Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane
Sermon for Washington Diocesan Convention
January 30, 2004

Creative complementarity: 'Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.' 1 Cor 12: 7

It is a joy to be here with you all today at the Washington Diocesan Convention and I bring warm greetings from all in the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. My own ties with this Diocese go back many years to when, in my previous capacity as Provincial Executive Officer, a formal partnership link between Washington and Cape Town was first initiated.

Now, after some preliminary discussions with Bishop John Chane during his visit to South Africa, we have come to strengthen the partnership by extending it to the entire Province of Southern Africa which includes six countries and an island. We pray God's blessings on this developing relationship and the bonds of affection that bind us together.

I have just said that I bring you warm greetings. How can I say this, when I am sure that not many of you have visited our Province, and perhaps fewer of us have visited you. It is not because I have traveled here from the hot African summer sun! It is because, however different we may appear, we know we share something of unimaginable glory.

We are all members of the body of Christ. We are sisters and brothers together, all one family, children of the same loving Heavenly Father.

This is the reason we can greet one another warmly. This is the reason we can build a strong partnership, and know that it can work. It can work to build the Reign of God in fuller ways than any of us could manage on our own.

As was clear from our epistle reading, the rich abundance of God's love finds expression in creative diversity. We are each formed unique, with different gifts. In this way we complement one another as we contribute to the life of the Church, the one body of Christ and to God's mission in the world.

Created diversity should not surprise us. We are created in the image of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three persons, each distinct, yet united in communion with one another and united in purpose. This is God's pattern for God's people. 'The body is one unit, though it is made of many parts.' (1 Cor 12:12)

Recognizing that God creates us for unity in diversity has important consequences for how we construe difference, especially within the body of Christ. We should expect it, and see it as a generous gift from the overflowing love of God. This creative complementarity is at the heart of the life of the Godhead and at the heart of the life of the Church. It gives immeasurable godly potential to the partnership we have between Washington Diocese and the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. The same is true at every level: within congregations, in Diocese and Provinces, across the whole Anglican Communion, and in all our ecumenical relations

These are fine words, but I am not so spiritually minded that I fail to see that they are a tough challenge to us - especially in the life of the Anglican Communion today.

The Church is little different from human families. Like them, we often find ourselves alongside people with whom it is all too easy to disagree. As you look around this Convention no doubt you can see people here who you would not want to call your good friend. But God says 'they are your brother and sister in Christ!' We cannot choose our
human family, and we cannot choose our Christian family.

Sometimes, of course, we think we can choose, and we talk of schism. Sometimes congregations split or churches divide. When any human family falls apart, it causes heartbreak, and when brothers and sisters in Christ try to go their separate ways, it grieves the heart of the Lord.

When we are tempted to think life would be easier if we split, we must remind ourselves that Christ died for each one of us and the Holy Spirit wants to give something through each one for the sake of all the others - 'to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good' (2 Cor 12:7).

This Gospel imperative urges us to hold together as we work though disagreements. We must face the challenge to develop an ethic of together-in-difference. This is a particular challenge to the Anglican Communion world-wide at present, when there is no clear agreement - indeed, much overheated disagreement - on the question of homosexuality.

Yet I do not think that homosexuality is really the issue at stake. There is a far more important principle, which the political struggles of today's globalizing world are echoing. It is the question of whether one world view, one political perspective, one theological stance, over-rules, is right, can assert dominance, and renders all other standpoints inferior and illegitimate. Or can we comprehend that none of us has the monopoly on knowledge and understanding, and, more than that, our lives are enriched and our horizons expanded when we encounter other, authentic expressions of human life, culture and spirituality?

Perhaps thinking that every question has only one valid perspective and one right answer is a legacy of the Enlightenment that we need to recognize and lay aside.

Only God sees the whole picture. Only God knows all the answers. And his word tells us that Jesus is the head of the body, and we are just parts.

Our job is to recognize that we belong to God, and we belong together - more than that, we need each other, if the body is to work well. It may be hard for the eye to appreciate the hearing function, or for the ear to comprehend sight, but the body needs both. Each part must respect the rest. God wants us to be united in diversity. He created us that way, and he will help us to develop an ethic of together-in-difference. It is an ethic that the world around us desperately needs.

Anglicanism has great strengths and experience to draw on in facing this challenge. We have never been a denomination based around a single statement of faith or set of rules. Rather, we are a Church that has held together through a shared past of deep historic roots, and through the maintenance and development of these relationships as the Anglican
Communion has spread through the world into its many (and still hanging) cultures.

That is what Communion is all about - koinonia, fellowship. Relationship, not rules. We are a communion, a family, of 38 ecclesiastical provinces, bound together by bonds of affection, and mutual commitment and respect.

This means we respect the autonomy of each Province. Yet each Province must also respect the others, and especially the Instruments of Unity: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates' meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Lambeth Conference.

I want to take you back to 1963, to the Anglican Congress held in Toronto. It was here that a great gathering of brothers and sisters from the whole Anglican Communion came together and first enunciated the concept of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence. As the era of colonialism was drawing to a close, the Anglican Communion recognized that these principles were the fundamental basis of our common life and mission. The idea of companion relationships emanated from there.

We must not lose that godly vision. Our relationship that is between Washington and the Church of the Province of Southern Africa is a visible outworking of that vision. I want to encourage the world-wide Anglican Communion not to be daunted by the threat of division when differences arise. We know that unity, especially unity in diversity, is often hard to maintain. Jesus would not have prayed for unity as he did at the Last Supper if it were easy.

Paul reminds us: The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit, into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Those differences were huge in the culture of that day. (Some Jews doubted that the Gentiles even had souls - you might imagine a similar view among some Christians today from the way they speak about those with whom they disagree!) But, says, Paul, what we have in common is far greater than what divides us.

Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence, said our Toronto forebears. Common Good, said Paul.

The Christian mindset does not see difference leading inevitably to discord and division. It sees the creative potential of shared ministry, striving together to bring out the best in one another. Or, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews put it, 'Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds' (Heb 10:24). That does not mean we can be provocative to one another! We are allies, not antagonists!

Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians puts it another way: 'Encourage one another and build one another up' (1 Thess 5:11). We must have that expectation as we develop our companion relationships: not just that we, believing ourselves to be right, would build others up if only they would listen to us - but rather that God will build us up too, through others, as we listen to his guidance while we honestly and openly engage with those who are different to us.

This does not mean that we have to agree with everything other Christians say. Rather, we listen to each other, and individually, and together, we listen to God. As finite and fallen human beings, we have to accept that we may have got things wrong, and certainly that there is always more to learn - in our heads, and in our hearts and the way we live. We must always keep on growing in holiness, in Christ-likeness, and in our calling within the body of Christ.

So I implore you, who are gathered here today, to lay aside all talk of division and split and schism. Pull back from the brink towards which so many seem to be racing. Hold fast to the vision of our forebears in Toronto. Hold fast to the picture Scripture paints. Hold fast to the body of Christ and to one another within the body. I am optimistic as I say this to you. For God is the God of reconciliation (2 Cor 5: 19). After 9/11, your Bishops issued a powerful statement entitled 'On Waging Reconciliation' - heed that call, wage reconciliation, within the Church as well as within the world.

Jesus is the one in whom all things hold together (Col 1: 17) - and in reality there is only one Church, only one body of Christ. The Church is not a club of the like-minded, a group of those who are happy to agree. We belong together whether we like it or not, and ultimately we cannot get away from one another, because we shall all be together in heaven if not before!

This is God's desire for us and he will help us. The Gospel reading gives this assurance: 'You know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.'

So let me end with a prayer from Paul's letter to the Philippians (Phil 1 :4-6) 'In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.'

May he fulfill this prayer in all our lives.

Amen.

Propers for the Holy Spirit
Isaiah 61:1-3
Psalm 139: 1-9
1 Corinthians 12:4-14
Luke 11:9-13