by Martin Davie, Christian Today
On 25 March Dame Sarah Mullally was enthroned as the Archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral. In her sermon the Archbishop declared:
‘In the Incarnation, we see God becoming one of us, and this gives me such hope for the church. In the ordinary and the extraordinary life of the church, we see God’s hand at work, the church rolling up its sleeves and getting stuck in where God is already at work, in the local and the global.
‘The church through the ordinary lives of its people continues to do so many extraordinary acts of love. God’s people, offering a listening ear, a word of encouragement or a prayer of healing, offering food, shelter, sanctuary and welcome in a world that so often seeks to divide us, tables to sit at, conversations to be shared, and being a simple loving presence, like the salt of the Earth, a light on the hill, the treasure of the kingdom, a church for the whole nation and for the world, which looks for ways of joining in with people of all faiths and of none in acts of service which will transform, a church which extends around the world with our sisters churches in the Anglican Communion, as part of the one holy, catholic and apostolic church to embody Christ’s love.
‘God is at work in the good news of the Gospel and in the hearts and lives of ordinary people who, like Mary, have the audacity to believe that with God we can do extraordinary things.’
This passage struck me because it is typical of the kind of description of the activity of the Church that we find time and again in the statements made by bishops and others responsible for talking about the work of the Church of England.
For example, an article in the Daily Telegraph published the day before the Archbishop’s enthronement reported on a poll showing that a majority of people believe the Church of England should lose its right to run state schools. The article quoted people who supported this idea and finally a ‘spokesperson for the Church of England’ who said: