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++Philip's 2023 Fono sermon

Archbishop Philip Richardson in Honiara Cathedral at the close of the Pacific Anglican leaders’ Fono, picking up on Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1-11 and sharing the main themes of discussion at the Fono.
• Watch Archbishop Philip's sermon on Youtube (20mins)

Archbishop Philip Richardson  |  02 Jun 2023  |

Archbishop Philip Richardson preached at the close of the 2023 Pacific Anglican leaders’ Fono on 21 May, laying out many of the key themes discussed by Pacific leaders at the Oceania Fono of Anglican Primates and General Secretaries.

The text of his sermon follows below.

Kia whai korōria te Atua i runga rawa, kia mau te rongo ki runga ki te whenua, me te whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa.

Glory to God in the highest; let there be peace on earth and goodwill among all people. 

Nisa Bula Vinaka, Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, tena koutou katoa a te whānau a te Karaiti.

Greetings people who are followers of the way of Jesus.

On behalf of my colleagues, it’s an enormous privilege to be with you, and can I begin by on behalf of my colleagues who have travelled from different parts of Oceania, to thank you the Anglican Church of Melanesia for your remarkable hospitality. 

We have been welcomed warmly, we have been fed plentifully and we have been able to do some good work together. But most importantly is this opportunity to gather together for worship, because the worship of our loving God that binds us together, that grounds us, and that directs us out into the world to live out the way of Jesus in our daily work. So to gather here with you today is a great privilege. Thank you. 

I do bring particular greetings from Archbishop Don Tamihere who along with Archbishop Sione and I share the primacy of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

Oceania & climate change

Oceania is a rich and diverse part of the world. Perhaps more than many other parts of the world Oceania is also a region that understands some of the significant changes that are facing us in the realities of climate change. We realise we have to build resilience and work hard to reverse the forces that are damaging this fragile, vulnerable and beautiful world that we inhabit.

It is my firm belief that those of us in Oceania have a responsibility to speak out of our experience and to inform the world to attend to the consequences of the changing climate.

We need to reach out to brothers and sisters around the world, whether in the Bangladesh Delta, the sub-Sahara or in the Arctic Circle, or any part of the world that feels the sharpness and immediacy of the challenges of our changing climate. We need to reach out to our brothers and sisters, and we need to show the world the impact on our neighbourhoods, to show the cost of not caring for our planet.

We need to remember that the impact of climate change is felt most profoundly by those who have contributed least to that climate change.

Those of us who live in wealthy circumstances have contributed most significantly to the damage to our world. Those who are most vulnerable, the poorest, have contributed least to that damage. 

So members of the Anglican Alliance (who have gathered here alongside the primates and general secretaries) have been focusing particularly on how to address the challenges that our world and our life and our systems of economics and politics place upon the most vulnerable in our world. 

Discipleship

At this Fono we have talked together about the importance of discipleship. We have asked How do we encourage each and every one of us to simply tell of our faith? To simply say to your neighbour, to say to your brother, to say to your sister,

“This is what Jesus has done for me. This is how Jesus has changed my life. This is why I committed myself to being a follower of the way of Jesus.” 

Theological Education

We have spoken together about the importance of theological education, of forming and shaping our leaders for the future and for the present. Leaders who are deeply rooted in scripture and the history of our Church, but also are profoundly aware of the circumstances of the world in which we live. 

Seasonal Workers

We have spoken with one another about seasonal workers and the responsibility towards seasonal workers who come from parts of Oceania to work in other parts of Oceania. We have talked about how we as the family of Christ, the people of God, can support and at times challenge our own Governments about the treatment of those who come to work in industry in our countries in order to support people back home.

These are important matters. As we think together and pray together, we speak together about the too many men and women and children in our communities who suffer from violence. 

Ending Violence in our communities

So we speak together about how the church, those of us who are committed to the way of Jesus, Prince of Peace, can address the challenges of violence and the most intimate forms of violence. We have talked about how we as the church have to take responsibility for ending violence both personally and collectively.

So these are important things that we have been speaking about. These are the things that bring us to Honiara and that bring us to this fono, which is a time and a place to speak well and to speak honestly. So that’s the work that we’ve been doing and we could not do it without the hospitality and the love that you have shown to us.

So thank you Archbishop Leonard for the way you lead this remarkable province. 

A province that was intimately connected with the province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia until the mid-70s. Whenever I come here, I feel as though I return to a little bit of my heart. And it’s good to be in this place of prayer again, a place which has been uplifted by song and by prayer for generations. 

John 17: 1-11

In the Gospel reading we heard again such familiar words from Saint John’s Gospel: Jesus’ prayer concerning glory. This prayer has a key role in St John’s Gospel.

It describes how God is made known to human beings. John makes an assumption. He assumes that people are created by God for relationship with God.

Our primary purpose in life is not to work, our primary purpose in life is not to play. Although both can be good, both can be hard. Our primary purpose is not even to create the next generation. Our primary purpose, for each one of us is to be in relationship with God, from which all other things will flow.

And this prayer, where Jesus focuses in on the glory that is the glory of God, and in which we are all invited through Christ to share is based on this fundamental assumption that we are made in the image of God, for the purposes of God, for the love of God, and out of that flows the love of neighbour and world.

Eternal life, John tells us, comes from relationship with this eternal God, and this relationship begins here and now. It’s not something that is in the future, in the world to come, but is here amongst those that we share life with. And as we come to know the love of God who made us, God reveals God’s very identity in and through love which is marked by sacrifice. At times by suffering, by service and by joy. That joy is rooted in the knowledge that you and I share that we are profoundly loved. 

There’s never been anyone quite like you in the whole history of the world. In the whole of Creation you are unique and precious to God. You are beloved of God, like nobody else has been loved before. 

When we realise that we are beloved by God in all our faults and all our foibles, then we can recognise that in our neighbour too.

So if you think of the person who you find the most annoying, the most difficult to love, who you find it hardest to love and remind yourself that they are beloved of God, unique and beautiful in God’s sight. 

Just imagine how that would change the way that you treat that person?

How you would think of that person?

Sometimes in the face of all the challenges and troubles in our world, we speak of strong leadership. But the way of love is not the kind of strength that all too often the world respects. The way of love is the way of sacrifice and service, the way of love is a way of about putting neighbour before self. The way of love is recognising that at the centre and the foundation is God’s love. 

So this life of ours, this world in which we live is no waiting room. This is a construction site, a construction site of a new community – the Kingdom of God – which is a kingdom which is based on justice, on peace, on righteousness and on love. 

The kingdom of God is a topsy turvy kind of world, it’s an upside-down world, it says that loving is actually more important than winning.

It’s a world that says leadership is to be reflected through a basin and towel and through arms that are outstretched on a cross. It’s a community that says that the foundation of that community is based on utter respect for the other person and a deep commitment to this world in which we live.

It is community that is based on generosity and unreserved giving of self, where setting people free is more important than trying to control their lives. And so we are called to recognise that in the beauty and diversity of this world, there is a responsibility. A responsibility to respond to its fragility and its vulnerability, to recognise that its very future is in our hands and that we are the ones who must do something about it.

This new community calls us to celebrate the beauty and diversity of humankind, but to also recognise the reality that so many of our brothers and sisters in this world are denied even the basics of human existence. Let alone the circumstances in which they might thrive and live to the potential that is their God given gift. To recognise and celebrate these two essential priorities for our mission and life as a church, is to recognise and commit ourselves to the way of Jesus.

So when Jesus talked about reflecting the glory of God in and through our lives as individuals and communities, he was calling us to that kind of commitment.

Diversity and Unity

There’s one other aspect of this I want to touch on before I conclude.

And that is, that in the recognition of our diversity, we recognise that what holds us together is ultimately a gift of God’s grace.

When we come together for the kind of purposes that have drawn the delegates to Fono, or the members of the Anglican Alliance regional committee to this place for our discussions, it’s that unity in Jesus, our unity in Christ that holds us together, despite great differences, great diversity. 

But we must never forget that that’s a gift that God gives us. That gift of unity. It’s not something that we create and it’s not something that we can destroy. 

Archbishop Sione, do you mind standing up? My brother, we don’t know each other particularly well. We are getting to know each other better as we share responsibility for our Church. 

But what I know for sure, is that Jesus has captured your heart. What I hope you know for sure, is that Jesus has captured my heart. So even if we didn’t get on, even if we didn’t like each other (and we do), but even if we didn’t like each other, what holds us to each other is Jesus Christ.

It’s because Jesus has reached out through God’s grace, told me how much he loves me, and how much I am a child of God. And I have responded to that love, that gift of grace – and I see the same in my brother’s life. So how dare I ever suggest that my relationship with my brother might be broken, for any reason?

I have to trust and believe in the relationship he has with Jesus, and he has to trust and believe in the relationship that I have with Jesus. That holds us together. So let us not accept any talk in our beautiful church of division and separation. Of walking away from each other. For that is to deny the love and the purposes of God. That holds us together in and through our differences. Thank you, my brother.

May the God who calls us to follow Jesus in the way of sacrifice, of service and love, and the one who took basin and towel and whose arms are outstretched on the cross, bless you and keep you, this day and always. 

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