Address to the Anglican Women’s Fellowship Provincial Council Meeting

 

Anglican Women’s Fellowship

Provincial Council Meeting

The Kay Barron Address

Theme: Re-imagining ourselves – Igniting God’s Flame

Diocese of Johannesburg

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

23 October 2024

President of the AWF, Ms Pamela Mntonintshi,

Members of your Provincial Executive Committee,

Bishop Dan, your Liaison Bishop,

Your host bishop, Bishop Steve Moreo, and

Delegates to this Provincial Council,

Thank you so much for inviting me to this 28^th Provincial Council today and thank you also to the visitors and guests here present. Please feel at home.

It is an honour and privilege to stand here today as Patron of the Anglican Women’s Fellowship and to present the Kay Barron Address, giving me an opportunity to share some thoughts and reflections on the theme for this conference – ‘Re-imagining Ourselves - Igniting God’s Love’. 

I am thrilled that there is a wide representation of delegates and guests here from the dioceses of our Province and beyond. This is indeed a sign that you, the AWF, are able as one of our Province’s leading organisations, to live out faithfully ACSA’s Vision statement in your mission and ministry. Thank you for your leadership, and thank you mostly for your openness to learn and grow in the knowledge and love of God, as witnessed in your experiences amidst the challenges you face every day. We wish you well in whatever you plan beyond this Council – and we also pray for God’s blessing and strength for you as you move forward. Let me also thank the whole AWF Provincial Executive for all you have done for our Province.

Whenever I prepare to speak at an event, one of the first things I do is to check the lections of the day as per our lectionary. It is remarkable how often the set passages of scripture offer key insights into whatever the occasion might be, helping me to discern what God might be calling me to say within that setting. Having read the Eucharist readings for today and reflected on what God is saying to us through His Word, I was astonished by the Gospel reading, in which Jesus says that he came to bring divisions amongst families – mother against daughter and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:49ff). However, I was consoled by Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (3:14ff) – a prayer that expresses deep emotion and reverence. It is a wonderful prayer that Paul says for the church, offering as it does the freedom of access to God which those who heard it now enjoyed as Gentiles, and also because they had a special ministry, since he was their apostle. He knows he can confidently count on their intercessions.

The opening verses of the passage remind us that God’s fatherhood is the archetype of all family life, although the exact nature of His fatherly relationship in this context is not clear. Jewish literature spoke of two aspects of divine fatherhood: “the chiefly family” by which they meant the angelic world and “our family” – by which they meant Israel. According to Paul, both Jews and Gentiles now make up God’s family in the fellowship of the united church.

Dear friends, the petition of Paul in this prayer is twofold: the empowering of the Spirit, whom Paul calls upon to fortify our inner lives as Christians, especially when we are going through trials, and for the indwelling of Christ who comes to make His home in our hearts. From these two parallel petitions, we learn that there is no great difference between the action of the Spirit on our inner selves and Christ’s presence in our hearts. The indwelling Christ is the assurance to us as Christians of the moral strength he gives us.

The fulfilment of Paul’s prayer has consequences which are explained in a combination of metaphors in the previous chapter of Ephesians, which taken together express beautifully God’s redemptive plan for us, a plan which embodies Christ’s love, a love which is so amazing that we cannot fully grasp it. As Paul writes, we, like the Gentiles of that time, are assured that we are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God. God’s love surpasses knowledge yet at the same time calls us to progressively experience more and more of his love.

The doxology also celebrates our confidence as the church that God is both able and willing to do all that Paul’s prayer asks for. Indeed, in using the word “abundantly”, Paul knows that God’s intention is that in his love we can expect even more than his prayer promises, even more than we aspire to. The secret of Paul’s confidence lies in the certainty that God’s power is at work in a church filled with the presence of Christ. Fittingly, at the conclusion of this thought, Paul gives all the praise to God, who is present both in Christ and the church. And in this letter, Paul does not see Christ and His church as being two separate entities, but rather as being so closely joined that we can regard them as one corporate whole, captured in the single phrase “Christ-in-His church”. It is because of this indwelling and empowering presence of Christ that we can receive his glory as something eternally present.

As I reflect on this passage, it seems to me a beautiful prayer for the AWF, one which resonates with your own aims of “prayer and worship”, mission, witness and service.

Turning to the implications of this message, and of our faith, for the AWF, and how we might re-imagine our mission in our current context, let us remind ourselves of the Province’s Vision statement. This maintains that Anglicans ACT, meaning that we are firstly:

-- Anchored in the love of Christ.

Secondly we are:

-- Committed to God’s mission.

And, thirdly, we are:

-- Transformed by the Holy Spirit.

What does this mean for the Province, and especially for the AWF, as we move into the second quarter of the 21^st century? As a start, it would be worth our while to look at the issues and the concerns which were raised and debated at the recent meeting of Provincial Synod.

The question of violence within communities and homes, and its counterpart in the church, seen in the abuse especially of women and children, is an obvious starting point, and I encourage you all to make yourselves familiar with the work of the Safe and Inclusive Church initiative. There is also a great need to make our churches safe and friendly places for those who live with disabilities, beginning with the most basic needs, such as making our church buildings, halls and toilets accessible to people in wheelchairs, but going well beyond that, consulting with those affected as to what their needs are.

As we prepare for our next Provincial Synod, I invite you to play your full role in addressing other important decisions our Church faces on how we order our collective life: on how we transform our liturgies so that we worship God in ways best suited to the times in which we live; and – despite Synod’s rejection of blessings for same-sex couples – on how we respond to the need for sensitive and effective ministry to those in such unions.

As members of AWF, God calls you to respond to what each one of us has become in Christ. Every Christian is called to be a disciple of Jesus and to serve as part of the wider body of Christ. Each one of us is called to one or other kind of ministry, and Christ will give us the gifts of grace for ministry to empower us as we seek the common goal of maturity in Christ. This all requires of us to be ignited, on fire with love for God and God’s church alike.

As I have said in addresses to you in the past, for us as Anglicans, the doctrine of the Incarnation is of central importance. For us, God takes human form and in so doing becomes part of the contemporary world. Through the Incarnation, God invites us to discern how best to realise our true humanity and to be directed how best we work with one another in service to God and in respect for God’s creation. The Incarnation, as I have said elsewhere, “communicates to us that God is... on our side. In Christ Jesus, God demonstrates God’s solidarity with the human condition. He is with us, alongside us, and, more than that, one of us – to a degree we probably will never adequately understand this side of heaven.”

During my time as Archbishop, I have devoted attention to the need for us as Christians and Anglicans to seek the common good. What is the common good? Simply put, it is based on the recognition that what is good and beneficial for the other who is my neighbour is what is good and beneficial for me. Too often, many of our us and our leaders seem to have forgotten what is it to seek the common good.

So, as we re-imagine ourselves, how do we become part of the contemporary world, seeking the common good for our neighbour?

If we look at the situation in South Africa, there need to be reviews of the implementation of the Children’s Act, the Sexual Offences Act, the Domestic Violence Act and other related statutes to ensure that the purposes for which they were adopted are being fulfilled. Those of you from dioceses outside South Africa will no doubt be able to name what’s needed in your societies.

Of course it is not only on issues relating specifically to women that you as our sisters in the AWF have a role to play, in both our church and in society. While you have particular strengths through your unique experiences as women, you are of course citizens who are as entitled and needed just as much as men to speak and to act on any and all issues facing our societies in this Province.

Looking at those societies more broadly, in all the countries of our Province there is a desperate need to fight to eliminate the inequality of opportunity which condemns millions of people to inter-generational poverty. We cannot deny that those born to educated, privileged families have better chances in life than those born to poor families without access to networks which secure them jobs and good incomes. Inequality of opportunity undermines people’s capacity to use their God-given gifts to improve their lives, and our passion should be to work for better opportunities and to create an environment which benefits all, and to work against the continued exclusion of the marginalised in our society.

If we want to be true followers of Jesus in the southern part of our continent, we have to work to overcome the shocking levels of inequality and poverty in our countries. As I told Provincial Synod, what does Jesus’s promise of abundant life mean to the one in every three South Africans—nearly eight-and-a-half million people—who are unemployed? What does it mean in Namibia, where the unemployment rate is also about 33%, in Eswatini, where it is 28% or Lesotho where it is nearly 25%?

But there is no reason to despair. I love the saying attributed to that great African saint, Augustine of Hippo, that “Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to ensure that they do not stay that way.” It’s been said that the attribution of these words to Augustine is apocryphal, and that no one knows their true origin, but it doesn’t take away from the truth they express: that our anger at the betrayal of our hopes must spur us into courageous action to recover them and set us back on the path which our political  liberation promised us.

Hope, as I told the Anglican Provincial Synod last month, is not a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept:

        “No, hope is the driving force which motivates our determination to name our problems, to identify solutions to them and to mobilise people to overcome them. Hope must be what drives us to work to fulfill the promise of societies based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights. Small steps taken in hope can become islands of hope and as they come together we can in turn create landscapes of hope. We need to be cautious though, because it is not simply about ‘good deeds or works’, it is about those deeds infused with love, which in the public domain means deeds infused with justice. If I might quote St Augustine once more: ‘Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.’”

And being a disciple of Christ, whose hope is founded in his his death and resurrection, in our times, also means we must stand up not only for the poor but for other vulnerable people, such as migrants and refugees, for no one is foreign, all are God's people and all matter before God.

So, I encourage all of you as members of this organization to continue striving for what is ethically good in our communities. Let us discern and fulfill our vocations to the best of our ability – by so doing we shall have responded positively to Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians.

Finally, let me once again thank the President together with your executive for the sterling work you have done during your term of office, and wish you and your executive all the best as you reach out and live lives worthy of your calling, igniting and spreading God’s love and shalom in the world.

May God bless you all.

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