St Martin's & St Paul's
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In many an office around this country you can find a sign on display: "If you can keep you head while all around you are losing theirs, then you may have misunderstood the seriousness of the situation." It is of course a take off of the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem,"If" which goes on from beginning, "If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." to conclude: "Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and which is more, you'll be a man, my son! "
Keeping calm, knowing the right way forward and following it whatever the distractions, these are admirable qualities. But is life always so clear cut? Is there some grain of truth in that Office Memorandum joke?
This year the Lambeth Conference comes to Canterbury. Unfortunately, not everyone who was invited is coming: some are going somewhere else. For some members of the Anglican Communion the challenge of being the Church in the 21st Century is all about staying true to a code of ethics and traditions that cannot change; for others it is about adapting to change and finding an authentic way forward that embraces change. So do we ignore developments around us and old fast to a traditional view, or do we try to listen to the views of others and absorb them? The situation is clearly serious, but which of us understands just how serious it is? Will the Church survive by holding fast to a defined set of ethical values rooted in the Bible and Tradition, or will it survive by taking these as a basis but adapting them to take on board what is learned from science and experience in a more tolerant age?
We don't know the answer to that question. The Anglican Communion has defined its cohesion as a Unity in Diversity: recent developments have stretched that to breaking point. Our Archbishop needs all our prayers for his skill and judgement.
We could also note that down the centuries Christianity has been able to grow and develop because of the tolerance and open mindedness of people who were not Christian to begin with. This is exemplified very well in the passage from Acts in which Paul introduces the person of Jesus Christ via the altar to an unknown god that he has spotted in the City. So open minded were the Athenians that they had such an altar alongside those to the well-known deities of their pagan faith. Paul was thus able to say, 'I know who that unknown God is.'
It is never going to be easy for large groups of people living in diverse communities and cultures to stay together in every way, especially in a faith as intelligent as the Christian faith. What is needed is a readiness, while holding an opinion based on prayerful study of Scripture, Tradition, reason and experience, to keep a space for the possibility of hearing and considering another view. If the Lambeth Conference really is a conference then it ought to be a time for hearing different views within the same framework of faith and mutual respect. Let us hope that for those who are attending that is exactly what it will be.
Amen.
