Press Releases22 Sep 08

Archbishop of Armagh's Address at Reopening of St Thomas', Belfast

Sermon preached by the Most Revd Alan Harper, OBE,
Archbishop of Armagh, at the Reopening of the Restored and Reordered St Thomas' Church, Belfast 19 September 2008

This evening is a time of considerable emotion for me, as it must be for everyone with an affection for St Thomas’s, for we have fond memories of this glorious space but we now see it not merely restored but renewed: re-ordered for the mission of the Church in Belfast fitting the needs of the 21st century.

Surely no-one, not even the longest established of St Thomas’s parishioners can say other than that this is a stunning and extraordinary transformation, one that has required huge financial resources, but more than that huge resources of imagination, expertise and, most of all courage on the part of the Rector, Canon Walter Lewis, the Select Vestry and the people of the parish. Every difficult decision you had to take has been thoroughly vindicated, the outcome is a triumph!

St Thomas’s was my own first point of contact with the community and the worship of the Church of Ireland when I came to live in this city 42 years ago. I was drawn here by the sound of the bells on Sunday morning calling me to worship. I was sustained by liturgy and music that aimed at the best that could be offered and by preaching that eschewed the complacent and anchored faith in the real lives of ordinary folk. I owe this church a very great deal.

I feel particularly privileged, therefore, to have been asked to preach at this special service tonight and to have been offered a theme as generous as “in my mind and on my heart”.

Let me begin by reminding you of these words which you heard read only a few minutes ago.

For he is our peace: in his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law, with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body, through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. (Eph 2.15-16)

Division in society, it seems, is endemic. Division in the Church is not new: it has been with us from the very beginning. It may even be that the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was rooted in division over how the mission of God to bring in the Kingdom was to be achieved.

Division in the early Church surfaced between Greek speaking and Aramaic speaking Christians over the way in which needy groups were being provided for out of the collective resources of the Christian community in Jerusalem. That dispute led to the appointment of the deacons, including Stephen, to oversee the distribution.

Division surfaced again because the Judaic faction within the Church wanted to insist that Gentile converts should be circumcised as well as baptized. That controversy may even have led to a shouting match between Peter and Paul according to Galatians 2.11, as did the issue of what food it was proper for Christians to eat.

Division among Christians, albeit over deeply and sincerely held beliefs has been a major contributor to social and international division. The division between the Orthodox east and the Catholic west underlies some of the contemporary Balkan conflicts, just as the European wars of religion reflected divisions between the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions, and so it goes on.

Against that background of what has seldom been merely verbal warfare is set the passage I have quoted from the Letter to the Ephesians.

The writer conjures up a picture of one of the most durable and persistent divisions in human history – that between Gentile and Jew. It is a division that still has the power to evoke hostility.

The physical emblem and expression of that division was seen and experienced in the Jerusalem Temple where stood a wall or balustrade beyond which Gentiles were forbidden to pass.

The doctrine of Ephesians is that the cross removed that division. Through the cross, not only could Jews approach the Holy Presence, but so also could Gentiles. Division was swept away and with it hostility.

The way to God, revealed in the Hebrew scriptures and to the Hebrew people was now freely open to Jew and Gentile alike. When they came together as disciples of Christ they were creating a single new entity out of two old and outmoded entities.

As Paul wrote elsewhere, “we no longer see one another from a human point of view”, rather we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5.16,17). The viewpoint is shifted, this single new entity is Christ shaped and Christ-like. When each looks at the other the dividing wall of hostility is broken down, dismantled, removed, abolished.

But wait, you and I live in a city and a society in which walls of division stand tall: walls of concrete and steel, but also, that which it is harder to dismantle, walls of the mind.

What is more, we live in a Communion in which difference is being hardened into division and hostility, and issues in defiant words and provocative acts. And while this happens the poor are not fed, the sick are condemned to suffer and to die un-noticed, the stability of the earth’s heat engine is further compromised and the earth itself is ruthlessly plundered through greed.

How are we to begin to recover the hope and the reality of a world made new in Christ? Perhaps by discovering the starting point.

The starting point requires that I begin with me, not with you.

Only the most outrageous and egregious arrogance (something I cannot afford for my soul’s sake!) – only the most outrageous and egregious arrogance could make me think that I should turn a beam of criticism and hostility towards you when I know, if only I have the grace and integrity to admit it, the extent of the sinful inadequacy in my own life and nature.

No, I should begin with myself, and I should do so in the knowledge that nothing, not even the things about myself that I most cunningly conceal from public view, nothing is concealed from the eyes of God.

The reality is that I am stripped bare, utterly exposed.

But there is a second reality. It is this: I am wholly and unequivocally convinced that because of the cross of Christ, and because I cling to that cross and refuse to allow the maelstrom of my inadequacy to sweep me away from Christ, God has decided (through no merit of my own) to disregard what he could with cold justice take account of to my complete condemnation, and to take note only of the hope in Christ to which I cling. Oh, he knows what I am like, but for Christ’s sake he chooses only to see Christ in me.

I find myself utterly changed by that understanding because, if this applies to me, (and I believe with all my heart that it does!) who am I, of all people, to deny or disregard the fact that it applies to every other person who also clings to life through hope in the cross of Christ?

Of all people qualified to make judgments about anyone else, I am the least! Indeed, to do so, to enter into judgment about the state of any other soul, is to usurp the authority of God.

Rather, I have an entirely different task. My task is to be committed to setting aside any and every pretence of judgment, or any prejudice I may have or harbour. I must look at you and at every other man, woman or child who articulates through word or deed a faith in Jesus Christ and see not all that God can see but only what God chooses to see.

If, as I believe, through Christ God chooses to see only Christ in me, I am permitted to look upon you and to see only Christ in you!

And, behold, the wall of division with all its hostility is utterly removed! How can I look upon the face of Christ in you and maintain hostility or countenance division? How can I? Unless I choose to visit condemnation upon myself I cannot.

No longer do we see one another from a human point of view!

The actual Greek word in 2 Cor. 5.16 translated “from a human point of view” actually reads something like “according to the flesh.” Paul is contrasting that which is fleshly, human, with that which is spiritual, godly. The viewpoint of Christians is irrevocably changed through the cross by faith; but, if that change is not reflected in the reality of our behaviour towards and our relationship with one another, the cross is denied and the faith we profess a hollow shell.

Walls of division give a temporary sense of a kind of security: the kind that keeps others out and our fearful self in. Real security, however, comes only when walls are removed and “the other” becomes a brother! And that depends upon daring to adopt a different outlook, one that is not fearful of the fallibility of the flesh but trustful of the outcome of life in Christ.

The writer to the Ephesians continued in this vein:
So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

The normative salutation of Christians, one to another, is “Peace.” It is the word of the resurrection. It is the word that came first each time to Christ’s lips. It is the word that needs to come first each time to ours.

That opening word was followed, as in the Gospel proclaimed at this service, by an examination of the wounds of Christ: an invitation that was more like a command, to delve into the very depths of the suffering of Jesus.

Peace is the word that Jesus proclaimed after his submission to the exercise of human brutality on the cross. His resurrection made no attempt to abolish or conceal the signs of that brutality, he carried them and demanded that we fully encounter them – recognize their stark reality. They are the reality out of which peace is born and through which peace is sustained. Far be it from us to mar, indeed to deny, Christ’s peace by inflicting additional wounds upon his already wounded body. Far be it from us to look upon one another other than through the eyes of Christ alone.

These are things that belong to our peace; these are the means by which new peace may be secured; these are dispositions by which hostility is defused and division eschewed. These, among others, are things that remain not only on my mind and also much in my heart.
Amen  

For further information, please contact

Church of Ireland Press Office
Church of Ireland House
61-67 Donegall Street
Belfast BT1 2QH

Tel: (028) 9023 2909
Fax (028) 9032 3554
Mobile (Paul Harron): 07787 881582