Archbishop's MDG sermon at Kolkota Cathedral

Sunday 10th October 2010

The service included a call to prayer for the lives of children living in acutely deprived conditions across India, with voices of local children reading out stories in the first person describing some of these children's lives - including the experience of a 14 year old village girl who had been trafficked into sex work in Mumbai.

The worshippers at this service joined millions around the world, catalysed by the Micah Campaign, to make a commitment to prayer and action for the MDGs on this significant date – 10.10.10. After a morning spent engaging with vulnerable groups served by the local church, including the elderly, disadvantaged children, and adults and children living with HIV, Dr Williams reflected on the need to respond to the needs of others. In his sermon he spoke about the need to 'fast' - not only in the traditional sense of the denial of material things, but also in the wider sense of denial:

"...denying the pleasures of thinking of yourself as an isolated being with no real relations with those around; denying yourself the fantasy that you can organise the world to suit yourself; denying yourself the luxury of not noticing the suffering of your neighbour."

"This is fasting that reconnects you with reality.  And in the context of the gospel, this is the fasting that the Holy Spirit makes possible for us, breaking through our self-satisfaction."

Dr Williams also pointed out the paradox that exists in our world today that, despite our sophisticated communications, we remain cut off from the reality, unwilling to see what is in front of us:

"Not only individuals but whole nations can behave as if they were alone in the world or as if they could shape the world according to their own agenda.  Through the centuries and in some parts of the world today, oppressive and sometimes brutal governments have worked to keep themselves in power while turning their own nations into paupers; they refuse to see what is literally in front of their eyes.  In many contexts you will see societies dealing with their shame over injustices that everyone is vaguely aware of by avoiding anything that brings into the light the actual scale of suffering involved."

The Archbishop urged Christians to see these goals not just as something for those in government to be concerned with, but as goals that should be pursued within their own communities:

"...it should be about growth in the life of the Spirit and thus in the life of a community that, in its own inner workings, shows a pattern of mutual generosity, truthfulness and faithfulness.  The goals we speak about are goals for our own common life, not just for the leaders of the nations to implement by their policies.  We want as churches to be a community where vulnerable people are safe, where education and nurture are guaranteed, where all have access to justice, where the material world is honoured and properly cared for, where healing is available for all.  If we can go on working at becoming that kind of Church, we shall be witnessing to the Millennium Development Goals in more than words.  We shall be showing that the human world can really change when the Spirit is at work."

Full text of sermon:

Right through the opening chapters of Luke's gospel, the Holy Spirit is a presence you can't avoid or deny.  The Spirit comes down upon Mary to bring about the birth of Jesus.  The Spirit fills Elizabeth so that she recognises the pregnant Mary as carrying the Lord of the new creation in her body.  The Spirit comes down on Jesus at his baptism, drives him into the desert to be tempted, and accompanies him in power as he begins his ministry (Lk 4.14).  It isn't surprising that when Jesus stands up to speak in the synagogue in Nazareth, he quotes from the prophet's words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.'

What is the Spirit doing in all this?  One thing is clear: the Spirit is the way in which God's agenda takes over human planning and understanding.  Mary doesn't know exactly what is in store for her as mother of the Saviour, and she feels frightened – with good reason, it seems, as Simeon tells her a bit later in the Temple that a sword of suffering will go through her soul as a result of bringing Jesus to birth.  But the Spirit catches her up into the new world, even before she has time to think it through.  Elizabeth recognises who Mary's child is to be and blesses Mary for believing the promise of God – blesses her, we could say, for not letting fear or doubt stand in the way of walking forward with God.  And Jesus himself, born of the Spirit, experiences the Spirit personally not just as an inspiring or uplifting presence but as the power that drives him to test himself to the limit, to learn through the temptations in the desert how to say no to all self-serving fantasies and hopes and to put himself completely in the hands of God his Father.

The Spirit is what pushes away unreality and selfishness.  The Spirit uncovers what is truly going on and gives us the courage to face it and act in God's name.  Most of the time, we try to make reality fit our preferences and our self-directed hopes.  But the Spirit will not leave us in peace with our own version of reality; the Spirit brings us into God's world, God's frame of reference.  When we say that Jesus was filled with the Spirit, what we mean is that Jesus lives every moment in God's world, not in the confused muddle of fears and hopes and self-serving preferences that the rest of us inhabit for so much of our lives.

And when that reality is uncovered, what do we see in the world when we are living in God's frame of reference?  We see a world where people are not free, where they are denied a future, where they cannot themselves enjoy a truthful and hopeful vision of things.   Our selfishness and untruthfulness have the effect of blocking out vision for other people and leaving them in the dark, unable to grasp the choices and possibilities they actually have.  The Spirit is thus the power that brings liberty to prisoners and sight to those who cannot see.  And we who live in the Spirit are committed to that agenda – to release and to the vision of hope.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the 'fast' that God wants; and we can understand this a bit better in the perspective of this vision of the Spirit.  Real fasting, says God to the prophet, is breaking the bonds of injustice and sharing your resources.  And it is fasting because it means denying yourself something – not denying yourself material things alone, as in the usual sort of religious fasting, but denying yourself the pleasures of thinking of yourself as an isolated being with no real relations with those around; denying yourself the fantasy that you can organise the world to suit yourself; denying yourself the luxury of not noticing the suffering of your neighbour.  This is fasting that reconnects you with reality.  And in the context of the gospel, this is the fasting that the Holy Spirit makes possible for us, breaking through our self-satisfaction.

All this makes very plain the strange fact that our world today has more rapid communication than ever before – and yet we seem less able to see and to face the reality that's there in front of us.  So much of our national life in various contexts is devoted to protecting the fantasies and the denials.  Not only individuals but whole nations can behave as if they were alone in the world or as if they could shape the world according to their own agenda.  Through the centuries and in some parts of the world today, oppressive and sometimes brutal governments have worked to keep themselves in power while turning their own nations into paupers; they refuse to see what is literally in front of their eyes.  In many contexts you will see societies dealing with their shame over injustices that everyone is vaguely aware of by avoiding anything that brings into the light the actual scale of suffering involved.

When we pray for justice for the poor and for the whole of our material environment also, we are really praying for the gift of the Spirit to open our eyes and help us to 'fast', to turn away from the unhealthy diet of falsehood.  And we pray therefore for the pouring out of the Spirit upon 'all flesh' – not just on believers.  For Christians seeking to serve God's agenda, there must be willingness to work with anyone whose eyes are open to the reality before them; they too have received some portion of the Spirit.

But there is still a specific and unique responsibility for Christians.  They have received the Spirit in baptism and they have been given the freedom to pray to God as Jesus prayed.  And the effect of this gift is that they have been drawn into the Body of Christ.  They have been united not just in some sort of human society but in a community, a communion, that makes us all depend on each other so deeply that we cannot even begin to think about our own welfare without the welfare of others.  When we read St Luke's account of the Spirit at work in the birth and baptism and temptation of Jesus and in his ministry in Galilee, what we are really reading about is the beginning of the Church, the birth of the Body of Christ.  As we see God's agenda being proclaimed and lived out in the life of Jesus, we begin to see that as we receive the Spirit we are involved in the same story.  We must allow the Spirit to sweep away the fantasies that we use to make ourselves comfortable; we must allow the Spirit to drive us into dark and difficult places where we have to let go of the things that make us feel safe.  And then we can live out our baptismal calling, open to one another in the community of Christ's love, living, each one of us, from the gifts we receive from the neighbour.

The pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals should not just be a matter of solving a number of tough problems about the distribution of wealth.  For Christians, these goals should be about growth in the life of the Spirit and thus in the life of a community that, in its own inner workings, shows a pattern of mutual generosity, truthfulness and faithfulness.  The goals we speak about are goals for our own common life, not just for the leaders of the nations to implement by their policies.  We want as churches to be a community where vulnerable people are safe, where education and nurture are guaranteed, where all have access to justice, where the material world is honoured and properly cared for, where healing is available for all.  If we can go on working at becoming that kind of Church, we shall be witnessing to the Millennium Development Goals in more than words.  We shall be showing that the human world can really change when the Spirit is at work.
 
And our prayer for the gift of the Spirit is also a prayer for the gift of integrity and realism day after day.  We pray that we may not give in to the temptation to deny the seriousness of the challenges before us, to pretend that 'it isn't as bad as all that really'.  We pray that our hearts may be open to feel the real pain of those around us. We pray that we may not give in to another kind of falsehood – the idea that it is all too difficult to change.  We want to be truthful about how serious things are – but we must also be truthful in acknowledging the fact that Jesus in his ministry and his cross and resurrection has already made a difference to what is possible for us.  And finally we pray for honesty about ourselves – about our refusals to 'fast' properly, about the extent to which we ourselves are still failing to see clearly because we cling to our old agendas, our doubts and fears about our own resources and capacities – which may be greater than we suspected.

In Luke's gospel, especially in these early chapters, the Spirit makes Mary greater than she could have imagined, makes Elizabeth a prophet who recognises where God is at work, and makes Jesus himself the one person who is completely free of the agenda of self and filled with the agenda of God.  Some scholars speak of the address in the Nazareth synagogue as the 'Nazareth manifesto', and that can be a helpful way to look at it.  But we have to be careful not to reduce it to just another manifesto for human improvement.  Because above all, it is a proclamation of God's gift of the Spirit, clearing away all that gets in the way of truthful vision and binding us together in mutual dependence and gratitude – the gift that makes us a Eucharistic people, gathered around the Table of Jesus Christ as guests together who are also called to feed each other with love and joyful appreciation.  Today, as we pray for all those who advocate for the Millennium Development Goals and for all our governments with their different levels of enthusiasm and commitment around these goals, we pray for ourselves that we may more deeply and fully receive the Spirit and so become better able to show the world what things look like when God has indeed stepped in to give health and newness of life to the people he has made – to save and bless his beloved inheritance.

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