Transcript of Archbishop's Interview With Radio York

This is a transcript of the interview.

Julia Booth: Let's cross now live to Bishopthorpe Palace and talk to the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. Good morning.

Archbishop of York: Good morning Julia and Happy New Year to you.

JB: Yes, thank you very much and the same to you.

This is an appalling tragedy, the UN are saying that it may well be the biggest natural disaster in history. How do we reconcile our faith with this terrible tragedy on this scale?

ABY: I think it is not an easy thing to reconcile, the heart of it because it is just so so awful and the people suffering terribly. We tend to look for answers actually where there are sometimes no answers.

I think the reconciliation for me comes in my understanding of God as I see him in Jesus Christ. A God who is almighty and powerful is born like a little baby, grows up and is crucified, doing for us that which we can not do for ourselves. On the cross you hear him say "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" But that's not the end. He rises from death, conquering evil and death and pointing out to us that actually in the end it is life in God which matters. So a God who has becomes like one of us, dies, rises, sends his Spirit, that we may be forgiven for the wrongs we have done in the past, and given new life in the present and hope for the future.

That kind of a God is neither to be seen as the sort of grand puppet master who just pulls pulleys nor is he a Dr Who, or a Wonderwoman or Superman but actually a God who is there with us. Rabbi Hugo Gryn was a survivor of the Holocaust and was asked the same question "Where was God when the Jews were being gassed? Why did he allow it to happen?" and Rabbi Hugo Gryn said "God in those gas chambers was being violated and blasphemed". That God is always around us, with us, suffering with us and giving us the hope that in tragedy and death and things we can't explain - in the end these things are not the end.

JB: You raise that fascinating question about whether God actually ordains things, the puppet master idea. Does God say 'Right you're going to have an earthquake in Haiti' or does it just happen and we have to use whatever we can to get through it?

ABY: I think you see, the reaction of those who believe particularly in the God we see in Jesus, is one of passionate engagement. For the lives that are left, a response that asks not for understanding but for ways of changing the situation in whatever ways are actually open to us - that's the question.

Jesus was asked a question which was interesting. When there was a disaster, a tower fell and killed quite a lot of people in the town of Siloam. They assumed because these people were more wicked than others, that's why they were killed and Jesus said "Not at all, don't be complacent; don't think you can comfort yourself by saying that bad things only happen to bad people".

Everyone needs to be aware of their fragility, their vulnerability and of their need for one another and for God. To me that's where actually I think it is.

If I believed in a God who creates a world that is beautiful but within it, has got a lot of energy and power. Tectonic plates actually can move. Water which gives life today can turn into a Tsunami, can turn into flooding. That's the world we've got as it is. But it is our God who has immersed himself and is always there with us in order that new life may come.

The other thing is that St Paul in Romans Chapter 8 is saying the whole of the (physical) world - plus people - is groaning to be liberated. There is a new world to come and a new place in which there will be no death and no more suffering and until that new creation has actually emerged. I am afraid that the world we are dealing with is not for us to be armchaired people sitting around and pontificating about this and the other. What is important is to be engaged and helping one another, that we may help the people in Haiti.

JB: It's that idea; you are saying it is part of the human condition. Suffering is part of being human.

ABY: I mean you can't escape it and unfortunately death is the greatest democratic institution. We all have to face death one day but when tragedies like this happen, what they make us aware of is our common humanity. So that when a brother or sister weeps, we weep with them because God has created us to be a family.

There is a wonderful African proverb which says that 'when a tiny toe is hurting, the whole body stoops down to attend to that pain'. And John Donne put it beautifully when he said that "No-one is an island entire of itself, but any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in humanity."

So, we can't separate ourselves from the people of Haiti. They're our brothers, they're our sisters. They have faced this natural disaster. All of us have got to bend our energy, our powers and help them and I very glad that the people are already out there trying to help from this wonderful county which Yorkshire people call 'God's own county'.

JB: Yes indeed, and we'll give the details of the Disasters Emergency Committee for you in a moment or two as well.

But we do, we have this idea. We say "what have I done to deserve this" don't we? How awful if the people of Haiti who are suffering so much are also wondering what did we do to deserve this? But actually, you're saying, unhook from that, you don't believe that is true. We don't deserve the tragedy that comes our way.

ABY: I mean there was a man before I spoke on the Today programme last week, and he said "All around me people died. I don't understand how I survived".

During the terrible tragedies of Idi Amin, I was held in a tiny little prison. All around me people were being butchered and actually hacked to death. I survived and now you ask me, how did I survive when all my friends were killed? I don't think I was always better than them. I don't think that because I was the sort of person who was going to survive. It just happened that I did survive and they didn't. And in the end, in the end, I found myself saying "save for the grace of God, there go I". Otherwise you know this guilt which we all love because we are looking for answers, for explanations, it doesn't work. A friend of mine was dying of cancer and I said to him David, - David Watson - who used to be vicar of St Michael-le-Belfry in this Diocese.

JB: Oh yes.

ABY: He was dying of cancer and I went to see him the day he died and I said "David, this is awful. Why you, why you?" and do you know what he said to me "John, that is not a question that you are going to find an answer to, nor can I. The question I have got to face, now that I have got this cancer, how can I live honestly, faithfully and die gracefully? You asked that question, I will get on with the art of living and that of caring." And do you know that a few hours later David died and I found myself with this question we like asking why, why, why?

Jesus asked that question and actually got no answer on the cross, and sometimes there is this silence, and we feel terrible, we feel awful. So I don't think people should run around because tragedies and awful things have happened to them, go around feeling that they have happened because they are bad, they are awful, they are terrible, and because there is a God up there who has a very big stick and is punishing them.

No, I am afraid our world is a foreign world. Jesus dies on the cross so that we may be forgiven. Dies on the cross and introduces into a world, a new way of living, and a new way of being and the day is coming when there will be a new heaven and a new earth when sorrow and pain will all go away. But that day is not here yet and so what we have to do at the moment is not go around beating ourselves, feeling we are terrible, we are awful but actually say we are so wonderfully and gorgeously made by God and when tragedies happen to us, the question is how in the midst of this pain do I help my brother, my sister? How in the midst of this pain can I live a fully forgiven new life which God in Jesus offers and that turns around all our troubles?

My mother died of cancer and she was so thin towards the end that you could lift her up, you know, with one hand. And my children, who were quite young at the time, saw Grandma dying and fading away but they said that every day, every moment, Grandma was full of hope, was full of joy. She was in a lot of pain. The pain wasn't going to go away and she gave my children a tremendous sense of hope, a tremendous sense of understanding, that actually we were all going to go down in a particular road, unfortunately for some tragedies happen and hit them so so hard that we want to find answers too. In the end all I would say is I am living with a God who has made us in his image and likeness. Incidentally, this is why it makes human disasters so appalling. If I am made to be like God how come I am suffering this? Well, look at the cross of Jesus, that there was also a burial for him but he did rise again and his Holy Spirit is present.

I am thankful to people who have gone out to Haiti to help. I am thankful to the United States, particularly Barak Obama who is determined to do something about it. I am thankful to our Government who sent quite a lot of aid out there already and I am hoping that one day these resilient people of Haiti will be brought to a newness of life, a new understanding, and a new way.

And we here in Yorkshire, I hope that we can do our best to try and help and support our brothers and sisters. And for those who have died, we can light a candle for them, be still and say to ourselves "Let us not have this sort of a world –a world in which we think either that poverty or precariousness makes it very, very difficult for people and especially those who have gone through quite a lot of trouble, politically, and socially everywhere. Why have they got into this trouble?" The answer is I am afraid, ask that one, there will be no answer. The answer is, we can liberate them and lift them out of the misery. And for those who died; bury them with dignity, and hope and love.

JB: Thank you so much, thank you so much for those words today. I really appreciate that. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

For a limited time you can listen to the interview at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p005ycpr/Julia_Booths_Sunday_Breakfast_17_01_2010/. (The interview starts at 1 hour and 13 minutes into the programme.)