The Archbishop of Canterbury's Message Christmas 1990
Episcopal News Service. November 8, 1990 [90300]
The Most Rev. and Right Honorable Robert A.K. Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury
Each year I welcome this opportunity to send you my greetings and good wishes for Christmas, but this is the last Christmas letter I shall write to you all as archbishop of Canterbury. This, for me, has been a decade of discovery, a decade in which I have come to know the Anglican Communion. Each successive year has added to the number of my friends in the communion, as I have visited new places and met new people, and I shall long remember the colorful scenes and friendly faces that have come to mean so much to me.
Traditionally Christmas is a time for the family. We focus our attention on a tiny baby, with Mary his mother and Joseph, and we see in them a model for all human families. Families reunite at Christmas, and instinctively we recognize the family in all its forms as the most fundamental institution in human society.
Churches are also families. I greet you as members of the Anglican family of churches. We are related by history, common beliefs and practices, and by mutual care and affection. We cherish our family likeness.
Recently in Korea I have seen how beautifully our liturgical tradition can combine with Korean imagination and precision. Earlier this year I watched Bangladeshi grace and simplicity harmonize with Eucharistic devotion, and on many previous occasions I have seen Anglican spirituality enhanced by buoyant African enthusiasm. Anglican Christianity always seeks to root itself in local soil and clothe itself in local dress.
Diversity of membership is no threat to Anglican unity, yet during the past decade the collapse of the Anglican Communion has been regularly predicted. We do not rely on a central authority, nor claim to possess a model pattern of faith and order. Like the Orthodox, we cherish our tradition of regional autonomy, even when it puts our fellowship under strain. Diversity need not separate us.
Nor does suffering. Who can deny that the cry of the Palestinian people has brought our church in Jerusalem closer to us all? It is far more than a presence at the historic cradle of our faith. Who can deny that the events of this year have alerted us to our diocese in the Gulf? The birth pangs of a new order in Southern Africa or the dreadful conflict in Liberia -- all these agonies affect our family life as surely as any doctrinal debate. The prayer for Terry Waite and his family has been for me a powerful sign of the unity of the Anglican family.
In my travels among you over the years, I have always sought to encourage our relations with other churches. I have seen for myself what Anglicans have contributed to the united churches in South Asia and among the brave Christian community in China. When I was in South America in May, it was clear to me how our small Anglican churches in Chile, Peru, and Paraguay could provide a bridge on which representatives of larger churches could meet and talk together. Anglicans ignore their vocation if they ignore other followers of Christ. We do not claim completeness; we are pilgrims together, confident in the special gifts we can offer to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But unity is not an end in itself. All good families open their doors to nonmembers, especially to those with no home of their own. As church families, we must do so again this Christmas. We must, as families, congregations, or national churches, offer the hospitality denied to the child Jesus and his family.
Recently I visited a medical foundation in London for the victims of torture. There were people from many nations and races. There was a crowd of Kurds and there were Christians from Somalia and Uganda. It was a place where degradation and compassion, tragedy and grace, were present in equal measure. I shall treasure their words of greeting more than any Christmas present. "We are people who know very little about the archbishop of Canterbury, but we all know one thing -- he is a friend of refugees."
At Christmas we rejoice in the generosity of God. In our festivities let us practice his hospitality, care for the stranger and the refugee, and in doing so, welcome Christ again into our hearts and lives.