The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, preached at the Service for the New
Parliament, St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, London, 9 June
2015.
To read what he said in its entirety, please go here. An extract is published below.
There are many different emotions here today. That is why the
readings today have deliberately been chosen to pick up two moments in
the Bible that have much emotion attached.
The reading from
Jeremiah speaks of the consequences of God’s judgement – and the reading
from John’s Gospel of what it means in practice to be a community of
values with a moral vision.
Jeremiah was a prophet of the sixth
century BC in the kingdom of Judah. Judah had survived for half a
millennium, more or less. But in the end, a combination of political
miscalculation and other factors meant that the kingdom was overrun, and
after a long and horrific siege (if you want to see what it feels like
read Jeremiah’s Lamentations) the city fell. In two great waves the
leaders of the nation – those who had survived – were taken on a death
march to Babylon.
Jeremiah had prophesied the defeat because the
nation had fallen away from God’s standards. Once the exiles were in
Babylon they wrote to Jeremiah, asking what they should do now. One of
the key parts of his answer is in that first reading.
The essence
of those verses, and those around them, is writing to the exiles at
this moment of the deepest possible blackest despair that we can
imagine. His answer was this: you’re going to be there a very long time
(that’s bad news), settle down and bless the community in which you
live. (‘But these are the people who massacred us,’ you can hear them
think.) The circumstances in which you find yourselves are not a cause
for despair, but for reflection on the past and a renewal of confidence
in the God who is greater than all of history.
And in fact, in due course, virtually uniquely among the people of that area they were brought back from exile.
The
people of Judah suffered the consequences of their turning away from
God to other gods, of seeking to find alternative values not based in
truth – the absolute truth of the revealed God – but in what was
convenient and easy.
Their society had been corrupted by materialism as the ultimate aim of existence, and by injustice and neglect for the poor.
Let
me be absolutely clear. I am not hinting or suggesting in any way at
all that anyone here is guilty of such things. One of the privileges of
my role is getting to know so many people in politics, and the more I do
the clearer it is that almost everyone I meet seeks to do what is
right, to make just decisions, and to serve their country with
integrity. Views to the contrary are mere descents into cynicism.
Yet
the best intentions can lead to the wrong conclusions. First, Jeremiah
says, we reap the consequences of our actions – and thus those actions
must be based in a moral vision and in an ideal that is founded on
eternal values that do not change.
Throughout the Old Testament,
time after time after time, from Genesis to Malachi, these values
include justice for the poor, reaching out to the stranger, integrity
without partiality in government, and a dedication to the flourishing of
the whole community.
Secondly, God is also saying through
Jeremiah that even when things go wrong, which in all societies they
will from time to time because we are all human (and let me say the
Church of England is not one to lecture others on how to be perfect),
God is greater than our greatest failures.
We have to seek to do
right, but we can trust in the providence and salvation of God for the
future. That is the promise made to the people of Judah, and thus they
were to settle down amongst their enemies; to make the best of their
situation, to bless the communities in which they lived, and look to the
moment of their redemption.
There is no coded political message
in this, but there is a very un-coded theological one: God can be
trusted, but we must do our part. And I know that is the belief and
desire of the vast majority here today.
So pragmatism does not
really work. Yet all politics is in the end about delivery, not merely
policy. Stating policies is the easy bit; making them happen is the
deepest of skills.
Pragmatism in the sense of short cuts to avoid
difficulty is not a good solution. It had taken Judah to defeat and
exile. But pragmatism in the sense of being practical and down to earth –
of making sure that delivery happens – is essential.
In the
reading from John 13 we see the greatest moment of holy pragmatism in
history. The Son of God Himself, Jesus – knowing confidently who He is,
what He is intended for, and that God can be trusted – sets aside His
pride and washes the feet of His disciples.
The truest leadership
is about service. And note that He even washes the feet of Judas
Iscariot, knowing as He does that this is the man who will betray Him to
torture and agony within twenty-four hours.
This truly is holy
pragmatism. It is the pragmatism of love without limit, of unconditional
love that reaches with generous, almost absurd grace to every person.
Such
pragmatism costs more than we can imagine and gains more than we can
believe. And yet it is the pragmatism to which we are all called, as
human beings, but especially those of you here, as national leaders.
So
we have two moments: in the first of them a nation in despair is told
that God can be counted on despite all their failures. The failures
matter. Actions have consequences. But they are never the end of the
story: God is.
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