In the Cross of Christ I Glory

About two generations ago liturgical pundits, those theologians who help us map out how we worship, moved the reading of the Passion from Good Friday to Palm Sunday. It gave us a chance to hear the story of the most important act of our Lord Jesus from all the Gospel writers not just the Gospel of John that we heard tonight. The consensus was that fewer and fewer people were hearing this important part of Scripture. In the Passion of Jesus we hear the defining work of salvation worked for us by God. It was not a part of the Gospels that could be ignored.

The only problem was that it made for a very full and almost unwieldy Palm Sunday liturgy moving from the heights of “Hosannas” to the depths of “Crucify Him” in one service. But I understand the need for putting the Passion on the Sunday before Easter. When I began my ministry, the businesses and schools were closed for Good Friday or at least were closed from noon to three in respect for those who wanted to be in church for services. As all nations have become more pluralistic, and religious practices are much more varied, the story of our Lord’s crucifixion has been would have gotten lost if we had not move to reading it on a Sunday. No one likes to look at the horrors of what our Lord suffered. And the attendance at this service bears that out.

So I was quite interested in the way people flocked to see “The Passion of the Christ” when Mel Gibson’s movie came out. And people were shocked at the violence and brutality of Christ’s death. Now, I didn’t go to see the movie. From praying over these passages for years I know the kind of inhumanity that our Lord suffered. We who have allowed ourselves to know the brutality that our Lord bore cannot look away. We are rooted in the compassion that our Lord taught. We must stand at the cross for his sake and our own.

Now I am sure that some psychologist would say that this is not healthy behavior. This “dwelling” on death, some of my non-religious friends have told me, is “sick.” But I am equally sure that unless Christians are willing to look at the death of our Lord Jesus, we will not understand the death of loved ones or understand the meaning of our own lives. In other words, it is the death of Jesus which gives meaning to the Christian’s life.

Following World War II, a Jewish psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors wrote a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Viktor Frankel saw in those who survived the death camps and more importantly those who survived the guilt of living when so many others had not, that it was those who could provide some meaning for their life that survived. In the face of such suffering they found that many had had to survive in order to give meaning to the deaths of the others. Despite the degradation they experienced, they knew that their lives were to sign that evil could not conquer the spirit.

The horror of the Passion of Jesus has meaning because of what happened to him. It shows us that when the world gives itself over to evil, to greed, to oppression, this kind of inhumanity reigns. The reign of the Roman Empire has often been taught that it was a time of peace---the “Pax Romana.” The only reason that there was peace was because the oppression was so omnipresent that rebellion could not raise its head. The Cross was the symbol of Roman domination. It was not the symbol of Jesus Christ until the mid fourth-century when Constantine, the first Christian emperor abolished crucifixion as a means of execution for the Roman Empire. Even though Paul teaches the glory of the Cross, it is a radical statement that slaps in the face of Roman oppression.

For Christians today, the Cross is the sign of triumph over the kind of oppression, the kind of domination, the kind of evil that executed Jesus. It is the sign which gives our lives and deaths meaning as followers of Jesus but more importantly it is the sign that the work of our salvation has been accomplished—completed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Good Friday is a difficult day. At the ecumenical service at noon today, all of the clergy gathered before the service for prayer. We all looked like we had been pulled through a knot-hole. Good Friday is hard work! Even though we know that Easter comes on Sunday—we know the end of the story, to live through the Passion of Jesus requires us to look at evil in the death of Jesus. We may not close our eyes or ignore this inhumanity practiced by humans. If we do, it WILL overcome us. If we take the easy way and ignore evil it will eventually bite us. In the Cross of Christ we are given meaning for our lives. We are to overcome the evil in life in the name of Jesus. We cannot do it by ourselves, but we have been graced by God to do so. Through our salvation we are to triumph over the greed, the oppression, and the foulness that self-serving produces. It is in Christ’s triumph over that evil that we are given our mission in life—to triumph with Christ over the evil in the world.

I am thankful you are here tonight. You have not turned away from the sufferings of our Lord. You have not averted your eyes from the evil that all too often seems to overwhelm us. I am thankful too, that you are willing to provide meaning for your lives in the shadow of the Cross. I pray that as you journey toward Easter, you will confront the evil in your life—to join with Christ in triumphing over whatever oppression, whatever greed, whatever hatred that you encounter. It is Christ’s triumph that we celebrate tonight. We have been given our mission in the Cross and we stand in the glory of that Cross. Amen

Grief

Yesterday the dreadful shooting of 14 people happened in my city. I was at my parish 40 miles away when it happened. The incident was near my home and on a route I take almost daily. I avoided that route on my way home last night knowing that there would still be emergency vehicles in that vicinity. But in my mind, I can see that building—a place where immigrants attend classes to become citizens—a place of welcome and information.

I still don’t have access to much of the information. I watched the news last night. Access to the internet newspaper is causing my browser to crash so I can’t get the most up-to-date information at the moment. I don’t know why this man did this. We may never know why this happened; he is one of the 14 deaths. But the violence of the act overwhelms us and makes us shutter.

This story will ring in Binghamton’s psyche for years. Our sleepy Southern Tier city has been visited with what we think is ‘urban violence’. The sense of security that most of us usually live in has been violated and shaken in a way that floods or other natural disasters cannot do. It smacks of Pogo’s declaration that “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This post could easily be a rant on gun control, or a strident call for vigilance. But it is not. It is merely a comment on the sadness that I feel and the grief that I share with all involved. It is a ‘standing-with’ all of our city family who have lost family and friends.

Recently I heard Walter Bruggeman speak about grief in western culture. He said that we, all too often, do not allow ourselves to truly grieve losses so that we can honestly move on. He showed how the Hebrew prophets would not let the people forget the things that grieved the people and God. Grief is the sadness, the utterly painful experience that we are not in control of the Universe. And if anything has shown us that we are not in control, it has been the mindless killing of people who were studying to become citizens of our country.

But it is in grief that some of our better traits can come to the fore. I am remembering the goodness that came about when we flooded a couple of years ago, when neighbor helped neighbor. I know that we here in our city have the ability to reach out to one another at this time and to grieve our loss of innocence together.

That this incident comes the week before Holy Week is not lost on me either. It is so easy to enter Holy Week with a sense of ‘retreat’ or introspection through the events of the Passion of Jesus. But this year, I do not believe I have that luxury. Holy Week may not be my personal journey to the Cross and Empty Tomb. It must be a journey I must take with my neighbors and friends in order to experience and live through the grief of what has happened. It is the only way that the Cross makes any sense whatsoever.

We are vulnerable here in Binghamton. We are not as safe as we have thought. No matter what kind of vigilance we can negotiate for ourselves, we will never be in control of our Universe. Bad things will happen. And the only thing that we can depend upon is the grace of God and the comfort of human kindness. Grief reminds us that we have obligations to one another to support and to be compassionate in the name of the God who loves us more than life.

Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."

Taken from a comment on WorkingPreacher.com

I have been centering my Lenten sermons on the baptismal covenant seen through the prism of the Sunday lections. And tomorrow's lessons are a perfect way to culminate this with "strive for justice".

One of the most important aspects of striving for justice is a willingness to take up the life of those caught in injustice--to have compassion--a willingness to 'suffer with' in order to bring to light the injustices that the world is willing to ignore.

Christ's unwillingness to ignore the injustice of the political and religious systems of his day brought him to suffer with all those who were being denied relationship with their God and the community of the faithful because of their race, their lineage, their social class, their lack of cleanliness, their sinfulness, etc. It is in the conflict between good and evil that we understand Christ's love. It is the acceptance of us by God and the Church no matter the condition of our lives that makes the Christian life so liberating. That grace is always free but it was bought with the ultimate price of the Cross.

We as Christians cannot avoid conflict without watering down the promise of the gospel. It is part and parcel of our lives in Christ. But this does not mean that we must be overwhelmed with the conflict.

I am an Episcopalian priest serving as a pastor of a small ELCA parish. I have watched conflict consume my denomination for the past 8 years--not for political or theological reasons, but because of the need for some to have power. The conflict has often so overwhelmed those of us in leadership that we often have had to choose sides rather than to stand beneath the Cross of Christ. But it has been in the light of this conflict that we as a church have gotten clearer on where Christ is leading us. My family home is situated in one of the dioceses that has chosen to leave TEC. What has been spectacular is the kind of energy and hope that the remnants of TEC have in that place. The faith will not die of conflict. It is in the conflict that we find what is really important to us--it is the community of faith in the Christ who gave us the Way.

The conflict to confront the injustice that was imbedded in the power structures of the church has been difficult and painful. But if we had ignored it, our denomination would have become inane, lukewarm and useless. As we have stood at the cross, the grace of God has helped us reorient ourselves to the kind of justice of inclusion, integrity and honesty that the crucified one calls us to. I am beginning to see the kind of resurrection with in my denomination that witnesses to Christ Jesus.

But since violence, which is at the center of all conflict, can taint this kind of confrontation with evil, we must always be mindful of the need to stand HUMBLY beneath the Cross of Christ. Though we stand in solidarity with those who have been mistreated, we may not fall into the arrogance that often marks the victorious. I believe that is what Jeremiah longed for in his words of consolation in Lent 5's reading. It is in the lived-out experience of God's love for us that will proclaim Christ that will shout the promise of our salvation.

Once Born and Twice Born

As I learn more of the Emerging Church and its emphasis on the experience or relationship with the Divine I wonder about the importance of this aspect of faith. There is no doubt about it; I am a reborn Christian. I had one of those Road to Damascus events in my life that changed my life. In my early years I am sure I was fairly obnoxious about trying to get everyone to have that same experience. There is a significant temptation to claim a ‘special’ or even a ‘holier’ experience than others who do not have the Pauline encounter

Through the years though, I have met people whose experience of God has been different from the ‘born again’ incident. They are those who have grown up in the Church. They have always known God. Rather than some dramatic sea-change the reformation that happens to those whom I call ‘once-born’ Christians is a gradual and incremental molding of their lives into what Christ would have them be.

‘Twice-born’ Christians know the moment that they first believed. They are brought to their knees and renewal is dramatic. The love that is experienced is overwhelming. It is often a mountain-top type of experience that when one comes into the mundane life in the valleys and plains, the faith then becomes a matter of remembrance rather than omni-present experience that was hoped for. The Christian life for the twice-born is often a search for another mountain-top experience through liturgy, retreat, meditation, etc. The Church becomes the vessel from which the Christ-life is lived out.

For the ‘once-born’ the experience of God is with one that was always present. This does not mean that it is static. Like Helen Keller, relationship with God is more the identification of what has always been known, “So that is who He is.” The love of God is the familiar fount from which one’s life flows. Often the identification of the once-born’s faith is with the Church. It is not only the community of the faithful; it is the place where God’s love is made manifest in word and sacrament.

In some ways there is not much difference in these ‘faith-born’ people. But when they begin to share faith, there is often misunderstanding. The twice-born do not hear the excitement that presaged their experience of God while the once-born find the ‘late-comers’ as too dramatic or superficial. There is a tendency on either side to view the other as suspicious.

I remember quite clearly as a convert in a Roman Catholic convent being viewed awkwardly by the cradle-catholics. I was not trusted because I was not of the sub-culture of those who had grown-up Roman Catholic. I wasn’t one of “them.” It was not intentional or ever mean; it was merely I had not grown up with the same experiences as they. It made it easy for me to leave the community when the time came to follow my vocation to the priesthood. However, I still miss the community.

A few years ago it was calculated that 8 out of 10 Episcopalians were something else before coming to the Episcopal Church. Often those who come to our churches today have no theological or Church background. They have either found us because of a very personal or dramatic conversion to Jesus Christ or they have been supported and come to know the warmth of God’s love by being a part of a loving Christian community in the local parish. Seldom do I find people joining the Church simply because the doctrine.

One thing I have learned is that I must listen carefully to the experience of Christ shared by my fellow church-goer. All too often our churches do not provide places where we may share the faith. It is difficult to share when our experiences are so different. In my experience of parish life, there was almost never a chance to share faith. In my current congregation I can see the love that they have for each other and I point that out. It is the practice of their faith that I see. But it is difficult to get them to describe it.

For the most part, Episcopalians have a difficult time expressing what their faith is. This is a phenomenon not just of the laity. The clergy have incredible difficulty in sharing their faith with their peers. We learn to describe it under duress during the ordination process. We sometimes are put on the spot during the interview process for a call, but we do not tend to share our faith with colleagues. We may set it up as some sort of paradigm in a sermon, but the competitive nature of the calling process roots out any possibility of sharing of faith. Consequently it is difficult for us to model this for the people of our parishes.

Perhaps one of the things that might be made a part of the training of clergy for the future is a venue for the sharing of faith. This cannot be a part of the litmus process which culls out candidates because their faith might be ‘suspect.’ It must be a place where one can practice describing their faith while trying to grow into it. It is a place where one can discuss the doctrines and see if they “fit” our experience of Christ instead of trying to fit our faith into the doctrines of previous centuries.

The future of the faith depends on how well we are able to accept different articulations of the faith. We must be a community who can not only proclaim the love of Jesus Christ, we must be a place where we can easily talk about the relationships we have with the God who is all to all.

CDO: What’s the Point?

Today the CDO (Church Deployment Office) sent me an email to update my CDO file. The CDO is the way that Episcopal clergy put their name in for parishes and make them available to the calling process. The email was appropriate as I have not updated my profile in a number of years. I am very happy with the parish I serve. It is the most Christian group of people I have served in the past 20 years. I am not looking to change.

I have been a priest long enough to remember the CDO process before the internet. We had long application forms and someone in the diocesan office who knew enough to help you know what categories to choose to make your profile pop out of the computer in the kind of parishes that you were looking for. It was a long process to prepare your CDO profile and one that had real ramifications about the churches that called one to interview.

The origin and purpose of the CDO process was to tear down the walls of the “old boy” network that was prevalent throughout the Episcopal Church. It was largely through the efforts of the National Episcopal Clergy Association that saw to the creation of the CDO. It provided for a fair process by which all clergy who were looking could have their gifts presented to a parish. It leveled the playing field. If the CDO had not been in place, women’s ordination would never have gotten off the ground. It also allowed for clergy from different parts of the country to be viable candidates for positions across the country. The CDO tore down much of the provincialism that was common in many dioceses. It brought much needed “fresh air” into dioceses that had become parochial backwaters. It provided for mobility especially for women who often had to follow husbands to new secular jobs to be eligible for church jobs throughout the larger church.

The canons concerning the calling of rectors were much more the purview of the parishes rather than the diocesan office in those days. The CDO officer was less the agent of the bishop who controlled who was to get into the diocese and more the agent of the parishes who were trying to call clergy who would serve the members of the parishes. The position of rector, while not autonomous, was always held with respect by bishops because a rector was the agent of his or her own people. Times have changed.

Nowadays, the purpose of diocesan CDO officers is to insert the bishop’s vision for the diocese rather than the particular needs or visions of the parish. It makes the clergy more agents of the bishop in parishes than pastors to the people they are called to serve.

Historically, that WAS the role of the priest in the Church. In the ancient Roman configuration, the priest was the agent of the bishop. The canons evolved to maintain that role. But the Protestant Reformation confirmed the role of the pastor in the parishes. The pastoral role was to serve the people, to preach and celebrate and proclaim the good news to the people of God. The role of bishop was to maintain the Faith. The catholic formula of power and privilege was rejected by reformers.

In the present reality of the relationship of clergy and bishops, the bishop is no longer the pastor and colleague of clergy. The demands of insurance companies following the sex scandals of the 90’s ended that relationship. The bishops now see themselves as the autonomous power in the local church. Their role has become less the leader and person of vision and more the controller and punisher of perceived misconduct. The penchant for present bishops to control the calling process is a clear indication that the calling process is less about engaging the Holy Spirit and more about manipulating who can come into the diocese. This means that the “old boys’ network” is back in and provincialism reigns in a time when we are looking at global ideals.

The purpose of the national Clergy Deployment Office is called into question. Why do we sustain a large expensive networking agency in NYC if their service is not going to be taken seriously?

This was posted by Mark Harris, a member of the Executive Board of the Episcopal Church. It is a good reminder for those of us who have to come up against those who have left the Episcopal Church. It reminds me that we do have a Constitution and a set of Canons that describe what the Episcopal Church is and has always been. Those bishops who schemed to have their own way attempted to change the Constitution of TEC in order to prove that TEC is wearing the "black hat." While I was in Ft. Worth, I heard some of the lies that were passed around about what TEC was about. It is important for us to be clear about who we are and what we are in the face of their criticism. At the same time, I think it is about time for us to quit responding to the folk at Stand Firm, Baby Blue, VirtureOnLine, etc. They have left to be their own churches. We need to let them go and make their own church if they can. They can no longer be the grist for our comments or their critique be something of enough importance for us to comment on it. We too need to be about creating the new Jerusalem.


Things I wish we could get right:

The Rev. Mark Harris

In Anglican Land, where words flow like water, we have gotten into bad habits. I wish we could get clear about several things:

(i) The member churches of the Anglican Communion are properly "national or regional churches." "Province" reeks of the very "sub" of "subsidiarity" that has been driving us all crazy since the Windsor Report. It assumes that the churches are parts or provinces of something else. They are not. (Thanks to Daniel Weir for his comments.)

(ii) In Episcopal Church land, the meeting of bishops between General Conventions is not a meeting of The House of Bishops, as if one house of General Convention met as a separate body with the right to speak for the Church. These meetings are more properly Bishops Conferences, during which they can indeed do those things that pertain to the office of bishops alone (such as acting in final determination that a member bishop is deposed, or electing a missionary bishop subject to consent by standing committees, etc.). The role of the House of Bishops extends beyond General Convention only in the limited ways allowed by canon. Otherwise they can meet and do things useful to them later when they do come together at General Convention, converse among themselves, write papers, urge actions from Executive Council, etc. But that is not the House of Bishops speaking, that is a Bishop's Conference speaking.

(iii) Resolutions of ANY body of the Anglican Communion have no juridical weight in any church in the Communion unless adopted as such by the governing body of that Church. So Lambeth 1998, res 1.10 can be touted as "the mind of the Communion" until the end of time, but no church in the Communion who has not assented to it is bound to it. That is why the Windsor Report is a report, the Lambeth resolution is couched in language of the gathered bishops with recommendations and urging of restraint rather than command, and the Anglican Covenant is not the Covenant until it is affirmed by churches. Everything else is politics.

(iv) The desire to be a world wide Anglican Church is the desire to be a little version of Rome or Constantinople. It's not worth it. The world does not need, and for that matter we Christians do not need, another Patriarchy.

Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead!

I have spent the past week in the Diocese of Ft. Worth. I have preached and celebrated in a continuing Episcopal parish; I have lunched and chatted with a number of continuing clergy and laity of the diocese. A new day is dawning here and it is wondrous to behold! I have waited 30 years for this day.

For 30 years this diocese has been run by bishops who have systematically kept members of the Church from knowing what was going on in the Episcopal Church nationwide. From its inception in 1985 as a conservative bastion against the inclusion of the Diocese of El Camino Real as a liberal diocese, a small group of people, both clergy and lay have tried to keep Ft. Worth from the normal interaction with the Church at large. The clergy have all been trained at Nashota House. Clergy who disagreed with the ultra-conservative, high church dictates of the bishops were not allowed to serve in the diocese. The bishops had also raised up many clerics in diocesan training programs (the old Canon 9) who were totally dependant upon the bishops. The bishops have more or less raised up their own successors so that there would be no fresh blood added to the gene pool. Bishop Jack Iker was elected in ’91 to continue the anti-women agenda that Bishops Davies and Pope had fostered. Most people knew that Iker could not keep his ordination vows to “uphold the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church”, but most people in the diocese did not realize how out of step Jack Iker was. Slowly but surely Iker became more and more paranoid, fearful of TEC and instilled this into his people. In too many parishes, the laity are afraid to contradict their priests even when they know that they are preaching the wrong message about the Episcopal Church.

In November with Bishop Iker’s rejection of the authority of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori and his joining with other break-away parishes with the Southern Cone of Brazil, Jack Iker was accepted as having abandoned the Episcopal Church and defrocked. Seven major parishes of the diocese and a number of laity have chosen to stay in the Episcopal Church. The diocese, before the split was not large—only 52 parishes and missions. Most of the churches, in fact, were missions, their clergy dependant upon the bishop for their jobs. Most of the larger parishes that had called rectors to their churches chose to stay in TEC.

The Iker-led Southern Cone churches are trying to follow along as though nothing has happened. They are being told that they are still Episcopalians—that nothing will change. But the reality of the Southern Cone group being able to keep their churches and their endowments is really slim to none. Even though there is an attempt to push through some laws in the Texas Congress that will limit the powers of the National Church, the likelihood of their success is remote because other dioceses of Texas are not supportive of Iker.

But the sad thing is how unprepared the people are to take charge of their churches. On Sunday I celebrated at the only African-American parish in the diocese. The people had never heard of the Union of Black Episcopalians or the Urban Caucus. They have never had a chance to interact with other Black Episcopalians in the larger Church. They have had a Nigerian priest as their rector who knows nothing about TEC and who has told them that TEC members worship God as Mother and don’t believe in the Trinity. This is the kind of misinformation that Iker and his ilk have fostered among the people.

Bishops who depend upon locally-trained clergy, a single-issue seminary, exclude the influence of national organizations like the UBE, Urban Caucus, Integrity, NECA, etc., who do not provide for good clergy continuing education, and depend on only local lay educational events lead dioceses into an extremely warped idea of what Church is about. When there is no fresh air in a diocese, the diocese becomes stagnant, dependant and ultimately ineffective in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

On February 7th, the Diocese of Ft. Worth will meet in convention to elect an interim bishop to help the people determine what steps need to be taken for the future. I am hoping that the court cases reclaiming the property and endowments for the Episcopalians will be mounted quickly for the sake of those who continue in the Church. Please pray for those who have had the temerity to be the Episcopal Church in Ft. Worth. Send the parishes and clergy of the continuing Church your regards and assurance of your prayers and thoughts. It has been quite difficult for these folks. Some of the continuing parishes are meeting in people’s homes or in other supportive denominations. But there IS fresh air here and the Holy Spirit is blowing freely. Thanks be to God!