In a sermon given at All Saints Margaret Street on November 1, Archbishop Rowan Williams reminded his listeners that God does not make himself credible by argument, but by the lives and deaths of faithful people who engage their human journey with courage and hope.
Speaking about our “contemporary anxieties” in the Anglican Communion, Rowan stated:
We need to tell the stories of the Saints to remind ourselves what is possible and within any Christian family. We need to tell the stories of those who have made God credible to us. And within our Anglican family we need to go on telling a few stories about those who have shown us that it is possible to lead lives of Catholic holiness even in the Communion of the See of Canterbury! We need to be reminded of what we have to be grateful for in the lives of those who within our communion and fellowship have lived out God’s presence and made him credible here in this fellowship with these people. God knows what the future holds for any of us for any of our ecclesiastical institutions, but we can at least begin with what we can be sure of; that God has graced us with the lives of Saints; that God has been credible in this fellowship with these people. This church with its very particular place in the history of the Church of England is one small but significant facet of that great mystery and that great gift. And at times when the future seems more than usually chaotic and uncertain, it doesn’t hurt simply to give thanks.
Read the entire sermon here.
It is a brilliant sermon and one that reminds us how to transcend the polarizations of our time.
