Diocesan Synod Presidential Address |
We celebrate this and every eucharist between the times. Between the time when Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh came to dwell amongst us; and was lifted up upon the cross that he might draw all humanity to himself; so that through him we might find the way to the Father. At every eucharist we celebrate his coming and we look forward to his coming again.
As we look back we are not ashamed of the cross of Christ as St Paul said and we should not be ashamed to own up to our Christian faith in public. It is in the nature of Christian love not to be easily provoked but we should salute Nadia Eweida for drawing a line. The Christian community in this country is a sleeping giant and it is high time that we woke up.
But we are not fighting for a memory or an inherited position. At a time when the hearts of many people are failing them for fear of what is coming upon the world, when so many are alive to the perils which we face from terrorism and the run away effects on the planet of our own profligate style of life it is vital that our community living between the times points firmly to the hope set before us in Revelation 21. “And I saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven.”
One of the weaknesses of the church in recent times has been the lack of colour and passion in our depiction of the coming Kingdom. George Caird in his comment on Revelation 21 says “Only in comparison with the New Jerusalem can the queenly splendour of Babylon be recognised as the seductive gauds of an old and raddled whore.”
The holy city comes from the infinite creative potency of the spirit of God. As we envision the holy city we look forward to an end time, to his coming again which has the power to irradiate and inform the present. The church is called to be an anticipation, a sketch, an essay in this future. We are called to be as those who are not at home in the old order but live as the citizens of a city whose builder and maker is God. [Hebrews XI]
A city built on the assertion of individual rights will very soon become a city of dreadful night. We are made in the image of God, father, son and holy spirit and we become ourselves as we go beyond ourselves and love one another. The cities of the earth are founded like ancient Rome on blood taken, Romulus slaying his brother Remus. The holy city is founded and flourishes on blood given.
We live at a time of peril and promise. It matters intensely where each one of us chooses to put our attention, our energy. Yeats prophesied that the best would lack all conviction and the worst would be full of as passionate intensity; that the centre would not hold and that mere anarchy would be loosed upon the world. Thanks be to God that he has held out to us a living hope; that he feeds us with this hope and makes us into his own people as he is doing now.
