There are those within the Church of England who regarded the appointment of Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury to be ill-judged; their fears have now surely been proved well-founded. That this man should be regarded as worthy of any office in a Christian Church, far less that of a leader, beggars belief. If such leadership embraces the obligation of following the example of Christ and walking in His footsteps, we must conclude that Rowan Williams, when weighed in the balances, is truly found wanting. Christ, the great Head of the Church, honoured the moral law and obeyed it to perfection. Sin is transgression of that law. Sodomy, of all sins, has divided the Anglican communion, and its leader has failed to condemn it outright.
We would expect any Christian worthy of the name to do so unreservedly and unequivocally.
Last November, a sodomite Bishop was, in the face of some opposition, consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire in the American Episcopal Church, and now the Archbishop has to face up to the consequences. Compromise is in the air. The Daily Telegraph (10/02/04) reports that the members of the international commission, which he set up after this so-called consecration with a view to keeping the “warring parties” apart, are to hold critical meetings at Windsor Castle. “Dr Williams”, we are told, “hopes to persuade the liberal leadership of the American Episcopal Church and the conservatives to agree on a new system to allow them to co-exist.” What does this mean? Is it possible, after all, for light to have communion with darkness – for there to be concord between Christ and Belial?
On the other hand, it would appear that the Anglican clergy in Africa are determined to leave no doubt as to where they stand, and their forthrightness is to be commended. It is reported that, when a new Archbishop was to be “enthroned” in Uganda recently, a delegation from the United States who desired to be present were told that they would be neither “welcomed, received, nor seated”. Anglican Church leaders in Kenya and Nigeria are equally adamant that they will not maintain communion with the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. This is all the more remarkable on account of the fact that the financial cost of such a stand is, as one might expect, very substantial. JM
Camouflaging Death
It has become not at all uncommon for funerals to be conducted in such a way as shows that those involved, including the ministers of religion, have no concept of the serious matter involved in a soul passing into the presence of God in eternity. By means of anecdotes and jokes, some bordering on the blasphemous, the significance of the event is trivialised and the thoughts of all present are channelled away from anything that would be truly profitable or helpful at such a time.
In their Directory, the Westminster Divines advised that friends attending a burial “apply themselves to meditations and conferences suitable to the occasion; and that the minister, as upon other occasions, so at this time, if he be present, may put them in remembrance of their duty”. The trivialising of death leads to the trivialising of life, and a funeral is an appropriate occasion for focusing attention on the spiritual and eternal realities which make life meaningful and which make preparation for death imperative. From all reports, even where the particular abuses mentioned do not exist, how
rarely are funerals occasions when the biblical perspective on life and death is presented!
What a difference there is between the emptiness of human endeavours to grapple with, or exclude, the solemnities of death and the solid hope entertained by, and on behalf of, those whose faith in Christ is such that they have reason to say with Paul: “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). Indeed, “devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him” (Acts 8:2). “But I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (1 Thess 4:13,14). There is all the difference here between those who seek to enlighten their darkness with sparks which they themselves have kindled and those whose darkest days are enlightened by the rising of the Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings. How we long to see the people of our land come to experience the power of the gospel to provide an unshakeable foundation for living and dying.
HMC