DWTX from Anaheim — Before presenting his meditation at the daily Eucharist on the second day of General Convention, July 9, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams got candid with his listeners. He spoke, he said, “simply and directly” because he does not like coded messages or hidden agendas. He thanked General Convention for inviting him, and he thanked The Episcopal Church (TEC) for its “continued willingness to engage with the wider life of our Communion,” even though he knew that such engagement was costly for some. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This has been hard and will not get much easier, I suspect.”
He went on to say he hopes and prays “there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart,” adding that many in the Communion are concerned because they have a “profound sense of what The Episcopal Church has given and can give to our fellowship worldwide.”
“If we – if I — had felt that we could do perfectly well without you, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
He echoed that theme in his meditation in which he spoke of a vision of Christ’s Church that is both simple and alarming: “We have been chosen . . . we have been spoken to by Christ, and our fellowship has been created by his word to us.” We are holy, said the Archbishop, “because we have been brought within earshot” of the eternal conversation between Christ and the Father.
It is this intimacy, said Williams, for which we are here as a Church. “Our life as a church declares to the world that God’s longing is for a humanity like this, a humanity broken open for intimacy.” In its corporate life, the Church presents and represents “creation restored in celebration of the word of God.”
Life, said the Archbishop, is not proclaimed in our achievements but in our admission of helplessness. We are bound to each other, and our life is invested in each other.
Full text of the Archbishop’s meditation can be found by clicking on the gold “resources” tab.