William Temple: "The personality of every man and woman is sacred."

Archbishop William Temple (photo credit: http://satucket.com)

I have a confession to make. For as long as I have been a Christian, I have only been to church on Christmas one time. Whew, do I feel better! The year was 1993 and I wasn’t even ten years old yet. My family had been in London for most of the month of December on what was the best vacation of my childhood. Seeing so much history, culture, and art sparked within me an endearing love for all things English. To make thingseven better for Christmas holiday we traveled down to Canterbury to stay at a little bed and breakfast and to attend Christmas service at Canterbury Cathedral.

When my family walked in for church on Christmas day, I did not know the importance of the Cathedral: it is the center of worship in the Episcopal/Anglican world, it is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is a historic site where Thomas Becket was martyred in 1170 and subsequently a place of pilgrimage. I did not realize all this on that Christmas morning. All I knew was that we were going into a very long service on Christmas day that was going to keep me from playing with my new toys. Yet, even as an overly-hyperactive child, I was blown away by what I heard and saw on that holy morning.

According to my mom, who keeps a meticulous journal, the 11:00AM service was a Mozart-Coronation-Mass Eucharist with Archbishop George Carey preaching. The choir was enchanting. The procession and the vestments were exquisite. The congregation was profoundly reverent. Even through the veil of my youthful inattentiveness I could tell that God was present, God had come to be with us.

One thing I do not remember well is the sermon from that day. In my memory I can see Archbishop Carey dressed in elaborate vestments, preaching with humble conviction, but I do not know what he said. Maybe he preached on the shepherds and the angels, or maybe he talked about Mary and Joseph. Probably though, he spoke about the Nativity Event, that is God comes to be with us.

Not too long before Archbishop Carey occupied the bishop’s seat at Canterbury, there was a man who not only talked about this, but also lived out his entire ministry showing to all whom he met that God became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. William Temple was the 98th (or 99th depending on what resource one consults) Archbishop of Canterbury, and today, November 6th, we remember him in the Episcopal Church. He served as archbishop in the tumultuous years of the Second World War, but throughout his life he was an inspiration showing that God comes to be with us.

To say that William Temple was a preacher’s kid would be an understatement. His father, Frederick Temple, was a bishop and became the Archbishop of Canterbury when William was 15. Perpetually a believer with very few doubts, though William never had a rebellious stage or conversion experience, but rather he lived out his faith from a very early age. Knowing that God had come to dwell with humanity enlivened his ability to relate to all whom he met. His brilliant mind also enabled him to empathize with those from very different backgrounds than his own. “He wrote that in Jesus Christ God took flesh and dwelt among us, and as a consequence ‘the personality of every man and woman is sacred’” (Holy Women, Holy Men 668). This belief permeated throughout all his interactions enabling him to bring people from different political and ecumenical backgrounds together.

As he rose to prominence in the Church of England, moving into higher positions of leadership it seemed inevitable that he would one day be a bishop. Yet, when he was the rector at St. James’s Picadilly, he retired so that he could focus upon helping the laity to achieve more power within the church. For eight months he worked tirelessly to get an Act of Parliament passed so that church members and not politicians made the big decisions in the church. After it was eventually passed, he went back into the church and soon became bishop.

When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, England was at war with Germany. In a bold act during the summer of 1944 during Operation Overlord, Temple visited the Allied troops fighting in Normandy, being the first Archbishop to “go to battle” since the Middle Ages. He was not one to shy away from getting politically involved and often was able to bring two opposing sides together by summarizing their points better than either side could do on their own. He denounced Nazism as idolatry, but advocated for humane treatment of Germans preaching against vengeance. He was an advocate of negotiated peace, but gained criticism for not condemning carpet bombing in Germany. Archbishop Temple died of complications with gout from which he suffered his entire life, before the conclusion of the war.

In all things Temple was one who lived out of the reality that God came to dwell with humanity. He treated all as if they were Jesus Christ himself. We who celebrate his life today are challenged to do the same. God came to earth and that makes the personality of all sacred. Let us so live that we might see each other as the bearer of Christ’s light in this world.