The Perkins Lectures: 'Christianity in the Crucible'

Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury
Wichita Falls, Texas

Thursday, 11 May 2000, 7:00 pm

[Lambeth Palace] I am delighted and honoured to receive the invitation to deliver the Perkins lectures for this Millennium year 2000.

I understand that it was the former Pastor of First United Methodist Church, Wichita Falls, Paul Martin, who conceived the idea for the Perkins Lectures. But it is Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Perkins we must thank for so generously endowing the Lectureship in 1943; the purpose of which is "to bring speakers to deliver lectures or talks for the furtherance of the Christian Religion… for the benefit of the members of said Church, for the benefit of Methodism generally, and for the benefit of the public at large."

With that aim in mind a short historical introduction might be useful.

As the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury, I represent one of the great branches of the Christian faith. It was in 597AD that Pope Gregory sent a timid monk, Augustine, with 40 monks to refound Christianity in virtually pagan England; a land renowned for its unruly and warlike inhabitants. In the 16th Century England with a great deal of Europe broke from Rome and became part of Protestant Christianity. In the late 18th century, the Church of England was among the earliest Churches to send chaplains and missionaries to the New World - among them the great Wesley brothers. It has to be said that John and Charles returned to England feeling failures for their lack of success. But, as it often happens, the sense of failure led to John's glorious re-conversion in the church in Aldersgate Street when under the power of the Spirit of God he felt his 'heart strangely warmed'.

Warmed indeed! That experience led to a rediscovery of mission and to what is called the evangelical revival in England. Sadly, however, although there were parts of the Church of England which accepted the insights of revival joyfully, the institutional Church recoiled with great horror from the enthusiasm of those they called 'Methodists' and in time a new Church began.

Therefore, it is good in this series of Lectures for an Archbishop of Canterbury to express my personal tribute to the Methodist Church and all it has accomplished, and the way it - like Anglicanism - has spread throughout the world. Today we are sister Churches in the glorious business of proclaiming and living the Christian faith. And that is why I am glad to deliver the Perkins lectures for 2000.

But what is this faith and what are some of the challenges we face?

In this series under the title 'Christianity in the Crucible', I will tackle some of the great themes of our faith: Christ, Scripture, Gospel, and Church. And we shall explore them within two contexts: the great Epistle written to the Ephesians and the 21st century which is our fleeting home.

So, then, to work! The Person of Christ in a Pluralistic Age.

Now, we often think of the world as presenting many challenges to Christians and we are tempted at times to throw up our hands in horror as we contemplate the problems of articulating our faith to modern men and women. However, it is worth from time-to-time reflecting a little on the breathtaking challenges that Christianity presents to our world! Christianity itself is a problem to the mind set of humanity!

Look for instance at this Epistle to the Ephesians. Its author presents an amazing picture of Christ. He is Lord, he is Image of God the Father, he is head of the Church and he is Saviour of the world. Are these ideas we can still hold on to with conviction, or do we turn away from them with regret because of what scholars call the 'scandal of particularity'? That is to say, are we in some sense embarrassed because in this man Jesus, God has appeared definitely and definitively to humankind?

The apostolic writers felt no embarrassment, no shame and no regret in presenting Christ as the 'hinge of history' and as one who makes all things new. It is an amazing fact that within 30 or 40 years of the terrible crucifixion of a virtually unknown stranger from Galilee he was being preached and presented as the true image of God and Saviour of all. So Cambridge Professor of Divinity C.F.D Moule, struck by the emphasis on the Lordship of Christ, writes: "The identification of that historical person - the Nazarene so ignominiously executed - with the subject of this description is staggering and fairly cries out for some explanation." Yes, indeed. And the explanation is to be found in the Apostles' conviction that Jesus is Lord and God.

But let us focus our attention now on Ephesians Chapter 1:3-14. Paul starts off with a headline:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."

As I said, that is the 'headline'. Jesus Christ is the source of all blessing. And as is typical of Paul, he speaks of a twofold blessing: we bless God for blessing us. And that is always a wonderful spiritual tip. Always bless God for his blessings in your life and mine. Never take God's blessings for granted. Let thankfulness be a mark of your Christian experience.

But let us look more carefully at the passage. What exactly is Paul blessing God for?

I don't think that Paul is expressing his thoughts here in a logical order - rather, they gush from him in a wonderful paean of praise and thanksgiving. In fact, in the original Greek all of the first Chapter of Ephesians is one very long sentence! The vivid and joyful language here has always reminded me of a sparkling mountain stream as the rich nouns and adjectives picture God's activity in Jesus Christ.

Paul states that Jesus is the source of our entire existence as Christians. First, we have been chosen to be his children. The verb is a vivid word - eklegomai - which means to 'pick out carefully'. Imagine when you shop for your vegetables in Winn-Dixie or your favourite store! You take it for granted that you will select the best you can afford. You don't go to pick out the worst tomatoes you can find or the most appalling potatoes you can lay your hands on! No, you go for the best. But Paul says God has chosen us - who are described in Ephesians Chapter 2 as 'children of wrath'. But that is the measure of God. He loves us as we are but loves us too much to want us to stay as we are. Our calling is to be holy and blameless.

But secondly, Christ is also said to be the source of our adoption as children of God. The image of adoption is a very important analogy in the New Testament: it never means second best, but it does seem to convey two essential ideas. First, that until we were adopted as children of God we were fatherless and motherless - homeless and abandoned. Adoption still remains a rich image of modern people without God because, make no mistake about it, if you and I do not know God as our heavenly Father, there is something essentially lost about our condition. We are strangers to God's love. We are orphans.

The second idea about adoption is that Paul draws our attention to God's breathtaking love for his abandoned children. Perhaps some of you here are adopted or perhaps you have adopted children. In our family one of our sons has two adopted little boys. He and his wife could not have children of their own so they set out on the long and difficult journey of adoption. We shared this journey with them and learned a lot. We learned, for example, that it is not easy to adopt. English adoption laws are very tough and we were amazed at the rigorous examination of the two young people to make sure they were up to adoption. By such high standards those of us who have had children of our own would have failed time and again. Those who adopt are motivated by love.

Yet, sadly, it sometimes happens with adopted children that they try so hard to be accepted and belong. I recall long ago a parishioner of mine who adopted a young boy Stephen when he was eight years of age. But for the first year his behaviour was so unnatural - he was so good! It was clear he was wracked with anxiety. He dreaded being sent away. And so his mother sat down with him and said, "Stephen, you belong to us. You are forever a member of our family. You will never be sent back to the home. So relax, don't pretend to be different or specially good. You belong." No adopted child should ever think of herself or himself as second best; adopted children are as loved as any other child. And that is why adoption makes us pay attention to the character of God as one who is passionately committed to us and our welfare.

But, thirdly in his list of the inheritance we enjoy, Paul says, "Christ is the source of our salvation." Hear Ephesians 1.7 again:

"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his grace."

Just two weeks ago we celebrated Easter, the heart of our faith. But the glory of resurrection cannot be separated from Good Friday the day of darkness. Now, I confess that I don't understand fully how Jesus Christ redeemed us. It is a mystery. Sometimes we wonder in the words of the young boy who once said: "Why couldn't God just let bygones be bygones?" Why didn't he simply forgive us, instead of Jesus dying for us?

But even today sacrifice is far from being a meaningless idea. On the contrary, it is a powerful concept which we all understand. In Auschwitz, for example, when the Nazis sentenced ten men to death in retaliation for some meaningless matter, one young man in total terror pleaded for mercy. A priest walked forward and offered to take his place. His name was Maximilian Kolbe. The priest saved someone else's life and sacrificed his own. Through his death another person was saved: he was redeemed or 'purchased'. Of course, such an illustration only goes a certain way in helping us understand the death of Jesus, because God is not like a monstrous tyrant like Hitler. We have to accept with humility Mrs. Alexander's great hymn: "We may not know, we cannot tell what pains he had to bear. Be we believe it was for us, he hung and suffered there."

In his book The Crucified God, the German scholar Jurgen Moltmann relates a poignant true story about a Nazi death squad which shot hundred or so Jews. An old Jewish gravedigger was left to fill in the grave after the soldiers had gone. As he was doing this, weeping all the while, he heard the sound of a baby crying. To his amazement, he discovered a young girl who had either given birth shortly before the killing or at the time of the terrible murders. Holding the baby in his arms, the gravedigger apparently cried: "It must be the Messiah. Only the Messiah could be born at a time like this!" Of course, the old man was wrong about the facts - but he perceived something in his cry that 'only the Messiah could be born at a time like this'. At the heart of darkness the Messiah comes - and suffers with his people. That is always his way. And inexplicably Jesus died for you and me.

And experience confirms this. The Reformation scholar Melanchthon used to say, "To know Christ is to know his benefits." In other words, the Christian faith is not an arid, erudite religion locked away in studies for the benefit of scholars who like that sort of thing - but a practical faith known in the act of living and believing. To read Ephesians is like listening to someone's experience of God. It is the intimate language of the heart.

And this leads me to reflect on a fourth element in Ephesians where Christ is seen as the source of Christian wisdom. If I have alluded to three very remarkable statements about Christ, then this fourth one is, in my opinion, the most astounding of all. And it is this: in Christ we know God's will for humanity and perceive, however dimly, the outline of his grand design for the fullness of time. Paul says that in Christ "God has made known to us the mystery of his will" and that, in Christ, all "things will be gathered up." In verse 17, Paul prays that "God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him… that the eyes of your hearts being opened you may know what is the hope of your calling."

These are truly awe-inspiring words, but for me they speak of a spiritual journey that we are all on. Of course, the process is a mystery to us - Paul has in fact already used that word 'mystery' by which he means 'an open secret'. Apparently in the deep south in the States one preacher entitled a series on God as 'Unscrewing the Unscrew-able'. Well, we know he meant 'inscrutable' but I guess he was half right: so much of what we yearn to know is beyond our knowledge, and we end up with a vocabulary for mysteries too deep for us to comprehend satisfactorily. And that is why Paul places together two words in his prayer for Christians in verse 17: revelation and the knowledge of Christ.

Revelation, I suggest, is the unfolding of God's will. Now, at this point some of the ministers in this gathering will get a little worried because in our seminary education we were taught that Christ's Revelation is final: Scripture has said the last word on the subject, and Revelation is at an end. It is true, as I said a moment ago, that Christ is God's final word to humanity. But this does not mean that God has stopped revealing himself through Christ and through human knowledge. On the contrary, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to go on disclosing God's will to us through Christ. Indeed, the sense of the Greek, apokalupsis, here suggests an ongoing and gradual manifestation, or appearance. And, isn't this a word to some of us here? We are being urged to go on learning and to grow in grace.

But the second word, 'knowledge' is equally important. The Greek word, epignosis, means spiritual insight - the ability to apply Christian insight to any and every situation. Cleverness and human intelligence count for a lot, of course, but I have met over the years many clever people who are not very wise. Christian knowledge comes from walking with God and using what the writer calls here 'the eyes of your hearts!' Now, if you did not know that your 'heart' has 'eyes', then you know now!

So, in the space of ten or so verses the letter of Ephesians makes the most astounding claims for Jesus Christ. He is the source of life and of its blessings. He is Lord of time and lord of history. All things are moving to their completion in him.

There are then many questions then that cry out for answers when faced with this challenge. What are we to make of these majestic claims? Are they believable and usable any more? How do we handle these dogmatic statements and still walk with believers of other faiths or with those of none?

Of course, these issues are not entirely recent. Take, for example, the sentiments of John Wesley, in his sermon entitled The General Spread of the Gospel. Having lamented the rise of Islam and the proliferation of 'Heathens' and 'Mahometans', Wesley wrote:

"Such is the present state of mankind in all parts of the world! But how astonishing is this, if there is a God in heaven, and if his eyes are over all the earth! Can he despise the work of his own hand? Surely this is one of the greatest mysteries under heaven! How is it possible to reconcile this (diversity) with either the wisdom or goodness of God? And what can give ease to a thoughtful mind under so melancholy a prospect?"

While we must forgive Wesley for being a product of his time (this certainly was not a very 'politically correct' remark on his part!), his statement does raise a salient question/problem for us as Christians: What are the limits of religious diversity?

Certainly Scripture and the weight of Christian theology give us no warrant to shrink from strong affirmation of Jesus as Lord. We must not apologise for what theologian Hans Frei refers to as the "unique, unsubstitutable identity" of Jesus Christ. I have found over the years that people of other faiths have no great respect for Christians who seem to spend a great deal of time reducing the distance between Jesus and other leaders of religion, or reducing the distance between Jesus and humanity as a whole. Yes, Jesus was fully human, and he was fully divine. We do our Faith no justice if we preach and teach that Jesus was 'just another man' like any other man. Persons of other faith traditions do not respect this. They know the claims of the Bible and of Christian theology. They are not looking for apologies - they are looking for an 'apologia', in the sense of a defence of the faith.

Thus we must challenge the 'nothing but-ery' so common in some circles: "Jesus was 'nothing but a Jew and should be understood in terms of the First Century." Or, it is sometimes implied: "Jesus was nothing but a messianic Jew whose attempts to lead a prophetic movement against the Romans ended in a tragic but heroic failure." Or, "Jesus Christ was nothing but a great teacher with a noble soul." Such attempts to confine Christ end in failure because the facts transcend all attempts to corral him to our categories of thought. Of course he was a Jew, and the more we study Judaism of the First Century we understand him and his times. But it is clear from the New Testament Jesus transcended his times and he was more than a first century Jew. He was a prophet but more than a prophet; he was a teacher, but more than a teacher; he was a noble soul but far more than a very good man.

Other faiths know this and often give to Jesus a higher status than some Christians! Very recently I wrote a small book Jesus 2000 in which I assert the divinity of Jesus. Within a two weeks of the book appearing I happened to meet a leading Muslim from the Sudan. In preparation for his meeting with me he had read the book, and he told me, "I agree with every word you wrote. For us Muslims, Jesus is son of God." I was impressed by this man and his study, but I did point out that I made several statements about Jesus in that book that Muslims would find very difficult to accept. The point was taken.

As I reflect on that meeting and the many others I have had with Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and many other religious leaders over the nine years I have been Archbishop, I have been led to embrace two overlapping ideas. First, that a high Christology does not mean intolerance and fanaticism. Second, that it is possible to be a wholehearted Christian and still be able to understand, accept, and work with persons of other faith traditions. I can fully understand people of other faiths who are made nervous by enthusiastic Christians who are so zealous of their faith but are so insensitive of the beliefs of others. I have said to people of other faiths that "my faith is so important to me that I am compelled to share it and to offer it to you as a gift. But in inviting you to partake of this gift, I too must have the humility to listen to your story of believing." And I have to say to you that listening to the stories of believers of other faiths, I have grown in my appreciation of these faiths and I have been impressed and humbled by stories of prayer and service to God that show that I have much to learn of God's dealings with others.

I need to say again, though, that dialogue and friendship with other faiths does not mean that we sell our soul to a lowest common denominator of faith or to mushy religious-sounding vagueness. All religions are not the same, and Jesus Christ is not merely one great religious figure among others. Rather, he is unique, incomparable and the gift to be shared.

Nevertheless, in the market place of religions today there is a great need for compassion, civility and humility on our part when encountering people of other faiths. In spite of major differences, there is a great deal of commonality among people of all faiths that leads me to conclude that we could do much more together in serving our neighbour and witnessing to a world loved by God.

But for most of us relationships with people of other faiths is not really the issue; the issue has much more to with our neighbours who do not believe in God at all and who would question the awesome statements of Ephesians with open mouthed amazement! "Do you really believe God loves us like that? How can you believe in God at all when you see our world in such a mess?" And we would be foolish and perhaps untruthful to ourselves to deny the force of these questions. Pain, meaninglessness, defeat and inscrutable evil are part of the round of every human being. No Christian is exempt from the fallenness of humankind. No, we do not deny these experiences but we do interpret them in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ.

And the death and resurrection of Jesus sheds light on every journey the follower makes.

Years ago I visited Gregorian University in Rome. The Gregorian is a university which trains Roman Catholic young seminarians. Apparently there used to be a philosopher who always began his first year course in a striking way. He would teach for a little while, and then he would turn to the huge blackboard behind him and put a small but clear white chalk dot in the middle of the expanse of blackness. He would then turn to his class and say:

"That dot represents all we do know about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and rational human life. The blackness represents ALL we don't know about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit and rational human life!"

Then he would lean forward and say in a harsh loud voice: "What we know then is precious little!" And then he voice would become softer and penetrating: "But what we know - is precious!"

So it is - that little dot in time, Christ our Lord, makes sense of all the questions and all the hurts of our day. And when we travel into his light, we have all we need.