The Bishop of Argyll and The Isles.

Fifth Reflection on the Lambeth Conference.

I was about to remark that it is rather ‘late in the day’ to be offering my fifth reflection on the Lambeth Conference. After all, two months have come and gone. Being true to the word ‘reflection’, however, I am glad that I come to this one so late. What is it that stands out above all in the Lambeth Conference? Well it has to be for me: +Rowan Williams himself, our Archbishop of Canterbury. (Please note the use of the possessive.)

Yes, I know there are those who would wish to fault +Rowan in the current slow grinding of cog-wheels over the ordination or consecration of those in same sex relationships. There are those who would say that his political savvy is suspect. Why have endless discussions about an Anglican Covenant, when some claim that the goodly Archbishop has every intention of pushing it through no matter what? Well, there are many who claim to know. I catch myself often in a ‘knowing’ attitude to others, which is tedious and irritating. And as I remind myself on these occasions, there is a codex related to Luke’s Gospel that has Jesus say: ‘Cursed are they that do not know that they do not know.’ Mmmm! Further, there are those who curl their lips and shrug their shoulders at what appears to be the complexity of +Rowan’s intellectual approach to what he has to write and say. I am reminded by a friend of mine, who is himself a fine preacher and writer, of a comment he received from an elderly lady following one of his sermons: ‘I didn’t know what you were talking about, Rector, but goodness, God was in the passion of what you said!’

Now, I do not want to push this too far, but I have not heard anyone convincingly suggest that they have understood the depth of St John’s Gospel. Nevertheless in the reading and praying of it, there is an engagement with that mysterious spiritual chemistry which can only be described as an experience of God. Any Archbishop of Canterbury would flinch if he was compared to the author of the fourth Gospel. Despite the facile criticisms of +Rowan, I can only tell you that in the three day retreat that introduced the conference, I saw and heard something of the beauty of the Word of God in +Rowan. I experienced an intellect that is determined to stay with the constant struggle of pondering on and expressing the Word of God. There was a holiness in him summoning us, the gathered communion of Bishops, to model the Christ-like life. That holiness is rooted in his authentic and graceful life of prayer that has honed him to give of himself to live towards that model. I cannot find any other way to describe the experience as being, what Peter Berger would describe, a ‘Rumour of Angels’.

Gathering in that majesterial and soaring architecture of Canterbury Cathedral is awesome enough, but for the 650 of us to have it to ourselves with the courtesy and forethought of the Dean, Robert Willis, was a luxury and an unforgettable privilege. All we like rhinoceri gathered for a three day retreat in different sizes, shades and shapes (!). Rather than vaulted silence, there was that rumble of ecclesiastical concern, and a wallowing in the mud of Episcopal gossip. +Rowan hushed it all with his ascending a podium with his addresses on ‘God’s Mission and a Bishop’s Discipleship’. I am told by one of his aids that the addresses were prayed and written on his knees in hours of preparation.

In the slip-stream of the Roman Catholic Church’s ‘Year of St Paul’, and , as +Rowan put it, as an act of ecumenical courtesy, he led off with a quote from the letter to the Galatians: “...who set me apart from birth, called me by his grace, and was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” I remember sitting there next to a Bishop from Sierra Leone on one side and a Poerto Riccan Bishop on the other, wondering whether I really did believe that I was called by grace. Then, in what seemed to me, a simplicity of insight, confounding his critics, he summoned us to think and pray with our own ‘seeing’ of God. “...in what places, in which persons, where is it that we have recognised the Son of God?” Frankly, those who have glanced at these questions might spend the rest of their lives pondering these questions. For me, as I went with the questions into the Chapel of the martyrdom of Becket, I realised that if I were to pray with them deeply, there would be a response from deep within me in my attitudes to my work as Bishop, based on the fragility of my journey as a follower of The Way. Lambeth had already given me a gift which would change my perspective in an irrevocable way. So, as +Rowan gently peered through his Michael Ramsay-like eyebrows (do they go with the job?!), I could feel that gentle tug, asking how real Jesus is for me in this moment and in every moment. That is where the Bishop must start if he/she expects his/her people to start there.

Following the Christo-centric experience of the Bishop, I could almost tangibly feel +Rowan’s pain as he spoke about the Bishop as the ‘focus of unity’. Look at us, I thought. Is it possible that we Christians may prefer division than unity? Let me add immediately that +Rowan is not a man to wear pain on his sleeve. No self-pitying mud-wallowing for him! If you and I are in Christ and we mean that, then unity is that which we already have despite the divisions. We are already one!

I managed to find a spot in the Cathedral where no one else seemed to be. So I lay down on my back and gazed at the vaulting. This posture was interrupted by a concerned verger who asked if I was feeling alright! It was time to get up and leave. So he gave me his hand and helped me to my feet. I smiled at the unity of that simple moment. I didn’t sleep well that night as I read my notes of +Rowan’s address: “...turn over in your minds the question of where you have felt the difficulty of the pressure to belong to something less than Christ, and to take sides.” In the dark of my student study-bedroom, I tried to relive +Rowan’s stricture: “There are few voices saying that the death of a child in Africa or the suffering of a woman in Myanmar, diminish the human reality of the child or woman in Britain or South Africa or Brazil, and the other way round.” Here was a jolt – a jolt that took me into the core of what it is to be part of the Anglican Communion. This is no club for consenting adults. This is the flexible, organic and desperately fragile community that has in common each others’ suffering which is that of Jesus. If the communion is not about that, then it is of little use.

So +Rowan our leader.....? What was his view of Christian leadership in episcopacy within the Communion? “Even in the Christian world we have a very individual view of leadership: and what Jesus Christ asks us to do as the servants of his body, is to find how to exercise leadership in communion. And having said that, there is only one place we can go, and that is to pray and reflect in relation to what the leadership of Jesus Christ means. ...there is no separation between our leading and our following Christ: only as a disciple can we lead, only as a learner can we teach.”

If I am a sycophant then I all I can tell you is that there are worse things to be. For that disease has brought me a healing which Lambeth and its Archbishop gifted.

Each of the retreat’s three days, as we piled back into the coaches for Kent University, I passed a pale-faced demonstrator who looked as if he had never heard a joke, let alone tell one in his life. He was holding a rather tatty poster accusing us Bishops of encouraging Sodomy. As I made an entry in my journal, I couldn’t help laughing to myself at the irony. For it was only after I passed the poster and looked back to read it, that I realised its message. Well I have not yet turned into a pillar of salt.

At the final Eucharist, the Melanesian Brotherhood and Melanesian Franciscans, who had formed part of the chaplaincy team for the Lambeth Conference, carried a book of the names of the Melanesian martyrs from the west end of Canterbury Cathedral into the martyrs chapel at the far East end, singing as they went. As they passed the Nave Altar, +Rowan blessed the book as a sign of the community of suffering within the Anglican Communion. Richard Carter, an Anglican priest, and serving on the chaplaincy team himself worked in Melanesia at the time of the killings. In his book on the experience, he writes: “Things were turning ugly in parts of the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, as tensions rose between two ethnic groups from the main islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita. Many indigenous people on Guadalcanal, opposed the significant presence of Malaitans, who had left their under-resourced island in search of work. Fighting between militants from both sides broke out in 1988 and continued until an uneasy truce was agreed in 2000. One rebel leader who refused to disarm, led a regime of terror in Guadalcanal's remote Weathercoast region. Throughout the conflict, islanders turned to the Melanesian Brotherhood for sanctuary and escape, as well as for help in getting to hospital and finding family members. People had no-one else to turn to. Schools had collapsed, the police force had collapsed and suspicion surrounded the government. Religious communities were seen as impartial. We were the only ones allowed to cross the barricades. It was as part of the peace process that Brother Nathaniel Sado headed to the Weathercoast with a fellow brother and a parish priest in April 2003.

Nathaniel was put in a cage and continually speared until he had begged to die. He was known as a very simple brother... gentle and kind. Harold Keke the leading militant had trusted us. The brothers did not know at the time, but Harold Keke had become paranoid about people betraying him, including those closest to him. Keke believed Nathaniel Sado to be a spy simply because he came from the rival island of Malaita and had asked questions. Six other brothers set off to the Weathercoast to find him. No-one knew they were heading straight to Keke's camp until they had disappeared, too.

The following few months were extremely tough for the brothers, who found themselves not only in the dark about their colleagues but also the target of attacks by Keke's men. But the community held together incredibly keeping an ongoing vigil of prayer for the hostages. They learned in August that brothers Robin Lindsay, Francis Tofi, Tony Sirihi, Alfred Hill, Patteson Gatu and Ini Paratabatu had been shot almost from the moment they entered the camp.”

And so Lambeth 2008 came to an end. Or was it an end? Perhaps these brothers gentle sense of community may be a sign for us, if we desire to see Christ in it enough. Thank you again Diocese of Argyll for making this gift possible. Now, where was I….?