That We All May Be One

The presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has begun describing the mission of our branch of the “Jesus Movement” as “loving, liberating, and life-giving.” This alliterative summary of the qualities desired of Christians will prove, I believe, very helpful. Just as it was recently when Bishop Curry said, in a not-so-veiled reference to the current climate of the presidential election process,”If it’s not about love, it’s not about God!” Just so.

The First Letter of John is the New Testament says that “God is love” and an ancient, but familiar Christian chant reads, “Ubi caritas et amor; ubi caritas Deus ibi est.” Where love and charity are, there is God. The Jews have always known that they were recipients of the love of God and even a cursory read through the four Gospels will reveal their central figure, Jesus of Nazareth, as one motivated by love of God and love of other people. This can be seen in his words and in his actions…which were often one and the same.

Liberation, of course, is a theme throughout the entire Bible. From the people of Israel being led out of slavery into freedom to Jesus’ non-violent resistance to the Roman occupation of Palestine and his own peoples’ leaders as complicit in their own oppression, to Paul’s dramatic statement in Galatians that “there is longer  Jew nor Greek, no longer slave nor free, there is not longer male and female; for all of your are one in Christ Jesus.”

And the giving of life is likewise a dominant biblical category. The ancient creation story speaks of God breathing life into humankind. The prophet Ezekiel has a vision of God’s spirit breathing new life into the dry bones of Israel. And, according to Christian teaching, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead becomes a kind of “first fruits” of the general resurrection awaiting all of us on the last, great day.

Love, liberation, and the giving of life. Qualities of the Jesus Movement articulated by our presiding bishop.

There is another bishop of The Episcopal Church who has reached a similar conclusion albeit by a somewhat different path. John Shelby Spong (happily now recovering from a recent severe stroke during a preaching mission to the Diocese of Norther Michigan) has been pilloried for years by many inside and outside The Episcopal Church for his controversial positions on many issues.

Most shocking to many has been his call for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from certain traditional doctrines. He has even posted, in Martin Luther fashion, “Twelve Points for Reform” which shake traditionalists to their core (and go considerably father than I myself am willing to go, while recognizing the legitimacy of many of his observations).

Nonetheless, Spong has mellowed somewhat over the years and, in any case, has been proven to be on the side of the angels in most of the controversies which have faced our church over the last decades from civil rights to the ordination of women to, famously, his early advocacy for the equal place of gays and lesbians in the church. In his recent books, Spong returns again and again to his own tripartite  summary of Christianity at its best.

He often writes, “If God is the Source of Life, we should live fully each day. If God is the Source of Love, we should love wastefully each day. If God is the Ground of our Being, we should strive to be all that we can be each day.” Life…Love…Being all that we can be. Sound familiar? While in a different order, I believe they line up pretty well with Michael Curry’s contemporary challenge:

Curry: Loving             Spong: Love Wastefully

Curry: Liberating       Spong: Be all that you can be

Curry: Life-Giving      Spong: Live fully

Two bishops. Each seeing themselves as “evangelists” to today’s culture. Formed in the same generous Anglican tradition. Different in so many ways. United in the important ones.

According to the former editor of the official journal of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, “the church has become an instrument of the Russian state. It is used to extend and legitimize the interests of the Kremlin.”

And the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Maldova “has warned worshipers that new biometric passports, required by the European Union in return for visa-free access to Europe, were ‘satanic’ because they contained a 13-digit number. He also tried to torpedo legislation extending protection against the discrimination in the workplace to gay people, warning that this would draw God’s wrath and sunder relations with ‘Mother Russia.'” (The New York Times, September 14)

This sad state of affairs is not news to those of us deeply involved in ecumenical relations and certainly not Episcopalians so involved. In the 1980s and 90s our church had extremely good relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, when the Soviet Union dissolved and, along with it, the officially atheistic stance of the Russian government, we were contacted to have our Bishop of the Armed Forces and Federal Chaplaincies assist in advising the Russian government about how a military chaplaincy might work in their new context. The Episcopal Church happily complied.

About midway through my time as ecumenical officer for our church, I assembled a small delegation to continue our warm relations  by engaging in informal dialogue in Moscow with the Russian branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church and — while we were there — to check on the status of an ambulance provided by Episcopal Relief and Development for one of their medical facilities. We had pictures taken with “our” ambulance and conversation in formal meetings and over festival meals with lots of ice-cold vodka!

We had always known that the Russian Church had been largely silent and complicit in the days of Communist rule. But we had cut them some slack, knowing just how risky resistance and protest might have been and realizing that, sometimes, under such circumstances, the best Christians can do under oppression is to hunker down, go underground, and preserve the Faith until better days arrive.

That appeared to have been a successful strategy in the early days of their relative freedom. When we were there, the churches were full as were monasteries and theological seminaries. However, with the rise of Vladimir Putin, the dark underbelly of such cozy relations between church and state began to be made clear. It used to be an embarrassment to Russian Orthodox Christians that some of their bishops were actually members of the KGB. Today, that appears to be more and more accepted.

The all-but-dictator Putin has embraced the ultra-conservative moral posturing of his church and made life extremely difficult if not dangerous for the LGBT community in Russia and wherever their church makes its witness. “A fervent foe of homosexuality and any attempt to put individual rights above those of family, community, or nation, the Russian Orthodox Church helps project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism and women’s and gay rights.” (today’s Times article)

The Episcopal Church may well have served as the canary in the coal mine, had anyone been paying attention. Our embrace of women’s ordination and equal rights for gay and lesbian persons in the life of the church and world led to our “fall” from a most-favored-status in ecumenical relations with the Russian church to a pariah! I once witnessed one of their leading ecumenical voices, one Father Chaplin, on the floor of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches question whether or not the Episcopal Church could even be considered Christian anymore because of our decisions on these issues of human sexuality.

This kind of ignorance and bias is tragic enough when the field of play is within one faith community and involves their relationships one with another. When such intolerance becomes the official policy of a re-emerging world power, wrapping itself in the gorgeous vestments of its puppet-like state church, everyone has something not only to regret…but to fear.

1 Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me;
all day long foes oppress me;
2 my enemies trample on me all day long,
for many fight against me.
O Most High, 3 when I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I am not afraid;
what can flesh do to me?
5 All day long they seek to injure my cause;
all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They stir up strife, they lurk,
they watch my steps.
As they hoped to have my life,
7 so repay[a] them for their crime;
in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
8 You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your record?
9 Then my enemies will retreat
in the day when I call.
This I know, that[b] God is for me.
10 In God, whose word I praise,
in the Lord, whose word I praise,
11 in God I trust; I am not afraid.
What can a mere mortal do to me?
12 My vows to you I must perform, O God;
I will render thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death,
and my feet from falling,
so that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

Psalm 56 (NRSV)

“I looked on the earth, and lo; it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins…” (Jeremiah 4:23-26b)

“I don’t suppose any of us who were alive on that day will ever forget the morning of September 11, 2001, fifteen years ago today. I was living in New York City, serving as ecumenical officer for The Episcopal Church. A number of us were in the Chapel of Christ the Lord at the Church Center for Daily Morning Prayer. Someone burst through the door and said, ‘A plane just hit the World Trade Center!’

We finished our prayers and took the elevators back to a small break room on our floor where there was a TV. Initially, we assumed like everyone else that this was some tragic accident or perhaps some misguided soul committing suicide in a dramatic way. As the morning unfolded and we watched, with the whole world, the awful events of that day, the cold grip of fear entered our hearts as we realized that we were a nation under attack – from whom, we knew not.

My initial concern was for (my wife) Susanne, who was staying at General Seminary and attending a meeting of deacons. The phones wouldn’t work and it took some time finally to make contact, to know that she was safe, and that they too were watching the events from the seminary which was actually closer to what later became known as “Ground Zero” than I was. All morning long, we watched not only the television, but from our eighth floor windows looked down on lines of people, some still covered with ash, walking in a dazed fashion north and away from the charred ruins of what had been The Twin Towers. There was an eerie silence in the city.

The next days were chaotic for New Yorkers, citizens of the United States, and around the world really.  Of course, all flights were cancelled in and out of New York, Washington, and elsewhere, and our first thoughts were how to get Susanne home. We finally secured tickets for her on an Amtrak train back to the Midwest, and when I took her to Penn Station, it looked like a railroad scene out of an old World War II movie.  Everyone was milling around, looking for family and friends, and trying to get out of New York. We got her onboard and she arrived home two days later.

The Bishop for the Armed Forces and Federal Chaplaincies, George Packard, had put a sign- up sheet up at the Church Center for clergy willing to serve as volunteer chaplains for rescue workers, first responders and others, and I believe I was one of the first to sign up.  It took days … to get all that organized though and the effort would last for many, many months.

As not only, ecumenical but interfaith officer, I began getting calls for educational material about Islam once the “jihadist” word began to spread.  Clergy and lay leaders wanted to help their people understand that, if these were indeed Muslim terrorists, they did not represent mainstream Islam and that Muslims were not our enemies. Even President George W. Bush made that clear in the early days.

We had almost no material on Islam as most of our interfaith dialogue had been with the Jewish community to this point; very little with Muslims at least on the national level.  Eventually, Episcopal Relief and Development provided an educational grant to my office and we were able to hire a Christian scholar of Islam, Lucinda Mosher, and she worked hard to get out educational material, develop a web site, and did a good bit of teaching around the Episcopal Church herself as the months and even years wore on.” (From With Gladness and Singleness of Heart by Christopher Epting)

Our nation made many mistakes in the wake of 9/11. But we did some things right as well. The Episcopal Church responded sacrificially right at Ground Zero. St. Paul’s, a chapel of Trinity Church, Wall Street, was somehow spared serious damage and was immediately opened as a respite center for first responders, medical personnel, and later construction workers. It was in that little church that Susanne and I, along with many others, counseled and prayed with those who were seeking to facilitate the recovery effort at what became known as “the Pile.”

Food and water, fresh socks and clothing were distributed. And, “George Washington’s pew,” a famous tourist attraction at St. Paul’s Chapel, became the location for massages and foot treatments to be given to any worker who asked for it. I always thought our first President – himself a kind of “first responder” — would probably have been pleased! We celebrated the Eucharist at noon every day there as well, praying for those who came…and for those who couldn’t.

I was proud of our church as well – and other churches and faith communities – when we tried to make it clear that whatever response the United States might make was not a “war on Islam,” but an attempt to bring the terrorists who had caused this horrific attack to justice.

Jeremiah said, in our First Lesson this morning, “I looked on the earth, and lo; it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins…” A perfect description of what 9/11 looked like! But Jeremiah didn’t end it there. The “weeping prophet” speaks the Word of the Lord as saying, “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.” (4:27)

We still don’t understand all the complexities that led to something like 9/11 happening. Still less do we understand why earthquakes in Italy, floods in Louisiana, and wild fires out West take place. What we do know is that God’s grace and healing touch can take place, precisely through the compassion and heroism of those who seek to respond in the Name of God.

Particularly as Christians, we know that the way of the cross is the way of life. When our Presiding Bishop, then Frank Griswold, walked into the smoke filled Chapel of St. Paul on the day after 9/11, he saw a small crucifix on the high Altar. And he said, “It was as though those tiny arms of Jesus were opening out to the whole world, embracing all the pain, and offering his love in return.” That’s what it means for the way of the cross to be the way of life.

There is a prayer in our Prayer Book office of Morning Prayer that Bishop Griswold was probably thinking of that day. It’s for use on Fridays…but perhaps an appropriate way to end these reflections on the 15^th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Let us pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name.” Amen.