The Archbishop of Canterbury

Churches Together in England Forum, Swanwick

Friday 13 July 2001

Has that exasperated accusation ever been flung at you by someone younger?

But reality, from a Christian point of view, can be looked at in two ways.

Take the word itself. It is derived from the Latin word 'res' which may mean 'thing' or 'matter'. Every time you and I take Holy Communion, think for a moment what you have in your hand. Surely it is more than a piece of bread! Now, I am not going to enter the dangerous area of what we mean by 'real' when we speak of the real presence! But I am sure we can all agree that when we take Communion the consecrated bread is more than a piece of bread. It points beyond itself to a deeper 'reality' than the piece of bread or wafer itself. It points to the reality of God incarnate, risen and at work in the world, nourishing and sustaining his people with food for the journey.

Reality. Let me take another illustration, this time from the Old Testament. I often go back to that wonderful passage in 2 Kings 6 where the prophet Elisha has a showdown with the Syrian King. We are told of how the servant of Elisha wakes up in the morning, looks out of the window and sees this huge, menacing army surrounding their town. His heart sinks, and the question trembles out: 'Alas, Master! What shall we do?' The reality confronting the poor man seems utterly overwhelming; there is no way through, all roads are blocked. It's a hopeless situation.

But as Elisha looks out of the same window he sees a quite different reality. Yes, the forces of the King of Syria are there. It is indeed a huge army, and within Elisha's town they have no resources to overcome such opposition. Elisha sees all this quite clearly. But beyond this immediate reality the prophet sees another reality; he sees the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire - the power and the grace of God, ready to bring deliverance and to transform that hopeless situation. And Elisha prays a simple but wonderful prayer for his servant - a prayer many of us may have echoed as we have struggled to help people catch a vision of all that God can do. Elisha prays: 'Lord, open his eyes, that he may see.'

It is my conviction that as Christian leaders committed to the quest for Christian unity we must be like Elisha in that moment of vision. The story speaks of two different visions, or versions of reality, by which we can live. One version of reality sees all the problems: genuine, indisputable problems which it would be naïve to ignore. But those who have only this version of reality to live by get stuck and lose heart. They see no way ahead. The other version of reality does not deny the problems but it sees them in the light of the greater reality - the reality of God and of his purposes.

So as we look out together on the surrounding ecumenical scene today, let us ask ourselves which version of reality we are living by. Is it a picture of frustrated and disappointed hopes? Of well-intentioned ecumenical mission and of years spent in meetings and groups - with not enough to show for them? Or is it a bigger and broader vision, in which we keep faith, despite the challenges and frustrations, with what we believe God intends for us?

And of course there has been much to encourage us and help us persevere in that bigger and broader vision. I look at the grassroots togetherness characterising much Church-life today. On a personal level, I value enormously the relationships that have developed between us as leaders of our Churches in the last ten years. They allow us sometimes to speak tough things to each other against a backdrop of real friendship. On a more formal level, the Joint Anglican-Catholic Working Group of Bishops, set up as a result of the Missisauga conversations just a year ago, is a forum for ecumenical discussion marked both by great warmth and by great honesty. I am indeed encouraged by all this.

So I keep returning to the reality of God's love for us all and the fact that each one of us has a part in his great plan. Wonderful though the story in 2 Kings is I am even more inspired by the description of God's purposes in Christ set before us in Ephesians 1. You will recall that this passage gives us a wonderful vision of unity in Christ. It speaks of all things reaching their fulfilment and destiny in God's love through Jesus Christ. During the year 2000 I read the first fourteen verses of that chapter most days as my daily prayer for the unity of the Church. When I have felt discouraged by the pace of ecumenical progress that passage has constantly nourished me. It reminds me that Christian unity is not a project which we generate for ourselves; rather, it God's will, and he is tenderly drawing us towards that goal.

Having begun on that positive note, it is now also right to come back to the challenges which immediately surround us. There are sobering facts which need to be addressed and it is not a mark of prophetic vision to ignore these facts, but rather to address them from a stance of underlying confidence in the purposes of God.

There are, of course, firstly the challenges which are common to all our churches as we seek to commend the Gospel in our contemporary world. Last year in an address I gave in Amsterdam I spoke of the reality of materialism and the obstacle it is to our mission. It attracted considerable public interest because I drew attention to the alternative saviours in our culture today - therapy, education and wealth - none of which, I argued, can by themselves provide adequate remedies for our broken world. And yet so many seek to find the reality of hope and healing in them. Now is not the time to go over the points I made then, but I ended by saying: 'The false gods of therapy, education, and wealth are but three of the most powerful defences human nature sets up to avoid the reality of brokenness which the Bible calls "sin" - sin which enslaves, which kills, and which reigns. Paul was right when he described its devastating effects. Humankind is in desperate need of a rescuer.'

The irony of the situation which faces us today is that the message of the Christian faith perfectly meets the demanding context in which the human family seeks to address its deep-rooted problems. Behind most of the presenting problems of our society there are spiritual challenges which are neither sufficiently acknowledged nor considered. We have only to reflect on the unrest that has scarred Bradford and other towns and cities in recent weeks. We are clearly confronted with communal and ethnic tensions, with suspicion and distrust between authority and those who feel marginalised in our society. But we also need to confront the fact that human weakness and frailty and the reality of violent and criminal behaviour cannot be mended by our own efforts alone - individual or collective - however well-intentioned. Fallen humankind needs the grace of God.

Faced with such challenges, we all have our struggles. We know that wider changes in society make it hard for us to build church communities. People are distracted. The leisure-orientated, mobile culture in which many of us now live can be at odds with the discipline of sustained commitment and involvement in the life and mission of any church.

We acknowledge all these challenges, which sometimes make it feel so difficult to build connections between the life of our churches and the daily lives of many men, women and children in England today. But there is another side to the story. We should not make the easy mistake of assuming that those who do not come to worship with us are not interested in matters of the spirit. In this regard there is an immense amount to learn from the research carried out by David Hay and Kate Hunt of Nottingham University on the spirituality of non-churchgoers. Through a sensitive and scholarly process of interviews they have brought to our attention the reality of the experience of the 'spiritual' in the lives of a great proportion of our neighbours who would not normally use the word 'religious' of themselves at all. These are often people looking for guidance in matters of the spirit - but sadly the church is too often not the place where they would look. There are insights to be had here which are both encouraging and challenging, and certainly leave no room for complacency. Indeed, it was noteworthy that at our General Synod last weekend quite a few speakers in a debate on the 'Health of the Poor' spoke movingly of ordinary people longing for depth in their lives and seeking God.

It is in this context of a broken world that we face together the challenges of a church struggling towards greater unity. So let us turn now to the challenges that face us in the specifically ecumenical scene. There is a widespread feeling that ecumenical advance has slowed down. Speaking in Rome in May, the Cardinal was right to comment that 'lay people are disappointed that we have not...moved further on the road to the visible unity that we believe is the Will of Christ.' I agree with that summary. But as I reflected on this address I wondered if there are times when we are all in danger of living with arrogant assumptions about our own superiority - assumptions which distort our understanding of the reality we must face. With tongue in cheek, let me parody:

The Anglican contemplates: 'If only the Roman Catholics would change their rules on Communion or Anglican ordinations!'

The Roman Catholic thinks: 'If only the Anglicans will get real about establishment!'

The Methodist broods: 'If only the Anglicans would not be so awkward about the historic episcopate!'

The Baptist sighs: 'If only the Orthodox would have shorter services!'

And we all say: 'If only the others were more like us!'

In contrast, what might a humble realism look like? Well, a humble realism would try to go behind the usual stumbling blocks along the ecumenical road and seek to discover the underlying causes of our disunity.

Let me offer some examples. Anglicans do feel pain at the 'non-recognition' of our ministry by the Roman Catholic Church. But we Anglicans do not recognise sufficiently the pain we cause to our Methodist and URC brothers and sisters by our less than full recognition of their ministry. Humble realism would help us to realise that our long-standing squabbles about Ministry are really symptoms of our disunity - not its causes. As Christian churches have fallen out with each other and have set up rival structures we have justified our antagonistic positions and rival communities by arguments about our ministries. We still find it difficult to recognise in practice one another's ministries and churches as God-given and fully apostolic.

Behind the theological walls of our separate fiefdoms there are deep historical wounds and painful memories. But humble realism would suggest to us that God has not let other traditions drift from his grace and love. Perhaps we have to look at the saints to help us. All of our traditions have saints and spiritual giants! In the Church of England Calendar we are reminded of this week by week as we give thanks to God for saints of the past from a great variety of Christian traditions: for example, John Bunyan; the Wesley brothers; Thomas More and John Fisher, the Roman Catholic Reformation martyrs; the Quaker Elizabeth Fry, and many, many others - all of them people who were willing to engage with the difficult realities of their time for the sake of the Gospel. And as we remember them before God with great gratitude, there is a sense in which our denominational barriers dissolve.

Humble realism would also suggest that we listen to the voices of the Church on the 'ground', whether in this country or abroad. In our LEP's and Churches Together Christians come together to pray, to share their faith with others who have none and to work for the Kingdom, and as they do so they recognise Jesus in each other!

My wife Eileen and I have also learned so much about shared ecumenical service and ministry from our travels overseas. I observe that in so many places leaders and members of different Christian traditions get on remarkably and there is a refreshing openness about traditions. I do not mean to suggest that traditions mean nothing to them - indeed, I have noted how Christians in Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere value intensely the treasures of their Church - but there is a greater willingness to cherish the traditions of others. I think of the recent visit to Zamfara State in northern Nigeria where the links between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches are as close as any I have seen. I think of Sudan, where Christians of many traditions share deeply in one another's worship and support one another against civil authorities who frequently oppress them. I think too of South Africa where the work of the Christian churches did so much to accelerate the end of Apartheid. In all these places and more, churches often grow together by forming alliances in order to address social and economic needs, usually in the provision of health-care, education, or advocacy for the poor.

But the distressing fact is that many of the divisions between churches I see overseas are exports of our divisions as churches over here. And that presents us with a great challenge because part of the hope for reconciliation amongst the Churches overseas rests with us who often are seen as 'mother' churches. Our unity can mean much to those overseas as well as to us.

But let me address a suspicion which may have been forming in your mind for the last five minutes. Is such 'humble realism' just British pragmatism without theology?

No! Christians here and overseas who discern the face of Jesus in each other are intuitively recognising what theology calls the recognition of our common baptism.

You see, perhaps our churches as institutions, and our theologians in their task of discerning the faith, have concentrated too much on the Eucharist or Holy Communion. Now, please don't misunderstand me, the sharing of the Lord's Supper or whatever we prefer to call it, remains at the heart of the ecumenical quest. But it is my view that we have not explored deeply enough the significance of that common baptism which almost all our churches share. The bishops of my Church have recently drawn attention to this in response to the document 'One Bread, One Body', published two years ago by the Roman Catholic Bishops of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We greeted One Bread, One Body as a very good document with which we were in agreement in many particulars. However, we asked about baptism which, as you know, in the New Testament is the sacrament of unity par excellence. Perhaps, then, we need to go more deeply into what baptism represents and the ecumenical importance of the grace of the Holy Spirit conferred in that rite. If we recognise one another's baptism what does that have to say about our intrinsic unity? Might it shed more light on what we have in common? Might it not help us to overcome the hurts I spoke about earlier?

True Christian realism, then, takes us to Christ our common Lord, into whom we were baptised and through whom we have been given the Holy Spirit whereby we exclaim 'Abba! Father!'

Unity of course is not a commodity on its own- like a luxury which we choose or reject. Unity is essential to the growth of the church and our common witness to the love of God.

This relationship between mission and unity was at the heart of the thinking - and the practice - of the great Lesslie Newbigin. In his classic The Household of God, written nearly fifty years ago (an amazing thought when we recall how recently he was still exercising a powerful ministry in our midst), he sets out a challenge which remains as pertinent today:

'I do not think that a resolute dealing with our divisions will come except in the context of a quite new acceptance on the part of all the Churches of the obligation to bring the Gospel to every creature; nor do I think that the world will believe that Gospel until it sees more evidence of its power to make us one.'

Reality. In Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets, T.S.Eliot wrote the well-known words: 'human kind cannot bear very much reality.' That's true. But it is when we glance in the direction that Elisha looked and saw the presence of God all around, and when, with Paul, we are able to comprehend the vision of God's glory, that we shall understand that the materials that God uses to make himself known are realities like humility, weakness, kindness and love.