13.10.2015
‘The Spirit of God in the Time of our Lives’ – Archbishop’s Address at Dublin and Glendalough Synod
Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synod 2015 is taking place this evening, Tuesday October 13, in Taney Parish Centre. Synod began with a celebration of Holy Communion in Christ Church, Taney, at 4.00 pm during which the Archbishop delivered his presidential address.
The business of Synod got underway in the adjoining parish centre directly after the service. During this evening’s meeting members will hear the reports of Diocesan Councils and the Diocesan Board of Education. Reports will also be heard from the Diocesan Committee of the Church’s Ministry of Healing, the Diocesan Council for Mission and the Diocesan Committee for Social Action. There will also be a presentation on the Charter of Dignity in Church Life.
ARCHBISHOP’S ADDRESS
In his address, Archbishop Michael Jackson, examined the impact of the Holy Spirit. He said there were three components of Spiritual being and Spiritual activity: communication, community and communion. He suggested that communion brought respect for difference and respect in difference. Church relationships required both if the spirit of the Spirit was to shine through us to others, he stated.
“This is the invitation to spiritual maturity, living beyond party politics and pretensions and living also on the other side of competing church–person–ships at every level of our church life. What is not of God cannot flourish; what is of God needs constant attention, encouragement and creativity if it is not to wither. These are the gifts of the Spirit. All of this I firmly trust we can do – together. It is the expression of the life to which God is inviting us in the hope that we are ready to hear the calling of the Spirit to love, joy, peace in the time of our lives, today and tomorrow,” he said.
COME&C PROJECT
Turning to the dioceses’ Come&C initiative, the Archbishop recalled that the Come&C Report was launched at last year’s Synod. The initiative celebrates the lives of people and parishes in churches and communities and connects people and parishes in friendship with one another. At the Come&C Day in September over 200 people gathered in the High School, Rathgar, to explore future possibilities.
“So, what is Come&C? It is the voice of the people in the parishes shaping the vision and witness of the dioceses. It is the commitment of the people in the parishes voicing a shared future with the community and with their neighbours. It is the combination of this voice of energy with the Five Marks of Mission of the Anglican Communion in shaping the range of voices that will, of course, be both the diversity and the riches of a diocese which encompasses over one and a half million people even if there are no more than forty–six thousand Anglicans officially and, on our own admission, fifteen per cent of us attend church. You can either be as small as you decide you are or as large as you want to be,” Archbishop Jackson stated.
JERUSALEM PARTNERSHIP
The Archbishop also highlighted the growing partnership with Jerusalem. The Prepare a Place project began in Advent 2014 and the diocesan family responded generously in support of Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. “I should like to thank members of the United Dioceses on what would seem to be a first strictly united diocesan missionary initiative for a very long time. I should like to thank you for a generosity of giving from the heart that amounts to well into six figures. Already the Diocesan Councils have unanimously endorsed the next stage; that is a formal partnership through Us with The Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East,” he said.
He said this was the opportunity of a lifetime for the dioceses to connect in friendship with people who are Anglican, Christian and human beings, like us but in “excruciatingly difficult circumstances”. He added that it also connects us to the theatre of war from which people are fleeing as refugees. Primarily it connects us to the roots of our faith and belief in God, he stated.
WELCOMING REFUGEES
Concluding his address, the Archbishop called on the Church of Ireland to connect to “caritative altruism” – the invitation to think of others when making decisions for ourselves. “It has to do with the response in dignity to those who are our neighbours in a different type of on–going crisis. We have a housing crisis already. We have a Direct Provision crisis already. We have a new crisis for a fresh and different group of people for whom there is no housing and no dignity and no future. And we call them: immigrants, as if they have any option but to flee their own country. People have said to me: Charity begins at home … and my only response can be: We never know how far it will take us and, in any case, Ireland will be the only home that these particular refugees can possibly call home,” he said.
The text of the Archbishop’s address is reproduced in full below:
Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synod October 13th 2015
Address by the Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalough
… the Spirit of God in the time of our lives …
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit! (Galatians 5.22)
INTRODUCTION: FRAMED BY ASH WEDNESDAY AND PENTECOST
Every synod, every where gathers people who want to meet each other within the love of God the Holy Spirit. The Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synods 2015 are one of those focused and energetic events. And we have gathered today for this very purpose. A significant, busy part of the Christian Year lies between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost. Both of these tent pegs are formed, framed and fashioned by God the Holy Spirit. Ash Wednesday points us to the Scriptural statement that, after the Baptism in the River Jordan: At once the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness, and there he remained tempted by Satan. (St Mark 1.12,13). Pentecost, again as Scripture tells us, made possible for the disciples gathered in Jerusalem communication and connection through the wonderful deeds of God to individual after individual, group after group, nationality after nationality: Surely these people who are speaking are all Galileans! How is it that each of us can hear them in his own native language? (Acts 2.7,8). This is the response.
The impact of the Holy Spirit is a formative and a lasting one: it is built up out of defining moments in the earthly life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and defining moments in the life of the church on earth as a response to the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This Spirituality is the shape of our own lives within and without the church. Such interconnection of hope and life, of individual and community, of God and world was well voiced by Pope Francis, long before his sustained utterances on ecology and climate change, when he wrote Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): ‘Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement.’ It is into this physical and spiritual desert that the Holy Spirit comes every time we invoke that same Holy Spirit to cleanse and to revive, as the Service of Holy Baptism reminds us. The Spirit gives life again and again, and in Pope Francis’ wonderful word, deals directly and definitively with: desertification.
THE SPIRIT OF GOD
It is important to note what we are told of the Holy Spirit. In some ways, the Spirit might be misunderstood as the deposit box or even the toy box of all the nice things we should like other people to do, without having to bother setting them in motion or watering them and feeding them ourselves; things like love, joy, peace, as outlined in Galatians. It simply does not work like this either then or now. Behind and within these three lie three components of Spiritual being and Spiritual activity. They are communication, community and communion. And all of them need to be connected with that much less domesticated and perhaps more violent side of the Spirit: earthquake, wind and fire.
Communication: (clarity): In Acts 2, whatever the people gathered in Jerusalem heard, they heard it each and all in their own language. They wanted to listen and, having heard, they were keen to be part of something bigger than themselves. Having heard, they could do no other than move forwards. They found themselves caught up in the energy of something beyond themselves and they were the better for it. Intention; wanting to do something; longing for something different to happen; being open to contributing and to participating in something beyond one’s own horizons; open indeed to guidance and to listening and to instruction and to acting in situations that can be different, dangerous and difficult – these are qualities and gifts of a Spiritual life and of a Spiritual response.
Community: (connection): Instantly, these individuals become a community of people defined by the same story in two interconnected ways, the people of God. The first is that their personal story has changed by their being together in the one place with one another in Jerusalem; and secondly, the story of Jesus Christ becomes their story in living ways. They are a very early synod, a coming together, of people in the Spirit of God and in the spirit of faith. Because something significant has changed for them, they have also become a community of dialogue, of engagement and of interaction. The subsequent history of the Christian Church has taught us that honest dialogue is in the longer term more fruitful than cosy consensus and yet dialogue requires patience, forbearance and the parking of frustrations and personal agendas firmly outside the door. Humility and obedience form the basis of response and action. Love, joy, peace begin to sound and to feel rather more demanding than the contents of an ecclesiastical toy–box.
Communion: (compassion): The importance of communion within this inter–relationship of communication and community is that it is itself a relationship whose quality transcends both division and negativity. This is the greatest gift of the Spirit throughout history and the hardest to accept in our individualized and competitive culture where celebrity is given an almost ridiculous prominence. Increasingly, each and every one of us wants the ground in front of us for ourselves. Ever more reluctantly, we make space for others with whom we agree and disagree; it hardly seems to matter; they are where we have decided that we want privacy, freedom, headspace, whatever we like to call it. More and more today people to whom I talk find that others are in their way. Communion not only transcends division and negativity and prejudice; it also binds us into a relationship with one another, with the whole of the Trinity and therefore with the whole of creation.
Communion pulls it all together. It is more than a federation and it is more than a club. It has to do with being part of something and someone larger than ourselves, not controlling this: belonging to God the Father and through God to our neighbour. It has to do with remembering and with forgetting, in a spirit of reconciliation of divisive differences, and with having the wisdom to know the difference between differences that are destructive and differences that are creative: belonging to God the Son and through God to our enemy. It has to do with the sharing of past, present and future as places of hope. This is a sharing that comes from acceptance of The Other as someone to whom and for whom we have a responsibility: belonging to God the Spirit and through God to the people whom we have not yet met. This is the glorious invitation of living in and belonging to communion rather than living, for example, in parochial isolation or personal loneliness or provincial silos.
Our neighbour, our enemy, the people we have not yet met: this is an interesting and unlikely combination. This is why synods are so important and so exciting and so life–giving. They bring together people who would not otherwise meet. We are people of a common purpose; we are people of a common Saviour. We need to meet in communion and in synod in order to be a people of a common vision and a common strategy. If we fail to do this, the common purpose and the common focus can wander. We do not choose communion; communion chooses us. And this is because God first chose us and loved us into being and into that greatest communion of all: the body of Christ. It is a mutuality of respect for difference and of respect in difference; the first can point us in the direction of tolerance; the second can point us in the direction of affection. We can turn away from both. Both are what we constantly need to work at in church relationships, if the spirit of the Spirit is to shine through us to others. Others transfigure us and they transfigure our relationships. This is the invitation to spiritual maturity, living beyond party politics and pretensions and living also on the other side of competing church–person–ships at every level of our church life. What is not of God cannot flourish; what is of God needs constant attention, encouragement and creativity if it is not to wither. These are the gifts of the Spirit. All of this I firmly trust we can do – together. It is the expression of the life to which God is inviting us in the hope that we are ready to hear the calling of the Spirit to love, joy, peace in the time of our lives, today and tomorrow.
COME&C
Last year at Diocesan Synods we invited Mr Sam Harper, Lay Honorary Secretary of the General Synod, to launch COME&C. As you are all aware, this is the fruit of a survey offered to all the parishes of the United Dioceses with a 79% take–up. Its purpose was and remains to enable us to celebrate our life as people and parishes in churches and communities. The thinking behind it is to connect us in friendship with one another. It was to the end of exploring future possibilities of this initiative that over two hundred people generously gave the full day on Saturday 12th September for a COME&C Day in The High School, Dublin. This was a wonderful gift and sacrifice on the part of each to other. I wish publicly to acknowledge the generosity in time and creativity that a Small Group convened throughout the first part of 2015 with me gave to this diocesan project. Their contribution in prayer and practicality has been incalculable. So, what is COME&C? It is the voice of the people in the parishes shaping the vision and witness of the dioceses. It is the commitment of the people in the parishes voicing a shared future with the community and with their neighbours. It is the combination of this voice of energy with the Five Marks of Mission of the Anglican Communion in shaping the range of voices that will, of course, be both the diversity and the riches of a diocese which encompasses over one and a half million people even if there are no more than forty–six thousand Anglicans officially and, on our own admission, fifteen per cent of us attend church. You can either be as small as you decide you are or as large as you want to be.
Our COME&C Day has not only brought us together as self–confident Anglicans with a deep sense of ecumenism and a strong sense of community. It has, I trust, gone some way to addressing the principled concern given voice last year in the diocesan cathedral at the Diaconal Ordination by the rector of Glenageary: ‘Is the Church of Ireland at last ridding itself of the perception that it is little more than a private members’ club?’ I imagine that at this stage he speaks for the overwhelming majority of clergy and laity in the United Dioceses. He has pointed up the bankruptcy of private treasure in the custodianship of the gifts of God. He, however, alone had the courage to say it publicly, to give it voice. It is not pretty but it is honest. He has indeed done the Dioceses some service. The connecting of our sense of community with the Five Marks of Mission enables us to envision something that has always been close to my heart and something I call: old church done better alongside: new church done beautifully. I am sure that, like me, you eagerly look forward to the day when COME&C becomes GO&TELL.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH JERUSALEM …
In the Season of Advent 2014 the United Dioceses partnered with The Bishops’ Appeal and with The United Society (Us/USPG) in a project entitled: PREPARE A PLACE. This was a simple idea. It focused on encouraging people in the dioceses to lay a place at their Christmas Table for someone from Gaza they would probably never see or meet and on having that person there spiritually. The simple invitation worked itself out in the most amazing and inventive of ways. Young and old were extremely creative in the ways in which as a diocesan family we responded to the crying need for friendship, solidarity and support in Gaza and in particular in the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. I should like to thank members of the United Dioceses on what would seem to be a first strictly united diocesan missionary initiative for a very long time. I should like to thank you for a generosity of giving from the heart that amounts to well into six figures. Already the Diocesan Councils have unanimously endorsed the next stage; that is a formal partnership through Us with The Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East.
For us in these Dioceses this is an opportunity of a lifetime. First, it connect us in friendship with people who are Anglican like us, who are Christians like us and human beings like us – but in excruciatingly difficult circumstances, significantly un–like us. Secondly, it connects us with the whole of the theatre of war from which people are fleeing as refugees to Europe and to Ireland, however tardy our response may have been and continues to be. The Diocese covers Israel, Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. We see people like us from these countries on TV every day of the week and it gives face and focus to our prayer and our practical response. Thirdly, it enables us to work through, with the resources of everyday living, the connections and the contradictions across World Faiths with people with whom we can make and develop contact and understanding. It enables us to be people of Inter Faith understanding in a Multi Cultural world. But, first and foremost, it connects all of us with something dear to our hearts: the roots of our faith and of our belief in God. To the Diocesan Council for Mission, to the Bishops’ Appeal and to Us, I offer my thanks and gratitude.
PUBLIC BENEFIT
As part of the implementation of the Charities Legislation, the churches are being required to take into their rhythm of life the idea of public benefit. The Church of Ireland is a charitable body, each diocese and each parish are charitable bodies and alongside this we have many institutions and organizations whose work is charitable. It is our concern to enable the people who act in a voluntary and in a paid capacity to enjoy their involvement in charitable administration for the benefit of those who are rightful recipients. Not only is this an opportunity to comply with good governance. It is an opportunity to regulate and celebrate the range of interests and concerns that are our responsibility and that lie within our custodianship. But the invitation is even greater and I should like these United Dioceses to be in the forefront of this initiative. And it is the initiative that you have taken in COME&C that makes this possible. It is the application of the principle of public benefit as such to the spelling out of the role of the Church of Ireland in contributing to and framing the common good in Irish society and beyond.
We all know that the common good is a concept that has all but become submerged as we as a nation have grappled with austerity and righting an almost capsized fiscal boat. There are other boats capsizing daily in the Mediterranean Sea and they are full of men, women and children – and more and more of them are not surviving. The common good seems to have gone off our national and ecclesiastical radar over the last half–decade as we have struggled to claw back the irresponsibilities of a casino–style approach to money; and money, after all, is part of creation and not to be misused or abused. It takes a very short time for habits shaped in crisis to become tradition. It takes a very short time for parsimonies once essential to become unalterable policies. And the poor always become poorer. We in the Church of Ireland need now to connect afresh with the big canvas of what I have long called: caritative altruism. If this sounds like a mouthful, it actually isn’t any such thing. It is the invitation to think of others as we make decisions and to put the care of them to the forefront of our decision–making. Self–preservation is entirely admirable. Think only of the instruction any time you are sitting on a plane: Put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others with theirs. But caritative altruism is equally urgent in the world of today. The two situations are radically different. It had to do with the response in dignity to those who are our neighbours in a different type of on–going crisis. We have a housing crisis already. We have a Direct Provision crisis already. We have a new crisis for a fresh and different group of people for whom there is no housing and no dignity and no future. And we call them: immigrants, as if they have any option but to flee their own country. People have said to me: Charity begins at home … and my only response can be: We never know how far it will take us and, in any case, Ireland will be the only home that these particular refugees can possibly call home.
PROSPECT
In church life we will never fully move out from concepts like maintenance, ministry and mission. Nor should we! Where we need to be extremely careful is that we do not play them off against one another and that we do not play them together off against other words that take us beyond the confines of our tired selves and of our tired institutions. We in D&G are fortunate to have embraced both the letter and the spirit of COME&C and PREPARE A PLACE and to let God the Spirit lead and guide us. Already compassion, embassy and enterprise are taking us to the next stage of maintenance, ministry and mission. Already compassion, embassy and enterprise are embedded in our diocesan self–understanding as principles of faith and principles of life – caring for other people and going out to meet other people, to speak with and for them in the things that matter in their lives. And we do it because they and we are children of God and children of the world. We have no option, as disciples of Jesus Christ, but to pray and work to make the connection of these two things with people on the outside of church life. They do not make sense apart from each other to anyone in distress or need. Far too much of our church life is internalized and inarticulate around the things of God. We need to recognize this as a gaping spiritual hole in our witness. The Public Benefit and the Value Added for us come to the fore and come together in the reward of service itself, service of others in ways where we set aside our own preoccupations for a time and let God serve us through our serving our friend, our neighbour and the people whom we have not yet met.
St Mark 10.45: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.