Address at Anglicare’s 150th Anniversary Service

Archbishop Peter Jensen | 4 June 2006

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Hebrews 13:15-16
‘Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.’

First ‘The Church Society’, dedicated to the planting of churches and the support of the clergy; then the ‘Home Mission Society’, dedicated to a range of tasks to do the work that the Diocese needed both in through evangelistic and parish development and in the area of care for those in need; now, still the Home Mission Society, but more familiar as ‘Anglicare’, concentrating on our joint obligation to help with the spiritual, personal and material needs of our fellow citizens. It is a great and wonderful story and it is no accident that we meet today to thank God for it, for we are a worshipping people.

Anglicare is no accident. It is the product of worship and specifically the worship that is offered to God through Jesus Christ.

We were created as worshipping creatures. That is what God has made us to be. Wherever you meet human beings you encounter worship of one sort or another – it is integral to our nature.

Of course modern men and women think that we are gods and that we deserve to be worshiped. But even in their demand for worship, they themselves reveal their own worshipping nature. For at its heart, worship means service and we humans, despite our pretensions, yield our service to the point at which we can discover power.

When we discover power we will sacrifice much to gain access to it, even our freedom itself. We want the meaning and significance that worship promises.

We reveal our dependence even as we hunger for independence. Greed for material possession is worship; the longing of the heart to meet some celebrity and to bask in reflected glory is worship; our addictions stem from worship – our ideologies are worship; we worship the politicians we think can give us a good life, and all around the world men and women find spirits and gods and even the dead or the stars, to depend on and to worship.

Is worship a good thing? Well our worshipping natures are a gift to us from God. But the primal rebellion of human beings against our Creator has twisted and spoiled everything, including our capacity for worship. Our worship is good, but it takes its goodness from what we worship, not from the act or attitude of worship itself.

When I praise a bad person I am bringing dishonour to myself; when I serve a bad cause I am at fault; when I yield myself to the service of a false god I am harming myself and others; when I worship the true God in ways which are unworthy, or in the wrong spirit, I offend him rather than please him.

We Christians are a worshipping people – but that is merely to say that we are people, because all men worship. The question is, who and how do we worship? Who is our Lord? Whom do we serve?

The Epistle to the Hebrews is a sermon all about worship. It is based on the axiom that our worship cannot please God because we are sinful people and we do not know what pleases him, and in any case we prefer to worship him by our own rules rather than his.

More than that, is also presupposes that the God-given rules, the rules that were once given to the people of Israel to be followed scrupulously, have now outlived their usefulness. They were intended to do a particular task, to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus the Saviour of the world. But now that he has come, to persist with them is to offer false worship no longer acceptable to God.

There was a central role in the old rules for the sacrifice of animals. The temple was a liturgical abattoir, where animal after animal died. The inherent sense that we feel, that we worship by offering sacrifice, is true enough, indeed we worship by offering blood sacrifice. The only difficulty was that the sacrifice of animals could not in the slightest redeem one human soul.

The system of sacrifice was intended to point to another sacrifice, the one that God himself provided, the sacrifice of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It was not a sacrifice of something owned by and yielded up by the worshipper; it was not a sacrifice which we could make. It was a sacrifice made on our behalf; it was the payment of a debt for us, far and far beyond anything we could offer.

God provided the temple; God made the covenant; God provided the true priest; God gave the altar, the altar of the cross; God provided the victim; God gave the blood. For our part we are simply to stand still and see what God has done. For our part we are simply to trust him that he has done all for us. Our true worship is faith in Jesus Christ. It is a worship for every day and every moment of every day. We worship not in the outward forms so meaningful under the old covenant, but under the new covenant through faith in Jesus.

If this point is clear – if it absolutely established in our minds that our worship is trust in the Saviour – if it is without the slightest doubt in our mind that we cannot save ourselves, but can only be saved through the mercy of God, then we may read this text from Hebrews in the right way. If we read it as suggesting that we can please God by our self sacrifice, independent of Jesus, then we have fallen back into the very error from which the gospel of Jesus was designed to deliver us.

For there is a sense in which we still have a sacrifice to be made to God. But this is not a sacrifice in which we seek forgiveness and mercy and the turning away of his wrath. That has already been accomplished, once for all, at the cross of Jesus. It cannot be supplemented in any way.

But, when we have trusted in Jesus and only Jesus, then, with thankful and joyful hearts, we offer up to God ‘the sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name’, that is, the sacrifice which consists of praise to God and which arises from the same lips which have confessed that Jesus is Saviour and Lord. Because Jesus has loved us, we love him and praise him.

We see that this sacrifice of praise is offered ‘through Jesus’. It is not a sacrifice to win God’s approval; through Jesus, his approval has already come. It is not a perfect sacrifice, rather it is perfectly acceptable because his sacrifice is perfect. All our sins and imperfections are abolished in his perfection. Our worship is always weak and foolish, but the wonder of it all is that God accepts it, through Jesus.

How do we best worship God? Not by inventing ways in which we imagine he may be honoured or pleased – not at all. We will fall back into the old sins of idolatry and hypocrisy. The first need of the worshipper is to listen, to listen to what God himself says about the right way to worship him. Remember that in worship we serve; we dedicate ourselves to serve our Master. How does God wish to be served?

Through Jesus; through Jesus because he has done all for us; through Jesus because only through Jesus can our service be acceptable to God; through Jesus because he moves us to praise and to obedience to God. In this passage, our worship expresses itself in praise, but it also expresses itself in the daily round of life, in meeting and seeing and caring for those who have needs. ‘And do not forget to do good and share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased’, pleased in and through Jesus. Jesus is our good neighbour; be a neighbour like him.

These are simple words, simple instructions and they are supplemented elsewhere in the Bible with more detailed teaching. But their very simplicity is persuasive and moving. ‘Do good’, ‘share with others’ – these are the sacrifices which please God. These are the marks of a Christian walk. They do not depend on organisations or the help of others to fulfil them; they are given to our consciences as they are so that we as individuals may find and do those good works which God has called on us to walk in day by day. They are the fulfilment of the command ‘Love your neighbour’.

However, it was not long after the gospel was unleashed on the world that Christians combined together to do good. We see it happening in Acts 6, for example, with the appointment of seven men to care for the widows. I do not suppose that they were motivated by a political philosophy, or a burning determination to solve all social ills or turn the whole world upside down. They simply did good and shared, and they banded together to share. They were worshipping, through Jesus, sacrificing time and money for their neighbours.

The first object of their sharing was their fellow Christians, but they never stopped at the door of the Christian fellowship. Their other neighbours, too, were cared for and shared the bounty of lives lived for God as a response to what Jesus had done for the world. It was the community values of the church which impacted so mightily on the world of their day. Jesus gave the power and the motive to love others who did not love them first, or did not love them in response.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I have just read Mr Mark Latham’s Diaries. In my view, he should have stayed as Mayor of Liverpool. I am not by any means suggesting that he was wrong to aspire to be Prime Minister – he may have been a success in that role. But what strikes me about reading his book is that his political ideas had to do with local communities above all and that he may have had a better chance of doing good at the local level – especially given his evident care for the South West of Sydney - had he committed himself to that work. His diary reveals and interesting and able man, but perhaps in the wrong place for effective action.

Listen to some of the points that Mr Latham makes:
‘we live in a nation with record levels of financial growth and prosperity, yet also with record levels of discontent and public angst, The evidence is all around us in:
• the extraordinary loss of peace of mind in society, evident in record rates of stress, depression and mental illness
• the breakdown in basic relationships of family and community generating new problems of loneliness and isolation in Australia. The traditional voluntary and mutual associations of community life have all but disappeared, replaced by home fortresses and gated housing estates
• the appalling incidence of crimes against family and loved ones: sexual assault, domestic violence and the sickness of child abuse
• the spillover of thee problems onto the next generation of young Australians, in the form of street crime, drug and alcohol abuse and youth suicide.

‘A striking aspect of this phenomenon has been the way in which it has affected all parts of society, regardless of their economic standing. Poor communities, after several generations of long-term unemployment and financial disadvantage in Australia, now face the further challenge of social disintegration, a loss of self-esteem and solidarity. Thirty years ago, these communities were financially poor but socially rich. Today they face poverty on both fronts.’

What strikes me about what Mr Latham was trying to accomplish is that he believes in the local and the need for local communities to work well. He clearly thinks - and surely he is right – that the best care is delivered by neighbours, as long as neighbours form a community of care and affection. Perhaps he romanticises the past but he clearly thinks that he experienced such a neighbourhood when he was growing up in Green Valley.

Mr Latham is not alone in saying that something is wrong in contemporary Australia and that community is needed to put it right. Without a doubt there is an increasing sense that money is a false god and that our wealth has failed us. Indeed, there is considerable evidence of a widespread discontent, even unhappiness, of a loss of well-being. The endless treadmill of work; the loss of time for relationships; the pervasive philosophy of individualism; the false ideology of success; the way in which we have lost meaning, purpose and belonging – these are not the observations of Christian preachers alone: they are being recognised on all sides as the ills from which we suffer.

In particular, we have put completely unfair stress on the family unit. Children are a good, not an encumbrance; marriage is a good, not a prison; men and women heading families in which they love one another and nurture their children is a God-given pattern, not one amongst a number of equally permissible options. In our selfishness, we have taken choices which do not support and maintain family life. Lack of community is the inevitable consequence.

Mr Latham and other social commentators, are pointing to the problems of contemporary life. They have answers which may or may not help. But we Christians also need to engage in this discussion by pointing out that the problems which are before us have spiritual and moral roots. Much of what Mr Latham rightly hungers for can never come to pass without a revival of spiritual values which will motivate men and women to shake themselves free from consumerism and to devote themselves to others.

We need a revival of personal ethics, of honesty in daily life, of faithfulness to one another, of the determination to keep your promises although there is no law against breaking them, of clean speech not punctuated by blasphemy, obscenity and malice, of self-disciple when our desires lead us in paths of unrighteousness. We need a revival of social ethics, of respect for those whom we do not know, of self-sacrificial care for the one who is sick or lonely, of a willingness to invest oneself in children despite the loss of standard of living, of care for our local communities and the willingness to give up time to volunteer to help others.

In the end, these are spiritual issues –for what could possibly motivate men and women to live like that? Judging by his book, Mr Latham has little respect for the churches or for Christianity. But I felt again and again that the gospel was what was missing from his laudable attempts to create community, and to remind people of love for neighbour at the local level. I felt that he himself would have been helped by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I think that his program would have been helped by it. But above all I felt that it would have provided that motivating power which would at least help to create the local communities which he thinks are essential to our humanity.

Anglicare is no accident. It is the product of worship, and specifically the worship that is offered to God through Jesus Christ. The first and best thing we can do for our community is preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that new churches, new fellowships of Christians will come into existence.

That is where the old Church Society had its beginning. Where families have been weakened, the family of the Christian fellowship is all the more significant; where individualism rules, it is all the more significant that there is a community of people who care for each other and look after each other; where money rules it is vital that we gather people who are generous to others and actually give their money away, regularly and freely; where speech is so debased, it is important that we have groups of people who speak to build up, and with dignity and freedom from obscenity; where human life is so cheap that we abort babies freely it is important to bear witness to the sanctity of every human life; where the size of the city makes for loneliness, it is vital that strangers reach out with love and take us in; where the disabled and the mentally ill are regarded as a burden, we must bear witness to the preciousness of all.

Individual churches cannot be, and do, all this. The problems are larger than the local community and we do no have the strength to do all that is required. The worship we offer God through Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of doing good and sharing with others, has lead us to band together in fellowships such as Anglicare. Through Anglicare and its workers, Christians can exercise community; speak up for the stranger; counsel the needy; welcome the lonely; connect people to one another; draw near to the sick and to those in prisons. It is, and must be, a spiritual work – it is motivated by the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ, it understands the real needs of the community through the wisdom of the gospel of Jesus Christ; ultimately, it adorns the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We celebrate 150 years of worship. I am grateful for all those who go to make up the mighty army of Anglicare. Our churches; our supporters; our skilled workers; our council members. It is entirety natural that a Diocese such as ours should support and nurture Anglicare: it is a gospel-motivated work, and it obeys the biblical command to do good and share with others. If Anglicare did not exist we would have to invent it. But it does exist, and together, we are so grateful to God that he has preserved and watched over this work for so long; together we pray that he will continue to do so.

For in the end, this work comes from God, and our lips will offer him the sacrifice of our thanksgiving and praise. It is definitely not human wisdom which has brought us to this point, and it is not by human wisdom that we should think that we will proceed. God has inspired us through Jesus to do good and to share what we have. May God continue to inspire such worship, for it is only the conviction that the gospel message of Jesus is true that will make us persist in doing good in the right way and for the right reasons.

Anglicare is no accident. It is the product of worship and specifically the worship that is offered to God through Jesus Christ.

May it always be so!