In an apparent reference to the conservative Diocese of the Southern Cross, which provides a home for Anglican (and some ex-Uniting Church) evangelicals from majority progressive dioceses (regions), Kay Goldsworthy, Archbishop of Perth, says it is possible some of her flock will leave. This is an excerpt from her Presidential address to the Perth Synod (church parliament).
Theologians identify communion, koinonia, as being at the heart of God’s purpose for the world. To be in communion brings both privileges and responsibilities. One theologian writes that it is “the overflowing of charity, of agape, caritas”.
Or to paraphrase a collect prayer of the BCP, without love, all our doings are worth nothing (Collect for Quinquagesima).
I think about communion, koinonia, often. I ask God for it to be more evident in the Diocese of Perth than it is currently. I pray that communion will be the experience of parishes and other Anglican communities as they live their life witnessing to Christ. I pray that we will learn more and more of what it means to live into the sacramental love of Jesus, whose life was poured out for us, and who continues to feed us with his body, as we struggle within our life together as members of his body, the Church.
The main issue that threatens our common life and koinonia in the Anglican Church in Australia at this time is the way in which we are handling conversations about human sexuality. I pray about Communion. About the rift that exists between churches and individuals across the Anglican world.
I am well aware of the members of this Diocese who, in this season of our life together, have declared by their actions that they are not in communion with their Bishop – me – and with many of you. They – some of you – do not come and receive Holy Communion when I am presiding at the Lord’s Supper.
I pray for healing and forgiveness for all of us in this breach of koinonia. I pray too for the grace of koinonia to pervade all of our Anglican communities, groups, discussions and exchanges so that we will live the way Jesus spoke to his first disciples, calling them to love one another, and to have forgiveness and mercy as a hallmark of their life in him, in John 13:35.
Anglican theologian, Paul Avis, in his book The Vocation of Anglicanism, wrote “we can settle for a cheap kind of communion with our fellow Anglicans, a fellowship of those like ourselves, those with whom we rub along comfortably; this is to seek what we may call ‘the communion of geniality”. It costs us little and merely reinforces our prejudices. Cheap communion is communion without the cross and without paying the price of love.
But there is also a costly form of communion, which is the fellowship of those who are different. I invite all of us into that costly communion, that koinonia with those who are different. We can push this away, but the Anglican life of diversity in Christ is a distinctive hallmark which should be deeply valued.
We have been having this uncomfortable, costly conversation over issues around human sexuality for decades in such a way that is reckoned by many outside and inside the church as a sign that they cannot truly belong among us. It is exhausting, and if I find it so, how much more so for the human dignity of those for whom this is about, both themselves and their families.
This was addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the 2022 Lambeth Conference when he reminded the bishops at Lambeth “that no matter where anyone stands on the matter of human sexual identity, everyone reads, studies and receives the bible with utmost seriousness. To suggest otherwise of another is simply wrong.”
Paul Avis acknowledges how very difficult it is to make the effort of prayerful holding on that is costly discipleship. For, when we listen to the apostle Paul, we know that we cannot do without each other. Over the past six years this has been the burden of my episcopal ministry.
The constant call to work through difference with each other with grace and compassion, understanding that the unity for which Jesus’ prayed on the night before he died (John 17), the unity which we have in the crucified and risen Lord, the unity which comes from the unity of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is more than any of us can say, ever. It is mystery to be lived into as members of the resurrection community, walking together in the light and love of Jesus, koinonia rests not only on our frail and broken and sinful selves, but also on the Lord of heaven and earth who has given us everything of himself for our salvation.
This costly discipleship may be too hard for some. In a recent meeting at one of our parishes those with whom I was speaking told me that they are looking for different leadership. I find myself asking: are there some of us for whom remaining in the Diocese of Perth is not possible?
When people speak of a line in the sand, it feels that it is rather a line in concrete, not to be blown over by the wind, or erased by the tide. As your Bishop, the biblical hermeneutic, the lens through which I read the bible means that I do not see the conversation about human sexuality as containing the last word on salvation.
I recognise, with grief, that it is possible that some of us may decide, as have others in Australia, to leave our church over this issue. However, that same hermeneutic, along with my experience of the love and mercy of Christ, is bigger than any of us, and all of us combined, leads me to still believe that in Christ, we can be held together. That Christ can hold us all.
Image: Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy. Image Credit: Bahnfrend/Wikimedia