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  • From: "Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: "permacultue discussion list" <pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas sermon 2008
  • Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 13:05:04 +1100

Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas sermon 2008

Thursday 25 December 2008

In his Christmas sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, the Archbishop of
Canterbury says that one of the lessons of the coming of Christ is that
people shouldn't waste time waiting for larger-than-life heroes to bring
comprehensive and total solutions to the ills of the world.

'There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus'; we've very likely heard
those words many, many times in carol services, like an overture to the
great drama of the Christmas story. The emperor Augustus would have been
delighted, I'm sure, to be told that his name would still be recalled after
twenty centuries - but more than a little dismayed that it would be simply
because he happened to be around at the time of Christ's birth. There were
all sorts of things for which he would have wanted to be remembered, and
many of his contemporaries were not slow in telling him about them. And in
fairness he had quite a good claim to fame: he had, after all, restored
order to the Roman state and consolidated its global influence as never
before. For many decades, a kind of peace prevailed from Germany to Syria –
enforced by typical Roman brutality when any signs of dissent appeared, but
still probably better than the chaos of the Roman civil war that had been
going on before. It made sense to hail him as restorer of peace, and to look
forward to a long period of stability and prosperity.

It didn't turn out quite like that, of course; but Augustus's reign was for
many people a sort of golden age. In later generations, new emperors set
themselves the goal of bringing back something of that stability and
confidence, and they would describe themselves on their coins and statues as
the rescuers of the world's good order – as 'saviours': something that had
already been common among the kings of the Middle East in earlier centuries.

So if you'd asked people of Jesus' day what the word 'saviour' meant, the
answer would be pretty plain. It was someone who would bring back the golden
age, who would put an end to conflict; you could almost say it was someone
who would stop things happening. Salvation was the end of history, brought
about by one unique charismatic leader.

Curious that, all these years later, the same language still survives.
Twentieth century totalitarian systems looked forward to a state of things
where all conflict was over and change and struggle stopped. On the other
side, after the end of the Cold War, some scholars were writing about the
'end of history', and an American President spoke of a 'new world order'. In
recent weeks, we've seen some of Barack Obama's advisers and colleagues
warning about the level of messianic expectation loaded on to the
President-elect - wisely recognising the risks involved in tapping in to
this vein of excited imagination always just below the surface of even the
most cynical society. We have certainly not, as human beings, grown out of
the fascination of saviours who will restore the good times. The Lord has
bared his arm and is once and for all returning to Zion; surely that is real
salvation?

And as always the gospel comes in with a sober 'Yes, but...' The saviour
arrives, but goes unrecognised. He is hidden in the form of poverty and
insecurity, a displaced person. Instead of peace and the golden age
restored, there is conflict, a trial, a cross and a mysterious new dawn
breaking unlike anything that has gone before. He was in the world and the
world did not know him. Yet to those who recognise him and trust him, he
gives authority (not just 'power', as our translations have it) to become
something of what he is – to share in the manifesting of his saving work.

So what's happening here to the idea of a saviour? The gospel tells us
something hard to hear - that there is *not* going to be a single
charismatic leader or a dedicated political campaign or a war to end all
wars that will bring the golden age; it tells us that history will end when
God decides, not when we think we have sorted all our problems out; that we
cannot turn the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of God and his
anointed; that we cannot reverse what has happened and restore a golden age.
But it tells us something that at the same time explodes all our pessimism
and world-weariness. There *is *a saviour, born so that all may have life in
abundance, a saviour whose authority does not come from popularity,
problem-solving or anything else in the human world. He is the presence of
the power of creation itself. He is the indestructible divine life, and the
illumination he gives cannot be shrouded or defeated by the darkness of
human failure.

But he has become flesh. He has come to live as part of a world in which
conflict comes back again and again, and history does not stop, a world in
which change and insecurity are not halted by a magic word, by a stroke of
pen or sword on the part of some great leader, some genius. He will change
the world and – as he himself says later in John's gospel – he will overcome
the world simply by allowing into the world the unrestricted force and flood
of divine life, poured out in self-sacrifice. It is not the restoring of a
golden age, not even a return to the Garden of Eden; it is more – a new
creation, a new horizon for us all.

And it can be brought into being only in 'flesh': not by material force, not
by brilliant negotiation but by making real in human affairs the depth of
divine life and love; by showing 'glory' – the intensity and radiance of
unqualified joy, eternal self-giving. Only in the heart of the ordinary
vulnerability of human life can this be shown in such a way, so that we are
saved from the terrible temptation of confusing it with earthly power and
success. This is, in Isaiah's words, 'the salvation *of our God*' – not of
anything or anyone else.

For those who accept this revelation and receive the promised authority,
what can be done to show his glory? So often the answer to this lies in the
small and local gestures, the unique difference made in some particular
corner of the world, the way in which we witness to the fact that history
not only goes on but is also capable of being shifted towards compassion and
hope. This year as every year, we remember in our prayers the crises and
sufferings of the peoples of the Holy Land: how tempting it is to think that
somehow there will be a 'saviour' here – a new US president with a fresh
vision, an election in Israel or Palestine that will deliver some new
negotiating strategy...It's perfectly proper to go on praying for a
visionary leadership in all those contexts; but meanwhile, the 'saving' work
is already under way, not delayed until there is a comprehensive settlement.


This last year, one of the calendars in my study, one of the things that
provides me with images for reflection e very day, has been the one issued
by Families for Peace – a network of people from both communities in the
Holy Land who have lost children or relatives in the continuing conflict;
people who expose themselves to the risk of meeting the family of someone
who killed their son or daughter, the risk of being asked to sympathise with
someone whose son or daughter was killed by activists promoting what you
regard as a just cause. The Parents Circle and Families Forum organised by
this network are labouring to bring hope into a situation of terrible
struggle simply by making the issues 'flesh', making them about individuals
with faces and stories. When I have met these people, I have been
overwhelmed by their courage; but also left with no illusions about how hard
it is, and how they are made to feel again and again that they come to their
own and their own refuse to know them. Yet if I had to identify where you
might begin to speak of witnesses to 'salvation' in the Holy Land, I should
unhesitatingly point to them.

In any such situation, the same holds true. In recent days, I have been
catching up with news of other enterprises in the Holy Land, especially from
the Christian hospitals in Bethlehem and Nazareth, struggling with all kinds
of pressure on them from various sources and with the chronic problem of
desperately small resources, yet still obstinately serving all who come to
them, from whatever background. And last week I spoke with someone helping
to run a small community theatre project in Bulawayo, supported by local
churches, working to deepen the confidence and the hope of those living in
the middle of some of the worst destitution even Zimbabwe can show. Signs of
salvation; not a magical restoration of the golden age, but the stubborn
insistence that there is another order, another reality, at work in the
midst of moral and political chaos; the reality that is the eternal 'Logos',
St John's Greek term that means not simply a word but a pattern of
harmonious relation.

That is what is made flesh at Christmas. And our own following of the Word
made flesh is what gives us the resources to be perennially suspicious of
claims about the end of history or the coming of some other saviour
exercising some other sort of power. To follow him is to take the risks of
working at these small and stubborn outposts of newness, taking our
responsibility and authority. In the months ahead it will mean in our own
country asking repeatedly what is asked of us locally to care for those who
bear the heaviest burdens in the wake of our economic crisis – without
waiting for the magical solution, let alone the return of the good times.
Internationally, it is remembering that our personal involvement in prayer
and giving is utterly essential, whatever pressure we may rightly want to
bring to bear on governments and organisations.

Isaiah looked towards the day when the guards on the deserted city's wall
would see the return of the Lord 'face to face'. So much of our witness to
salvation depends on this face to face encounter (and yes, that was one of
the ideals that helped to shape the work of this year's Lambeth Conference).
We can't pass the buck to Caesar Augustus, Barack Obama or even Canterbury
City Council – though we may pray for them all and hope that they will play
their part in witnessing to new possibilities. To follow the Word made flesh
is to embark, with a fair bit of fear and trembling, it may be, on making
history - not waiting for it to stop. And that means speaking and working
for Christ in the myriad face to face encounters in which he asks us to be
his witnesses – to see and to show his glory, the glory as of the Father's
only Son, full of grace and truth.

(c) Rowan Williams 2008

--
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor



  • [permaculture] Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas sermon 2008, Nicholas Roberts, 12/27/2008

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