wfn.org | [ACNS] Archbishop of Canterbury Sermon 22 Feb 2005

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ACNS 3944	     |		ACO	     |		22 FEBRUARY 2005

Sermon Preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Rowan
Williams, at St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, 22 February 2005

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

>From our first reading this evening, 'you shall be to me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation'. These words spoken to the people of Israel in
the wilderness are spoken again to the church in the New Testament. And
spoken to us today. But what is it to be called to be a kingdom of priests?
In the understanding of those who wrote our Old Testament lesson, the
priest was the focus of everything that God's people gave to God. The
priest on behalf of the people gave thanks; made sacrifices; made
atonement; made peace between God and the world. And so for Israel to be
called to be a priestly people in the midst of the nations of the world is
for Israel to be called to give to God on behalf of the world. To give
thanks, to make peace. God's people are there so that there may be peace
between Earth and Heaven. And yet as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us so
forcefully in the New Testament, human beings alone cannot make lasting
peace between Earth and Heaven. The sacrifices are o
 !
ffered year after year and yet sin, warfare, spirit and body returns again
and again. Those repeated offerings cannot make the fundamental change that
is required. And so it is that the calling of God's priestly people narrows
down to the one who is our great high priest, Jesus Christ, priest forever
after the Order of Melchisedek as the Letter to the Hebrews has it.

And it is that calling, Christ's calling to be the one and only true
peacemaker that we read about in our New Testament lesson. 'He is our peace
who has made us both one, making peace that he might reconcile us both to
God in one body through the Cross'. The calling of all God's people rests
on the shoulders of the one man, the one who alone can make a lasting
peace; who alone can give true and adequate thanks to God for the whole
world; who alone can offer the sacrifice that restores relationship between
God and the world. And it is this one great high priest who then calls us
afresh to be instruments of his peace; to be a priestly people, because we
know that peace has been made. And we put our lives in his hands; we let
him use us, we let him build us into a place where he can be: a sanctuary,
a temple for his glory. And we can do this, we can put ourselves into his
hands because we know that it is not for us to make peace, but for us to
inhabit the peace that he has made!
 and to draw the world into it.

So we who are called to be instruments of Christ's peace, we who are called
to be the kingdom of priests in his name and power, we like the Old
Testament priests, in the words of the prayer book, make prayers and
supplications and give thanks for all. The Church is above all a place
where prayer and supplication and thanksgiving happen. If the Church fails
to be such a place, it is no real Church. But the worship that is offered
in the Church, the prayer and praise and thanksgiving, is not simply what
we do. It is what Christ does. The Church is a place where the peacemaking
worship of Christ is real. A pillar of fire in our midst between Earth and
Heaven. That is what the Church is for. The one sacrifice of Christ that
sustains all our prayers, that permeates all our praise and thanksgiving;
the one worth offering, the one true act of worship - that is the life of
the Church.

So what is required of us who are called into this fellowship? We are
required first of all to know that is Christ who has made peace. In other
words, we are not to be anxious. A doomed peace of advice it may be for any
Church, not least for the Anglican Communion at the moment, and yet that is
what Christ says to us. He has made peace and our life rests on what he has
done and on nothing else. So our own efforts at peacemaking and witnessing
to peace in world and Church alike must not be characterised by anxious
striving, by desperate activism, by the passion to get it all sorted and
all right, now. He has made peace by the blood of his Cross, and we live in
the fullness of what he has done and we warm ourselves at the pillar of
fire that is set, up in our midst, between Earth and Heaven by his prayer
and sacrifice.

And secondly, we are called to find that peace in the shared offering of
thanks. To find peace in our worship together. The writer to the Hebrews
tells us not to be slow in coming together to worship, or reluctant as some
are. Because it is as we pray together that we find the peace that Christ
has made. And again and again in the midst of our tensions, our struggles
and uncertainties, it matters more than we can readily say that we should
let ourselves be drawn together by that pillar of fire, to make prayers and
supplications and give thanks in the power of the Christ who is among us.
So that, third, we are called upon to become, as the New Testament lesson
suggests, a place where God is to be found. That is what the Church exists
for and I say it once again, a place where the reality of Christ is alive
in our midst, a place where God is to be found. A sanctuary. But remember
the two meanings of the word sanctuary in common use. A sanctuary, yes; a
temple for God; but a sa!
nctuary - a place of refuge, a place of asylum, to use a very current word.
A place where those who need a home and have none may find it. So that to
be built by God into a sanctuary, a living temple, is not to be built into
some closed holy space. It is to be built into a temple whose doors are
open, where God is to be found and God's peace makes a difference. In all
these respects, what deep conversion is required of us? How readily we turn
to anxious striving, as if Christ had not died and been raised. How
awkwardly we sit with one another to pray together and worship together.
How easy it is for us to close our doors. But, we are called to be a
kingdom of priests, and to be built as a holy temple so that the world may
be invited, may see, may be transfigured.

There are many definitions of what it is to be a priest, but one that has
struck me with great force recently is this: a priest is someone who in his
or her friendship reveals to me the face of God. Someone who in his or her
friendship reveals to me the face of God. To be a kingdom of priests then,
is to be a people through whose friendship God can be seen. Are we friends
to God's world? We shall be so if we learn to be friends of Jesus Christ
and friends with one another. But it may then be that we are able to be
true priests in sharing that face to the world, which is not ours and never
will be the face of the one who has called us, and loved us, and pledged
himself to us, and lives and works and prays in our midst, Jesus Christ.
That is the calling of a priestly people; the kingdom of priests, the holy
nation, the calling given to God's people from the beginning, the calling
brought to its consummation in Jesus Christ, the calling through Christ
renewed to each one of us !
and every Christian community of which we are a part. The call to our
Anglican Communion to be a kingdom of priests, a priestly people. Those
among whom the prayer of Christ may be seen and heard. The peace that
Christ has won may be tangible. And to be a friendly home for a world of
homeless people lost in unhappiness, in error, and sin. What greater
calling can there be? May Christ then be visible among us. May that pillar
of fire be seen as we meet together to worship. With whatever doubts and
tensions and uncertainties as we meet, he is there, as he has promised. May
Christ be seen and Christ's peace be heard. May we all of us, as believers,
be those who in their friendship show the face of God to the world. And may
the spirit of the Christ we praise among us help us through the difficult
conversion and the daily discipleship that alone will make that real and
credible. Amen.

© Rowan Williams 2005

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