…there is still a specific and unique responsibility for Christians. They have received the Spirit in baptism and they have been given the freedom to pray to God as Jesus prayed. And the effect of this gift is that they have been drawn into the Body of Christ. They have been united not just in some sort of human society but in a community, a communion, that makes us all depend on each other so deeply that we cannot even begin to think about our own welfare without the welfare of others. When we read St Luke’s account of the Spirit at work in the birth and baptism and temptation of Jesus and in his ministry in Galilee, what we are really reading about is the beginning of the Church, the birth of the Body of Christ. As we see God’s agenda being proclaimed and lived out in the life of Jesus, we begin to see that as we receive the Spirit we are involved in the same story. We must allow the Spirit to sweep away the fantasies that we use to make ourselves comfortable; we must allow the Spirit to drive us into dark and difficult places where we have to let go of the things that make us feel safe. And then we can live out our baptismal calling, open to one another in the community of Christ’s love, living, each one of us, from the gifts we receive from the neighbour.
The pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals should not just be a matter of solving a number of tough problems about the distribution of wealth. For Christians, these goals should be about growth in the life of the Spirit and thus in the life of a community that, in its own inner workings, shows a pattern of mutual generosity, truthfulness and faithfulness. The goals we speak about are goals for our own common life, not just for the leaders of the nations to implement by their policies. We want as churches to be a community where vulnerable people are safe, where education and nurture are guaranteed, where all have access to justice, where the material world is honoured and properly cared for, where healing is available for all. If we can go on working at becoming that kind of Church, we shall be witnessing to the Millennium Development Goals in more than words. We shall be showing that the human world can really change when the Spirit is at work.
And our prayer for the gift of the Spirit is also a prayer for the gift of integrity and realism day after day.
Read it all.
Archbishop Rowan Williams MDG sermon at Kolkota Cathedral
…there is still a specific and unique responsibility for Christians. They have received the Spirit in baptism and they have been given the freedom to pray to God as Jesus prayed. And the effect of this gift is that they have been drawn into the Body of Christ. They have been united not just in some sort of human society but in a community, a communion, that makes us all depend on each other so deeply that we cannot even begin to think about our own welfare without the welfare of others. When we read St Luke’s account of the Spirit at work in the birth and baptism and temptation of Jesus and in his ministry in Galilee, what we are really reading about is the beginning of the Church, the birth of the Body of Christ. As we see God’s agenda being proclaimed and lived out in the life of Jesus, we begin to see that as we receive the Spirit we are involved in the same story. We must allow the Spirit to sweep away the fantasies that we use to make ourselves comfortable; we must allow the Spirit to drive us into dark and difficult places where we have to let go of the things that make us feel safe. And then we can live out our baptismal calling, open to one another in the community of Christ’s love, living, each one of us, from the gifts we receive from the neighbour.
The pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals should not just be a matter of solving a number of tough problems about the distribution of wealth. For Christians, these goals should be about growth in the life of the Spirit and thus in the life of a community that, in its own inner workings, shows a pattern of mutual generosity, truthfulness and faithfulness. The goals we speak about are goals for our own common life, not just for the leaders of the nations to implement by their policies. We want as churches to be a community where vulnerable people are safe, where education and nurture are guaranteed, where all have access to justice, where the material world is honoured and properly cared for, where healing is available for all. If we can go on working at becoming that kind of Church, we shall be witnessing to the Millennium Development Goals in more than words. We shall be showing that the human world can really change when the Spirit is at work.
And our prayer for the gift of the Spirit is also a prayer for the gift of integrity and realism day after day.
Read it all.