community theatre project in
Bulawayo, supported by local churches, working to deepen the confidence
and the hope of those living in the middle of some of the worst
destitution even Zimbabwe can show. Signs of salvation; not a magical
restoration of the golden age, but the stubborn insistence that there is
another order, another reality, at work in the midst of moral and
political chaos; the reality that is the eternal 'Logos', St John's
Greek term that means not simply a word but a pattern of harmonious
relation.

That is what is made flesh at Christmas. And our own following of the
Word made flesh is what gives us the resources to be perennially
suspicious of claims about the end of history or the coming of some
other saviour exercising some other sort of power. To follow him is to
take the risks of working at these small and stubborn outposts of
newness, taking our responsibility and authority. In the months ahead it
will mean in our own country asking repeatedly what is asked of us
locally to care for those who bear the heaviest burdens in the wake of
our economic crisis - without waiting for the magical solution, let
alone the return of the good times. Internationally, it is remembering
that our personal involvement in prayer and giving is utterly essential,
whatever pressure we may rightly want to bring to bear on governments
and organisations.

Isaiah looked towards the day when the guards on the deserted city's
wall would see the return of the Lord 'face to face'. So much of our
witness to salvation depends on this face to face encounter (and yes,
that was one of the ideals that helped to shape the work of this year's
Lambeth Conference). We can't pass the buck to Caesar Augustus, Barack
Obama or even Canterbury City Council - though we may pray for them all
and hope that they will play their part in witnessing to new
possibilities. To follow the Word made flesh is to embark, with a fair
bit of fear and trembling, it may be, on making history - not waiting
for it to stop. And that means speaking and working for Christ in the
myriad face to face encounters in which he asks us to be his witnesses -
to see and to show his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son,
full of grace and truth.

> (c) Rowan Williams 2008

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