That We All May Be One

Sometimes “unity” comes in strange ways.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at their recently completed Churchwide Assembly, took several significant steps with regard to the place of gay and lesbian Christians in their church.

First of all, they passed an extremely well-done social statement on human sexuality. Then, they passed  four resolutions concerning the implications of that social statement on the internal life of the ELCA. The effect of these was to open the door for the recognition of faithful, monogamous, relationships between members of the same gender and to permit those living in such relationships to serve as “rostered leaders” (including clergy) in the ELCA.

This will surely not advance cause of Christian unity directly anymore than similar decisions made by The Episcopal Church has. There will be defections from the ELCA, ecumenical relations especially with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (to the extent that the ELCA even had any ecumenical relationship with that smaller Lutheran body!), and there will be pain and distress from some — as well as joy and relief for others.

How then could this possibly foster church unity? Well, perhaps we are beginning to see new alignments and new partners across the Christian world. Some European Lutheran bodies have long been more inclusive of homosexual persons. A number of the Old Catholic churches in Europe (with which we are in full communion) have taken similar steps.  Ditto the United Church of Christ. And the Anglican Church in Canada is about to.

The United Methodist,  Presbyterian, and Moravian churches here in the U.S. may become emboldened to take steps forward in this direction.  Certainly they will have empathy for decisions made by their full communion partners in the ELCA since they are facing the same realities in their own churches.  

It is too soon to see what all this will mean in God’s time. The worst case scenario is that we will see a realignment of liberal Protestant churches driven more by cultural accommodation than by theological reflection and prayerful discernment (although the thoughtful ELCA social statement hardly signals that).

The best case scenario is that the Holy Spirit is once again shaking the Church by blowing winds of change. Like the acceptance of Gentiles in the New Testament, the 16th century Reformation, the establishment of The Episcopal Church on these shores free from control by the Church of England, liturgical renewal, women’s ordination, and other such developments.

All these are based on the centrality of baptism and the fact that “…as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There really is neither Jew nor Greek…slave nor free…male nor female; for you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:27-28)

That is a unity perhaps hard to see at present, but infinitely deeper than institutional uniformity.

Time will tell. And only God knows.

Proper 12B (2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21)

 A couple of months ago when I was with you, we had a Gospel reading from Mark about Jesus in the boat with his disciples during a storm, and calming everything by saying, ‘Peace, Be still.”  I said then that the Church is often like that little boat, buffeted and tossed about by the storms of life – but that Jesus can always bring peace if we keep him at the center of the boat!

 Now, today again, after the Gospel reading about the Feeding of the 5,000, we have a similar story, as recounted by St. John, of Jesus calming his disciples during a rough sea by saying, “It is I; do not be afraid…and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.” It’s almost as if God is speaking to us about the need to find peace in the midst of our storms; storms you are still experiencing here at St. Paul’s, and storms The Episcopal Church continues to go through in the wake of our recently- completed General Convention!

 I don’t know what reports you may have heard about the Convention in Anaheim from which Susanne and I just returned last week. As usual, the press got most of it wrong in that we really did very little different with respect to the controversial issues around human sexuality and other things which continue to bring stress and strain on our church and on the whole Anglican Communion.

 The big, largely unreported news really was that we reaffirmed our commitment to addressing global poverty through the Millennium Development Goals, and launched some new initiatives on domestic poverty even while having to slash our own budget because of a $24 million deficit caused by the economic meltdown in this country and around the world. We’ll have to lay off 37 of our 150 staff people at the Church Center in New York, including my own Associate for ecumenical relations, and lose about 24% of our program budget in the process! 

 These are not easy times for any of us, but the Church should not expect to be spared from the kind of hard decisions businesses and other institutions are being asked to make.

The difference is – as I tried to say in one of my last sermons to you – is that we have Jesus in this boat with us…to bring peace, even in the midst of the storm.

 But we need to be in touch with that Jesus. We need to access the kind of power and grace he can give us if we expect to draw upon his strength and guidance in tough times like these. That’s why I’ve always loved these lines from Ephesians which we had as our Second Lesson today. It’s really a blueprint…or an outline…of what we need to do, and be aware of, to draw upon the grace of God we find in Jesus.

 The author begins by saying, “I bow my knees before the Father…” Well, of course, that’s just a descriptive way of saying that he is praying! And prayer is the key. We must be, in these times and always, a people of prayer! But what do we pray about? Well, the Lesson continues, “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”

 Well, there’s a lot there! We need to pray for each other that we may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and that Christ may dwell within us. And what do we need to make that happen? We need to be “rooted and grounded in love.” As we pray for one another in this church – for those we agree with and those we disagree with, we need to love them! That’s the essential quality of life for Christians. We need to love on another!

 The next thing the author prays for is that we “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

 That means, in the midst of our struggles, we need to see the big picture (the breadth and length and height and depth) of the Church’s mission. We have to keep “the main thing, the main thing,” keep our eye on the prize – which is to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God.

 Our mission is to know Christ better, and to make Him known, in this little church, in this community, and in the Church and world beyond. That’s why we need to pray every day, to read the Scriptures every day, to come to church every Sunday and invite others to come with us, and not to be afraid to witness for Jesus Christ whenever and wherever we can.   

 We had a great Collect, or prayer, for this Sunday. “O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.”

 That just means that, since God alone gives us strength and wholeness, if we trust that God, we will be protected (no matter what!)…and that even while we confront temporal, “earthly” things like budget deficits and church fights and small numbers, we’ll be able to pass through them (and triumph over them) in such a way that we don’t lose the important things – like healing…and love…and forgiveness…and eventual reconciliation. And, finally, the gift of eternal life!

 That life abundant Jesus promised us. That life abundant that only he can give; and only he can take away. I close with the final line from Ephesians this morning which sums it up better than I ever could:

 “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Proper 7B – St. Paul’s, Durant. I Samuel 17:32-49; Psalm 9:9-20; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41.

 One of the humbling aspects of being at the Lambeth Conference of Bishops last year with brother and sister Anglicans from around the world was hearing their stories of faithfulness and real heroism as Christians in the midst of very difficult circumstances.

 Whether that was a bishop from the Sudan trying to preach the Gospel in a land whose wars never seem to end; or a bishop from Pakistan facing imminent danger from the Taliban; or a bishop from Polynesia worrying about whether the fact of global warming will ultimately cause his little island to disappear under the waves of the Pacific, due to melting glaciers and rising levels of the sea in that part of the world.   

 Their situations are desperate! But the amazing thing to me was how they continually drew upon the resources of our faith to sustain them in their times of testing. They would cite texts like our first one this morning, and the unlikely victory of the young, relatively untested David against the seasoned warrior, Goliath.

 “Yahweh, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine,” David said. And so it was.

 Or the assurances in today’s Psalm that “Yahweh will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of trouble/ Those who know your Name will put their trust in you, for you never forsake those who seek you, O LORD.”

 Or the catalogue of suffering Paul endured while doing the work of an apostle and evangelist; “…beatings, imprisonments…sleepless nights, hunger…” and all the rest of it, making him “…sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

 Dear friends, I have seen Christians like that – at the Lambeth Conference, and around the world. And I can tell you that the words of these biblical passages are as true today as on the day they were written!  True in their lives; true in their ministries.

 And I thought this week how instructive today’s Gospel is in this regard. It’s a familiar story to us: Jesus and his disciples are in a fishing boat crossing the Sea of Galilee when a “great windstorm arose” whipping up the waves and threatening to swamp the boat.

 I’ve been on that body of water and I can tell you that conditions can change in a matter of minutes as it’s found surrounded by hills and is not very deep, so a simple change in wind direction can add a chop to the water and bounce you around pretty good, even on a larger vessel than Jesus and his friends were in!    

 Jesus was either exhausted or relatively unconcerned because he was asleep in the back of the boat and, touchingly, Mark tells us, “asleep on a cushion!” “Teacher, do you not care if we are perishing?” the disciples shout. Jesus wakes up, calls for Peace and Stillness and – the text tells us – “there was a dead calm.”

 This story has been used in a variety of ways over the years and a number of ancient commentators were fond of pointing out that the Church itself has often been depicted as a boat. Even our church architecture sometimes reminds us of the construction of a ship, and the fact that the part of the church building you are sitting in is classically called “the nave.”

 And the Church itself has passed through many times of turbulent waters. From the early conflicts we see in Paul’s letters, to the great split between East and West in 1052, to the Reformation when the Catholic and Protestant churches broke apart, to the establishment of The Episcopal Church on these shores free from the control and Establishment of the Church of England. Complex issues that we confront today. Christians are no strangers to turbulent times in the Church and in the world.

 Whether it’s the kind of pain you’ve gone through here at St. Paul’s in recent months, to the struggles of the Diocese of Iowa to respond to the many challenges before us when congregations can no longer provide the kind of financial support they used to, to the challenges The Episcopal Church will face at this upcoming General Convention, not because of the potentially controversial issues we will have to confront but because the economic downturn which challenges us as individuals and our congregations and our dioceses are also causing us to make very difficult choices on the national and international level as well.

 Certainly my budget has been slashed in 2009 and the next three years looks even bleaker. You may be facing that in your own households or in your places of employment.

 But when I think of my sisters and brothers in the Sudan…or Pakistan…or Micronesia, all I can hear is their faithful telling of the stories of the young David…the songs of the Psalmist…the heroism of St. Paul…and Jesus, in that little boat, saying “Peace. Be still.”

 The problems we face are real enough. But they do not compare with what our forebears in the faith have gone through or what many of our fellow Anglicans live with every day of their lives.

 Let’s just try to remember, when we feel ourselves buffeted about in a storm-tossed sea,that we have the same resource available to us that those original disciples had. We have Jesus in this boat with us.

 And he’s no longer asleep. He is saying, “Peace. Be still.”

Amen.

Thursday of 7 Easter. Acts 22:30; 23:6-11; Psalm 16:5-11; John 17:20-26.

It’s great to be back with you today! One of the things I miss most by being in one of our regional offices is participating in our chapel life here at the Church Center. So I’m grateful to Fred Vergara for allowing me to “substitute” for him today…really at the last minute when I asked him.

 Having just returned from Cincinnati and our Anglican – Roman Catholic dialogue there, I was tempted to preach on the last line from today’s reading from Acts when the Lord said to Paul: “Take courage, for as you have testified about me at Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also at Rome!” (But then I decided maybe I’d better not “go there!”)

 Instead I’ll share with you a thought I gleaned from the Roman Catholic bishop who co-chairs that dialogue with our own Bishop Tom Breidenthal of Southern Ohio. His name is Ron Herzog and he is a relatively new bishop in the Roman Catholic diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana. He preached on the very same Gospel reading we had today earlier this week – lines from the great High Priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17.

 The passage begins with Jesus saying “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they all may be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe…” That is, of course, the great ecumenical text, read at almost every ecumenical service I go to – that we all might be one so that the world might believe!

 But Bishop Herzog picked up on another insight as well. He reminded us that, when Jesus says that he is not only praying for the apostles, but also for those who will come to believe because of the apostles’ testimony, that means that Jesus is praying for US!   

For US…now…today…and tomorrow! For us who have “come to believe” because of those original apostle’s testimony.

 I’m not sure how often we stop to remember that. We know that Jesus came to save us. We know that he lived and died as one of us. We know that he was raised from the dead to give us the gift of eternal life. But do we also know that he is alive today, making intercession for us!

 When he challenged St. Paul to “Take courage,” because he not only had testified to Jesus in Jerusalem, but was now to take that same message to the heart of the Empire in Rome, it must have given that great Apostle some pause. But he knew then what we must learn today – that he was not alone in his mission and ministry. He was being supported, led, guided and prayed for by none other than the same Lord to whom he was bearing witness!

 And so are you, dear friends! So, if you are feeling overwhelmed or overtaxed in your work, in your life and ministry today, just take a minute to remember who’s praying for you – not only your family, not only your friends, not only your colleagues in ministry…but the Lord Jesus Himself! And on those prayers, you can most surely depend!

Our Gospel for this 4^th Sunday in Lent is the familiar story of Jesus feeding the multitude. It’s the only miracle story found in all four Gospels which is why we are so familiar with it. Yet I think often we are so preoccupied with the “miracle itself,” with the multiplication of the loaves and fish, that we miss out on so much else that is going on here in addition.

The very first line gives us a clue, but we often skip right over it to get into the story. It begins, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.” (John 6:4). There wouldn’t be much point in John telling us the time of year if it didn’t have something to do with the point of the story.

The Passover was (and is), of course, the freedom meal for the Jewish people, the meal “eaten in haste” before Moses led the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt. It was the meal eaten every year by devout Jews, and it was the Last Supper eaten with his disciples “on the night Jesus was betrayed” which developed into the Eucharist – the meal you and I partake of each Sunday we can.

But this feeding of the 5,000 was a meal too. And, when John tells us that it took place around Passover time, he is asking us to look back to that original Passover and forward to the Eucharist. Notice in verse 11 that John writes, “Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.” Basically the same actions Jesus takes at the Last Supper: “…the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said This is my Body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (I Corinthians 11:23-24). Taking, blessing, breaking, and distributing…the bread.

On both of those occasions, when Jesus is presiding at a meal, his disciples were bound to see him in the role of Moses, the originator of the Passover, and also in the role of the Messiah. Because there was tradition which said that, when the Messiah came, he too would preside over a festive banquet, hearkening back to the Passover, at which all the people would be fed. One such account is in the 25^th chapter of the Prophet Isaiah:

 “On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all the peoples, the veil spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces…” 

The people were bound to see Jesus in that role as he multiplied the loaves and the fish. That’s why they tried to “take him by force and make him become king.”

So here have three sacred meals – the Passover, the Feeding of the 5,000, and the Last Supper. And all three have something to teach us. The Passover teaches us that God wants us to be free…The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish teach us that God can bring abundance out of scarcity…And the Eucharist teaches us that God has fulfilled Jesus’ promise to be with us to the end of the ages!

As we set about the task of re-building St. Paul’s Church here in Durant, all three of those things are important. First of all, it’s important to know that we are free in Christ! We are free to look at new possibilities and new strategies.  Free to open ourselves to new possibilities we may never have thought of before. God is not interested in us being weighed down and hamstrung by anger or bitterness or resentment or by anxiety about the future for that matter. If God can bring slaves out of Egypt, provide them with manna in the desert and plant them in their own Promised Land, God can surely rebuild this church.

And God is also able to bring abundance out of scarcity. If our Lord Jesus Christ could cause 5,000 people to be fed with five loaves and two fish, then he can surely multiply our resources and bring abundant life out of what appears at the present time to be a scarcity of resources. God is in the “new beginnings business” and we need to hang on to the promise given in today’s Epistle: The author writes “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:4 ff)

And finally we need to be confident that Christ has not deserted us and he never will!

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel he promised to be with us “to the close of the age.” And one of the signs of that presence is the Eucharist we celebrate at this Altar. As a matter of fact, whenever “two or three are gathered in his name” he has promised to be with us.

How much more so when those two or three break the Bread and share the Cup of the Lord in this “memorial (meal) he has commanded us to make?”  

The God you and I serve has set us free to serve him “in perfect freedom.” He has promised us abundant life and blessing if we are faithful. And, in this Eucharist, he assures us of his continual presence until the end of the ages. Let me close with a prayer I would like to suggest each one of you pray daily in the weeks and months to come. It’s found at the bottom of page 817 in the Prayer Book.

Let’s stand and pray together for this Parish and for your life together: “Almighty and ever living God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers for this parish family. Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent. Grant us all things necessary for our common life, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.

A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of the Episcopal Church meeting in Hendersonville, North Carolina, March 13-18, 2009 to the Church and our partners in mission throughout the world.
 
I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.  In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

–Philippians 4:11b – 13

As the House of Bishops gather at the Kanuga Camp and Conference Center for our annual Spring Retreat, we are mindful of the worsening financial crisis around us. We recognize there are no easy solutions for the problems we now face. In the United States there is a 30% reduction of overall wealth, a 26% reduction in home values and a budget deficit of unprecedented proportions. Unemployment currently hovers at over 8% and is estimated to top 10% by the end of the year. There are over 8 million homes in America that are in foreclosure. Consumer confidence is at a 50-year low.

Unparalleled corporate greed and irresponsibility, predatory lending practices, and rampant consumerism have amplified domestic and global economic injustice. The global impact is difficult to calculate, except that the poor will become poorer and our commitment to continue our work toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is at great risk. A specter of fear creeps not only across the United States, but also across the world, sometimes causing us as a people to ignore the Gospel imperative of self-sacrifice and generosity, as we scramble for self-preservation in a culture of scarcity.

The crisis is both economic and environmental. The drought that grips Texas, parts of the American South, California, Africa and Australia, the force of hurricanes that have wreaked so much havoc in the Caribbean, Central America and the Gulf Coast, the ice storm in Kentucky—these and other natural disasters related to climate change—result in massive joblessness, driving agricultural production costs up, and worsening global hunger. The wars nations wage over diminishing natural resources kill and debilitate not only those who fight in them, but also civilians, weakening families, and destroying the land. We as a people have failed to see this connection, compartmentalizing concerns so as to minimize them and continue to live without regard to the care of God’s creation and the stewardship of the earth’s resources that usher in a more just and peaceful world.

In this season of Lent, God calls us to repentance. We have too often been preoccupied as a Church with internal affairs and a narrow focus that has absorbed both our energy and interest and that of our Communion – to the exclusion of concern for the crisis of suffering both at home and abroad. We have often failed to speak a compelling word of commitment to economic justice. We have often failed to speak truth to power, to name the greed and consumerism that has pervaded our culture, and we have too often allowed the culture to define us instead of being formed by Gospel values.

While our commitment to the eradication of extreme poverty through the eight Millennium Development Goals moves us toward the standard of Christ’s teaching, we have nevertheless often fallen short of the transformation to which Christ calls us in our own lives in order to live more fully into the Gospel paradigm of God’s abundance for all.

Everyone is affected by the shrinking of the global economy. For some, this is a time of great loss—loss of employment, of homes, of a way of life. And for the most vulnerable, this “downturn” represents an emergency of catastrophic proportions. Like the Prodigal who comes to his senses and returns home, we as the people of God seek a new life. We recognize in this crisis an invitation into a deeper simplicity, a tightening of the belt, an expanded Lenten fast, and a broader generosity. God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness meet and embrace us, waiting to empower us through the Holy Spirit to face the coming days.

In a time of anxiety and fear the Holy Spirit invites us to hope. Anxiety, when voiced in community can be heard, blessed and transformed into energy and hope, but if ignored, swallowed or hidden, fear and anxiety can be corrosive and lead to despair. We Christians claim that joy and hope emerge for those who have the courage to endure suffering. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul goes so far as to boast of his suffering, because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Our current crisis presents us with opportunities to learn from our brothers and sisters of faith in other parts of the world who have long been bearers of hope in the midst of even greater economic calamity.

We can also learn from our spiritual ancestors, who found themselves in an economic and existential crisis that endured for forty years – on their journey from Egypt to Israel. While they groaned in Egypt, they murmured at Sinai – at least at first. And then after their groaning, complaining and reverting to old comforts of idol worship, they were given Grace to learn and understand what the Lord wanted to teach them.

They learned that they needed the wilderness in order to recover their nerve and put their full trust in God–and to discover their God-given uniqueness, which had been rubbed away during their captivity in Egypt. They adopted some basic rules that enabled them to live in a community of free people rather than as captives or slaves – the God-given Ten Commandments. And perhaps most importantly, our spiritual ancestors discovered that the wilderness is a unique place of God’s abundance and miracle, where water gushed out of a rock and manna appeared on the desert floor – food and drink miraculously provided by God.
 
As we go through our own wilderness, these spiritual ancestors also point the way to a deep and abiding hope. We can rediscover our uniqueness – which emerges from the conviction that our wealth is determined by what we give rather than what we own. We can re-discover manna – God’s extraordinary expression of abundance. Week by week, in congregations and communities around the world, our common manna is placed before us in the Eucharist. Ordinary gifts of bread and wine are placed on the altar, and become for us the Body and Blood of Christ, which, when we receive them, draw us ever more deeply into the Paschal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.
 
As our risen Lord broke through the isolation of the disciples huddled in fear for their lives following his suffering and death, so too are we, the Body of Christ, called to break through the loneliness and anxiety of this time, drawing people from their fears and isolation into the comforting embrace of God’s gathered community of hope. As disciples of the risen Christ we are given gifts for showing forth God’s gracious generosity and for finding blessing and abundance in what is hard and difficult. In this time the Holy Spirit is moving among us, sharing with us the vision of what is real and valued in God’s world. In a time such as this, Christ draws us deeper into our faith revealing to us that generosity breaks through distrust, paralysis and misinformation. Like our risen Lord, we, as his disciples are called to listen to the world’s pain and offer comfort and peace.
 
As we continue our Lenten journey together we place our hearts in the power of the Trinity. The God who created us is creating still and will not abandon us. The Incarnate Word, our Savior Jesus Christ, who in suffering, dying and rising for our sake, stands in solidarity with us, has promised to be with us to the end of the age.  God the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God for us and in us, is our comforter, companion, inspiration and guide. In this is our hope, our joy and our peace.