Evensong in an English village church on a summer’s evening. A small, robed choir processes in, with one of the trebles wearing a cassock that is two sizes too small, revealing light-blue jeans and a pair of scuffed trainers. The lesson is read by a churchwarden wearing a blazer and a smart tie, (“I was always brought up to dress properly when I entered God’s house.”). The prayers, including, “Lighten our darkness…” are taken by a priest who is devout but tired. The final hymn, “The day Thou gavest…” is accompanied by the sound of swallows, skeetering in the skies beyond the stained-glass windows. It’s a special time of day which the prayers, the hymns and the sermon have echoed; a time to rest in the simple, understated love of God.

Now, in the centre of that English evensong (the swallows still skeetering outside), picture a film being shown on a big screen. It opens with a grainy, hand-held camera-shot of trees, bending beneath the force of the wind; roofs being torn from buildings like pages from an exercise book; windows sucked out, twisting and flailing, flying helter-skelter through the driving, rain-soaked air.

The storm ceases and the picture changes to a flat, low-lying countryside inundated with water. The camera zooms in on a bloated, human corpse, half-naked, floating softly in the water, and then pans to another corpse and another and another; men, women, children, animals all spread-eagled, silent in death, destroyed by the storm and the floods.

The scene changes: a church building, piece by piece, collapses slowly into the flood-waters; nearby, parishioners watch helpless, tears cascading down their distraught, lined faces. The camera moves on, following the progress of a flimsy riverboat, its engine sputtering, low down in the water because it is carrying sacks of grain and fresh drinking water for the survivors. Another boat is laden with bamboo poles; another with clothes and medical supplies. Such small boats, such courageous compassion. These are some of the boats being used by the Anglican Church in Myanmar to take supplies to villages which have been all- but- obliterated by a cyclone. A priest takes a funeral, the Eucharist is celebrated in a building which has been battered and bruised by the force of the storm.

As the film comes to an end, Evensong resumes. The hymns and prayers are led by the Myanmar bishops and their spouses who are at the Lambeth Conference. They do not ask for help, nor is their film one which trumpets their own response to the natural disaster which hit their country. This is a humble statement, most powerful because word-less, a way of sharing with all of us how their Church tries to combine service, prayer and pastoral care. It was not their intention, but those of us who watched their film, saw in all that they were doing the Risen Christ palpably amongst them. This, let me repeat, they did not intend but it was a powerful example of what Christian love in action really is.

We bowed our heads in prayer in gratitude for their story, in solidarity with their faith, seeing the love of Christ burning like a candle in the darkness.

The Lambeth Conference is made up of countless stories such as this one. It’s like glimpsing Christ out of the corner of your eye; “and she, supposing him to be the gardener…”,or, in this case, we, recognising in the actions of the Anglican church in Myanmar, a profound truth, that Christ’s love is literally unconquerable, ever-present, manifest in a million ways. Wherever love is, there is the Risen Lord. In Myanmar He travels up-river in a flimsy boat with a sputtering engine, looking for the lost, comforting the bereaved and binding up the wounds of the broken-hearted.