In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is a special day in the Anglican Communion for today is Anglican Communion Sunday. Today Anglicans from around the world will be praying for the ministry of our Communion. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be celebrating this special day with you in a place that has hosted all of the Primates of the Communion last year, a place very sensitive to its role in welcoming Anglicans from around the world, and of course your striking support of Archbishop Tutu and South Africa and as well as your Chinese congregation. I would safely guess there are Anglican/Episcopalians here today from other parts of the Anglican Communion. What a great gift this is for me to be in this pulpit.

"We have found the Messiah." John 1:41

I would like to focus on St Andrew, the first disciple called by Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel story.

Before I started to prepare this sermon I must be honest and say that I really did not know much about Andrew. And the Gospel appointed for today does not help very much either, except for the great confession Andrew makes: We have found the Messiah.

Andrew. The New Testament shows very little interest in him. His name appears only 12 times and four of those times are in the lists of the Apostles. The Gospels do not even agree about where Andrew lived. The Gospel of Mark has Andrew living in Capernaum with his brother, Simon Peter, when Jesus calls them to leave their nets to "become fishers of men". According to John, however, Andrew's home was not Capernaum, but Bethsaida, and he was not called from fishing, but from being a follower of John the Baptist. Who is this Andrew?

What we can say about Andrew for sure is that he is the first of the Apostles called by Jesus and that Andrew tells Jesus that the Greeks wanted to see him.

"We have found the Messiah."

If John is right, that Andrew comes of Bethsaida, think what this means.

• Bethsaida, a fishing village outside the land, outside the Galilee, on the other side of the River Jordan.
• Bethsaida, not a part of Israel, but a part of the Greek-speaking world.

And out of this town Jesus calls his first disciple. Jesus looks beyond the borders of the land, into the Gentile world, to call his first disciples. The Greeks represent the world outside of Judaism, and it is from here that Jesus calls his first disciples. And the Greeks wanted to see Jesus, and Jesus gives his response: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

"We have found the Messiah." But the Jesus who is presented to us does not fit the criterion of success for this world. "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." For the Christian, the "hour of glory" is identical with the hour of obedience, pain and servanthood. And it is to that ministry that we are called today, in this Epiphany season.

Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, installed our new Secretary General, John L. Peterson, as an Honorary Canon in Canterbury Cathedral. In his remarks before the service, he put in perspective what his task would be as he faced the challenges of his new ministry. I serve as his Communication Officer. Archbishop George Carey said,

"Our Communion is a thrilling body to belong to, but it is a Communion facing vast changes and challenges. We are working among the very poor of the world; Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Brazil, South Africa, East Asia - to name but a few of the places where Anglicans are making important contributions. Yet we as Anglicans are privileged to be a part of a universal Church, the world-wide Anglican Communion; some 70 million strong and in 160 countries. It enables us to think of ourselves as a family and to be supportive and prayerful as a family."

You here in England are a vital link in this global Anglican family, both historically and in actuality in this day and time.

Let me share with you a letter we recently received in London from Bishop Daniel in the Sudan. The letter was nine pages long, written out in long hand. As I started to read the letter the Bishop was telling me about the horrid drought in the Sudan and how the drought was ravaging his country. I continued to read his letter, but on page eight, I gasped. The Bishop wrote about his son John who had died in February. He died as a refugee in a refugee camp. He died of malaria or because of some other disease not known. The Bishop did not know why his son died. The Bishop asked that we pray for his son, for John's wife and his two small daughters. Then he asked for our prayers for Mama Grace, his wife. John's death had devastated her. Ravaged. Devastated. I remember vividly meeting Bishop Daniel in my trip with Archbishop Carey to the Sudan, in the Diocese of Yambio. The people of Sudan, like the people of Rwanda, Burundi, the Kurds and the Palestinians all know what it means to suffer. Members of our family are suffering. I can see `face to face', in my mind's eye, hundreds of people I've met in my travels.

• When the people of Sudan suffer, the people of England suffer.
• When the people of Rwanda face annihilation, the people of England suffer.
• When the people of Burundi are at tribal war, the people of England suffer.
• When the people of Palestine lose their human rights, the people of England suffer.
• When the people of England suffer, the people of South Africa suffer.

In 1995 I made a trip to Rwanda, with the Archbishop of Canterbury. There are many horrific images that continuously flash through my mind.

Who could ever forget walking through a Church where the skeletons of 5,000 people are still lying on the floor.

Who could ever forget walking through the same Church and seeing blood-stained vestments strewn on the floor amongst the bones of the victims of the genocide.

Who could ever forget visiting an Anglican orphanage and seeing hundreds of orphans, who will carry the horror of the genocide with them every day of their life.

Who could ever forget walking into a Church and the crowd of 1,000 who greeted me were only widows. All of their husbands had been murdered.

Rwanda was described to us as a country of widows and orphans. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is the tragedy of tribalism. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is the tragedy of inhumanity. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is our tragedy because we are Rwanda when we fall short of that perfect image of God.

We are Rwanda when we walk on the other side of the street and do not help our neighbour in need.

We are Rwanda when we let our racial prejudices take control of our emotions.

We are Rwanda when we do not speak out with the prophetic voice of Jesus.

But the image that will always haunt me is neither Hutu nor Tutsi, instead it is an impoverished pygmy community living alongside a Rwandan hill. We were with Alison from Christian Aid when we stopped to see this community. They had fled at the time of the war and their impoverished homes were looted and ransacked. When they returned home everything was gone, including the makeshift walls of their homes. They had nothing left. No housing. No food. No nothing.

A mother, perhaps 15 years old, was feeding her child. All of a sudden the child slapped his mother's breast and grabbed the other breast and then the child started to scream. There was no milk in his mother's breasts. When Alison asked the mother what she needed, her only request was for some milk for her child. The mother did not ask for a car. The mother did not ask for a bicycle. The mother did not ask for a VCR or a television. The mother did not ask for any money. The mother only wanted some milk for her child. The mother had no food and she was malnourished, her breasts had gone dry. And every pygmy mother whom we saw was dry. We are Rwanda when our voice of outrage does not join that child's scream.

Church leaders have expressed to me his absolute devastation that when all the aid agencies come to assist with trying to put things back together again in this crisis situation, that the one name that was missing in the religious circles was "Anglican". Indeed this is something that I want to share with you today, the fact that the Anglican Communion, at this particular time, has no way of responding to the crises which I have mentioned in this sermon or which happens or afflicts the Church every day of its life. There is lots of work to be done.

We need a mechanism as the Archbishop of Canterbury called for in his Christmas message last year. A mechanism to respond to the crises that affect our brothers and sisters around the world. Frankly, it is important that our name be seen as people who care. The work is there for us to do. Situations never seem to fail to emerge. The challenges are many. There are not wealthy Churches but the blessings are many. The history is remarkable and they are simply asking us to do what Christians should do for each other -- that is, to love and care for each other.

We are all interrelated. We are all part of a whole that is greater than the part. We are part of the Body of Christ and we are called upon in this 1996 world of suffering, in this 1996 world of joy, to reach out to our brothers and sisters. We are called to respond to the needs of the world in which we live.

Let us not be indifferent to the claims that we as Christians make. To be a Christian means that we live the pain of a Bishop Daniel in the Sudan. To be a Christian means that we stand with the mothers who have no milk in their breasts. To be a Christian means that we reach out to those living with AIDS in London. To be a Christian means that we lift our voice in protest to those who have their basic human rights denied them. To be Christian means that we live in the radical image of God.

We have a goodly heritage as Anglican Christians; we must cherish, share and care for it.

Our mission is urgent and it cannot be delayed. Our mission is to a hungry world -- a world whose values are often the opposite of the Gospel. God turns our values upside down. We are called to be radical, redeemed and powerful disciples in our house. For it is when we live this radical lifestyle that we will be able to embrace the tremendous diversity as we live in the perfect image of God. How are we going to respond to the people who so much need our love and care? How are we going to respond to those who offer us their pain? How are we going to respond to those who offer us their joy? I trust that our answer will be to respond that "We have found the Messiah." And in so finding the Messiah might we always be a loving, caring and giving people who are truly a world-wide family under the banner of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Canon James M Rosenthal
St. Martin-in-the-Field, London, England