Sermons: April 2010

Good Friday, 2010

Mary Webb

In the Jewish Passover tradition, Seder begins with a question asked by the youngest child: “Father, why is this night different from all other nights?” Thus begins the centuries’ old recounting of how Yahweh was faithful to His people and delivered them from their enemies.  As Christians, we are sometimes asked a question of similar construct:  “What’s so “good”about  Good Friday?  How is it different from all other Fridays?  It must seem outrageous to the unknowing that this day of torture, suffering, and death of the Anointed One, the Son of God, should be called “good.” Yet we followers of Christ have come to understand the paradox and see the “goodness,” the holiness, in this day.

Growing up in the Roman Catholic tradition, observing Lent well meant the weekly recitation of the Stations of the Cross.  Following Jesus to Calvary included 14 short meditations on significant events along the way.  How well I remember gazing upon his crown of thorns and reflecting on the mockery his enemies had made of Jesus.  I imagined that after one soldier had laughingly placed the crown on His head, another decided to re-position it, gouging painful new wounds in the flesh of our Lord and dripping blood into the eyes of He who is Love.  I’ve since moved on and left that all-too-vivid imagery to Mel Gibson, whose film I’ve vowed never to see……for how can one sit passively & watch Love being tortured?

When I contemplate Christ’s suffering now, my focus is not on the physical, as much as the emotional, psychological pain that He endured……..pain caused by feelings of abandonment & rejection.....feelings that Jesus experienced in His humanity,  that perhaps we have known, or the pain which we have inflicted upon others.  Those words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” cut deep, and haunt us during this liturgical season, as do the words of Jesus’ closest ally, Peter:  “I don’t know him!  I don’t know of whom you speak!”

Peter.  Blessed Peter. Zealous, human Peter. Ready to walk across the stormy sea towards Jesus’ outstretched hand earlier in the gospels, until he looked down at the wild waves & his faith faltered.  In tonight’s reading, he is angry at the arresting soldier & quick to defend Jesus with the sword, yet later sobs in agony after he has denied even knowing the Jesus he so deeply loves.  Jesus once asked Peter, “Who do YOU say that I am?” and he had replied, “You are the Christ; the Son of the living God.” What happened?  Human frailty and fear.  I am Peter. You are Peter. How many times have we denied He who is Love? And what about Judas?  Yes, Jesus gave him permission to leave the table, and He didn’t try to change his mind.  Yet what must Jesus have felt about His impending betrayal after 3 years with this apostle?

The emotional, psychological pain of abandonment:  perhaps many here have known its wounds firsthand. To know that you have caused another to suffer is also painful. I recall an incident from 20 years ago when I took our young daughter to a children’s story-hour at the library.  Afterwards, mothers & children browsed nearby-shelves for appropriate storybooks.  Though I was only a few feet away from our daughter, a shelf obscured me from her view. Heart-wrenching sobs permeated the room, and I quickly identified her as the source.  Holding her trembling little body next to mine, I tried to reassure her again & again: “Allison, Mommy would never leave you; Mommy would never leave you.” That incident has helped me many times in my attempt to understand the profound nature of our Father’s love for us…..and for the suffering Jesus on the cross. In His human nature, Jesus suffered not just Peter’s denial, that of Judas, & our own, but the seeming abandonment of His Father.

There is great sorrow in tonight’s readings, but great reassurance as well.  Jesus reached out in forgiveness to Peter, as He does to each one of us.  And as the Father did not abandon His Son, he will not abandon us. We heard that reassurance earlier from the psalmist, “…but when they cry to Him, He hears them.”

The question each of us must ask, as followers of the crucified Christ, is how well are we listening to the cries of the rejected & abandoned in our own world; to those in need all around us? God is not indifferent to human suffering, having experienced it.  We can’t be either.  As we leave here tonight, let us reflect on the Triumph of the cross, Christus Victor, the triumph of Love, our eternal embrace by God.  It IS a Good Friday.

Amen. 

Sermon for Easter Vigil

April 3, 2010

Grace Episcopal Church

The Rev. Vern Hill 

Tonight we have gathered quietly to have a conversation in words and symbols, in musical tones and rhythms.  The conversation begins with the beginnings, the Genesis, of our time - those primordial gestures that brought into being the vast cosmos ever expanding even today.  That created light from the Void that stirred into being a chemistry that in at least one remote location of the galaxies brought into being living things, ever more and more complex until beings appeared cast in the very image of their creator. 

Gifted with thought these newly birthed “earthlings” entered upon their garden home.  And quickly learned both of their dependence on mother earth, the richness of her plants and animals, and air and water, and their responsibilityfor caring and tending their home.  In this they came to digest the realities of choice-driven responsibility and consequence.  Such was the culture of holiness in creation. 

Tonight in this conversation we recall that our earthling ancestors not unlike ourselves on occasion chose badly, chose actions that nearly brought them to extinction, that could send into their midst great evil and harm, but, as we have heard, into their midst came the Prophets, Reminders of who they truly were and what they were created to be.  They were not created for violence or slavery or the stealing of life from one another.  The Spirit-filled Cry to Be was both relentless, but, filled with compassion, never willing to abandon the created.  The values for growing life set before the earthlings were not complex – humans were to do justice, act in mercy; show kindness and seek after that which was good for all living things and their garden home. 

In time came One who possessed in the form of a human all that was meant for us in our creation.  In this Jesus. born among the very least of peoples, the love-force of creation from the very beginning continues.  In this Jesus, the Cry continues to seek to lift us up and move us toward what we are to be, made as we are in that divine image.  The whole story of us is found in the whole story of this Jesus, his life, death and birth to new life.  IT with a capital I is all part of a single thread in the unfolding story of our humanity.   

Tonight we mark a stunning moment in that story, the crossing of a Great Divide, the reaching of an end and entering a beginning, a new genesis.  The Divide is the birth to new life, a resurrection, a transformation, an End of the present “order”, of how things are; “Order” is a word Paul used to describe our world held captive by death, by principalities and powers caught up in their own self-serving.  “End” in Greek is telos,  an interesting word – it can easily be misunderstood in Greek as it can in English.  Its common sense is  finality.  “The End” - The movie has ended just in case the plot line left you clueless.  But in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul talks of  Jesus’ resurrection as the “first fruits” of creation’s end.   There has been fulfillment; the way things are – the present order – is ending; the rules have changed.   Something is being born in this telos; something new is taking shape.   It is the birthing of a new community of beings drawn out by the love of their creator, who build their lives on what they find in Jesus.    Jesus' ministry up to his death on the Cross -- his healing, forgiving, teaching, breaking bread with any who would eat with him – draws together  a community who would continue a new humanity in remembrance of him.  This is the  telos which births God's kingdom, where Isaiah's vision is fulfilled, and God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. 

To this community and its story from the beginning we welcome some by baptism tonight:  their going through the birthing waters of the Kingdom of God.  As we share in the richness of this moment let us all recall with thanksgiving these words of Paul – 

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 

So that we might “walk in newness of life” - We are People of the Resurrection.  It is who we are.  It is who we are when we serve at the feet of the oppressed, when we hear the cries of the downtrodden and poor;  and give support to the struggle against all that is unjust and corrupt, when we cry for those who have no tears left to shed, when we will no longer accept those things which deny the true right to life others  have as beloved children of God.1   

Our struggle in community is to be faithful to our vocation and when we by carelessness and inattention seem to deny what has happened by this End time, this Resurrection Divide, let the Cries of the Spirit speaking from the cross and out from the empty tomb draw us ever onward.  

Christ is risen, Alleluia, Amen.

Easter Day

Principal Service, Year C (RCL)

April 4, 2010 

Isaiah 65:17-25   Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26  Luke 24:1-12

Late last quarter at CSUB, when I walked into my Intro to Religion class one day the best student in the class had a weird look on her face: “Can I come see you during your office hours?”

“Of course,” I replied. But that look—what was going on?

When Danielle came in to my office, she sat down . . . and just looked at me, with that same weird look. I was getting nervous.

“Are you . . . religious?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“Are you . . . a priest at a church in town?”

“Yes.”

Stunned silence. Then she exclaims, “I would never have thought that!”

“Well,” I say, “since I’m teaching at a secular university, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

More silence. “How do you do it?”

†     †     †

Maybe Danielle’s question is really for all of us here today: How do we do it? To paraphrase Kermit the Frog: It’s not easy being religious.

We hear all the time that we live in a “secular” age. But what is secularism? A common definition is “indifference to, or rejection, or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.” We’ve been living with various forms of secularism since the 18th century.

That’s a long time. In many ways, religion in the West has been under siege for 250 years.

Gary Kessler, an emeritus professor at CSUB, points out two ways that secularization is problematic.
  • First: “Secularization marks a gradual process of the loss of social and public influence of religious organizations.”
The loss of social and public influence.
  • The second follows from the first: “Secularization marks a change in traditional religious patterns[; this change leads to] the privatization of religious choice and commitment.”1
Kind of a religious “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell.”

To quote a song from the Pleistocene: “It’s your thing, do what you want to do. / I can’t tell you who to sock it to.”2 Just don’t do your thing in public.

In such an uneasy environment, I’m afraid that the passage from Isaiah that we just heard could seem downright silly.

Isaiah foresees a sweet and utopian time: the people, having been in exile in Babylon, will return to the land of their forefathers and -mothers, the promised land, the land of milk and honey; when they do, all reality will change: “one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, / and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”

One of our own, Woody Allen, responds, “You can live to be a hundred—if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

Isaiah proclaims today that “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, / the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” Woody Allen nervously predicts that “The lion and the calf shall lie down together—but the calf won’t get much sleep.”

Who are we to believe? Isaiah, or Woody?

I’m serious.

Just listen to Isaiah’s magnificent vision (we should cue Handel’s Messiah):

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight . . . .

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain,

or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD--

and their descendants as well. 

How do we translate Isaiah for our times? Perhaps the better—and more difficult—question is How dare we translate Isaiah for our times?

Only in relationship.

One of the half-truths of American secular piety—which means it’s also a half-lie—is rugged individualism.

By contrast, the central message of Christianity is relational. In a recent address, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, expresses this very well:

Part of the New Testament claim is actually that there's something about human beings which is true universally; an orientation, a magnetic “drawing-towards” the source of all things, and a capacity to relate to the source of all things, not simply as someone who obeys or thinks, but as someone who is related intimately and intensely; like a child to a [mother or] father.That's what human beings are made for . . . . We are designed for that relationship because in that relationship we become free. We become free to be ourselves, free to love the God who made us . . . , free to echo and imitate the self-giving love of that God in our life day after day.3

As Archbishop Rowan points out, such belief is not one of exclusion and condemnation but is, rather, one of relationship and acceptance: 

When we sit alongside the Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something from their humanity as a gift to ours.  

Rowan rightly asks God to save us from practicing religious bullying, manipulation, and condemnation. No “John 3:16” signs need apply. 

We Episcopalians could so easily get self-satisfied here: we’re certainly not bullying, manipulative, or condemning!  Heck, we probably don’t even know what John 3:16 says!4 

But Rowan’s been an Anglican far too long to let us get away with smug self-righteousness: he quickly adds, “But God save us from the nervousness about our own conviction which doesn't allow us to say that we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters.”  

“Nervousness about our own conviction.” Ouch. 

Rowan’s an Anglican; he’s nice. Those silly British, after all, have afternoon tea. The Book of Revelation, however, doesn’t do tea; it excoriates our timidity: “I know what you do; you’re neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”5 

Double and triple ouch.  

I didn’t know there were Episcopalians in first-century Asia Minor. 

So, why does Jesus matter? 

Archbishop Rowan puts it well: 

We believe he matters because we believe that in him human beings find their peace. Their destinies converge and their dignities are fully honoured. And all the work that we as Christians want to do for the sake of convergent human destiny and fullness of human dignity has its root in that conviction that there is no boundary around Jesus—that what he is and does and says and suffers is . . . [liberating and] relevant to every human being; past, present and future [emphases his].  

Which means each and every one of us. And everyone we know—and don’t know. 

Amen.

2 Easter (Year 2, RCL)

April 11, 2010

Acts 5:27-32    Psalm 150 
Revelation 1:4-8     John 20:19-31

I know some of you are old enough to remember Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh In.” Remember Gary Owens, the news announcer? OK, get that image in your head: 

Cana, Galilee — This just in. In a surprise development yesterday at a local wedding, Jesus of Nazareth transformed water into wine. . . .  

Does someone—besides Mary—know what Jesus’ first sign is in John’s Gospel? (It has something to do with wine.) 

That’s right: changing water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana.1 

Now, a tougher question: What does John say about this matrimonial miracle? 

“This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.” 

The word ”sign” occurs a lot in the Gospels, not just in John. But John imbues these signs with a particular theological importance: “[Jesus] thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.” 

John situates Jesus’ first sign near the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry; today’s reading about Thomas gives us the last sign. 

Our Gospel passage today presents the famous “Doubting Thomas” episode: Jesus returns, and breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples.  

Jesus doesn’t do this in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. This scene reflects John’s own theological understanding of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

Thomas, having gone out for Starbucks, misses this bestowing of the Spirit. When he returns, the disciples breathlessly tell him everything that happened. Already irked by the vote that made him carry twelve cups of coffee, Thomas famously says, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side, I will not believe." 

By the way, wouldn’t most of us, whether irked or not, say exactly the same thing? 

Thomas makes only one appearance in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—and he doesn’t even get a speaking part. In dramatic terms, he’s an extra, working for scale. But he’s a very important extra: he appears in a list of the twelve disciples. 

Does all this mean that this story about “doubting Thomas” is not historical?  

Not at all. It seems entirely plausible to me. As I said, who among us wouldn’t have demanded proof? I would’ve probably asked for something even a bit flashier: “Hey, Jesus. Can you do some more of that water-into-wine stuff? Only, in celebration of your resurrection, let’s make it a better vintage this time.” 

Did Matthew, Mark, and Luke know this story about Thomas? I seriously doubt it. It’s too good to leave out! 

Why is it here? John tips his hand at the end of the reading. Actually, he lays his whole hand triumphantly on the table—he’s got a royal flush. He grins, and rakes in all the chips: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” 

Ah, that explains things: “Now Jesus did many other signs . . . .” 

John’s a skilful writer; he would’ve gotten an “A” when I was teaching writing. He very carefully places a “sign” at the beginning and at the end of his Gospel. There are seven signs in all. 

Why?  

Let’s look at these two signs again. At Cana, Jesus reveals his glory, and “his disciples,” John says, “put their faith in him.” 

Now, after the resurrection, even though Jesus gives a sign to Thomas, in a seeming paradox signs no longer matter: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." 

As modern disciples of Jesus, we have an advantage over the first disciples: we can see both the beginning and the end, the need for signs and the need for signs no longer. 

The word “sign” in Greek does not mean “miracle”; “miracle” is a separate word. 

John is saying that we first come to faith through a sign—which doesn’t have to be a miracle. Such a sign can take almost any form and can happen at almost any time.  

Each of us, I think, can identify a sign that brought us here—a sign that continues to bring us here. 

Some of you have seen the film Romero, based on the life of Oscar Romero, archbishop and martyr of El Salvador. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to. The actor who played Archbishop Romero, the late Raul Julia, was so moved by the experience that he returned to his Catholic faith. 

I don’t know whether Julia’s sign happened in a flash or whether it came through the months that he as an actor inhabited the great archbishop. I suspect it was the latter: like the slow growth of your child who all of a sudden is taller than you. 

Whether sudden or incremental, such a life-changing experience—when one feels, when one sees, the presence of God—is a sign. But—and this is very important—signs do not need to be cataclysmic, momentous, love-at-first-sight occasions. 

When Miriam and I were at seminary, we discovered that most of the seminarians were there, like me, because of a sudden sign, a spiritual mid-life crisis. The problem with that, one professor lamented, was that many of us were using seminary as our catechism class. 

But Miriam personally felt the results of a second problem: many of those who had experienced sudden, often cataclysmic, signs, looked down on those, like Miriam, whose spiritual growth had been slow and steady. 

But as John reminds us, there are many, many signs; it’s silly, and can be hurtful, to classify and straightjacket them.  
  • Signs can occur suddenly, a shock of recognition and insight.
  • Signs can be sudden, but then need to gestate. As the poet Wordsworth said of poetry, they can be “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” but they take their “origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
  • Signs, like a flower opening to the sun, can be a slow unfolding towards the sweet breath of Christ and Christ’s loving embrace. 
There are as many signs as there are children of God. 

May each of us, in silence now, and during the coming week, reflect on the signs in our life. 

If any of you would like to write down your “sign” or “signs,” I’d love to read them. I’d love even more to put them in Grace at Midweek, either anonymously, or with your name. This way, we as a loving community can all share in some of God’s “signs and wonders.”2  

Amen.

Sermon for Easter 3

April 18, 2010

Grace Episcopal Church

The Rev. Vern Hill 

On last Tuesday we re-entered the world of cyber-space.   Our visit to a parallel universe, the desert of eastern San Diego County without the basics of hi-tech communications – no internet, no cell phone, no TV signal had been much too brief.  Tuesday we relocated to an RV site where for $7 per day we re-connected and Melinda and I could dig our way through about 100 emails – she actually rather sensibly chose to play cards with some friends. 

While I was busily exercising my email technique of “scan and delete”, I came to one from a good family friend which was an alert - a call to action. Normally I use the delete key for such calls but the sender has real credibility with us and It caused me to pause.    I want to share it with you because it has helped me remember that both Peter and Paul had a BEFORE TIME AND PLACE in their lives to what happened to each as described in the readings today.  

The email begins:   

Going beyond disrespect...

The movie "Corpus Christi" is due to be released this June to August.  A disgusting film set to appear in America later this year depicts Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals!  As a play, this has already been in theaters for a while.  It's called "Corpus Christi" which means "The Body of Christ".  It's revolting mockery of our Lord.  But we can make a difference.  That's why I am sending this e-mail to you.  If you do send this around, we just might be able to prevent this film from showing in America.  Let's stand for what we believe in and stop the mockery of Jesus Christ our Savior.  Where do we stand as Christians?  At the risk of a bit of inconvenience, I'm forwarding this to all I think would appreciate it, too.  Please help us prevent such offenses against our Lord.  There is no petition to sign, no time limit, or minimum number of people to send this to. . . 

JUST GET THE WORD OUT

From our friend’s computer this went out in the twinkling of an eye to 41 other people and may have expanded exponentially beyond despite the rest of this story.  Since we had been camped in that parallel desert universe we were unable to instantly rise up and spread the alarm had we been so motivated.  What we were able to do, finally on Tuesday, was to read three subsequent emails.  The first from another family member expressed skepticism about such a movie, the second offered serious proof there is no such movie in the making and the third email was from our friend expressing profound embarrassment and relief that it was a hoax.

While I am not sure this is the best venue for a discussion on the impact of the web on our national life, I will offer that I am becoming convinced that the instantaneous exchange of totally fictional or outrageously biased content without any real factual basis that is choking the internet may be the most serious test of our  democracy and, because the content often springs from the manipulation of common prejudices against alien immigrants, homosexuals, persons of color, and religious minorities, the threads of suspicion and mistrust and anger become a challenge to those who understand the call of God to be welcoming and progressive in the sense of more loving and tolerant.

Having said that, let’s do a review of the email because my friend’s solutions to this threat require some attention.
  1. Send this email to everyone you have an address for.  (a kind of Paul Revere response – emergency – everything is threatening and potentially catastrophic)
  2. Why send the email to others? We can stop the film from being shown in America.  (1st amendment???)
  3. Why is it critical to stop the film?  Because it mocks Jesus, our Lord and savior. (We are a Christian nation; a defacto theocracy) which leads to
  4. We cannot permit this as Christians.  (You see we are the majority and majority rules).
And The Trigger – the disciples and Jesus are portrayed as homosexuals.  A real SLAM-DUNK.

Some things about our friend –
  • He is a Christian, active in his church which is not a mega-church but is certainly a wanna be.  It is non-denominational and independent, meets in an industrial warehouse building. 
  • He struggles to be faithful; reads and studies the Bible; and prays.
  • He and the congregation are not just into personal salvation but believe in “feeding the poor” – provides meals.  However they would be uncomfortable dealing as a matter of religion with the larger systemic issues surrounding why are the poor poor?
  • He is a school teacher, well educated.
  • He’s a good person.
He is not unlike our separated Anglican brothers and sisters.  He is not unlike those who dispute the place of women in the clergy or as bishops of the Church.  Out of recent history he is not that much unlike my grandmother’s foster father, another good and generous man, who believed segregation was God’s plan for the races or unlike those throughout the south in the 1860s who believed the Bible supported their “peculiar institution”.

These are people who are seeking to be faithful, and yet from my sense of the Gospel and from what causes us to gather here at Grace each Sunday there is misdirection and misunderstanding of what Jesus wants of his followers and his Church.

The lectionary on the third Sunday in Easter points us to two of the most important persons within the whole story of Christianity beyond Jesus himself.  And today we meet these two at defining moments in their personal journeys of faith, the recommissioning of Peter and the conversion of Paul.   Of these two Paul’s story may be the most helpful in understanding where my friend is on his journey of faith and why action with this email is so important to him. 

We all know well the story of Paul on the Damascus road.  Just outside the city Paul (referred to here by the story-teller using his Hebrew name, Saul) has an encounter with a blinding light and hears the resurrected Jesus speak to him.  But wait - this is not the Paul I am interested in for now.  I want us to look more carefully at Paul before the blinding light and voice, before his encounter.  Who was he before this?

Paul ( Σαῦλος (Saulos), and Παῦλος (Paulos)) was a Jew and a member of the tribe of Benjamin.  The writer of Acts claims that Paul was from the Mediterranean city of Tarsus in present-day south-central Turkey.  Tarsus was considered an intellectual center, something which may have contributed to Paul’s skills as a preacher and writer.  Acts also claims Paul was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee.  His strong devotion and ambition had led to advancement in stature for him within Judaism’s Jerusalem temple leadership.  His present mission and the reason for traveling to Damascus was that he was determined to contain, if not destroy, what he saw as an heretical sect of Judaism, a cult called “The Way” made up of some followers of a Galilean itinerant rabbi, one Jesus of Nazareth.  He saw this growing movement as an internal threat, a heresy corrupting the purity of his faith tradition.   His task was to bring an end to the fraud and on this journey he had something very important – he had letters from the Sanhedrin which were his legal authority to extradite Jews from anywhere to Jerusalem for trial. 

So there you have it - what do we really know about Paul before his encounter –  From this we know
  • He sought to be faithful to the Tradition of the Elders and to the Torah.
  • He was well read in the scriptures.
  • He was devoted to his religious faith and to God.  
Any of these characteristics sound familiar in the on-going chorus of debate over all of the issues which today seek to tear apart the church?  Over and over we all turn to Tradition – what those before us thought and did within the life of the Church, the historical testimony through those many lives.   And what we find – if we are honest – is often within that Tradition are  contradictions - excuse after excuse generated for genocide, for war without any just cause, for ethnic and religious persecution  and for economic exploitation. Over and over we all turn to the scriptures.  And here it is time to bring even greater honesty to bear.  For from scripture (unless you pick and choose real carefully), there is no single voice speaking.  What we find when we are honest is conflicting testimony speaking from a vast array of voices– with teachings often advocating things like revenge and slavery and complete obedience to ruling authorities, teachings about the place of women in society – any of which ought to make us more than a little uncomfortable. 

Paul was well armed with Scripture and Tradition.  It was not enough.  It only justified his understanding, the things he already believed.  His concept of religion to use an example from our own Western movement, was circled wagons prepared to ward off any new threats.  Paul was confident in his faith.  He was sure he was right.

So what happened?  When you read through the teachings and parables of Jesus the good news is that the Kingdom of God is breaking into the present time, change is happening, trans-formations are taking place – prodigal children are coming to themselves and rising up.  What we celebrated just two Sundays back in Easter is not a singular event but a moment of witness to the coming Kingdom, a new community of those born into new life in God.  The risen Christ explodes in light overwhelming the present places of darkness.  The story, begun in the void of creation with those words, “Let there be light” – continues.  The Cry of the Spirit that gave birth to all living things draws us onward, an evolution of substance and understanding of who we are and how life can truly be.

In the blinding vision Paul is asked a simple question – “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  On that question Paul’s entre vision of himself was lost into blindness, replaced soon by a whole new kind of sight, eyes that saw and understood truly the whole Kingdom of God.  What Paul learned was this: that which does not gather people together as community, that which does not welcome, embrace, bring healing and reconciliation among people, that which excludes, limits, marginalizes, which is fearful and diminishes, that which does not include with out-stretched arms a greeting at God’s table is not of God.    It’s not of God; it is not born from God. It is not Godly.

God is always at work on us, all of us wherever we are, whoever we are, however religious or righteous we think we might be – this is the fundamental gift from the stories today of Peter and Paul.  It is the nature of grace to draw us from our BEFORE TIMES AND BEFORE PLACES toward greater and greater perfection in love.  This is the power of the resurrection at work.  Easter is not a one-time-only event.  Rather it is an ongoing counter-story which challenges ‘us as we are’.   Easter is never done with any of us!   Amen.
Anglican Split, Episcopal Schism—and Why it Matters1

Kern County Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

April 25, 2010 

The title of my talk today is “Anglican Split, Episcopal Schism—and Why it Matters.” 

You may be wondering, “Why the heck should we care about what those silly Anglicans are up to?” 

The internal politics and wrangling don’t matter to you—but I think the issues do. I have three reasons why I think what’s going on within Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church should matter to everyone. 

First, a bit of history:
  • Anglican Communion & Episcopal Church
  • map of British Empire and the Anglican Communion
  • Africa: evangelization and numbers
  • the old diocese here—voted to leave Dec. 2007. 3 others. All 3 Episcopal parishes in Bakersfield left.
  • Remain Episcopal—house church, All Saints’ 2007, then Christmas, then regularly in the Chapel of FCC
  • Started out with 12; grown to 130
Conservative Anglicans have issued a statement which, among other things, declares (not by name though) that the Episcopal Church and other national Churches within the Anglican Communion are proclaiming a “different” and “false” gospel. The conservatives “reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed.” 

This seemingly simple statement has two IEDs within it. By “IED,” instead of Improvised Explosive Device, I mean Intentional Explosive Device.  

The first is that seemingly innocuous “word or deed”: Episcopalians have supposedly denied the orthodox faith in “word or deed.”

The phrase “word and deed” occurs in the Confession of Sin that Anglicans say each Sunday. Thus, to the conservatives, we’re sinners, and they’re not, and we need to repent our sins. This is the worst kind of religious arrogance. 

Second, denying “the orthodox faith” here is code for the ordination of women and the full acceptance of homosexuals as children of God. “Orthodox faith,” I was surprised to learn, now has nothing to do with theology or Christology; it concerns only positions on two social issues. This is nonsense. 

As part of our baptismal covenant, we Episcopalians say that we will
  • seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,
  • and will strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
If these promises are “unorthodox,” then I’m proud to be a heretic. 

In the press and publicly, the two main issues that are causing the split with Anglicanism are homosexuality and the ordination of women as priests, and now bishops.

But, as even conservative Anglicans acknowledge, homosexuality and women’s ordination are only presenting issues. They only mask a much deeper division. 

A BBC article gets it exactly right: 

Word has got about that traditionalist Anglicans have something against gay people - and that is what is driving the Communion towards disintegration.

Of course some of them might not like homosexual people, but, as they never tire of pointing out, that is not what this historic rift is about.

In reality, the dispute centres on how strictly Anglicans should interpret the Bible, and whether, for example, it should be read as ruling out active homosexuality as a sin.

Homosexuality is simply the presenting issue - the human behaviour that exposes radically different approaches to the Bible, and helps to make this such a fundamental dispute.

A quicker way to phrase the conservative approach to the Bible is “fundamentalism.” Fundamentalism is not Anglican.

Fundamentalism is actually a product of—and reaction against—rationalism and modernity. It’s a modern, ahistorical, anti-history movement that cuts across denominational lines. There are fundamentalists in every Christian denomination.

Religious fundamentalism refers to a "deep and totalistic commitment" to a belief “in the infallibility and inerrancy of holy scriptures, absolute religious authority, and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (fundamentals) that do not compromise with modern social and political life.”

As one scholar has said, "For me, fundamentalism is an attempt to comprehend that which cannot be comprehended, to rationalize the unfathomable, ‘effing’ the ineffable.”

I like that—“effing” the ineffable.

Now fundamentalists are trying to take over the Anglican Communion—and, one could argue, the government of the United States.

Fundamentalism—and its theocratic aspirations—is one very important reason why what’s going on in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion matters outside the Episcopal Church.

A second reason is this: As Genesis tells us, we are made in the image and likeness of God.2

From this follows our baptismal covenant:
  • we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves;
  • we will strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
Much conventional wisdom these days—and not just among biblicists and fundamentalists—ignores God’s creative love, and the biblical ethic that we love one another. 

What concerns me most is not the misbegotten theology and misplaced fear that props us this conventional wisdom. What concerns me most is the human wreckage it causes; how it maims both those who believe it and those they harm. 

This is the third reason why what’s going on in the Episcopal Church matters. 

I’ve counseled young people who have had to leave home because they’re gay. As a priest, I’ve heard numerous stories from gay parishioners of injustice, persecution, and oppression. One story would be too many. It breaks my heart. 

This past Thursday in my New Testament class at CSUB, we were discussing conventional wisdom and subversive wisdom. The book chapter we were discussing argues—convincingly, in my view—that Jesus taught using subversive wisdom. When Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman or healed a leper, he challenged the conventional wisdom of his day. 

One student in the class, Opalin, a young African-American woman, told us what it was like growing up with the conventional wisdom that white is good, black is bad; white is superior, black is inferior; blonde Barbies are much prettier than black-haired Barbies.  

As a child, this student was so brainwashed by white American culture and conventional wisdom that she would pour talcum powder all over herself, hoping it would make her white. 

As a child, Opalin was a leper at the margins of conventional culture. There was a worse horror, though: by essentially putting on white face, she became a leper to herself. As a leper, she was exiled to the margins of society; conventional norms and wisdom essentially erased her. Such erasure is a form of murder. 

A story about St. Francis of Assisi has a lot to teach us here. Going completely against conventional wisdom and the norms of his day, St. Francis dared to kiss the mouth of a leper. Like Jesus, St. Francis raised the leper from the dead. 

At Grace Episcopal Church
  • we believe that God calls us to serve all persons;
  • we believe that God calls us to strive for justice and peace among all people;
  • we believe that God calls us to respect the dignity of every human being.
We believe that God calls each of us to claim the leper's mouth as our own. 

Thank you.