21.10.2014
“… giving an account of the faith that is in me …sowing and spreading the seeds of the Spirit” – Archbishop of Dublin’s Diocesan Synod Address
The people of Dublin and Glendalough have been called to give an account of their faith. In his Synod address, delivered during a service of Holy Communion in Christ Church, Taney, this afternoon (21 October) Archbishop Michael Jackson said that in a time when the name of God was being used as justification for atrocities, people of faith should not be afraid to talk about God.
The Archbishop said that it had become embarrassing to talk about God in polite society. But he said the name of God was being invoked right across the cradle and the crucible of religion itself in the Middle and the Near East as a distortion of a noble tradition. Inappropriate talk of God was being used to offer justification for barbaric crimes against humanity and this should awaken us to how precious religion and faith are.
“While politicians across the Northern Hemisphere have spent months weighing up the damage to their chances of re–election which would be occasioned by any direct intervention, whether political or military: schoolgirls were being abducted and joining the disappeared in Nigeria; small boys were being blown to smithereens on the beaches in Gaza and new and old generations of Mediterranean fisherfolk were being wiped out; along with the clinical and cynical targeting of older parents and grandparents and disabled people who were technically and physically incapable of leaving their homes; IS was also developing its own version of political spin around a contemporary caliphate and taking to itself the patent of religion,” he stated.
“I suggest that we owe it at least to our own tradition of Christianity, to the fact that we are derived from the faith of the Jews and to our human solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters in Ireland; we owe it to all of these people and these factors to give an account of our faith as a faith of proactive prayer, of critical understanding, of accompanying compassion and of sustained action for God and neighbour. Community Leaders in Ireland of the Islamic tradition repeatedly have sought to be and to teach their young people to be citizens who belong in Ireland. As fellow–citizens and as people of faith, we need to engage in local areas, in public policy and in situations of civic capital and the common good with them and they with us: because God is God,” the Archbishop added.
In Dublin and Glendalough, the Archbishop said, there was much work to do and it could be done together – giving an account of faith in our daily lives and coming to churches to give thanks and make afresh the community of the Trinity on earth.
He said the figures emerging from the Church of Ireland census made uncomfortable reading but the opportunity lay with members of Diocesan Synods to address the reality and draw to the surface other statistics which showed that the numbers were not the sum total of our existence and expression of discipleship. The answers to the Mission and Vision questionnaire, which was distributed earlier in the year, contained the seeds of a different story for the future, he stated.
In conclusion, Archbishop Jackson quoted the Revd Gary Dowd in his sermon at the Ordination of Deacons in September in which the Rector of Glenageary said: “I have currently come to believe that we are living through a period of transition as we struggle to deal with the gradual realization that much of what has served us so well in the past in terms of structure and practice has to be shed or radically reformed, so that the church has the freedom to minister more dynamically and effectively”.
The Archbishop wondered if these could be the words of the Spirit in our day and asked if the people of the dioceses were willing to listen, hear, pray and act.
Archbishop Jackson’s address is in full below:
Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synod 2014
Address by the Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalough
… giving an account of the faith that is in me …sowing and spreading the seeds of the Spirit
INTRODUCTION
Last Sunday’s Gospel (St Matthew 22.15–22) speaks directly to any and all of us when we find ourselves called upon to give an account of our faith. It tells of one of those particularly testing situations where Jesus is deliberately and cynically cornered by those who find him ‘beyond challenging,’ something of a nuisance and an ineffectual leader. He is not, if I may coin a phrase, playing the game and propping up the side. As wolves in sheep’s clothing, they move in close and personal, in the following way, smelling flesh and blood; and to be honest, God Incarnate is fair game for flesh and blood, if any Person of the Godhead is:
The Pharisees plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. (St Matthew 22.15)
Jesus is asked to give an account of the things that matter to him and the things that matter to everyone else – in that order: God and Caesar. The question is about whether both are reconcilable or whether, in fact, they are compatible at all. It throws us forward to that voice of betrayal in which we all, by our reading and hearing of Scripture, are complicit: We have no King but Caesar! later in the Gospel. The presumption, like that of many who continue to ask questions of Godly people today with mischievous intent, is that he will fall into the trap of playing the one off against the other, of fluffing his lines and of letting himself down and of being disloyal to the state. He does not do this and his answer has passed into history. It is not a way of evading the issue, but a way of showing the mischievous that their question is nothing short of dishonest and lacking in integrity:
Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s. (St Matthew 22.21). And with that the Gospel Reading moves towards a rather satisfying and open–ended close.
ENCOURAGEMENT
My hope is that this brief vignette will offer us encouragement, as in our own lives and as disciples of the same Jesus Christ, we seek to give an account of our faith. Giving an account of our faith: you may think that this is not going to happen to you ‘in a month of Sundays’ and, if by any chance it does, then you are going to cross the road before you find yourself cornered by anyone expecting you to give an answer. There is really no need to be frightened of these areas. And I think that we all need to begin to look out for opportunities and possibilities like this to engage in such conversations, gently and confidently. It can happen in quite an interesting and spontaneous sort of way. Someone might ask you who you are and what you do. The same person may genuinely be interested in what you do and, not surprisingly, even more interested in why you do it. Many seemingly everyday jobs and many seemingly ordinary people do work which is fascinating and forces people to reflect and to ask: Why on earth would that person bother? People who work primarily in the home; people who teach; people who work in the caring professions and all those who cannot but respond to need and who refuse point blank to turn people into numbers and objects whatever their profession – this instinct to care and not to count the cost is a work of grace and all the more fascinating to a confused neo–liberal world. And that is because such an instinct does not submit invoices nor does it seek for any reward or payback. However long it takes us to say it, or indeed avoid saying it, there is ultimately one reason why Christian people in particular do this sort of thing. It is: because God is God.
BECAUSE GOD IS GOD
It has become more than embarrassing to talk about God in polite society; and yet, as we speak and listen, the name of God is being invoked right across the cradle and the crucible of religion itself in the Middle and the Near East, in what was quaintly called The Levant, as a distortion of a noble tradition. There is a genuine urgency to talk properly and positively about God today and not least in Ireland which is a diaspora country for many Muslims from right around the world. Inappropriate talk of God is today being used to offer justification of the most barbaric and pre–meditated of crimes against humanity and the most anarchic and cruel destruction of communities and individuals. While politicians across the Northern Hemisphere have spent months weighing up the damage to their chances of re–election which would be occasioned by any direct intervention, whether political or military: schoolgirls were being abducted and joining the disappeared in Nigeria; small boys were being blown to smithereens on the beaches in Gaza and new and old generations of Mediterranean fisherfolk were being wiped out; along with the clinical and cynical targeting of older parents and grandparents and disabled people who were technically and physically incapable of leaving their homes; IS was also developing its own version of political spin around a contemporary caliphate and taking to itself the patent of religion. Right across the area that historically has been the seedbed of religion, in the Abrahamic tradition as we know it, people who disagree with a form of one of those traditions have been obliterated. IS has manufactured an identity out of a strange mixture of modernity and antiquity and its members have taken the name of God to their own ends. If anything ought to stir us out of somnolent silence and out of distanced disengagement and awaken us to the reality of how precious religion and faith in fact are, this I suggest ought to be the moment, this ought to do it for us. I suggest that we owe it at least to our own tradition of Christianity, to the fact that we are derived from the faith of the Jews and to our human solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters in Ireland; we owe it to all of these people and these factors to give an account of our faith as a faith of proactive prayer, of critical understanding, of accompanying compassion and of sustained action for God and neighbour. Community Leaders in Ireland of the Islamic tradition repeatedly have sought to be and to teach their young people to be citizens who belong in Ireland. As fellow–citizens and as people of faith, we need to engage in local areas, in public policy and in situations of civic capital and the common good with them and they with us: because God is God.
JESUS AND THE SPIRIT
Often we tend to assume, and then rather quickly forget, that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the One God with the Father. This is the bedrock of our faith and the starting–point of our belonging with God and with one another in communion and fellowship. We meet Jesus and the Spirit and the Father at particular times in the Bible. These meetings are powerful in setting the mood music and the critical character of Christianity. One of these special times is The Baptism in the River Jordan. The picture is painted in the Gospels for us of Jesus submerged in the water; the Father speaking from heaven and voicing his approval; the Spirit hovering as a dove. The whole Trinity is involved in this act of drawing humanity into divinity, of holding God and us together. And this is the faith into which the baptism of each of us draws every one of us. For, as the International Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin reminded us time and again, baptism is for mission; we are bound to Jesus by the Trinity to share Jesus in faith with others.
Another special time is the moment when, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the human Jesus seems to be in conversation with the divine Jesus. This relationship of trust and of conversation moves from Gethsemane in The Valley of Kidron to the Hill of Calvary where the cry: My God, my God why have you forsaken me? from the psalms points to the tension and the togetherness of faith in the Trinity. Both belonging and suffering echo profoundly into life as every one of us here knows and lives it and is touched by it when we see and hear it happening to others. Mission and suffering; death and resurrection shape our faith and the contribution which that faith still makes to the understanding of life today, so many thousands of years later.
THE TRINITARIAN MODEL OF LIFE
Often we think that language of The Trinity is too complicated and too theological for us. The language of Trinity lies at the heart of the faith of which we are called to give an account and it binds us in community to one another and to God. In God the Father we see creation and recreation along with the redepmtion and the longing to restore for us a right relationship with the God who goes out of the way to find us and to bring us home. In God the Son we see a very strong and deep identification with us in human life and in divine glory, God’s instinct to share the best of who God is with the people who never expected to belong as well as with those who by faithful witness have always belonged – the SyroPhoenician Woman and the Aged Simeon. In God the Spirit, we see truth and love and justice lived out with compassion and with fire but also, perhaps most pertinent of all, in community – the instinct which God has to draw and to hold us together. God also asks us to go out in community and constantly to share who we are with those whom we will meet. And so the sowing of seeds and the sharing of seeds combine with one another as we engage with one another and, furthermore, engage beyond the borders of our parochial communities. Such sowing and sharing are for us a challenge and an invitation to enjoy the love of God and to offer that enjoyment to others.
SYNOD
We gather together in synod as a diocese this afternoon. Like living a life of faith, you have always done it, at least since the days of Disestablishment, on a regular annual basis and we gather again in 2014 to be The Synods of these United Dioceses, my fourth time to be with you as your bishop for such a gathering. A synod is the coming together of ways, the sharing of experience and the airing of ideas and above all the celebration of the God who is the content of our faith in our worship. Those who have reviewed the Synodical life of these United Dioceses have decided to hold Diocesan Synod on one evening for the foreseeable future. We are, in many ways, doing no more than falling into line with every other diocese in the Church of Ireland. The reviewers have been motivated by a number of realities. The first reason they have done this would be that for the last number of years we have found it hard to fill with pertinent synodical business the second day. The second reason would be that the Reports perforce relate, by their very nature, to the year past and do not easily form the springboard of future–focused thinking and commitment ; this is not the fault of those who with selfless commitment form the Committees which work from year to year, but it has been the concern of those who have revisited and revised Diocesan Synods to open up an opportunity for you, who are the synod, to think, to commit, to envision and to carry forward the things which will express your faith for the future in the everyday lives you live in the communities whose vast experience you carry with you here today. I commend their instinct for encouraging us to look forward in such a way and I would encourage each one who speaks briefly to say things which move us forward, things which share the celebration which you bring to this Diocesan Synod from your parish and every other group which you represent. To this end Reports will be proposed without anything beyond a formal seconding, in order best to use the time which we have available to us.
One of the delights for me over the year past has been to do two things in particular. The first has been to complete my visit of every parish grouping in the United Dioceses. I have not yet been able to visit every church building and, inevitably, there are churches which in work like mine you visit more than once. Everywhere I have gone, whether the parishioners were forewarned or not that I might be coming, I have been welcomed and greatly enjoyed my time with you. The second thing which I have done has been to give to each ordained person an opportunity to meet me on an individual basis in my home and I would reckon that the uptake in this has been in the region of 90%. This has been most enhilarating and most encouraging for me personally and I trust that the clergy who have participated have found the same. It is no secret that the sort of conversation which we had centred on the inspiration and motivation to ministry which each and every one carried and nurtured in the early days of ministry and how this has developed and changed over a long period of service in these dioceses and elsewhere. For me this has been a tremendous inisght and a real pleasure.
I realize as do you that there is much work to do and I also firmly believe that together we can all do this work. It is, as I have outlined briefly, the work of giving an account of our faith in daily life and coming to our churches to give thanks and to make afresh the community of the Trinity here on earth, where we live and go to school, where we buy and sell, where we tend and care for animals – in all the diversity which is who we are as the people of God in these dioceses. The raw data offered us in the Church of Ireland Internal Census of November 2013 makes uncomfortable reading. Admittedly it only does what it was asked to do, but nonetheless it shows that over three successive Sundays the average attendance in church is no more than 15% of those who declared themselves members of the Church of Ireland in the most recent National Census. The opportunity lies with you as Members of Diocesan Synod to address this reality which has come to light because of your honesty and the honesty of your fellow parishioners. The opportunity is also there for the future to draw to the surface other statistics which show that these numbers are not the sum total of our existence and of our expression of our discipleship, if such is the case. My own findings in relation to the questionnaire on mission and vision seems to me to contain the seeds of a different story for the future but there are key areas where we will have to work honestly and pray fervently. But, as I say, of that more later! This, with your permission, will be shared with you right at the beginning of the meeting of Diocesan Synod in the adjacent Parochial Hall.
This year we had the pleasure of having ordinations to the diaconate and the priesthood in these Dioceses. I decided to invite clergy with experience internal to the dioceses to lead the Retreat and to preach at each service. I sensed a mature realism in the following phrase in the sermon preached at the Ordination of Deacons by a member of our senior diocesan clergy in September of this year, and one ordained almost thirty years, and I quote: ‘I have currently come to believe that we are living through a period of transition as we struggle to deal with the gradual realization that much of what has served us so well in the past in terms of structure and practice has to be shed or radically reformed, so that the church has the freedom to minister more dynamically and effectively.’
As I listened to the rector of Glenageary in the pulpit in Christ Church Cathedral utter these words, I wondered if these could be the words of the Spirit in our day and in our time and in our dioceses. I also wondered if the people of the dioceses are willing to listen and to hear, to pray and to act.