Speak in a Language Understood of the People

The following remarks were given at a conference on the Anglican Covenant held at General Theological Seminary (10 to 12 April 2008)

Vernacular Particularlity versus Global Universalism:

A Pivotal Issue for the Anglican Covenant

The Rev’d Dr Richard Geoffrey Leggett

Vancouver School of Theology

Let me begin my comments by making my status clear. Although I am a member of the Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada and a member of the Joint Commission of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, I am not empowered to speak for either today. Nor do I speak for Vancouver School of Theology.

I speak as an Anglican liturgist who has been privileged to serve nationally and internationally. I speak as a liturgist who has worked with aboriginal people in Canada and the United States for more than twenty years as they wrestle with the relationship between local culture and the received Anglican tradition. This experience has caused me to question the necessity for a covenant other than the Quadrilateral, an approach which bore fruit in our full communion agreement with the ELCIC, and the Anglican commitment to what can be called the vernacular.

The St Andrew’s Draft of a proposed Anglican covenant needs to be seen in the context of the on-going search within the Anglican Communion to identify where authority is located and, more importantly, how authority is exercised. This debate first raised its head over such issues as artificial contraception and the remarriage of divorced persons but reached a fever pitch with the ordination of women in certain provinces of the Anglican Communion in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 1997 the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission released the so-called ‘Virginia Report’ on authority. The Report recommended strengthening what it termed the instruments of unity: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. A number of responses were made to this Report, most expressing profound concern at its centralizing tendencies. I wish to note that two of the more critical reports came from the Anglican faculty of Vancouver School of Theology and from the Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada.

I do not need to rehearse for this audience the history of the events concerning the present controversy regarding the full inclusion of gay and lesbian disciples of Jesus Christ in the life of the Anglican Communion. Suffice it to say that the controversy gave rise to the Windsor Report of October 2004. The Windsor Report resurrected the spirit, if not the flesh, of the Virginia Report, recommending the strengthening of the roles and authority of the familiar Virginia quartet of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. Two more radical suggestions were made: (i) the creation of a council of advice regarding arrangements for shared episcopal ministry and (ii) the admonitions that, in the election of bishops and the selection of representatives to international Anglican bodies, consideration be given as to whether the bishop elected and/or the person appointed will be acceptable to ‘others’ in the Communion. Once again, the Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee expressed its profound reservations with the proposals of the Windsor Report.

Let me continue my comments on the covenant process with some observations by David Bosch, the late South African theologian of mission. At the end of his chapter on ‘New Testament Models of Mission’ Bosch has a section entitled, ‘Where the Early Church failed’. He gives three examples.

First, the early Christian community stopped understanding itself as leaven and began to understand itself as the loaf.

Those who followed [Jesus] were given no name to distinguish them from other groups, no creed of their own, no rite which revealed their distinctive group character, no geographical center from which they would operate. . . . The community around Jesus was to function as a kind of pars pro toto, a community for the sake of others, a model for others to emulate and be challenged by.[1]

In the course of time the Jesus community simply became a new religion, Christianity, a new principle of division among humankind.[2]

Second, the early Christian community ceased being a movement and became an institution.[3] Bosch describes movements as (a) progressive; (b) active, influencing rather than being influenced; (c) future-oriented; (d) willing to take risks and (e) willing to cross boundaries. On the other hand, Bosch describes institutions as (a) conservative; (b) more or less passive, yielding to influences from outside; (c) past-oriented; (d) anxious and (e) guarding boundaries.

Third, the early Christian community ceased to be a community of communities and became subject to Gentile hegemony.[4] The original Christian movement was thoroughly Jewish in its perspective and its mission. It faced the challenge of the Gentile mission and envisioned a community of communities, Jewish and Gentile, that could witness to the good news of God in Jesus Christ. However, the vision of a community of communities failed and was replaced by a Gentile hegemony that eventually resulted in the anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish bias of much of Christian history.

I suggest that the proposals for ‘unity’ outlined in the St Andrew’s Draft Text, mooted earlier in the Virginia and Windsor Reports, represent a similar failure of mission on the part of the Anglican Communion.

Is the Anglican Communion moving from being ‘leaven’ in the body of the church catholic or a new religion?

Archbishop Michael Ramsey once described the vocation of the Anglican Communion as one of ‘disappearing’. He spoke of the Communion as a community within the church catholic that shared a common story. He insisted, however, that its purpose was not to be a ‘church’, i.e., an ecclesial community with competing claims over and against other ecclesial communities.

One of the risks of the St Andrew’s Draft Text and the covenant process is the creation of a centripetal force that will change the roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council from their present roles as nexuses, places where paths come together, into centres from which paths lead out. When that happens, the Communion ceases to be a communion and becomes a church.

Is the Anglican Communion a movement within the church catholic or an institution?

Following on my observations above, the present climate in the Anglican Communion seems to be encouraging a shift from being a movement within the church catholic into an institution. To those of us with a love-hate relationship with the Anglican Communion, it may surprise us to suggest that we are not yet truly an institution, but I do believe that there is a significant shift in view that is occurring among us. If we look carefully at the proposed covenant and at recent actions of at least one instrument of communion, the Primates’ Meeting, what appears is an environment that is (a) conservative; (b) more or less passive, yielding to influences from outside; (c) past-oriented; (d) anxious and (e) keen to guard boundaries.

Is the Anglican Communion a community of communities or a like-minded community dominated by one theological culture?

In my teaching I have frequently described Anglicanism as a Christian movement committed to ‘national catholicism’. Our ‘catholicism’ is expressed in the four points of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral:

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as ‘containing all things necessary to salvation,’ and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith;

The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith;

The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself --- Baptism and the Supper of the Lord --- ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him;

The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.[5]

Here I would focus on the fourth point of the Quadrilateral, especially the phrase, “. . . locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.”

Our ‘national’ character finds expression in our commitment to inculturate the gospel in the places where God has put us for mission. Another way of expressing this ‘national’ or ‘inculturated’ character is to use the concept of the vernacular. This commitment to the vernacular can be found in the foundations of the Church of England. In the final paragraph of the statement ‘Of Ceremonies, Why Some be Abolished and Some Retayned’ printed in the first Edwardian prayer book, we read the following:

And in these all our dooynges wee condemne no other nacions, nor prescribe anye thing, but to oure owne people onelye. For we thinke it conueniente that euery countreye should use such ceremonies, as thei shal thynke beste to the setting foorth of goddess honor, and glorye: and to the reducyng of the people to a moste perfecte and Godly liuing, without errour or supersticion: and that they shoulde putte awaye other thynges, which from time to time they perceiue to be most abused, as in mennes ordinaunces it often chaūceth diuerselye in diuerse countreyes.[6]

In Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Richard Hooker, the foundational Anglican theologian, responds to the argument that Scripture is the sole source of wisdom with an affirmation of how God’s wisdom pervades all of creation.

Whatsoever either men on earth, or the Angels of Heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountaine of wisdom, which wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. As her waies are of sundry kinds, so her maner of teaching is not merely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred bookes of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some thinges she leadeth and trayneth them onely by worldly experience and practise. We may not so in any one special kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other, but let all her wayes be according unto their place and degree adored.[7]

In recent years the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation has considered what unites Anglicans in worship as well as what celebrates the distinctive cultures in which we live and serve. This point of view is perhaps most clearly articulated in the statement and essays associated with the meeting of the Consultation in York in 1989.

Thus we believe that [Resolutions 18, 22 and 45 of the Lambeth Conference 1988] (and the relevant parts of the Lambeth ‘Mission and Ministry’ section report [paras 180-186]) call in question attempts to identify Anglicanism, whether locally or worldwide, through any common liturgical texts, ethos or style. We believe the ‘essential Anglican norms’ of Lambeth Resolution 47 are largely those contained within the Lambeth Quadrilateral and described within Lambeth Resolution 18 --- i.e. the Bible, creeds, sacraments of the gospel, and episcopal ordination. We believe that use of vernacular language to be foundational to inculturation, and within that value highly the ‘traditional liturgical materials’ to which Resolution 47 also refers. Our common liturgical heritage in items such as the Lord’s Prayer promotes common prayer, sustains a dialogue with the scriptures, and conserves an element of the universal amid the particular of inculturated worship.[8]

Inculturation is the ‘vernacularization’ of the language of the Christian gospel and the specific traditions which may have been the missionary agents of first contact.

Inculturation must . . . affect the whole ethos of corporate worship, not only the texts but also, for example, the use of buildings, furnishings, art, music and ceremonial. From one aspect it means cultural decolonialization of worship, from another it requires recognition of the special needs of an ethnic or other minority, which may be culturally distinct from the prevailing ethos of the Province. True inculturation implies a willingness in worship to listen to culture, to incorporate what is good and to challenge what is alien to the truth of God. It has to make contact with the deep feelings of people. It can only be achieved through an openness to innovation and experimentation, an encouragement of local creativity, and a readiness to reflect critically at each stage of the process --- a process which in principle is never ending. The liturgy, rightly constructed, forms the people of God, enabling and equipping them for their mission of evangelism and social justice in their culture and society.[9]

It is this vernacular quality of the Anglican tradition which is potentially at risk in the covenant process. It is this openness to innovation and experimentation which is potentially at risk in the covenant process. It is the attentiveness to the special needs of a given minority within a Province which is potentially at risk in the covenant process. This vernacular quality is not maintained by statute but by the patient process of reception and communion within diversity.

If Anglicanism is to survive as a communion --- that is, in maintaining actual communion among its very diverse members across the world --- it will do so only by acknowledging the centrality of its spiritual tradition. . . . In so far as we decline to do so, we shall probably try to substitute, at the heart of Anglicanism, the kind of doctrinal and disciplinary rigidity that we have both rejected and coveted in the Reformed and Roman traditions. If we do so, we will tear Anglicanism, both as a community and as tradition, into increasingly small pieces.[10]

Our unique vocation as a Communion that claims both its catholic and reformed heritage may lie in our willingness to reject centripetal proposals in favour of those that focus on remaining at the Table and listening to one another as we journey through the difficult process of vernacularization.

No one in the Anglican Communion really knows what the practical implications of our communion with one another may yet be in terms of working out what each national church does and how it hears the gospel. For example, the Episcopal Church in the United States now ordains women to the priesthood and episcopate, while some churches in Africa reject such ordinations. Similarly, Episcopalians deplore polygamy while African bishops debate the possibility of permitting it within the church. If such disparate churches are willing to remain in communion, that in itself is an expression of the Incarnation. We Anglicans who are in communion with one another are having to ask how the gospel of Jesus Christ is to be incarnate in a particular time and place, and to a particular people and community. How do we enjoy continuity in our shared tradition of belief while still making room as new political and cultural situations arise?[11]

Despite the differences that are straining the bonds of affection and communion within our Communion, I am convinced that these bonds will not be strengthened by constitutional institutions but rather by a renewed commitment to a unity within diversity that is courageous enough to weather patiently the process of the vernacularization of the Christian gospel. Thank you.

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[1] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, American Society of Missiology Series, no. 16 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991, 2002), 50.

[2] Bosch 2002, 50.

[3] Bosch 2002, 50-51.

[4] Bosch 2002, 51-52.

[5] The Book of Common Prayer (USA 1979), 877-878.

[6] The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, Everyman’s Library, no. 448 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1910; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1910), 288.

[7] Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity II.1.

[8] David R. Holeton, ed., Liturgical Inculturation in the Anglican Communion including the York Statement ‘Down to Earth Worship’¸ Alcuin/GROW Liturgical Study, no. 15 (Bramcote, UK: Grove Books Limited, 1990), 12.

[9] Holeton 1990, 9-10.

[10] William Countryman, The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 190; as quoted Patricia Bays, Anglican Diversity: Challenges for the 21^st Century (Toronto, ON: The Anglican Book Centre, 2001), 116.

[11] James Griffiss, The Anglican Vision, The New Church’s Teaching Series, no. 1 (Toronto, ON: The Anglican Book Centre, 1997), 65.

Hope that casts out fear

[The following homily was preached at the Easter Vigil celebrated at St Mary's Anglican Church in Vancouver BC on 22 March 2008. The appointed gospel reading is Matthew 28.1-10.]

+ My friends in Christ, I speak to you in the name of God the Weaver, who through the shuttle of the Holy Spirit weaves us into the pattern of the Word made flesh. Amen.

It was with great interest that I opened the Vancouver Sun this morning and discovered that the rector of St Mary’s had participated in a conversation with a Pentecostal pastor, a humane secularist and a Buddhist nun regarding heaven. Then I turned to the Globe and Mail’s review of recently published books to find a lengthy review of a book on Jesus written by a professor of religious studies in Toronto who began his life as a Christian and has since converted to Judaism. These articles appear in the context of the last several years when Christian faith and religion in general have been the subject of numerous books and critiques, some of which have gone so far as to say that religion of any form is the source of most of the conflict experienced in the world today.

Religion is, after all, controversial. By ‘controversial’ I mean that there are different opinions voiced with differing degrees of passion. There are several ways that one can respond to this public and, in my opinion, welcome controversy about the place of religious faith in social, cultural and political life. One response is to engage in respectful dialogue with others, whether religious believers or not, in order to seek common ground and, where necessary, dispel false impressions and caricatures. Another response is to refuse to engage in any dialogue at all and, in that wonderful Canadian phrase, live in two solitudes: believers on the one side of the divide, non-believers on the other.

While I have a clear preference for the first approach, respectful dialogue, the second can, at times, be relatively benign. We conduct our business without concern about the opinions of others. We do not actively condemn them, but we do not feel obliged to enter into conversation with them. This attitude, however, can give rise to a more dangerous response to a controversy about religion. This dangerous response is when we turn a controversy into a conflict. In a conflict our passions have become so aroused that we seek at first to convince those who disagree with us that they are wrong. When those who do not agree with us refuse to change their point of view or to make any concessions to ours, we can quickly become entrapped in the darkness of coercion as we seek stronger means to compel others to acquiesce to our position.

This descent from controversy into conflict and, in some cases, into oppression and persecution arises from one cause: fear. Here the familiar words of 1 John bear witness: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”[1] When we commit ourselves to protect the dignity of every human being, when we commit ourselves to each other as God has committed God’s very self to us, when we commit ourselves to humility, then fear finds little room in us.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little death

that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it

to pass over and through me.

And when it has gone past

I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

When fear has gone

there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.[2]

In the space of ten short verses, tonight’s gospel reading from Matthew speaks of fear four times. The guard is so afraid of the angel that they shake and become like dead men. The angel greets the women by saying, “Do not be afraid.” Even then the women run away in a combination of fear and joy. When Jesus appears suddenly appears to the women, his first words are, “Do not be afraid.”

In Matthew’s account of the visit of the women to the tomb, the women are not bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body. They have come to ‘see’ the tomb. This is a risky action; by doing so they associate themselves with a man condemned by the Jewish authorities for blasphemy and executed by the Roman authorities for sedition. Elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel and in the New Testament, the verb ‘to see’ denotes ‘understanding or insight into God’s purposes’. These women have come to see Jesus; they know that there must be more than his death. What they will see, they do not know. But they are willing to take the risk.[3]

In 1995 I was elected to General Synod for the first time. When I arrived at Carleton University to register, the person behind the desk said, “Thank goodness you’re here! Come with me!” He took me by the arm, assured me my baggage was being taken care of and led me away down a corridor to another office. “Here he is,” my companion said to the woman at the desk, “Dr Leggett from the Diocese of New Westminster!” “Thank goodness you’re here!” she said, “Come with me!” A shorter trip brought me face to face with yet another member of the local committee.

I was finally allowed to sit down and was told the situation. Along with every other member of General Synod, I was scheduled to go to a local congregation for the Sunday liturgy, some four days away. The congregation I was to attend was part of a multi-point charge and the rector of the parish had just come down with a severe case of laryngitis. “Would you preach and preside at the services in the parish?” I was asked. I said “Yes” thinking how honoured I was until I found out later I was simply the first clergy member of General Synod from New Westminster who had shown up at registration.

That Sunday was Pentecost and I found myself preparing to preach on one of the major celebrations of the Christian year without any of my usual resources. Instead I had to sit simply and quietly with the Scriptures for the day and ask, “What do I think the people need to hear?” As I did so, a clear and succinct message came through to me.

I had been wondering what was the real gift of Pentecost. The apostles and other disciples of Jesus knew what he had taught. They had, according to Luke, witnessed the resurrection. But there they were, hiding away from the world, for fifty days, if we are to believe the traditional chronology. What happened on Pentecost that released them to undertake a mission that would change the world?

The community of the apostles and disciples were deeply afraid. The controversy aroused by their risen and ascended Lord had moved well beyond dialogue into active oppression and persecution. In John’s gospel there is the poignant statement that the doors to the place where the community was gathered were locked because of their fear of the authorities. Despite all that they had heard and seen, they were ‘tongue-tied’ by fear. Despite the message of the angels, despite visions of the risen Lord, they were hunkered down and dispirited.

After some thought I knew what had happened. The primary gift of the Holy Spirit was not tongues; it was hope. Hope is the deeply-seated conviction that there is a future, a purpose, worth living for, working towards and, if necessary, dying for. Hope is the realization that God has a purpose, a telos to use the New Testament term, towards which God is working. Through the Holy Spirit God invites us to participate in proclamation of this future.

When one lives in hope, the world looks very different. When one lives in hope, fear may indeed arise in us, but its shadows quickly disappear in the light of the hope that is within us. Our problems and challenges do not disappear, but they no longer define our lives. Instead, our hope helps us define how we will respond to those problems and challenges.

As I reflect on my time with the Anglican Church in Myanmar, I realize that I have spent three weeks among a people who have every reason to live in fear.

• Christians are actively persecuted in the military and civil service in that they know that they will not be permitted to rise beyond a particular rank or position.
• Clergy are not permitted to vote.
• Church property may be seized or expropriated without warning and without recourse to law.
• There is no secure or legal means of bringing foreign funds into the country for purposes of relief and development.
• Clergy who study abroad risk being refused permission to return to their studies if they return home to visit their families.
• Any gatherings of more than five persons, other than regularly-scheduled worship services, are forbidden unless authorized by the military.
• Bishops are frequently prevented from visiting portions of their dioceses because of the on-going conflict between the military and tribal militias.
• Postal workers routinely take religious books and resources sent to the church in Myanmar from abroad and sell them to used book dealers who, in their turn, notify the church that the books and resources are now for sale, usually at prices that stretch an already tight budget.
• In a country where the majority of the population is under twenty-five unemployment is rampant.
• During the recent installation of the Primate of Myanmar, security forces were present throughout the service, recorded any public remarks and took numerous photographs of the participants.

Yet I did not find fear.

What I found was a church that was living in hope --- even in the face of oppression and persecution.

• Throughout the country pre-school children are being educated and cared for, regardless of their religious tradition, by Anglican pre-schools.
• Throughout the country micro-credit is being extended to help people establish themselves in sustainable enterprises.
• Throughout the country the Mothers’ Union provides health education, training and, in some more remote locations, supports medical clinics to provide basic medical care.
• Throughout the country young people live out a commitment to the gospel which, on more than one occasion, led me to ponder our failure to imbue a passion for the good news of God in Jesus Christ in people of my ‘baby boomer’ generation and in those who have come after.
• Throughout the country Anglicans, who make up one tenth of one percent of the entire population, gather Sunday after Sunday, saints day after saints day, and give thanks to God for all God’s gift to them and to all creation.

This vitality of Christian witness, this quiet but pervasive joy, comes, I think, from a deep well of hope. Anglicans in Myanmar believe that there is a future, a purpose, worth living for, working towards and, if necessary, suffering for. Anglicans in Myanmar believe that God has a purpose, a goal towards which God is working in us, through us and with us. Anglicans in Myanmar believe that we are called to proclaim this purpose to all and, when it is necessary, to use words as well as the witness of their daily lives.

My friends, this is the night. This is the night when darkness vanishes for ever. This is the night that dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence and brings mourners joy. This is the night when Christians are called to remember that we are not now nor have we ever been meant to live in fear. We have been called to live in love and, to live in love, we proclaim our hope.

There is no doubt that controversy swirls around and among us. That controversy is not limited to questions of sexuality but extends into

• questions regarding how the Holy Scriptures are to be read and interpreted,
• uncertainty regarding the future of our congregations, our dioceses and the national structures of our church and
• differing opinions about how we understand the relationship between the Christian gospel and other religious faiths.

If we live in fear, we may find ourselves descending into the darkness of conflict, a descent that can arouse in us the desire to defeat our ‘enemies’ whomever we think them to be. If we live in fear, then we may find ourselves like the apostles and disciples in the Upper Room, so paralyzed that the good news that we have to share is silenced. If we live in fear, then we respond to our critics and those who may differ from us with accusations, threats and denials rather than with humility, promises and affirmations.

On this night when we proclaim the resurrection, we commit ourselves to remain ‘firm in the hope [God] has set before us, so that we and all [God’s] children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise [God’s] name’.[4] We gather to proclaim that Christ is risen and that his resurrection empowers us with hope. This is no vague hope, no wishful thinking. It is a hope grounded in God’s covenant fidelity, in God’s constant working throughout all of history, to bring about fullness of life for all creatures, human and non-human. It is a hope grounded in the tangible life of Christ expressed in the Christian community, through its engagement not only in direct service of those in any need or trouble, but in its willingness to engage the political, social and economic structures which deny and diminish the dignity of every human being.

To say, “Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!”, is to say to the whole world that lordship does not belong to those who crave power and instil fear; no, lordship belongs to the One who willingly goes to the Cross and who is raised to banish the power of fear and death. To say, “Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!”, is to say that lordship does not belong to those who would demean the dignity of others, those who rejoice in division and use our differences to distort and destroy; no, lordship belongs to the One who humbled himself to share our humanity so that we might share his divine life.

My friends, this is the night when we renew our baptismal covenant to choose justice rather than self-interest, to live in covenant fidelity with God and one another, to walk humbly in the presence of God and neighbour. This is the night when we affirm that we are a community of hope rather than fear, community committed to human solidarity rather than prejudice and suspicion.

Let us pray.

Sanctifier of time and space, maker of dancing quarks and ancient quasars, of energy and element, blessed are you, God of gods. Your saving love endures forever; your holy light pierces the cold darkness of death and chaos; you cut a covenant of life with your creatures, which no evil can overcome. May the glorious radiance of resurrection dispel the shadows in our lives and conform us more closely to your risen Christ, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honour, praise and glory. Amen.[5]

---

[1] 1 John 4.18.

[2] Frank Herbert, Dune.

[3] The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 1799.

[4] The Book of Alternative Services, 215.

[5] Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, 105.

Let us overcome the darkness that is within us

[The following homily was preached at St Mary's Anglican Church in Vancouver BC on Good Friday, 21 March 2008.]

+ My friends in Christ, I speak to you in the name of God the Weaver, who through the shuttle of the Holy Spirit weaves us into the pattern of the Word made flesh. Amen.

On this Good Friday we gather to remember the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and ponder the implications of his voluntary suffering and death for us and for the whole of creation. Let me begin with three stories.

The first story: The Gentiles tried to kill us but they failed.

Last night, while we were commemorating the last meal that Jesus had with his friends and stripping the sanctuary in anticipation of his passion, our Jewish brothers and sisters were celebrating the feast of Purim, a story told in the book of Esther. It is rare that Purim and Holy Week coincide.

The story of Purim takes place during the reign of the great Persian king Xerxes who counts a young Jewish woman, Esther, among his wives. One of Xerxes’ advisors, Haman, takes a keen dislike for Mordecai, a Jewish elder, and he hatches a plot to exterminate the Jews in the Persian empire.

Mordecai learns of the plot and advises Esther, his niece, to take action. She is at first reluctant, but when Mordecai reminds her that she shall not escape the fate planned by Haman, she agrees to act. Since Xerxes has not summoned her, she must risk his wrath and possible death by appearing unbidden in the audience chamber and then asking to speak with him. She succeeds and eventually foils Haman’s plot. Haman is executed and the Jews are permitted to defend themselves against Haman’s henchmen who have already launched their attacks. The Jews win and Xerxes extends imperial protection to the Jewish community.

Here we were last night, beginning our sombre journey to the Cross, while our Jewish friends were celebrating a great victory. Imagine how some of our Christian ancestors might have reacted: Christians in mourning, Jews in celebration.

The second story: The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.

The ancient city of Alexandria was a cosmopolitan metropolis of several million people: Egyptians, Greeks, peoples from all around the Mediterranean, peoples from Asia and Africa and one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Palestine. There had always been particular tensions between the Jewish, Greek and Egyptian communities in the city. After the Roman conquest of the city during the reign of Augustus Caesar, Greeks and Jews were given certain rights and tax exemptions not given to the native Egyptian population. The Greeks despised the Jews for various reasons and denied Jews access to the public places where business and politics were conducted.

These tensions reached their height in the year 38. In the past the Jewish community had sent a traditional declaration of loyalty to the emperor on the occasion of his accession. But in the year 38 the Roman governor had failed to send this declaration of loyalty to the new emperor, Gaius Caligula, whether intentionally or not is still not clear. This political lapse was complicated later that year during the visit of Herod Agrippa, the titular Jewish king, who had been sent to Alexandria on a mission from Caligula. Herod had never been popular with the Jewish people and it appears that the Jews of Alexandria insulted him in some fashion. When the governor failed to take action, the Greek and Egyptian population rose up to take direct action against the Jewish community.

Jews were forced to abandon their homes in four of the five districts of the city and were forced into what we now call a ‘ghetto’. Jewish businesses were destroyed and thousands of Jews were killed on the streets, in the amphitheatre and by extra-judicial executions. Statues and pictures of Caligula were forcibly placed in Jewish synagogues causing the Jews to rise up to resist the desecration of their places for prayer and teaching. Eventually the riots came to an end, but the damage done to the Jewish community lasted until the year 117. In that year the emperor Trajan annihilated the Jewish community in Alexandria as part of the Roman effort to quell yet another Jewish rebellion in Palestine.

Sometime during these troubles, a member of the Jewish community in Alexandria took pen in hand and wrote what we now call the book of Wisdom or the Wisdom of Solomon. A portion of this book is frequently read at funerals particularly because of its simple yet hopeful beginning: “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”[1]

• The earlier optimism of the Alexandrian Jewish community for a rapprochement with the Greeks and for social and cultural acceptance by them had been replaced by a mounting sense of disillusionment and disappointment.
• The author addresses his fellow Jews in an effort to encourage them to take pride in their traditional faith. By presenting Judaism in intellectually respectable terms, he seeks to shore up the faith against hostile anti-Jewish attacks from without and gnawing doubts from within.

He is guided by three themes:

• the certainty that justice will be eventually triumph over injustice,
• the conviction that a life lived in accordance with God’s wisdom as revealed in Torah is better than any other life and
• the troubles of the present time are this generation’s exodus, its own experience of costly deliverance from tyranny into freedom.

Even if the present time is fraught with evil and injustice, the author affirms that it is still wiser to act morally and faithfully because moral and faithful actions plant the seeds that will eventually bloom into the harvest of righteousness, peace and justice. Perhaps the writer of Wisdom expected the seeds to sprout in the next generation, but he probably did not live to see this happen.

The third story: It is better that one community die if it serves the state.

Let’s fast forward nineteen hundred years. On the 30^th of January 1933 the President of the Weimar Republic appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. On the 10^th of March 1933 the Nazi government opened the first concentration camp, Dachau, in an agricultural area just outside of Munich and incarcerated members of the Communist and Social Democratic parties. In 1936 Sachsenhausen, first a concentration camp, later an extermination camp, was opened near Weimar, a city always associated with liberal democracy in German history. In 1937 Buchenwald, also a concentration camp that became an extermination camp, was opened near Berlin. As these camps opened and political realities became more difficult, many Jews attempted to flee Germany. Some attempted to flee to the east into Poland, but the Polish authorities refused to permit the Jews to enter the country.

In a tragic Catch-22, the German authorities would not allow the Jewish refugees back into Germany. They were trapped in the border zone and their situation became increasingly desperate. The world took no action as people languished, unable to leave, unable to return. In Paris the son of a couple trapped in this ‘no-man’s land’ took a gun to the German embassy and shot the third secretary who died a few days later.

Just before midnight on November 9, Gestapo chief Heinrich Műller sent a telegram to all police units informing them that ‘in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.’ Rather, the police were to arrest the victims. Fire companies stood by synagogues in flames with explicit instructions to let the buildings burn. They were to intervene only if a fire threatened adjacent ‘Aryan’ properties.[2]

• More than 1,000 synagogues were burned or damaged.
• 7,500 Jewish businesses were ransacked and looted.
• 91 Jews were known to have been killed.
• Jewish hospitals, homes, schools and cemeteries were vandalized.
• 30,000 Jewish men, aged 16 to 60, were arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.

This night, the 9^th to the 10^th of November, is known as ‘Kristallnacht’, the ‘night of broken glass’. On the 15^th of November Jews were banned from public schools. By December Jews were banned from most public places in Germany.

These events mark the beginning of what our Jewish brothers and sisters call ha Shoah, the Holocaust. By 1945 six million Jews had been systematically exterminated as well as millions of Socialists, Communists, gays, lesbians, Jehovah Witnesses, gypsies and prisoners of war. The scope of the Holocaust of European Jewry and the murder of millions of others is difficult to comprehend, so difficult that there are voices today that deny the Holocaust ever took place or assert that the Holocaust was invented by the Jews in order to maintain their secret control of the world’s economy and to bolster support for Israel.

Why do I tell these stories on a day when we gather to remember the death of Jesus?

I tell these stories because of the power of the narrative we have just read. John’s powerful narrative of the events leading to the death of Jesus has been read throughout the Christian world for at least fifteen hundred years. Many of us have been moved by Johann Sebastian Bach’s The St John Passion. We may have uncritically absorbed the message explicit in John’s gospel that the death of Jesus is the responsibility of ‘the Jews’, an entire people, rather than the Jewish and Roman authorities who saw Jesus as a threat to public order and to the stability of the state. He was, to use modern political language, a subversive, whose message, like the Dalai Lama’s, was seen by the political authorities as providing philosophical fuel to terrorist fires.

Throughout western history and into the present day, purveyors of fear, demagogues and dictators have found it useful to make Jews and other minority groups scapegoats for the problems faced by a given society. But purveyors of fear, demagogues and dictators are not the only ones who find scapegoats useful.

All of us have, from time to time, found it self-serving to identify the cause of our problems and challenges with a particular person or party or group. Let me speak in those voices.

• “I am tired of being told that I bear any responsibility for the present situation of First Nations people. It’s their own fault if they choose to live on their ancestral land rather than get with the programme of the twenty-first century. Let them get over it.”
• “The church used to be a comforting and peaceful place before women, gays and lesbians began agitating for their so-called ‘rights’ or so-called ‘justice’.”
• “It’s time for the conservatives to go away. They are all homo-phobic, critical fundamentalists.”
• “You know, our congregation was wonderful until that crazy rector moved the altar and brought in the BAS.”
• “You know, we could do great things here if the Prayer Book people would just move away.”

I do not know about you, but I do know myself. I have felt and, in one fashion or another, spoken these words in various times and places.

The problem lies, as Shakespeare says, not in our stars but in ourselves. When we gather here, year after year, to tell the story of the last days of Jesus of Nazareth, we are telling our own story. We are telling the story of how fearful we are of encountering the darkness that exists in each one of us. When God sends us the witness of the prophets and sages, when God sends us the witness of the people of the covenant of Moses and, in the fullness of time, when God sends us the witness of the Word made flesh, we resort to that primeval response to flee. But God, ever faithful, pursues us and finally, like even a cornered rabbit, we fight to the death to protect ourselves from learning the truth.

That truth is that deep within each one of us is the desire to be the centre of the universe. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are about to be thrown into the fiery furnace, the king challenges them by saying, “Now let us see whether your God can save you.” But Shadrach responds out of a deep awareness that it is God who is the centre of the universe, mysterious yet purposeful, incomprehensible but ultimately compassionate. He says, “Whether God saves us or not, God is still God. If you are trying to prove a point, you will fail.”

The truth is that deep within each one of us is the desire to be the only beloved of God. When Jonah is furious with God for having dragged him from his home to proclaim a message of judgement on Nineveh and then, because the people heed the message and repent, God decides not to destroy the city, God asks Jonah, in so many words, “Do you think you are the only one I love? Do you think you are the creature whose existence is important to me?”

The truth is that deep within each one of us is the desire to be the final adjudicator of all value and worth. When Peter falls into a deep sleep and has a dream where God bids him eat what is forbidden, he challenges God by declaring he has never eaten unclean things. But God speaks to him, much like God speaks to Moses: “I am the one who will declare what is clean and unclean. If I choose to do a new thing, I will do it. Now go and bring the Gentiles into the covenant!”

But in the end, the desire to be the centre of the universe, the desire to be the only beloved of God and the desire to be the final adjudicator of all value and worth are illusions that can lead to even more dangerous delusions. The truth is found in the Cross of Christ, the ultimate symbol of humanity’s attempts to hide from the Holy One of Israel who constantly seeks to free us from the bondage of fear and death.

At the end of today’s liturgy, as we gaze at the Cross and remember the powerful story told today, let us ponder how we have avoided confronting whatever darkness lurks in our own souls that may lead us to find convenient scapegoats, whether near or far, rather than seek the heart of God that beats within each of us. Let us be conscious of how that story has been used to kill rather than promise life. Let us leave this place with the commitment to do all within our power to prevent the story of the Lord’s death from ever being used for other purposes than proclaiming the bottomless love of God for us and for all of creation.

Let us pray.

We veil our faces before your glory, O Holy and Immortal One, and bow before the cross of your wounded Christ. With angels and archangels, we praise you, our Mercy, and we bless you, our Compassion, for in our brokenness you have not abandoned us. Hear us as we pray though Jesus, our high priest: heal all division, reconcile the estranged, console the suffering, and raise up to new life all that is bound by death. Amen.[3]

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[1] Wisdom 3.1-3.

[2] ‘Kristallnacht.’ Encyclopedia Britannica 2007. Retrieved 10 November 2007 from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9046254

[3] Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, 100.