Press Releases23 Oct 04

Archbishop Eames addresses Scottish Episcopal Church at anniversary service in Laurencekirk

Address by

THE MOST REV DR ROBIN EAMES,

Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland

at the

SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL CHURCH

200th Anniversay Service

of the

SYNOD IN LAURENCEKIRK

Saturday 23rd October 2004

I am delighted and honoured to be with you today on this day of celebration and remembrance and I thank your Primus for his kind invitation and welcome. I bring to you the greetings and prayerful good wishes of your Celtic neighbours, the Church of Ireland. The ties which bind what is called the ?Celtic Fringe? of our Anglican family could not be greater and I pay tribute to your Primus who so recently strengthened those ?bonds of affection? when he hosted a meeting of the bishops of Scotland, Ireland and Wales near Aberdeen.

We meet today to celebrate an event of immense significance in the history of the Scottish Episcopal Church ? the Synod of Laurencekirk in 1804 when agreement was reached in creating the Scottish Episcopal Church as we know it today.

In his excellent book ?Steps to Freedom? my old friend and colleague and your former Primus Bishop Luscombe describes the events of that dramatic period in Scotland?s history. The opposing parties of the English qualified chapels and the Scottish non-qualified chapels came together in what I can only describe as ?an act of faith and trust?. The penal law period had contributed markedly to the presence in the dioceses of Aberdeen and Brechin of most of the Scottish congregations. The Synod began on 11 September 1804 and though not in continuous session ended on 24 October that same year. History records that some of the first people to be informed of the outcome of the debates and decisions were the Archbishops of the Church of Ireland. Even then we had those ties of affection and collegiality!

Commenting in his book on the significance of the Laurencekirk Synod bishop Luscombe writes that after 1804 the Scottish Episcopal Church was

?organised and strong, full of honour and confidence, facing the future with courage and hope.?

Two hundred years ago men and women of faith faced a largely unknown future for their Church, with courage. That faith was to see a Church which has contributed so much to the Anglican family in the deep spirituality of the Celtic traditions of worship and witness. It was to provide for the Anglican family in Scotland a liturgy which reflected those same traditions. It was to represent to this nation all that is best in ?the Anglican way?. It was to influence in ways that could not have been envisaged at that time the spread of the Anglican life in North America.

Truly Laurencekirk has found its rightful place in the life of Scotland and in the world Church family to which we belong.

Remembrance of great events is a part of Christian tradition. But such memories gain their real significance when we place them in the context of the here and now.

My friends we mark this historic milestone in the life of your Church at a time of great stress and strain for the Anglican family to which we belong. Time alone will tell how we all see our future as an Anglican Communion. It is a time for prayerful and cool reflection on great issues. But it is also a time to indicate to ourselves and to others something of the depth of what I call ?the experience of God?s prompting.?

Let me explain what I mean.

Through His Spirit the living God prompts or encourages the Church on its pilgrimage. Through His Spirit God prompts and encourages us as individuals on our pilgrimage through life. Sometimes that prompting is to enter new ways or new experiences. Sometimes it is to caution us about our plans or our intentions. At others it is to encourage us to show more courage and with it to trust more in our faith. As we each individually reflect on our lives today we can all recall incidents which remind us of those emotions. Times when we needed to be cautioned, times when we needed more confidence to walk along untried paths in life. For most of us there have been times when as we look back it could only have been the prompting of that Spirit which compelled us to do things.

Today you remember a moment in your history when those same promptings of God were to have a profound and lasting influence on your Church here in Scotland. As we read the accounts of that time we see them all in action : caution yet realism, courage and faith to trust God?s providence in new ways.

So this anniversary prompts us to look back. It encourages us to learn from memories ? but it compels us to experience that same prompting for the present and the future.

May I presume to suggest just two ways we could sense today what that prompting based on our experience of the past is saying to us ? not just here in your Church in Scotland but is saying to all of us across the world?

First, I believe God is saying to His Church ? ?trust more in my love?.

The response by the Church to the eternal love and pressure of God can be a most variable and indeed frustrating experience. We are all as Churches very good at what I call ?selective dependence on God.? Provided we can feel God is on our side of any particular situation all is well. Provided we can invoke the majesty of the Almighty for how we see things all is well. Selective calling on God happens at times in all our Churches and Church life. How easy it is to departmentalise the eternal and all-embracing power of God to influence people or events. How easy it is to restrict and label for our own convenience the omnipotence and eternal nature of the God and Father of us all. When we do that we deny the sheer omnipotence and enormity of the God who created us. Any response of that nature whether in our personal experiences or in the worship and planning of the Church is to lose sight of that essential nature of God ? the universal love of God at all times, for all people and for all the ups and downs of life.

So the call of God on an occasion such as this must surely be to see and feel that all embracing love. To see in others that same love. To see in those we may disagree with people who have the same claim and the same reliance on that same love and presence.

Too often the real victim of how we regard our relationships within and without the Christian Church is trust. Trust ? so easy to express and so easy to fracture and destroy. But the call of the God who prompts on an anniversary such as this must surely be ? trust in the unbelievable power of the God of eternity, the God who was the same yesterday, today and for our unknown future.

Second, I see the call of the God who prompts His Church and His people to find a new courage in being the Church and in being His people.

Do you remember that incident in the New Testament when the disciples posed an unexpected question to Jesus:

?What do we have to do to be like you??

We don?t know what answer they expected or anticipated ? a spiritual insurance policy for their lives, an agenda for personal safety on the road of life?

Do you remember our Lord?s answer :

?If you are to be followers of mine deny yourselves, take up the Cross and follow me.?

When they did, far from being a safe road to Paradise it took them up a winding road to the hill of Calvary and the greatest suffering they could ever imagine.

It was to take a long time for the Church to discover the real meaning of that incident. In fact I sometimes wonder today if our Churches have yet fully grasped its meaning.

The courage to take up a Cross, to move away from and beyond the limited often secular thinking of this divided world and simply ?to follow? demands so much faith ? and so much personal courage ? of our Churches and of us as people. Yet if we truly believe what we have said today in our worship, if we truly trust in the constancy yet intimacy of the God of the Church we have no alternative.

God calls His Church and His people not to the safety of an inward-looking religious club. He calls us into the heart of the pain, the contradictions and the hurt of the world. It is in sharing and being a part of that world that we truly take up a cross and deny ourselves ? and follow ?

So today we commemorate a most important chapter in the history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. We thank God for the vision, trust and faith of those who have gone before ? but we respond to the call of God for the present and for the future He has for the Church. For let none of us doubt no matter what lies before us in the immediate future, what lies before us as members of the Anglican family, there is a future for the Body of Christ, the Church.