wfn.org | Archbishop of Canterbury : "There are no quick solutions for the wounds of the body of Christ."

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Archbishop of Canterbury tells global south gathering: "There are no quick solutions 
for the wounds of the body of  Christ."

Posted On : April 20, 2010 05:00 AM | Posted By : Webmaster

ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2010/4/20/ACNS4699

> Related Categories: Lambeth Palace

The Archbishop of Canterbury has used his video address to the Fourth Global 
South to South Encounter meeting in Singapore to emphasise that it is the work 
of God?s Spirit that can heal the tensions within the Anglican family.

Dr Williams was speaking specifically to two items on the meeting?s agenda: 
challenges for the Church?s mission and the Anglican Communion Covenant, which 
he described as a new way of ?grounding our mission?.

?The text of the [Anglican] Covenant is a whole,? he said. ?It is something 
which lays out the foundations of our faith, the language that we share, and 
the hopes that we share, but it also?we hope and pray?sets out a path for the 
future, a path of mutual attention, mutual respect, the kind of obedience to 
one another that the New Testament proposes for us, but so much in the 
Christian tradition also suggests ? the careful listening to one another?s 
needs, and discernment of what we can say together... So one of my prayers for 
your meeting in these days is that you will discover something about that 
mutual obedience, the covenant with one another that comes out of our grateful 
acceptance of the covenant God makes with us in the blood of Jesus Christ.?

He went on to say that the Anglican Communion had been reflecting on the need 
for a covenant ?in the light of confusion, brokenness and tension within our 
Anglican family ? brokenness and a tension that has been made still more acute 
by recent decisions in some of our Provinces.

?In all your minds there will be questions around the election and consecration 
of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles.  All of us share the concern that in this 
decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide between itself 
and the rest of the Anglican family.  And as I speak to you now, I am in 
discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences 
might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that most 
Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common 
mind.

?But I hope also in your thinking about this and in your reacting to it, you?ll 
bear in mind that there are no quick solutions for the wounds of the Body of 
Christ.  It is the work of the Spirit that heals the Body of Christ, not the 
plans or the statements of any group, or any person, or any instrument of 
communion.  Naturally we seek to minimize the damage, to heal the hurts, to 
strengthen our mission, to make sure that it goes forward with integrity and 
conviction.  Naturally, there are decisions that have to be taken.  But at the 
same time we must all...share in a sense of repentance and willingness to be 
renewed by the Spirit.

?So while the tensions and the crises of our Anglican Communion will of course 
be in your minds as they are in mine, I know from what you have written, what 
you have communicated about your plans and hopes for this conference, that you 
will allow the Holy Spirit to lift your eyes to that broader horizon of God?s 
purpose for us as Anglicans, for us as Christians, and indeed for us as human 
beings.?

> ENDS

Editors Note: Video Will be added as soon as it becomes available

The full text of the Archbishop?s address is below:

The Archbishop of Canterbury?s video address to the Fourth Global South to 
South Encounter, 20 April 2010

Greetings to you all, in the name of our risen Lord and Saviour.

You are meeting in this most precious season of the Christian year ? the Easter 
season when we give thanks for the new creation revealed and made real for us 
in the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  And we meet also praying in 
preparation for Pentecost for the renewed gift of the Holy Spirit in which 
alone we come fully alive to God and to one another in Jesus Christ.

I wish you every blessing in your meeting and I?m delighted that it?s happening 
at this particular moment, not only in the Christian year, but in the life of 
our Communion.  I?m very sorry indeed that it?s not been possible for me to be 
with you physically.  But I know that my greetings and best wishes will have 
been brought to you by our friends from the United Kingdom who are joining you 
on this occasion.

I want to comment on one or two things that relate to your agenda, and indeed 
to the agenda that we share as Anglicans in our worldwide fellowship.

The text of the Anglican Covenant has now been available for discussion for 
several months.  As you know it?s the fruit of long, careful, prayerful 
discussion; the fruit of a sustained attempt on the part of so many people 
throughout our Communion to determine not only what it is that binds us 
together in terms of our faith, the authority we accord to scripture and 
tradition, but also what binds us humanly and specifically to one another in 
our fellowship, in our Communion ? what it is that makes us one body, one 
community, able to speak to the world in the name of Christ.

The text of the [Anglican] Covenant is a whole. It is something which lays out 
the foundations of our faith, the language that we share, and the hopes that we 
share, but it also?we hope and pray?sets out a path for the future, a path of 
mutual attention, mutual respect, the kind of obedience to one another that the 
New Testament proposes for us, but so much in the Christian tradition also 
suggests ? the careful listening to one another?s needs, and discernment of 
what we can say together, that is part not only in the life of the Church from 
time immemorial, but that has also been an important part of the life of many 
religious communities in the Benedictine tradition in which that mutual 
listening and obedience to one another has been so crucial.  So one of my 
prayers for your meeting in these days is that you will discover something 
about that mutual obedience, the covenant with one another that comes out of 
our grateful acceptance of the covenant God makes with us in the blood of Jesus 
Christ.

Covenant, as many people have said, is an extraordinarily rich word.  In your 
discussions during these days you?ll have had many opportunities to think about the 
richness of that word in Scripture and in the theological tradition.  But as I 
reflected on it myself, one of the texts that I looked to was the association that 
St Paul makes in Romans 9.4 between adoption¸ glory, and covenant.  He?s 
speaking there of the Jewish people: ?from them?, he says
(v.5), ?comes the Messiah?, the Lord, the Incarnate God.  In their life they 
have discovered adoption as children of God, the revelation of the glory of 
God, and the covenant reality which holds them to God and to one another.  And 
I would like to think that as we Anglicans together reflect on covenant, we 
think also about adoption and about glory.

As Anglicans we, like all other Christians, understand our lives in Christ as 
being brought into that glorious liberty which belongs to the children of God ? 
the liberty from self and sin, the liberty to pray and to praise without 
hindrance; to stand where Christ stands; to call God ?Abba! Father!? (Mark 
14.36, Romans 8.15, Galatians 4.6), to speak with his voice and to breathe in 
his Spirit.  We are adopted sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.  And in 
that being drawn into the adoptive relationship with the Father, what happens 
is glory ? the glory that in St John?s gospel Jesus assures he will give to his 
disciples because they have come to share his relation with God the Father 
(John 17.10).

So, to the world we show a new pattern of human life reconciled with the 
Father, free in the household of the Father to come to him with our prayer, 
with our praise, our petition, whenever we need and whenever we wish, confident 
of his reconciling and forgiving love.  We show to the world that model of 
reconciled, forgiven life, and of bold and intimate prayer.  And in doing so, 
the glory of God is reflected in us:  the glory that Christ has with the Father 
before all time and to all eternity, now made real in the faces and the lives 
of ordinary people like you and me.

That new life is made real in us, and that glory is shown in us, because God 
has made a covenant with us ? has promised in Jesus Christ to be with us when 
we turn to him, has promised that his merciful, forgiving, renewing strength 
will always be there for us, that his Spirit is never exhausted in re-creating 
us.  It?s the covenant that makes us aware of our new status as the adopted 
sons and daughters of God, the covenant that is the foundation of glory being 
shown in us.  And therefore it?s God?s covenant with us that is the basis of 
our mission, our confident readiness to share with the whole needy world the 
promise of being adopted as sons and daughters, the promise of glory.  And as 
so much in Scripture hints, as we rediscover again and again that covenant that 
God has made with us, so we rediscover the covenant that binds us to one 
another.  We share in that status of sons and daughters.  We see glory in each 
other?s faces.  And in our unity and our commitment to one another we show that 
God not only has a purpose for individuals, but that God has a purpose for the 
human family.

So when, as an Anglican Communion we seek to bind ourselves in covenant, we?re 
not simply making a contract, we?re not simply trying to solve problems. We?re 
trying to find a way of grounding our mission in a new way, in the recognition 
of that inter-weaving of adoption and glory that all Christians share.

So as you discuss the Covenant?and as the Covenant is discussed in your 
Provinces?I hope that that larger dimension will always be in people?s minds.  
I was particularly pleased to see the ways in which the titles of the various 
bible studies and lectures during your meeting reflected that sense that we 
need to go deeper into the idea of covenant.  Few things could be more 
important for us.  So, in all those discussions and reflections I wish you 
every blessing, and I look forward with great eagerness to hearing what you 
have discovered in your thinking and praying together.

But of course we are reflecting on the need for a covenant in the light of 
confusion, brokenness and tension within our Anglican family ? a brokenness and 
a tension that has been made still more acute by recent decisions in some of 
our Provinces.  In all your minds there will be questions around the election 
and consecration of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles.  All of us share the concern 
that in this decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide 
between itself and the rest of the Anglican family.  And as I speak to you now, 
I am in discussion with a number of people around the world about what 
consequences might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that 
most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our 
common mind.

But I hope also in your thinking about this and in your reacting to it, you?ll 
bear in mind that there are no quick solutions for the wounds of the Body of 
Christ.  It is the work of the Spirit that heals the Body of Christ, not the 
plans or the statements of any group, or any person, or any instrument of 
communion.  Naturally we seek to minimize the damage, to heal the hurts, to 
strengthen our mission, to make sure that it goes forward with integrity and 
conviction.  Naturally, there are decisions that have to be taken.  But at the 
same time we must all?as indeed your own covering notes suggest for your 
conference?we must all share in a sense of repentance and willingness to be 
renewed by the Spirit.

So while the tensions and the crises of our Anglican Communion will of course 
be in your minds as they are in mine, I know from what you have written, what 
you have communicated about your plans and hopes for this conference, that you 
will allow the Holy Spirit to lift your eyes to that broader horizon of God?s 
purpose for us as Anglicans, for us as Christians, and indeed for us as human 
beings.

Adoption and glory: these are the treasures given to us in the very earthenware 
vessels of our discipleship with its varying failings and confusions.  And yet 
God has promised to be faithful. And it?s his faithfulness that we celebrate at 
this Easter season, and as we wait for the seal of the Spirit at Pentecost.

May your prayers and your thoughts be part of a new Pentecost for the Anglican 
Communion, which will bind us in communion more deeply than ever, make us more 
faithful, effective and imaginative witnesses to God?s truth to the ends of the 
earth.

May God the Father bless you all, through the risen Christ, showering upon you 
the power of his Holy Spirit.

> +  Rowan Cantuar:

> © Rowan Williams 2010