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Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Romans 10:5-13, Luke 4:1-13
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Reverend W. Lee Shaw
Yesterday I was at the diocesan offices for a meeting of the Diocesan
Council. I noticed one the staff members had a bumper sticker on
her office door: The Episcopal Church Welcomes You. The Anglican
Communion not so much.
Many of you are aware of the latest turn of events within the Anglican Communion and Episcopal Church. The Primates (Archbishops) of the Communion met last week in Tanzania. In their final communiqué they placed some demands on the Episcopal Church. Two of the most prominent were that the House of Bishops not authorize any blessing of unions in their dioceses or in General Convention and that they pledge to not give consent to any gay or lesbian in a partnership who may be elected as bishop, such as Gene Robinson. They gave a September 30 deadline, or else we may be excluded from the Anglican Communion or our bishops not invited to the Lambeth Conference next year. There were other demands as well, but these two stand out.
This is serious business. There are many serious problems with
this demand from the Primates both spiritually and with our own
Constitution and Canons of the Church. I am personally sick about
it all on many levels. This Thursday Bishop Carolyn invited the
General Convention Deputation to take counsel with her on these
matters. When I drove to the diocesan offices I felt physically
ill with what we would be talking about. I tried to reflect on the
words of Gene Robinson during his own turmoil after election as
bishop: Sometimes God calms the storm and sometimes God lets the
storm rage and calms the child.
I did not feel calm.
Two hours later, I had a sense of calm. In our prayerful conversation and consideration of this ultimatum/blackmail from the Primates we decided to move forward in a positive direction. We are drafting a document for Bishop Carolyn to take to the House of Bishop's meeting next month that will reframe the conversation in terms of our Baptismal Covenant with recommendations as to a way to move forward. This Tuesday I will bring this topic to our Integrity meeting here at St. Stephen's for their input as well as a way of moving forward; moving forward hopefully in the Anglican Communion and with a sense of integrity of our own life in Christ as the Episcopal Church.
To make matters even now curiouser and curiouser a group of African
Archbishops have given an ultimatum to the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Church of England: If Canterbury does not come back to
us by September 30, we will decide whether they will continue being
with us or not. Let us know if they will have stopped celebrating
same sex marriages and ordaining homosexuals.
They are now
threatening to exclude the Archbishop of Canterbury from the Anglican
Communion! Sometimes it seems like a topsy-turvy world.
We live in interesting times. We live in challenging times. We
live in times that call us to look deeply into our lives and our
baptismal commitments articulated in our Baptismal Covenant. We
are also called to look at the rich tradition of Anglicanism and
the true meaning of the via media or middle way. Theologian Richard
Hooker in the 16th century reminded us: I pray that none will be
offended if I seek to make the Christian religion an inn where all
are received joyously, rather than a cottage where some few friends
of the family are to be received.
This is also a time of temptation. There is the temptation to give in, to sacrifice the polity, Constitution and Canons, gay and lesbian members, and integrity of our church to a group of foreign bishops. We have the story of the temptations of Jesus in our Gospel. For Jesus to give into those temptations would have been so much easier: to deny his own sense of call, his own integrity, his own self. Temptations can be very, well tempting.
A couple of days ago I made a posting on the House of Bishops/House of Deputies listserve, where I wrote in response to a man who asked us to step back and have Gene Robinson do the right thing and resign and for the church forego any relationship with gays and lesbians in the church. I wrote in part the following in the pattern of his message:
For the sake of the Gospel, once and for all, let us live into our Baptismal Covenant to
respect the dignity of every human being.For the sake of the Gospel, once and for all, let us stop damning one another in the name of God.
For the sake of the Gospel, once and for all, let us rejoice in the diversity of creation God has given us.
For the sake of the Gospel, once and for all, let us share in the Eucharistic mystery of the body and blood of our Lord, knowing that we all fall short of the glory of God.
For the sake of the Gospel, once and for all, let's stop this damn fighting and get on with the business of Jesus!
And so we need to hear Paul's very real call from our Epistle today
as to what the Episcopal Church has been doing for the last generation,
opening the doors of the church in welcome to all people, regardless
of race, sexual orientation, sex, age, disability or anything else.
Paul writes: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek;
the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on
him.
Hear that again: Jesus is Lord of all! There are no distinctions. It is time we got on about the business of Jesus and live fully into our promises made in our Baptismal Covenant. We need to be about the business of Jesus, this is what we are called to do and who we are called to be!