Currigan Center, Colorado Conference Center

Bishop Simon E Chiwanga
Chairman, Anglican Consultative Council

Melted for Greater Spiritual Circulation

Your Grace, the Presiding Bishop, Members of the General Convention, invited Guests, Sisters and Brothers:

I once read of a Bishop who started his Charge to his Diocesan Convention as follows: "I feel rather like a swan. I look all calm and serene on the surface, but I am paddling like the dickens underneath!" And that's me today!

First, I thank you, Your Grace, the Presiding Bishop, and all the Deputies of the General Convention and Delegates to the Triennial Meeting for inviting my wife Gladys and me to be your guests at this august Assembly of the General Convention. Thank you for the most awesome honour of being asked to preach at this Convention Eucharist.

It's more awesome, I feel, than I felt when I was asked to preach at the opening service of Lambeth '98. Canterbury Cathedral is conveniently structured for timid preachers like me, because it is so divided into smaller portions. You don't see the impact on the whole congregation as you do in this wonderful improvised cathedral.

We accepted this honour on behalf of our Diocese of Mpwapwa, and of the Anglican Church of Tanzania, and indeed of Anglican Consultative Council. And so we bring warmest greetings and prayerful best wishes to this Convention from our Archbishop, Donald Mtetemala of Tanzania, and from the Anglican Consultative Council.

I am delighted to be reunited with friends, former and current fellow Members of the Anglican Consultative Council, including the Chair of the House of Deputies, Mrs. Pamela Chinnis. I feel encouraged to see two Senior Staff of the Anglican Communion Office at this Convention: namely, the Secretary General, Canon John Peterson, and the Director of Communications, Canon James Rosenthal.

May I also use this opportunity, Your Grace, on behalf of the Anglican Consultative Council and on behalf of my own Church, to thank you for your generosity. The only word I can use to describe the generosity of the Episcopal Church USA is 'overwhelming.' You are a most generous and loving Church, at all levels - individual people, parishes, dioceses and the national office. Thanks be to God for your insight, and your willingness to share. You know you could say no, but you don't say no. The work of the Anglican Communion would be virtually null and void without the support of Churches like the Episcopal Church USA. One of the ways I have witnessed myself most dramatically in the Episcopal Church (and I say this without hesitation, and it comes from the bottom of my heart) is the work of the Episcopal Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, the work of the United Thank Offering (UTO), Trinity Parish Wall Street, and many, many other parishes. And indeed, it becomes riskier to begin to mention by name people or organizations, because you are bound to leave some of the most important friends.

I'm delighted to be worshipping on this Sunday, when we also celebrate and seek to promote especially the work of United Thank Offering (UTO). It gives me a deep challenge and inspiration to learn that we are worshipping here with at least 1,500 youths from all over the church. I once said in my own diocese that one sign of a healthy church is in its representativeness in terms of age and gender.

It is indeed from your Church and the Church of England that so much of the missionary activity stemmed in the early days. So thanks be to God for your witness, and thanks be to God also for your struggles.

I always thank God, and I do so sincerely and humbly, even for your struggles, because in my studies of the missionary work of the churches of the Communion, I always draw great inspiration from the Episcopal Church for being a champion in striking, beating a new path, pushing the frontiers of the mission and ministry of the Church. So when I say I thank you even for your struggles, I mean so very sincerely, even when I feel nervous, when I don't understand quite the extent you have reached, I still admire the courage, the venture, and the daring spirit. And I do hope that you too take this pioneering role most seriously in the way you listen to those who watch and admire you.

Melted down for greater spiritual circulation

The story is told that during the reign of Oliver Cromwell in England, there was a shortage of currency in the British Empire. So representatives carefully searched the nation in hope of finding silver to meet the emergency. After one month, the Committee returned to report to Oliver Cromwell its findings. "We have searched the Empire in vain seeking to find silver," it reported. "To our dismay, we found none anywhere except in the Cathedrals where the Saints are carved from choice silver." To this, Oliver Cromwell eloquently answered, "Let us melt the Saints, then. Let us melt them down and put them into circulation!"

I have taken that as the theme of my sermon: "Melted down for greater spiritual circulation." Just before Lambeth '98, I heard a preacher, a very vigorous and pertinent preacher who declared that "many Anglicans are like Arctic rivers, they are frozen at the mouth!" Why not then ask the Lord to melt us down for greater spiritual circulation? For today's lessons speak about Being Sent, in the name of Jesus, to proclaim and work for the Reign of God; the shalom of God where all will be reconciled and restored to unity with God and with each other, through repentance and healing.

In choosing this theme, I was also very much inspired by the overarching theme of this General Convention: God's Jubilee as a time when things were let to lie fallow, in order in due course to experience restoration to new life. The Jubilee provides a wonderful setting and starting point for the sending out of Jesus' followers that we have just read in chapter 6 of the gospel according to St. Mark.

It is interesting that St. Mark sets the sending forth of the disciples in the context of Sabbath, of worship, and as many of you would know, Sabbath as a day of rest, foreshadowed the idea and practice of Jubilee, in the Old Testament. St. Mark records:

Then He went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed him. And when the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the Synagogue...And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits. (Mark 6:1,7)

I always deeply appreciate when I'm called upon to make a pause, in my ministry, to listen to God, to meditate upon the path I've trodden along in my pilgrimage, to wait for God if I've made too much strides ahead of Him. This is especially so when I have to live with ambiguities, with life's insecurities, life's unknowingness. But out of this pause there comes always a deeper discernment and a fresh commission to go forth into the world.

It is my prayer that as we prayerfully pause at this Convention, and hereafter, in the spirit of Jubilee, we will be able to listen to God for fresh vision and fresh commissioning, even when God's word to us is contrary to our expectations, to our hopes, or to our desires.

The gospel for today opens with a warning on this danger of being fixed on discernment. Note how the worshippers in the synagogue did not receive what Jesus taught. They had made up their minds as to what God should do and say to them. They were ready for Jesus to expound to them the words of the prophets, but when Jesus tried to apply the prophets' words directly to their own lives, they questioned the legitimacy of Christ's authority. They had resolved that any genuine message from God must confirm their cherished positions, their closely held beliefs. When this did not occur, they rejected both the message and the messenger of God.

If the synagogue was the place of nurture for Hebrew children, to be rejected by such an institution must have caused a deep hurt to Jesus. But as the Americans would say, "Jesus hangs tough." He is faithful in the face of, He passes the "obedience test," because he finds his security in God, not in public opinion. Being freed from the need to please, being freed from hatred and bitterness, Jesus simply goes on to another place. Yes, rejected, but not shattered. As Paul says in Second Corinthians:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that excellence of God or the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. (2 Cor. 4:7-10)

So the sending out of the twelve in the Gospel according to Mark is foreshadowed by the rejection of Jesus and his message. It is from the midst of rejection that the commission of the apostles ensues.

The urgency of the mission

In reflecting about this being melted down for spiritual circulation, I want to highlight three areas of mission. First, the urgency of mission. As an African I remember when I could very boldly say that Africa was on fire for the Gospel of Christ and indeed in many places in Africa the witness to the Gospel is uncanny. It is beyond our wildest imaginations.

I am thinking of places like the Sudan, where even today people are persecuted, are tortured because they confess with their lips and believe in their hearts that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, and their saviour, personal saviour. Where some of the stories we hear of early Christian martyrs sound so far fetched and people being put in prison for their faith, in places like the Sudan it happens this very day. How courageous has been the witness of the church, and our own Archbishop of Canterbury and his multiple visits to that land? A land neglected by the world, by the media, by those who seem to consider it worthless. But thanks to God for you and many who have been faithful and those who continue to support the work in Sudan and in such like persecuted, suffering places.

Is Africa on fire? Pick up your local newspaper, listen to the television. Yes, Africa is on fire, but of a different sort. Not the fire of Pentecost, and I am afraid the fire is one that is burning out of control. Whether it be in our inability to honour God's creation, whether it be in our inability to honour each other as Christ's own, as people made in the image of the creator. The trouble spots of Africa and the world are countless; it's like a litany of devastation as one often hears in a church service when people offer the prayers of the people. One disastrous situation after another.

The source of much of the pain and devastation in the world comes from our worship of the worship of materialism. In Tanzania, in this country, and elsewhere, there is a frightening hollowness of a life that tries to substitute material goods for God's presence, a life that responds to the advertisements on the television rather than to God's call, a life that covets more goods, more clothes, more cars, even more houses, and ignores the actual poverty in the world. The power of advertising, the calculated creation of desire for goods by corporations, the government measurement of almost all results in financial terms, the stock market as a "headline news" item every day - it is almost impossible to escape these messages of materialism.

Note how in the sending of the twelve Jesus commands them to go out with very few possessions. They were to travel light and to rely entirely upon what God would provide for them as they went about their task: no extra footwear, no food, no back pack or wallet, no money (not even copper coins), and no spare clothing. Implicit in Jesus' commission of the apostles is a sense of urgency and an appeal to personal sacrifice for God's mission in God's world. It might be said that Jesus did not want the potential divisions which possessions and other issues do engender between even the closest of friends to get in the way of their mission. Is it not the devil's diversionary tactics that we should spend a lot of energy, precious energy and resources trying to sort out and to manage what appears to be a messy situation?

Yes, there is an urgency to the commission of the apostles, an urgency that says we must go, go in the face of rejection, go in the face of security of possessions and materialism, go trusting that God is with you.

Partnership in Mission

Second is the place of partnership. Note that in the sending of the apostles in mission Jesus sends them out two by two. Unfortunately, I've never come across an account of how Jesus drew lots to identify who should go with whom. I can imagine that not all of the apostles were matched with their best friends and colleagues but probably with one that they least liked. We do not get to choose with whom we will work in God's mission. Rather God chooses our partners for us. God links us with one another in, as the Presiding Bishop has noted quoting Rowan Williams, in "solidarities not of our choosing." Who are our colleagues in mission as we are sent out side by side as Jesus' Apostles in the world today? How does Jesus send out Anglicans, globally, into the world to preach repentance, anoint the sick and heal humanity? The two by two sending of the Apostles shows that we cannot do such work alone but must work alongside of our brothers and sisters in Christ outside and inside of the United States. If we are to effect healing and repentance in the world we must be genuine partners in mission as Anglicans and with our ecumenical sisters and brothers.

The united witness of the Anglican Communion and other Churches to overcome international debt is a wonderful example of how we need to rely on each other to proclaim and work for God's Reign in the world. I want to thank this General Convention, and many ECUSA dioceses, for taking the issue of International Debt most seriously. Thank you very much indeed! I ask this General Convention to accept the Third World's deepest gratitude for this marvellous work. This, I believe, is fulfilling one of those great objectives of the mission of God (Missio Dei), as stated in ECUSA's Catechism: "Restoration of all people to unity with God and with each other in Christ."

But the sending out as partners in mission is not to be done in an imperialistic, power-manipulative way, (as is the way of the world) but it is to be done in all humbleness and weakness, which is Paul's injunctions in the epistle read to us of 2 Corinthians. We are not sent in human terms (I call this "power over") but in God's terms ("power with"). Each and every one of us, (as Ezekiel has said in the first lesson) is called and sent to proclaim and work for the reign of God. We need not fear nor use the powers of the world. Rather we should trust in the Lord who will use our weakness to effect God's Reign. (Psalm 124 - Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.)This work of restoration requires us to work out of weakness and not out of a power-over situation, and it requires us to work alongside of, and in relationship with, brothers and sisters in Christ at home and around the world. In the unity of our corporate weakness and humbleness, offered to God, is the promise of reconciliation and wholeness for all humanity, of all creation.

What then, to follow Paul's epistle, are the weaknesses with which the Anglicans are afflicted that can be given over to God as part of our work for the Kingdom? What are they? Could it be our seeming divisions over such issues as human sexuality, liturgical change, or the ordination of women? What would it look like if we laid our differences humbly before God and before each other as an expression of the reality that we do not have all things figured out?

God wants us to be unified in love. This is also what St. Paul means in the Body metaphor as we read in 1 Cor. 12. All members are important to the body, and therefore no one can say "because I'm not an .... I'm not a part of this body." All members are to be patient, kind, not self-seeking, not easily angered or alienated by rejection, and not to easily give up the struggle, but to look for alternative ways of achieving the same ultimate objective.

Go forth - where? To a rebellious world, Ezekiel says. How? Urgently. With whom? All partners, equal in the name of Christ. And then, as we work the mission of God, we'll see the fuller meaning of the Jubilee concept. And then, as we come to report back to Christ about our achievements, Christ will say to us, as he said to the disciples, "Don't rejoice because the spirits heard you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in the book of life." Paul said "woe unto me, lest I preach to others and I myself later find myself cast out of the Kingdom of Heaven."

And therefore being sent out begins with being melted down, cleansed, purified - through repentance, confession, and then equipped for the mission of God in God's mission.

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