In the service of Reconciliation and Hope.
Westminster Abbey, 28th November 1996
John Vikström
A narrow door leads up to the pulpit in the Cathedral of Porvoo. Above the door there are two quotations from the Bible, one on the outside and the other on the inside. As bishop of Porvoo in the 70's I often had cause to remember these quotations. Now I wish to share them with you.
When the minister or bishop climbs up to the pulpit, he is faced with the apostle Paul’s words to the Christians of Corinth, We preach Christ crucified (I Cor. 1:23).
The Lord has not made life easy for his preachers either in Porvoo or in London or, indeed, anywhere else. A market survey among people today might well reveal that when we mount the stairs to our pulpits, we should speak above all of signs and miracles, of supernatural things and fantastic experiences, of profound thoughts and great wisdom. This is the sort of thing people want to hear. But we are exhorted to preach Christ crucified, a bleeding, weeping, doubting son of God, a God tortured and wounded to death.
To preach Christ crucified is to preach a vulnerable God. A God who remains distant and far away is well protected from all attacks. A God who is close to us, on the other hand, is defenceless and vulnerable.
An impersonal God, an impersonal vital force, an impersonal highest principle is protected by anonymity. But a God who reveals his innermost thoughts, his will, his heart, exposes himself to criticism and doubt.
God’s church is just as vulnerable, just as defenceless in the face of criticial observations and doubts. Where is your God among starving children, raped nuns and sick missionaries? Isn’t your God able to protect even his most loyal followers? And why do you have lightning conductors on your church roofs? Don’t you believe in God’s care and protection when you’re praying inside?
On the cover of the Porvoo Common Statement there is, as we know, a picture of the cathedral in Porvoo. At the top can be seen a cross with a crown of thorns in the middle. I can tell you something that most people don’t know: there is a lightning conductor concealed in the cross - a symbol of doubt together with the symbol of faith.
This is rather embarrassing. Should we perhaps ask the present bishop of Porvoo to have this humiliating piece of technical equipment removed from the cross on Porvoo cathedral so that our communion would have a purer and more noble symbol? But before we do that, shouldn’t we reflect for a minute? With its lightning conductor isn’t the cross on Porvoo perhaps a better rather than poorer symbol of our faith and fellowship?
We believe in a God who is close to us, a God who enters into our broken and incomplete reality, not just in very human Bible texts and in the simple bread and wine of Holy Com-munion but also in our suffering and loneliness, in our sorrow and pain, in the darkness of our doubts and fears. We believe in a God who is open to our questions and doubts, a God hidden behind weakness and foolishness.
But the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength, writes the apostle (1 Cor. 1:25). When we believe in a vulnerable God on the cross, we have nothing to lose, nothing to fear any more. There is no longer anything to separate us from God. No darkness, no doubt, no sin, no death that can separate us from God and his love (Rom. 8: 38-39). For he is already here, in the middle of all this. God is here, with us and for us.
Why this presence of God? It is a question of the unfathomable mystery of reconciliation. Surely he took up our infirmities, says the prophet, and carried our sorrows ... the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5). He is the Redeemer who is here among us, creating peace, healing that which is broken. As churches we have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5). Therefore we must preach Christ crucified - not only in Porvoo but in every church.
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When the bishop or minister leaves the pulpit in Porvoo cathedral, he sees above the door other words from the same letter: the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk of word but of power (1 Cor. 4:20).
God’s kingdom is not a matter of words, of pompous speeches and declarations, not even the Porvoo Declaration. God’s kingdom is a question of power, the strength of God that is powerful in its weakness. God’s kingdom is the life that God’s Holy Spirit inspires and tends in his church when the gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments administered.
God’s kingdom is the power of the Spirit which creates unity amidst all schisms, which gives hope and new courage in the midst of doubt and despair, the Spirit that lets the flower of life thrive on the harsh soil of selfishness, that creates new life and a new future in the valley of the shadow of death, reconciliation with both God and man.
Our churches live and have their being in a part of world that longs for reconciliation and hope. Once it was the war - both hot and cold - that gave rise to rifts and differences. Now it is nationalism that sunders peoples, and economic ideologies and policies that divide our peoples into winners and losers. At the same time as the process of outward integration advances, our part of the world is threatened with collapse from within. Marginalisation and alienation of more and larger sections of the population is a catastrophic trend in our coun-tries today. In this very serious situation we are in crying need of visions that will bring us together, and concrete expressions of a fundamental fellowship.
The Porvoo Declaration aims at a deeper realisation of the unity that has already been bestowed upon us both as people and as Christians. It is also a promise of the perfect unity that we will one day celebrate before the throne of God. Therefore we can with thanksgiving and joy place our increased and deeper communion at the service of reconciliation and hope.
