The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, offered the keynote address today to the Lutheran World Federation and his lecture topic was “Our Daily Bread,” arguing that, ” We may focus so closely on the rights of human persons that we lose sight of their beauty and dignity, the beauty and dignity that help to feed us. ” A thoughtful theologian offering words of beauty and hope; how will these words be understood and lived out?
Below is an excerpt.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AT THE ELEVENTH ASSEMBLY OF THE LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION
STUTTGART, GERMANY, 22 JULY 2010
From the website of The Archbishop of Canterbury
… Our internal church debates might look a little different if in each case we asked how this or that issue relates to two fundamental things – our recognition that we need one another for our own nourishment and our readiness to offer all we have and are for the feeding, material and spiritual, of a hungry world.
As things are, we are liable to fall into a variety of traps. We may conduct our interchurch quarrels in a spirit that sends out a clear message of unwillingness to live with the other and be fed by them. We may consume our time and energy in what we like to think of as service to the needy, while ignoring our own need and poverty, especially our need of silence and receptivity to God. We may imagine that by faithfully performing the liturgy we embody the reality of the Kingdom, whether or not we are being transformed into a community of mutual nourishment. We may focus so closely on the rights of human persons that we lose sight of their beauty and dignity, the beauty and dignity that help to feed us. The list could go on. But the point is that the intimate connection between our mission and the prayer for our daily bread impacts at so many levels on the life of discipleship that the range of possible areas of failure is correspondingly broad.