Farewell, Rowan, Great Archbishop of Canterbury! | Dreaming Beneath the Spires
I heard of the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury with very real sadness. A scholar, a poet, a fine, humble human being.
I feel rather cross with those who made his tenure a cross.
However, the only purpose for this brilliant, imaginative, godly man to remain as Archbishop would be the platform it provides for a public demonstration of how a real Christian should live and behave.
His most lasting contribution to the world no doubt will be through the written word, hopefully through poetry.
Institutions. They suck your life-blood and spit you out! No institution is worth one’s loyalty, one’s energy, one’s life-blood.
Why? Because they are transient. In heaven, there will be no Anglicans, only Christians. No Anglican Communion, no Anglican Covenant.
Is the Anglican Church worth expending one’s life, time, love, loyalty on?
No, of course not. Only Jesus Christ is worthy of one’s love, loyalty and life-blood. Jesus, and the people we love.
In fact, in my view, even strengthening the local church by working in its power structures, as a member of a PCC, a Warden, a major donor, is a poor investment of time. Leave such things to those who love power and significance, and there will be many. But thou, oh man of God, flee these things.
Investing in individuals– simply, humbly, over cups of tea; simple humble one-on-one ministry—that IS worth it. This will endure; we will meet these people in heaven, when abominations like our church politics and 3 hour PCC meetings are long forgotten!
The campaigners against the Anglican Covenant, an abstruse, recondite (and I am told boring and unreadable) document which I am not clever enough or interested enough to understand have certainly shortened Rowan’s tenure, for it was his brain and heart child. One needs “the constitution of an ox, and the skin of a rhino” to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, he said on the day he resigned. Ultimately, he had neither.
“What’s so bad about the Anglican Covenant?” I asked a strident campaigner, an older lady. “It puts Englishness at risk,” she said.
Well, if it does, so be it. Englishness is at risk, anyway. It is definitely dated. It dies when the trumpet will sound, and we shall be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.
And we shall enter a new heaven and a new earth, and that, to judge by accounts of visionaries who’ve seen it, will be most Unenglish.
It will be crowded: Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand.
Emotional, noisy and demonstrative, and all this in public
In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
Undecorous. Unliturgical, uncontrolled. All sorts of people and animals in the wrong place.
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
And most of all, so very, so very unEnglish
a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:9).
Did he perhaps visualize his Anglican Covenant as paving the way for this great day?
