(ACNS)
There are two realities that encompass us as we meet as a world family of the Anglican Communion. And I would like to draw your attention to both these realities, without which our conference and our forward journey will become meaningless.
The first is that our world is a torn and divided world. Bishops are expected to bring their dioceses with them to the Lambeth Conference, and Bishops whose dioceses strive to be faithful by the challenges that come to us from God’s world will inevitably bring along with their diocese the pain and the struggles, the injustice, the evil, the hostility that men and women encounter in today’s world. It is indeed a true saying that God gives the Church an agenda out of the crises of the world. And so my dear sisters and brothers in Christ, the Anglican Communion must always give the highest priority to our invitation from Christ to participate with Christ in transforming God’s world. To bring healing, peace, justice, reconciliation, abundant life, where there is oppression, where there is hostility, where there is strife, and division. This concept of the world in pain must, through this conference and after the conference, receive the energy and spirituality of our Church. No other priority can contend for that place. God has called us and placed us in God’s world so that we might participate with him in bringing this transformation.
The second reality is the reality that we are a wounded community. Some of us are not here, and that is an indication that all is not well. Certainly the crisis is complex. It is not a crisis that can be resolved instantly.
The journey ahead is a long arduous one – a journey that will demand our prayers, our faithfulness, our mutual trust in each other, and of course our trust in God who makes reconciliation possible.
It is not complex – it is very simple. Promises were not kept, and people stayed away as a result.
A modern fallacy is the concept that [i]complexity justifies both innovation and risk taking[/i]. But when you look at those invoking complexity as a justification, you often find the child-like attitude that the only complexity existing was that they didn’t know what would happen in the future. In order to invoke a post hoc prompter hoc analysis, they intone “Well, we certainly had to try Something!” when Hippocrates would have prescribed “First do no harm.”