CofE Representative to the EU Institutions InstalledThe Reverend Dr. Gary Wilton has been formally installed as the first Church of England Representative to the EU Institutions at a service in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Brussels on Sunday 4th May 2008. The ecumenical nature of the role was emphasised by greetings from Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels and Primate of Belgium. During his sermon the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, the Right Reverend Geoffrey Rowell spoke of the changes he has seen in Christian churches across Europe adding: “We live in a Europe in which peoples are on the move. On our own small scale as the Diocese in Europe we are aware of migration by UK citizens which could lead over the next 25 years an additional 1.85 million UK citizens are projected to move to Europe. All over Europe I encounter many from Africa and Asia who are now here in Europe. Your own congregation at Holy Trinity, as we see this morning, shows just how real this is – and I thank God for it. I shall ordain a Nigerian to serve a Nigerian congregation in Padua at Michaelmas. Amos Manga, was ordained last year to serve a large Sudanese refugee community in northern Finland. I licensed Ephraim Boms from Nigeria as a reader in Athens last week. Stories of the imminent collapse of European Christianity fail to take account of the consequence of Christian immigrants from the global south; and are likewise often ignorant of the religious revivals in Russia and places like Montenegro. The largest theology faculties I know are in Bucharest and Belgrade. All this means that Europe is changing, and one of the issues to be addressed is this mobility – a mobility which is in one respect an elitist attribute – global managers and academics, and politicians, and, let me be honest, bishops; but which has also led to the presence in Europe of the under-privileged, but those find themselves constrained by immigration controls and residence laws. The sharp question which Jesus was asked ‘and who is my neighbour?’ and to which he replied with the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan (the good heretic in strict Jewish eyes), is a challenge for us in Europe today.”
The full text of Bishop Geoffrey's sermon follows.
BEARING WITNESS COMMISSIONING AND COLLATION OF GARY WILTON AS CHURCH OF ENGLAND REPRESENTATIVE TO THE EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS, AS ASSOCIATE CHAPLAIN OF THE PRO-CATHEDRAL OF HOLY TRINITY, BRUSSELS, AND AS A CANON OF THE CATHEDRAL CHAPTER OF THE DIOCESE IN EUROPE “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will bear witness for me in Jerusalem, and throughout all Judaea and Samaria, and even in the farthest corners of the earth.” (Acts 1.8) We did not plan when making this new appointment of a Church of England representative to the European Institutions that the commissioning and collation of the new representative should take place today, this Sunday which falls between Ascension Day and the Feast of Pentecost. But it is entirely appropriate that we are doing this today. The Feast of the Ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday, is the sweeping up of Easter, and the victory of the Cross, into the Lordship of Christ over the whole universe. “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever. And this Sunday is a time of anticipation, of waiting for the energising gift of the life-giving Spirit. The Ascension story which St Luke tells at the end of his Gospel and the beginning of Acts, speak of the Lord being taken up into glory, of his commission to the apostles, to bear witness from Jerusalem to the farthest corners of the earth, and of waiting in prayer until they are clothed with power from on high. Behind St Luke’s Ascension story is the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah being taken into heaven in a whirlwind, in a chariot of fire, and with horses of fire (‘Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home!) – a story in which Elisha, Elijah’s disciple, begs his master that he may be his successor, that he may receive a double portion of his spirit – the double portion which belongs to the designated heir. And in that story Elisha is told that, if he sees Elijah when he is taken into heaven, then that will indeed be the case. Elijah’s cloak falls to the ground; Elisha picks it up; and goes back across the Jordan in the spirit and power of Elijah. The mantle has indeed fallen on him – so powerfully that the phrase has entered the English language. So at the end of Luke’s Gospel Jesus tells the apostles that they are to wait in the city…until they are clothed with power from on high – and the word ‘clothed’ is surely chosen deliberately with reference to the Elijah story. When the Spirit comes they are to be his heirs and successors; they are to be witnesses (and remember that the Greek word for witness is μαρτυρεω from which we get our word martyr) to the kingdom and lordship of Christ; and they are to be witness because the animating energy at the heart of their teaching and their transformed lives is the creative and transforming Spirit of the Lord himself, the Spirit who is the Lord and the Giver of life. And so with a mighty downrush of a whirlwind from heaven, and the tongues of flame that were believed to form the wall of heaven and the presence of God, on the Day of Pentecost the church of God is born to live the life of the new creation in the world. The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of the dynamic spread of the church of God from Jerusalem to Rome – from the centre of Jewish faith, from the Holy City with the temple, and the place of Good Friday and Easter, to Rome, the centre of the most powerful empire of the world at the time. It is a journey, as Luke describes it, through many places – small communities in Asia Minor, encountering the sceptical philosophers and new age religionists in Athens, and the dubious life of the port city of Corinth – until at last the Gospel is proclaimed in Rome. St Paul, who was turned round, converted, on the road to Damascus, becomes under God the spearhead of this mission, and in Rome, though it is not recorded in Scripture, both he and Peter witness with their lives in a martyr’s death. The sweep of church history continues this movement. Constantine recognising Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. The divergence of Greek East and Latin West. Christians in the Syrian tradition penetrating to the borders of China. The Slavic peoples of Russia and elsewhere inheriting much of the worship and customs of Byzantium. The peoples of northern and western Europe bringing their customs into a church which is in many ways a shadow empire, Rome in Christian form. And then the split of the Reformation when Europe’s house is divided. And yet from Europe the Gospel spreads to the new world, and to Africa, shaping history and culture – and yes, because Christianity is an incarnational religion, being shaped by history and culture. Religion is never a private matter, it is, to use a phrase of Newman’s, ‘a mould in which nations have been cast’. Christianity has left its mark on Europe for better, and sadly sometimes for worse, as historical Christian divisions still contribute to the fault-lines of Europe, in the Balkans and elsewhere. And religion is enduring. I would not have thought in 1980 that in 2007 I would be celebrating Easter in a rebuilt cathedral which Stalin had demolished, with on one side of the iconostasis President Putin and the Mayor of Moscow and other political leaders, and on the other the chief abbesses of Russia. Or who would have thought that in Albania where Enver Hoxha viciously endeavoured to stamp out religion in an atheist state more complete than the Soviet Union, would now have an airport named after Mother Teresa (the most famous Albanian), and churches and mosques rising to serve new generations of worshippers. Cultured despisers may write off religion; but faith and religion has a habit of coming back, because it reaches to places in the human heart that political ideology cannot reach. Yet, as Professor Vigo Demant pointed out years ago, Politics is in a sense next to religion because both are concerned with the will, and with choices. When Archbishop Rowan visited the European Institutions a few years ago he asked the question: ‘What is the moral compass of Europe?’ It is a question that needs continually to be pressed, and it is part surely of what you, Gary, will be wanting to press in your engagement on behalf of the Church of England with the European Institutions. When I visited Brussels last November with members of the House of Bishops’ Europe panel, together with a Swedish and a Lutheran Bishop from Germany, we engaged with the current moral challenge of climate change, a subject pressed powerfully among the Christian churches by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. We were received warmly, and learnt much, but I remember a comment, that climate change was a moral challenge to the nations of the world, not least those of Europe, but we need your help, because you know about changing hearts and minds. Yet policies are always perilous as recent concerns about the impact of biofuels on the price of food makes clear. A recent report from the World Health Organisation, Building from Common Foundations, sets out a programme for working with faith communities in many parts of the world; and as Bishop I am delighted that one of the authors and shapers of that report is a priest of this Diocese, Paul Holley, chaplain of La Côte near Geneva. We live in a Europe in which peoples are on the move. On our own small scale as the Diocese in Europe we are aware of migration by UK citizens which could lead over the next 25 years an additional 1.85 million UK citizens are projected to move to Europe. All over Europe I encounter many from Africa and Asia who are now here in Europe. Your own congregation at Holy Trinity, as we see this morning, shows just how real this is – and I thank God for it. I shall ordain a Nigerian to serve a Nigerian congregation in Padua at Michaelmas. Amos Manga, was ordained last year to serve a large Sudanese refugee community in northern Finland. I licensed Ephraim Boms from Nigeria as a reader in Athens last week. Stories of the imminent collapse of European Christianity fail to take account of the consequence of Christian immigrants from the global south; and are likewise often ignorant of the religious revivals in Russia and places like Montenegro. The largest theology faculties I know are in Bucharest and Belgrade. All this means that Europe is changing, and one of the issues to be addressed is this mobility – a mobility which is in one respect an elitist attribute – global managers and academics, and politicians, and, let me be honest, bishops; but which has also led to the presence in Europe of the under-privileged, but those find themselves constrained by immigration controls and residence laws. The sharp question which Jesus was asked ‘and who is my neighbour?’ and to which he replied with the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan (the good heretic in strict Jewish eyes), is a challenge for us in Europe today. By creating and enabling this new post of Anglican representative to the European Institutions the Church of England has (belatedly) signalled its recognition that we are a European Church; that the European Institutions shape our lives, and that a distinctively Anglican voice needs to be heard; and it is good that we are working in concert with the Conference of European Churches, to whom we are grateful for much support and advice.; It is right that Gary should be part of the ministry team of Holy Trinity, Brussels, and again I want to pay tribute to the support and advice Holy Trinity (and especially those of you who work in the Institutions) and Robert Innes, your Chancellor and Senior Chaplain, has so generously given as we have pursued the long road to this appointment. I commend Gary, and Gillian and the family with him, to your care and support. Pioneering ministries and new work of this kind are never easy. We have probably given you, Gary, a brief too enormous to be fulfilled – but, rather like my own impossible job, it is God’s impossible job. Not everything that can be done will be done, but we trust that rooted and grounded in the common life of prayer and worship of the Body of Christ, what is needful will be done. You are to be eyes and ears, and a voice to speak on the big issues – not just of the self-interest of the Church of England (though being alert to lead in organ-pipes, and the embalming of bodies, and such similar things, when by the law of unintended consequences European Directives can touch things of which they were unaware is a little part of what you are called to do). We shall learn from you as you fulfil your commission, part of being a witness having received power from on high, the grace and life of the Holy Spirit. Jacques Delors famously spoke of the need for a ‘soul for Europe.’ The personal and the pastoral; friendship and openness to people are part of what is needed. Europe is not, and must not be, as popular journalism in England so often portrays it, a soul-less bureaucracy. The European Institutions must be concerned with human flourishing, and if so concerned then there are real questions: Who are we as human beings? What is our destiny? How do we speak of and enable the spiritual dimension of human life? And all of these touch on questions of justice, and bio-ethics. How are the vulnerable protected? Who speaks for the handicapped, the mentally confused, the dying, and for unborn life? These are all sharp and challenging and practical questions. The churches need to put them to those who shape European life and understanding. The spiritual wisdom, which the churches embody and transmit from generation to generation, is needed more than ever if Europe is to be more than concerned with economics, important as that is. Ascensiontide speaks of the taking up of humanity into God, of a life transformed by a love which is triumphant over sin, and evil, and death. As the great sermon of St John Chrysostom puts it, a sermon read in the Orthodox churches last weekend as they kept their Easter: ‘Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen and hell has lost its prey! Christ is risen, and life reigns!’ It is that life which the Ascended Lord pours on his Church through his life-giving Spirit, so that we all may be witnesses from Jerusalem…to Brussels…and to the furthest corners of the earth. |
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