A bigger picture for a kinder (more caring) world
While it would be great to think that the Olympics really did make for a kinder world, I wonder whether they do. I’ve loved the stories of human resilience and resolve we’d heard over the last few weeks, especially of local heroes, and of competitors being supportive of one another, regardless of their team. But will the world be a better place after the closing ceremony in Paris? I really do hope it will be, somehow. And yet, I know it won’t be enough to make a lasting difference for most people around the world.
Perhaps we could ask the same question of ourselves and our church. Do we make for a kinder, more caring world? I’m sure we do, on a good day. Can we do better?
There’s something distinctive about living as a Christian in the Anglican tradition. For one, it’s spacious, something I really appreciate after having spent almost 5 decades living deeply into several non-Anglican Christian traditions. The worldwide Anglican communion is a diverse and interdependent family of churches that seek to do life in communion with each other. Therefore, implicit in an Anglican way of being Christian is an appreciation for people from different cultures and ethnicities, worshipping God in ways that are both similar and different from our local expression of being Anglican. This can be challenging for sure, and even confronting. It can also be deeply enriching.
Living as a Christian in the Anglican tradition draws me deeply into my life of faith in particular ways:
- through communal and personal worship saturated with Scripture
- through the enduring traditions of Christian community (I call these large ‘T’ traditions as compared with the small ‘t’ traditions of local custom and personal preference) that celebrate the richness of God’s love not simply for a favoured few, but for all people across the spectrum of human diversity
- and through reason – a rigorous, imaginative and informed approach to faith.
Scripture, tradition and reason invite us into a bigger, more spacious way of being a follower of Jesus, inviting us to be people who care deeply for one another, for friend and stranger, for our own selves, and for the earth. Scripture, tradition and reason provide us with resources for following Jesus in a world that can sometimes feel disorientating and exhausting, lonely and dehumanising.
It seems to me that in all Jesus’ encounters with people, people who were ‘insiders’ and people who were ‘outsiders’, there was always an invitation to a more spacious way of life. Life in all its fullness is more spacious because the rules of engagement – to love God and love neighbour, showing justice and kindness, by God’s grace – are accessible to all ‘who have ears to hear’. Straight from Jesus, this is Scripture, tradition and reason informing practical, grounded faith for the real world, then and now.
But do we? Do we have ears to hear Jesus’ command, “love God, and love your neighbour as yourself”? Do we have ears to hear, and the will to follow Jesus in ways that express God’s loving kindness to both insiders – those we consider to be ‘like us’ – and to outsiders – those who are different from us? People who are ‘other’, from a different team. People from a different Christian tradition. People from a tradition that isn’t Christian. People who are difficult or abrasive, or needy. People, fullstop!
Loving God and neighbour with justice and kindness and are not necessarily cool concepts in many parts of the world right now, including the Gold Coast. But cool has never really been my thing. While being Anglican certainly isn’t cool in most circles, I find that our Anglican worship and way of life in community can offer a grounded pathway for being Christian that dodges the exhaustion of ‘cool’ or popular. Although we see so many people striving to be these things, we can offer a more authentic way of being kind in the real world.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been grateful for opportunities to hear about living out Jesus’ command to love and show deep care through Anglican agencies beyond the parish. I’d love to share these with you briefly.
- At the Anglican Board of Mission annual dinner in Brisbane (beautifully hosted by Rev’d Eron Perry), our Archbishop Jeremy Greaves, and Regional Bishops John Roundhill, Cam Venanbles and Sarah Plowman, participated in a panel that explored the current context of mission for our church. It was a poignant conversation that highlighted both challenges and opportunities for our church in the proclamation of the gospel. The bishops reminded us that God is at work in the world. Our role is to join in what God is already doing. Authenticity and genuine love are vital elements for meaningfully sharing God’s love through Christ in our world and context. Anglican schools are taking on a growing role in the mission of the whole church.
- I attended a simple communion service in St John’s cathedral, followed by an open conversation with Bishop Sarah, about the role of women in our church and their stories. Marking the 50th anniversary since the ordination of the first women in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in the US, we celebrated the ongoing journey of women’s ministry in our diocese and beyond. Historically, ordained women have been under-represented in parishes and schools on the Gold Coast. While men of deep faith, serving with care and compassion have faithfully provided ministry in our Gold Coast parishes and schools, we might consider how the under-representation of women has shaped the church in our corner of the world. How might our Anglican communities become even more spacious as welcoming places of deep care, loving kindness and compassion as we proclaim the gospel in action as well as words, and in ways that resonate with a wider cross-section of people?
- The Anglican Schools Commission hosted a workshop to foster Anglican identity that was open to clergy, staff, school council members and students from Anglican schools in our diocese. It was a great day of hearing from students about what Anglican identity means for them, and sharing how we can strengthen practical expressions of living out Christian faith in the Anglican tradition in our diocesan schools.
- Last week I went to the annual Anglican Schools Australia conference with people from all across Australia who brought perspectives from large cities as well as regional areas. We heard from excellent speakers, including the The Right Reverend Dr Vicentia Kgabe, Bishop of the Diocese of Lesotho, who will be a keynote speaker at our upcoming clergy conference. She had lots to share, from scripture and from her experience about living and leading as Anglican Christians in our very complex world. I’m looking forward to hearing from her again in a few weeks!
There is a groundswell of support for ministry in our schools to be not only the role of chaplains and Christian/religious education teachers but of all leaders, especially the Principal. When school leaders are advocates for and living examples of Christian faith in the Anglican tradition in spacious and deeply caring ways, school communities can become places of deep care and belonging and nurturing in faith for young people, their families and for staff. All Christians in our school communities have the opportunity to provide an attractive and life-giving way of living with kindness in our world.
Let’s all encourage one another to live in ways that create a more spacious and kinder world, showing to others the deep care with which we were first loved by God.
And let’s be willing to have a bigger picture of what it means to be Christian in the Anglican tradition so that our church and school communities become kinder and more welcoming – more Jesus-oriented and less self-focussed – in authentic and genuinely loving ways. Imagine what might happen if we put as much effort into that as an athlete training for the Olympics! Then we might truly see our world become a more caring place for all.
Grace and peace,
Mary-Anne