Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

The retired Archbishop of Cape Town and former Primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, gave the following homily at the memorial service for Archbishop Edward "Ted" Scott, at St James Cathedral, Toronto, Canada on Monday 13 July. Archbishop Scott, who was the former Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, died in a car accident last month.

The text of the Most Revd Desmond Tutu's speech follows:

"In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

I greet you in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Your brand new primate Archbishop Andrew Hutchison has honoured me wonderfully by inviting me to preach at this thanksgiving service to an outstanding servant of God, Ted Scott. Thank you father, and thank you to the family for letting this be so.

Primate, it is a quaint title. Once at the 1988 Lambeth Conference I saw a notice announcing African Primates' Meeting. And you expected someone to appear with a bunch of bananas. Your immediate past primate, Michael Peers I believe once got a question that was sent by a zoologist researching the mating habits of primates) and archbishop Michael, I believe, told him he was indeed an ecclesiastical not a zoological primate. Ted Scott was a primate too. And we have come to celebrate and to give thanks to God for this remarkable man and for his outstanding ministry and witness.

In the Book of Job, the first chapter verses 6 - 8 you recall the day God interrogates the Satan, the adversary, who was still a member of God's heavenly court. "Where have you been?" God asks. And the Satan says, " I have been roaming over the earth." And then God asks, "Have you seen my servant Job? Have you noticed, have you considered my servant Job? Don't you think he's neat? Isn't he quite something?" I suspect God would be inclined to ask, "Have you seen my servant Ted? Isn't he just something?" God has ample reason to show off his servant because indeed he was quite something else. We will return to this anon.

Could we turn to the beginning of John's gospel? There you may recall is recorded how two of the Baptist's disciples hearing that Jesus is the Lamb of God, go after Jesus and ask. "Where do you live?" And Jesus says to them "Come and see." And they stayed, we are told with him that day. One of them was Andrew and because of what he had seen he went off to tell his brother Peter. "Hey, do you know we have found the Messiah?" What he had seen had been enough to convince him that this one was the long expected Messiah of Jewish longings.

They say that Ted's family was surprised when he told them he wanted to be a priest since he had been less than complimentary in his comments up till then about the church. He believed it was not sufficiently aligned to the little ones, the despised, the poor, the hungry, the powerless. It was not to be surprising when he came to hold an official position in that church, just what line he would then be pushing.

"Have you seen my servant Ted? What do you think of him? Come and see."

Those without clout found someone they could relate to. He was someone who made God and the things of God attractive and accessible. He could say "Come and see." And those who came and saw liked what they saw and they were attracted to this gentle, compassionate one who reflected the character of the God he proclaimed and served. Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate. Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Those at the bottom of the heap, those at the end of the queue, those found in him a committed and courageous but gentle champion. How I wish I could have been able to be confrontational as he was confrontational and yet not to be abrasive. How easy it is when you are right to become self-righteous. Not so Ted. He emulated his Lord and master whose standards were so woefully low. Anybody, just anybody could enter heaven. Even those whom the high and mighty, the prim and proper ones, lifted their noses to. The equivalent of the scum of society, the ostracized ones. He reflected the character of the one who was vilified as a friend of sinners, the ones possessed by demons. Ted was gentle, yet tenacious and they called him Red Ted because they thought he was pushing so called socialistic agendas. He was controversial. But then, the Lord and master he served was highly controversial. He espoused unpopular causes. He stood up to the powerful in Canada for the rights of the indigenous peoples of this land, standing up to the powerful interests in opposing development that impacted badly on ancestral lands. What a glorious moment when his successor, Michael Peers, apologized to native Canadians on behalf of the Anglican church, perhaps the high point of Archbishop Michael's illustrious term of office for which we praise and thank God.

Ted. "Just call me Ted." Well some of us lesser mortals need all the stage props you can get. "Your Grace," and all of those highfalutin titles. He was not falsely modest. He was just genuinely accessible, ordinary in a good sense. He let who he was do the talking and how eloquent it turned out to be. He has been marvellous in his support of gay and lesbian persons. And his support for the place of women in society and in the church was so crucial in insuring the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate.

We in South Africa were glad he was on our side in our struggle against apartheid. He was just too formidable to have been an adversary. Just imagine if he had been on the other side. We owe him an immense debt of gratitude for standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with many, many in this land and throughout the world so that today we are free. We have been free now for 10 years. But without the support of such as Ted Scott and so many, many others our victory over the awfulness of apartheid would not have happened. And it is such an incredible privilege to be able to stand here and say on behalf of our people, millions and millions of them, how deeply, deeply thankful we are for Ted's support and your support that insured that today we should be the free nation that we are.

You might recall that when Nelson Mandela came to Canada in 1990, after his release from prison, he addressed your parliament here and thanked Canadians for supporting us. And in that address he specifically mentioned Ted Scott, thanking him for starting the Solidarity Fund. And he went on to say, " Archbishop Scott is a great friend of our people and a man I am proud to know." Now that is high praise from a moral colossus of our day. My successor as archbishop of Cape Town. Archbishop Ndungane asked me when I told him I was coming here, to convey his own thanks and condolences and those of our church. And I was told by the former rector of a large parish in Soweto, he is now a bishop, that there is a hall in the parish church in Soweto named after Ted Scott as the result of a generous gift that he gave to that church.

The world has held Ted Scott rightly in high regard. He was a world leader in the ecumenical movement having been Moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches at a time when that body was being assailed for its grants to liberation movements, castigated by so many as being really terrorist organizations. Ted was vilified but eventually he was vindicated when the truth came out. His stature was acknowledged when your prime minister, Brian Mulroney nominated him for membership of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group established to try to encourage change in South Africa. This group was among the first of outsiders to meet Nelson Mandela in prison.

I thank God that Ted touched my life. I am slightly less bad for that. And I believe that there are many others who might testify in similar vein. It was not for nothing that he was awarded the prestigious United Nations Pearson's Medal for Peace and the highest Canadian accolade, the Order of Canada.

"Have you considered my servant Ted? Come and see."

And what we have seen makes us want to worship and adore the one who moulded Ted in this fashion. How one prays that God's church, our beloved Anglican Communion, would be one to which we could point people to and say "Come and see." And that they would see a church that cared for the least of the sisters and brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ; that was home to the hungry, to the battered, to the abused, to the lonely; that spoke up for the voices that embraced the outcasts and welcomed all, that said all are of infinite worth, all are held in the divine embrace with a love that will not let anyone go; that gives up on no one.

Can the world come and see it - a communion that excludes no one, that says all belong, all are insiders. All. For you see our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking about his coming, crucifixion, exaltation, as John calls it, says, "I, if I be lifted up will draw", - Jesus didn't say will draw some - Jesus said, "I if I be lifted up will draw all, all, all to me. All: black and white, red and yellow, rich and poor, young and old, male and female. All. Gay and lesbian and so called straight. All. All. Sharon, Arafat, Bush, Bin Laden, Sadaam Hussein. All. All. All belong. Palestinian, Israeli, Roman Catholic, Protestant in Northern Ireland. All belong, in this incredible family, God's family.

For that is what the church is for - a church for which Ted lived and for which he died? What a wonderful memorial it would be to him if instead of bickering about human sexuality we were concerned about dehumanizing poverty, about AIDS, about an unjust international economic order. About wars, frequently, totally, unnecessary and immoral wars. Concerned that we still have the obscenity of spending such huge sums on defence when we know that a fraction of this budget of death and destruction would ensure that God's children, our sisters and our brothers would have clean water to drink, would have enough food to eat, would have a proper education with adequate health care, a safe home environment. We will not, we cannot win the war against terrorism as long as there are conditions that make people so desperate that they are ready to commit dastardly acts.

If people came to see our church what would they see? Or to paraphrase what Ted said were two key questions Christians have to ask. "What kind of church are we becoming? What kind of world are we helping to bring into being? "

Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invincible, the only wise god we all honour and glory for time and for eternity. Amen."