Anglican Communion News Service

Given by The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church USA

Preface

I have no intention of repeating the eloquent words of the Archbishop of Canterbury on Tuesday evening, when he spoke of the future of Jerusalem, this golden city beloved of so many people. At other times, and in other places, I have had my say. Today I simply want to place myself squarely behind the archbishop. You know that you have said something of consequence when the press attacks you. The press attacked our archbishop for being naïve and for sticking his nose where he ought not. We have heard this before. But there is nothing naïve about prayer, hope and vision. Such things move mountains­even mountains of hatred and violence. May our archbishop­and all of us­continue to meddle in such things.

Now is the judgment of this world,
Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out.
(John 12:31)

This paradoxical statement of Jesus, capping a week of paradox, must have seemed stunningly inaccurate at the time. It certainly did not look like the ruler of the world was being cast out. It looked like the ruler of the world was winning a resounding victory. Certainly it looked like that to Jesus' friends: the end of a dream, the utter failure of their hope for the kingdom of God on earth. They would not have said things were finally coming together at that moment They would have said that things were coming apart.

This is the paradox of our faith. We remember that John wrote among a people already beginning to experience persecution. He knew of their sorrow, of the difficulties of their situation, the terrible challenges to their faith. But he also knew that God moves most powerfully in the human situations that seem most hopeless. When does the flame of faith burn most brightly in the human heart? Is it during the easy times, the times when everything goes along smoothly and without incident? Is it not true that we see the face of Jesus Christ most clearly at the times when we most need to see him? We look for Jesus when the world is especially cruel, and he does not fail to reveal himself to us. The early church used to say that the blood of its martyrs was the seed of its growth­and we are here today because what the early church said was true. God adds to us the strength that we need.

The most important thing that we can give those committed to our care is the example of Christian courage that we set for them. Let them see Jesus: Let them see leaders who value our faith so highly that we are glad to sacrifice for it, whose hoped is so lively that no power on earth could wreck it. If this is your legacy to them, they will have all that they need to live and grow into the full stature of Christ, whatever happens to them in the world.

In the lives of our several churches and in our own lives, this is just the way it is: the life of faith always skates perilously near the edge of failure and frequently tumbles into the abyss. The broad avenues of success and respect are ordinarily not the paths along which God leads us. We are called to a more dangerous walk, straight into the mouth of evil, straight into confrontation with the worst that the world can do to the children of God. "Pray for us now and at the hour of our death," we beg the saints, because we know that the moment of danger is a holy moment, a moment over which the spirit hovers lovingly.

We are here to witness for peace among people of war, to assert the claims of life against the merchants of death, to serve the poor in a world smitten with the rich, to honor the spirit in a world addicted to the desires of the flesh. Such a set of values is not a recipe for world success, and very often the people of God do not succeed.

In our day, we share with our brothers and sisters who taste worldly failure­in so many countries where the faith is persecuted in this century that has seen more religious persecution than all the early centuries, so famous for their holy martyrs, combined.

If we do not share the pain of worldly failure when it comes to one of us, if we abandon one another, each to our own local sorrows and challenges, we lose the gift of paradox which is God's primary way of interacting with the human. We cannot know the risen Christ if we shrink from the crucified Christ. We who work in countries where our faith is not officially challenged are especially in danger, for the paradox is often very available to us: if we allow ourselves to remain in the sunny, complacent meadows of the worldly security our enlightened national governments protect, security will turn to apathy very soon, and nothing saps our spiritual strength more efficiently than apathy. Nobody is padlocking the doors of American churches to prevent the faithful from gathering. Nobody is putting American priests and bishops and laypeople in jail for witnessing to Christ. Our lives are not in danger because we are Christians. But our souls will grow soft if we do not engage in the struggle of our brothers and sisters for whom these things are daily realities.

When the men said, We want to see Jesus, they didn't know the extent of the paradox of Jesus. Of course they wanted to see the healer, the wonderful preacher, the famous friend of the poor. But I am sure that they didn't particularly want to see the condemned man struggling along the road under the instrument of his own death whiled the crowd jeered, the abandoned man, the convicted criminal. But Jesus was seamless: you didn't get one Jesus without the other. Didn't then, and don't today. There is still only one way to participate in the Resurrection, and it is by way of the cross.

To Christ crucified, risen and redeeming, who lives and reigns with the God who created us and the Spirit who sanctified us, be glory now and forever. Amen.