A Letter from the Dean

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

I would like to suggest the following way forward out of this impasse.

1. That we learn from the Eastern Orthodox and the uniate Rites within the Roman Catholic Church.
2. That we give up the notion of one bishop for one geographical area.
3. That Anglicanism have within it various Rites in the meaning above, e.g., the U.S. Rite, the Nigerian Rite, etc. which cross geographical boundaries.
4. That there may be significant variations within these rites so long as there is agreement on the points of the Lambeth Quadrilateral.
5. That all Bishops within these rites are in full Communion with the See of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion, thus both Bishops Mims and Robinson and other Bishops ordained for ministry in the United States by other Provinces are Bishops of the Anglican Communion and full participants in Lambeth.
6. That the U. S. Rite allows for the blessing of same sex relationships and the ordination of people to all orders who are in partnered relationships of the same sex.
7. That The Episcopal Church allow Primates and Bishops from other jurisdictions to exercise juridical authority within the United States, and that other Provinces allow the Primate and Bishops from The Episcopal Church to exercise juridical authority within all other geographical Provinces of the Anglican Communion.
8. That all real and personal property of The Episcopal Church and its dioceses belongs to The Episcopal Church, but that in those cases where a Diocese or Parish desires to join another Province such property may be purchased at fair market value for use by fellow Anglicans, and that those Dioceses or Parishes who wish to be part of The Episcopal Church in other countries be allowed to do the same.

Yours in Christ,
Tom+
The Very Reverend G. Thomas Luck

Comment: I saw this letter from Dean Tom Luck from our cathedral on the House of Bishops/Deputies list serve. He is to be commended for his willingness to wade in on a very difficult understanding of ecclesiology, of how the Episcopal Church understands itself. It says something about his bravery to post on that website simply because it is a good way to have your ideas fairly well dissected by everyone in the Church. It is also the first I have heard from anyone in the Diocese of CNY who has been willing to say ANYTHING about the current struggle in the Anglican Communion save in the ‘confidential’ settings of clergy conference and the blogs from the militant Right.

The intrepid Dean has an interesting proposal, and in the end, may be the way things shake out given the way that things happen in the Church, more because of NOT taking a stance. It may be the way that the Anglican Communion ends up rather than by coming to any new pro-active understanding of what is happening in the communion.

But the problems of ecclesiology that rise in Tom’s proposal are multitudinous.

From the last proposal, I have to go with the courts: The property belongs to The Episcopal Church (TEC) Full Stop! It may not be bought and sold or held hostage by those who want to go to Nigeria. Property is held in trust for all those who have gone before and for all those who will come after. Sorry. This is non-negotiable.

Proposal 7 poses some interesting concepts. This means that not only can Akinola continue to appoint priests and bishops in this country; it would allow any other province to do the same in his. Would the Californian bishops be happy if ++Carlos Touche sent priests to minister to the folks in east LA? Would the priests of the US like to minister to the ex-pats in Nigeria? This would cause the continued factionalizing along racial and ethnic lines like the Roman Catholic Church experienced in the 20th century and which is causing continued difficulties in the cities of the NE to this day. One of the important jobs of Church is the aid to the socialization of immigrants into any society or culture.
Proposal 6 I cannot complain about. It is an important ministry of TEC to the whole of Christian society in this country and abroad. In various ages, the dominant culture of an age has had to bring to the rest of the world an understanding of justice and fairness. It was England in the 18th century that raised the issue that slavery was immoral. It took America many years and a civil war to catch up. It may take that method of change to bring the issue of gay and lesbian civil and religious rights to other parts of the world. But it cannot stop us from declaring ordination and consecration of gays and lesbians is the right thing to do.
Proposals 1,4,5 uses another Roman Catholic model or even a Eastern model for unity. I am most uncomfortable with Roman Catholic models for anything in TEC because we don’t do Roman Catholic well! Anglo-Catholics who ape all things RC end up looking foolish and miss the point of what Anglican catholicity means. In TEC our penchant for election beats the appointment model on almost a visceral level. Episcopalians do not take well to ‘appointment’ of any kind. We want to have our say. And it is deeply rooted in our Episcopal Constitution and Canons that we are a church that holds all orders in equal respect and honor. I feel that Luck’s penchant for catholicity cannot out weigh the ingrained call for our church to be one of equality. This has been a tension—a healthy tension in TEC since it’s inception. We meddle with the balance of powers to our peril.

The uniate model really doesn’t work in this country for Roman Catholics or uniate Catholics—the issues of married clergy, and individual church order are run rough shod over by the Italian Church. Such a model in the Anglican Communion would be not only messy, given the behavior of the bishops who have been invading TEC, there would be no order. Also having different rites in which culture and language is the paramount difference, is quite different from matters in which the concept of faith and morals are at the center of the discontinuity.

At present we all do “agree to Lambeth Quadrilateral”. The problem is that there are some who simply refuse to abide by it. And that is the problem with Tom's proposals. We cannot call out the police if a bishop does not conform to the principle of unity. The only thing that we can do is say "you are not part of me." Which Scripture does seem to condemn.

Basically these proposals are a call for a “freeze frame” approach to what is going on now --a desire for everyone to agree to allow what is going on to continue. And I don’t think that addresses the problem.

What we have seen over the past 4 years is a minority assaulting the Church structure for their own advantage. It is has been no less a junta than what goes on in Latin America or Africa. And because we are a people who believe in the rule of equality, because TEC has bent over backward to listen to those who would undo our constitution and canons and who would undo the Anglican Communion in the process, we have allowed the tyranny by a minority. I am sorry, but I cannot agree to make peace with those who would use their bully-boy tactics. If they want to convince the majority of the Church they are where the Holy Spirit is going,and work within the context of our polity, then that is fair. What is not fair, what is not just, what is not Christian, is bringing in other nations into what was a cultural justice issue in our own Church that needed to be addressed. The issue will be an issue for Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda in the future and they can deal with it when it is right for their culture to do so. But for those in TEC, the so-called network folks need to know that doing an end run around the democratic principles of TEC will not be tolerated.

But more than any one thing that has set my teeth on edge is the disrespect for Christ that has been dramatized by those who would break communion. For bishops to refuse communion because they believe themselves to be holier than others smacks of a kind of disrespect for all that any Anglican holds dear—the Body and Blood of our Lord. That we who have been in the Church for the past 30 years to put up with the antics of +Ft. Worth, +San Joachin, +Quincy, +Fond du lac says that we have been willing to accommodate the unworthy at communion because we believe Christ makes all worthy to commune. For those who would separate themselves, I would say “Go with God. You have not been a member of TEC for ages. Go to Africa, Brazil, or where ever and be happy.!” But leave the keys on your way out. Yes, take your pensions, you worked hard for them. But go and minister in Christ in the Church you have chosen.”

No Tom, we cannot just say “let bygones be bygones”. Too much damage has been done to our Church’s structure as it is by the bishops of the Network or what other alphabet soup they choose to go by.

What the Episcopal Church did in the early 19th century when they chose to be a church not based upon the” Lord Bishop’s” concept of government, was to devise a new formula for Church than what was practiced in England, Italy or Constantinople. We have lived by this form of ecclesiology for 200 years because our bishops knew that they were elected by the people and were accountable to the clergy and laity of their dioceses. We have been unwilling to allow the meddling in each other’s ministries all over the globe. If we let go of that principle, we will never have any order.

Should we walk apart? No. We should not choose to break Communion with anyone. If they force us to go, then the blood shall be upon their heads. It will be TEC that will survive simply because the old 'Lord Bishop' type of church is dying and one in which clergy and laity must work together will be the one that survives.

Thanks, Tom+. It has gotten the conversation going.

Balance of Power and the Calling Process

Part of what makes the government of the Episcopal Church work is its balance of powers. Just as in the American Constitution the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government balance each other, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church are to hold in tension the powers of bishops, clergy and laity.

Over the past few years one aspect of these powers, the calling of a Rector in the Diocese of Central New York, has been eroded by the appointment of clergy to specific parishes as vicars and then after a year, their appointment as Rector. This has been done by the bishop rather than through a clear calling process in which the parish takes the responsibility for calling its Rector with the bishop’s approval. This practice flies in the face of the traditions of not only the diocese but the Episcopal Church as a whole.

The present practice which is provided because either the diocese cannot get qualified clergy to make application to the parishes, or because the present system is too unwieldy for the congregations means that the clergy are then beholden, not to their congregations where their ministry should be centered, but to the bishop. This makes the power structures in the diocese uneven and unbalanced. It means that the calling of clergy by parishes is now completely in the hands of clerics instead of a walking together of clergy and lay. It also gives the bishop an inordinate amount of power in the diocese when that power should be balanced with clergy and laity.

Granted, many of our churches are now part-time cures. That in and of itself, makes it difficult to get clergy to come to CNY. But there are other dioceses where the decline of membership has called for different styles of leadership in parishes. Various kinds of cluster ministries, yoked situations have often cobbled together congregations so that they can support clerics, all to various degrees of success. Nothing beats the one parish/one cleric model of ministry. But not all of our parishes have that luxury in the present age.

All kinds of ministerial efforts are being considered. We have raised up indigenous clergy, members of a parish who become the “parson” or “person” in the old English sense. These congregations should be commended. But there are still parishes that have chosen to select their clergy from outside of the Diocese to help keep the diocese from stagnating with local clergy and opening the diocese to the wider Church.

My experience with a diocese that tried to control who came into it was the Diocese of Ft. Worth who only allowed clergy with like minds with the bishop to be allowed to be submitted to the parishes of the diocese. This diocese in its 20 some years of existence has never been part of the mainstream of the Episcopal Church. The clergy are fearful of saying anything that does not conform to the bishop’s ideology. And it fosters fear and dishonesty among the clergy because the power of the bishop is not held in balance among the orders of the Church. And no self-respecting Episcopal cleric will apply to churches in that diocese. This diocese is one of the ones now threatening to leave the Episcopal Church. And I would suggest that it is because the basic balance of powers has never been exercised in that diocese that this problem exists.

In CNY we are faced with the loss of parishes taking responsibility for the calling of their clergy. With fewer and fewer congregations going through the rather dense process to call clergy, and a process which is becoming incrementally more complex because of the lack of clear expectations from the Diocese, what is happening is that clergy and congregations are becoming less bonded to the ministry together. Clergy who are missioned by the bishop do not have the same connections with their parishes. And a common ideology of the ministry of the bishop is beginning to grow within the diocese that looks more Roman Catholic than Episcopalian. It erodes the pact between clergy and lay members. It makes the laity dependant upon the bishop rather than as discreet powers unto themselves that the Constitution and Canons hold as important for the good order of the Church.

What is needed is a process of calling a Rector that is clear and unbounded by the powers of the bishop. By canon it is always the bishop’s right to vet the clergy coming into the diocese and that responsibility should always be available to the bishop of a diocese. But the process of calling a new rector should not be clouded with Byzantine requirements and ever-changing remedies so that the bishop can control who might be considered by a parish.

Many dioceses help their parishes develop a profile for the Church Deployment Office (CDO) and then let them cull and interview those who submit their resumes. Then when the parish has pared the list down to a manageable number, ask the bishop to vet the names that have presented themselves to the congregation. In this way the major work is being done by the parish and for the parish. And the bishop still has a way to have some say but not an ordinate amount. This form of calling is used in many dioceses and could easily be used in the Diocese of Central NY if approved by convention vote. We have the right to order ourselves by convention and we should move to reclaim the rights of the laity with such an effort. Comments are welcomed.

Airing Linen

I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of secrecy. My experience of Christ is one of liberation and openness. Relationship is predicated upon the Light of Christ finding its way into every nook and cranny of my being. It requires not only honesty with one’s self; relationship with God requires an honesty with others that is also one of transparency.

As clergy, I have been required to maintain confidentialities of those who come to me as a part of pastoral concern. Sometimes I know things, especially in the parish, that cannot be shared because the individual who confided in me should be the person to speak of their particular concern. But here lies a sociological conundrum. How do I keep from triangling in relationships?

Triangling is getting someone else to do your work for you without you having to reveal your motives. Person A goes to Person B and tells them that C needs to do something so that B will put pressure on C to do it. It is a dishonest transaction; A should speak to C him/her self. Clergy often end up being the Person B in congregations simply because we are the person everyone comes to. The real clue is that as a pastor, I cannot go to C. I have to encourage A to go to C to provide healthy relationships in the parish.

When there is conflict I feel that the more information I have about an issue the better informed I am to resolve a conflict. It means that I have to be deadly honest with myself and with others if goodness and healing is going to result. I believe sincerely in the healing powers of the Light of Christ. “The truth shall set you free” is not merely an axiom in my spiritual journey; it works. It not only works in my personal life. It works in my corporate life.

When so many Roman Catholic prelates were being exposed for having obscured the sexual abuse of children by clerics in their charge, I understood both the plight of parents who demanded openness from the hierarchy. I also understood the charge to protect the Church by the bishops. After all, I had known Cardinal Law when he was a young bishop in Springfield, MO. I knew that he had been a man of compassion and honesty. But as the story began to unfold about the obfuscation that so deeply permeated the Archdiocese of Massachusetts, I began to see such triangling that led to sinfulness because of the basic dishonesty of the transactions. Protection began to be avoidance, and avoidance began to be arrogance in the face of abuse. Lives were being ruined simply to keep up appearances.

Today, I would rather err on the side of transparency than be a party to obfuscation in the Church. I do not wish to be a party to continued abuse of those who have been victims. However, after many years of working with the victims of abuse, I know it is in the airing of the abuse that most victims leave behind the role of victim and move into the role of survivor and then to healing. When those who have come forward begin to throw off the shame of abuse the Church needs to affirm that action by confirming transparency rather than further obscuring the facts. It is a delicate task but we need to find ways to do it.
What drives me nutz however, is the way some fall back on confidentiality to avoid taking responsibility for one’s own personal agenda. For Person A to go to Person B and expect Person B to tell Person C to change and then for Person B to refer to Person A but not by name is dishonest. When leadership falls back on an unidentified accuser as the underpinnings for punishment of a member of the group, it flies in the face of basic civil justice. The accused must be able to address his/her accusers. The Church may not be cavalier in the way it addresses information. As a leader of the Church I may not base my evaluation of another on innuendo or gossip, but only in the light of honest interaction. For leadership the task is not in telling Person C of their sins, it to bring Person A and Person C together to talk about differences. The airing of differences often leads to healing.

What confidentiality cannot be in the Church is a repository of ill will. I cannot simply allow issues to plod along without addressing them in the name of holding things in confidence and paralyzing Persons A and C from ever coming to grips with the issues they have between them. Nor may I use these differences as a way to hold the group hostage as the only bearer of the whole story. As a Christian I am required by faith to believe that Christ’s light can heal. It is in airing this kind of linen that allows issues to be addressed by all concerned rather than to be hidden allowed to fester. But this must be done in an atmosphere of trust.

The sad part of all of this is that there seems to be so little trust in the Church at present. It would be easier for me to give up on the healing in the Church because there is little trust its system. But my hope is in God, not in leadership or ecclesial systems. The Church has often shot itself in the foot. The Church is only as perfect as I am and that isn’t very. I cannot delude myself into believing that Church is going to be better than I am willing to be. But I also need to trust that God perfects God’s Church by calling us to new and better ways of airing our differences for the good of the whole. It is a difficult task, but I believe essential if we are to survive in the face of post-modern cynicism. The transparency I can model today may mean healing for tomorrow.

Signs of the Times

Sermon
St. John’s, Ithaca
August 19, 2007

This morning as I was driving here, I saw several deer, some fawns with their spots along side their mothers. I saw a flock of wild turkey, a skunk which I carfully avoided, a raccoon and some trees with the ever so lightly tinged with yellow and orange. The coolness of the morning tells us that fall is just around the corner and summer is almost gone. It is a bittersweet morning for those of us who live in upstate NY. We know that the summer that we wait 9 long months for each year is fading and we know that winter will be with us before long. It is that same kind of feeling that I believe that Jesus was reminding the people in today's reading.

For the last 2 weeks I have complained that the readings are those that the compilers of the lectionary put in August because preachers go on vacation in August and stick the visiting priest with these lessons. And today’s readings take the cake! In a world that would proclaim “Jesus loves you” from t-shirt to bumper sticker, and saccharine sweet images of the Divine dog our every move, this passage sounds remarkably harsh.
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He journeys there to address the misconduct of the religious leadership. He goes to Jerusalem because he is speaking truth to power. He goes there to call the people to repentance. The fire he enjoins upon the people is a cleansing flame—a refiner’s fire. The division he promises is not battle, but the kind of pruning that is necessary for a plant to grow.

This is not the Jesus of our childhood. This is the Christ that calls us to discipleship. This is not Sweet Jesus, meek and mild; this is the Christ who invites us to renewal and change. This is not something we want to hear on a hot August morning.

But there is no time like the present to address this passage. Jesus calls his people to recognize in the crisis of his day the call to change. And I would suggest that it remains the same for us too. If we are to understand the signs of our times and how to meet them in a Christ-like fashion, we must understand what is going on in our world.

Last week I said that I was beginning to see some slight moving toward a sense of compromise in the Episcopal Church in the light of the schism that has been tearing at us for the past 4 years. And that may be true. But I have not dealt with the whole of the issue. I could probably speak for a month on what has happened in various places in the Anglican Communion. But mostly it is an issue that began in the US over the inclusion of gay folk in the Church and in the ordained ministry.

It would be easy to blame us gays for all of this. In fact, that is what many of those who set themselves apart say that this whole crisis is about. But I daresay that if it had not been the election of a gay bishop who was in an open and affirming relationship, there would have been some other kind of crisis conjured by those who are leading the schism. This schism is not about human sexuality! It is about power and authority and who has the right to determine the path that we as Church may go. It has been nothing less than a junta, an attempt to overthrow the basic government of the Episcopal Church by a minority who cannot get their way through normal elective processes.

Underlying this attempt at take over are theologies galore which are alien to the Episcopal ethos: Biblical inerrancy, covenantal professions, fourth-century orthodoxy have all been trotted out to show how wrong the Episcopal Church is and how righteous their segment of the Church is. They are the TRUE Church—the TRUE Anglican Church in the United States, and we are apostate, we are told. But now that the Archbishop of York, the primate of England, protests their “Anglicanicity”, those who would divide the Episcopal Church are now saying that they are holier than the Anglicans and they don’t need the Anglicans either.

In all of this mudslinging, though, there is good that is coming out. And I believe it is this that Jesus is referring to in today’s readings. We as Episcopalians and Anglicans are being forced to differintiate who we are in ways that we have not had to for as long as I have been in the Church. We are being forced to say that we are a denomination of Christianity that is going to be welcoming and open to a wide variety of people. We are saying that we are a place where there is much latitude in faith and that people with widely diverging ideas can meet, discuss their faith, and form community without having to be homogenized. We are not saying that those who disagree must leave. On the contrary we invite them to be with us, to commune with us, to celebrate Christ’s Church in ways that further the broadness of our communion.

It is in this crisis that we as Episcopalians have had to declare who we are, and whose we are. And this is not a bad thing today when the title ‘Christian’ is becoming a word that has been appropriated by right-wing political ideology to mean something remarkably anti-intellectual and strident. For the Episcopal Church, the epitome of what once was described as the “Republican Party at Prayer” is now called upon to articulate itself, without its ideological trappings, without its regard to status. We are having to claim ourselves as open to conservatives AND liberal, open to catholics and evangelicals, and open to those who have often been excluded simply because of who they are. We are being forced not just to SAY we include, we are having to LIVE this out in radical ways that are uncomfortable and perhaps even somewhat embarrassing. We are having to put our money where our mouths are. We are having to live out an inclusivity that we would rather give lip service to, but the crisis now says we must step up to the plate.

Forty-two years ago this past week a young Episcopal seminarian by the name of Jonathan Myreck Daniels forced the Episcopal Church to deal with the inclusion of people of color. The Church had paid lip service to integration, the plurality of membership. But throughout the South, Blacks couldn’t attend a white Episcopal Church. Jonathan Daniels and Judy Upham, now a priest of our diocese who serves St. Mark’s in Candor, went to Selma to stand as witness to white brutality in the Black sections of that city. Their presence brought the inhumanity of racial segregation to the crisis point. Jonathan was gunned down on the streets of a small Alabama town on August 20, 1965 because he was trying to register Black folks for the vote. Last summer Judy and I returned to Selma to participate in the memorial to the Alabama martyrs. Judy carried a picture of Jon while we retraced the journey that Jon and others made that fateful day. They had no understanding then that the crisis that unfolded was to open the Episcopal Church to an acceptance of what we know as a Christian truth: that all are created equal in the sight of the Lord.

The strife in the Episcopal Church today is a crisis from which we are all going to learn. It has been painful; it will continue to be painful. But I do believe that we as Church are going to come away from this schismatic attempt by some, a better and healthier Church. The purpose of the Church is to preach and teach the love of God. And I see the Episcopal Church doing that. Our bishops have made it clear that they will not step back from the ordaining gay folk in open relationships. Our General Convention has shown that it supports the legislation that is open and welcoming. And over this summer I have heard the clearest and most open discussions of who we are as Church and what we proclaim. It is a Church that I can support whole heartedly because it has taken Jesus at his word. It has not shrunk from Jesus’ fire or sword. It has been willing to stand the test. And yes, there has been division. There has not been peace. But there have been good things that have come from this.

Jesus chastises the people of his day for not understanding the signs of the times. In Luke, we hear him say that we can tell when it is going to rain, why can’t we interpret the signs of the coming of the Messiah? I do believe that the “present unpleasantness” as some would call the past four years in the Church, is a sign of God’s work. I do believe that the crisis that we have seen will bring about the kind of change that will allow us to meet the challenges of a new era. I do believe the Christianity is alive and well and not bound by anti-intellectual tomfoolery. And I believe that the Episcopal Church will continue to be a place where all will be welcome no matter what our theological stance. And I believe that what will unite us is what has kept us together for 2000 years—the Eucharist of the Altar.

If we cut ourselves off from that, then we will lose our focus on Jesus and devolve into some kind of group of nay-sayers that provide no substance or sustenance for the people of God. I hurt for those who have separated themselves from us. I hurt for us in losing them. But I will not step back from the place of inclusion to which Christ has led us. For Church is not about how many enter the doors. It is about being faithful to a Christ that would take such crises and bring growth from them. We must be willing to experience the fire. We must be willing to endure the battle. We must be willing to read the signs of our times. We must be willing to recognize Christ’s hand at work among us and rejoice. AMEN

Betrayal of Innocence

Word has come this week of the suspension of another colleague for sexual misconduct with minors. It is a terrible blow. I have known the priest for many years and considered him a respected colleague. He has accepted the decision of the bishop to suspend his orders for 20 years which will effectively remove him from the priesthood for the rest of his life. And I agree most heartily with the actions of the bishop. But I am still left grieving for the young people who were molested, for the priest who has fallen so far from the grace of God and for the Church who has been besmirched by his actions.

The adolescences that were betrayed, I hope, are being tended to by professionals who can help them regain an unsullied image of themselves. There will be no way for them to regain their innocence about life, themselves or the Church. They will forever question themselves about their own involvement because that is the nature of sexual abuse. That betrayal of innocence will mark them the whole of their lives. And that is why this sin is so abhorred by all.

I do not understand the need for adults to find sexual gratification from young people. I can understand the temptation to find sexual gratification from others. I can understand the extreme loneliness that often comes in the way of life that is called the priesthood. I also can understand the loss of control that leads one into temptation. But I do not understand the desire to destroy the innocence of young people or children nor the naiveté that perpetrators often delude themselves with when they ignore it. But understanding the motivations or the temptations are not necessary. I just know of the evil of it. And the anger that image surfaces is a temptation toward sin in and of itself.

What do I do with the feelings I have for the colleague who has violated those boundaries? Do I hate him or her? No! I am unwilling to be facile about ‘loving the sinner and hate the sin.’ I must be willing to stand in that very uncomfortable place between the sinner and the sin and invite the sinner to return to faith. That is what is called of the Christian.

It would be easier to just hate the sinner and remove him/her from my acquaintance. But as a Christian I am called to accept the judgment of God, that all are deserving of Divine mercy. And perhaps that is what is so difficult about this particular issue in the Church. For us to know the mercy of God means that we must be willing to forgive. There is part of me that would like to stay angry at my colleague; there is so much energy in righteous indignation. But that would pull me into his sinfulness. I cannot go there for the sake of my own soul.

Over the past 15 years or so, we as Church have had to address this problem of the misconduct of clergy in a much more up-front way than it was dealt with in the past. We cannot shove things under the rug as did the Roman Catholics in Boston. We must be willing to look dispassionately at the failure of fellow clergy. We must be willing to offer the mercy of God and not shun those who fail, but we may not ignore it. We must be willing to stand in that space of discomfort between the sinner and the sin, between the image and the reality of a Church that is heavenly inspired but lived-out in the muck of temptation and sin.

We, as Church, can no longer live in a naïveté that the organization is holy without our vigilance. We cannot know our churches as being safe if we are not diligent in making them so. We cannot expect our clergy to be impervious to sin in positions where there is little collegial support, no ecclesial support and damned little support of our parishioners. We must be willing to understand “there but for the grace of God, go I.” We all are capable of such sin save for the grace of God. And consequently the Church may not maintain a veneer of innocence. We are all sinners in need of redemption.

And so I stand today, chastened by my friend’s sin, yet with my hand open to him inviting him/her to the mercy of God. I stand loving my Church knowing that she will never be the same, and yet knowing that she is the fount of blessing for me as always.

Greed

I am not sure where the compilers of the Lectionary get their readings for August. I am sure, however, they were all Rectors who took their vacations during August and left such readings for the supply clergy to have to deal with.

In the Gospel reading we find Jesus being asked to settle a dispute between two brothers. Jesus responds in a harsh way that to us is surprising. He says “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Jesus will not be drawn into a dispute over things.

The role of a rabbi in the first century was often to be the arbiter of such squabbles in a community. Rabbis knew the Law, and could render judgments that were binding. But Jesus did not want to enter into this kind of legal fracas. He wanted to deal with the issue for what it was—a fight over money. At the center of the feud was not fairness, not justice, but greed. Jesus’ response is harsh. He will not be pulled into a fight over things.

All too often we fight over ‘things.’ We even get to the place where the things are made into principles, principles that become some how holy and righteous in the process. But in this instance, Jesus, stops the discussion and tells the parable about the rich man who tears down his barns to build even bigger ones for all the things he has. ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

Jesus cuts through all the pious ‘fairness’ stuff and gets to the heart of the man’s request. It is GREED.
There is no greater sin in the Bible than idolatry. It is the sin that God punishes unmercifully in Hebrew Scripture. The Old Testament is filled with stories of the Hebrew people betraying their covenant and losing their inheritance. Idolatry, the going after other gods, is the fundamental distrust in the God who has given everything to the believer. In today’s epistle reading from Colossians, the writer equates greed with idolatry—placing things above the place of God. Anytime believers put more trust in their possessions than God, they commit the sin of idolatry. And I would suggest that the greatest sin that tempts us today is not sexual profligacy. I would suggest that in a consumer economy the greatest temptation to sin is greed.

Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with the temptation to put things before God and others. Our media is lousy with ads that badger us to buy this or that so that we will be prettier, stronger, brighter, and more with-it than the next guy. And ultimately we are to be so self-sufficient that we no longer need God. Once we have all the things that we want, we must be willing to protect those things. We build bigger barns, move to a larger house, buy more insurance, and put up higher fences. We cannot leave our things any longer to visit other places or cultures to broaden our perspectives about life. We must find ways to guard our property. We become prisoners of our possessions.

Judy and I have so many books that it has become too expensive to move. The cost of moving all those books is prohibitive. Will we reread all those books? Not in a lifetime! Now, I know that none of you have this problem. But over the years we have inherited things like our mother’s china, or been given all kinds of ‘valuable’ things for which we have no earthly use, but because they are ‘heirlooms’ we feel some responsibility for. These have become albatrosses hung about our collective necks. I remember when we moved Mom to a retirement center; I found my high school prom dress, which she had painstakingly made, still in the closet. I had a hard time sending that to Salvation Army. I guess I could have sold it as an antique on EBay but…. We become overwhelmed with things.

Now, I often divide the world up into “Keepers” and “Neatnicks.” For those of us who are packrats, we must be willing to see our penchant for nostalgia may be rooted in the sin of putting our trust in things. For those of us who can throw things away easily, we must guard against consuming more than our share of the world’s commodity. In either case, the glorious age of consumerism that is gripping the world is a time when we must guard against the sin that would have us believe that we deserve or are entitled to whatever simply because we can afford it, or more importantly, even when we can’t. The sin of greed is insidious. It makes us think we are invulnerable. It can make us foolish thinking that somehow we may ignore God’s command to love others as ourselves. We can merely send our money rather than screw up enough compassion to care about people in dire situations.

Greed is an embarrassing sin. At some level we know that the quality of life that we have in the US impinges upon the rest of the world. We make all kinds of excuses---we give so much to other nations, or we are basically good people, or we WORK for our things, or we deserve it because we have made ourselves great. “God helps those who help themselves” we say. (By the way, that does not come from the Bible. It is found in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, but it is not from Scripture.)

But the Christian life is not about what we deserve. If we follow Protestant theology, we are nothing and deserving of nothing except by the grace of God. There is one thing that working among the Lutherans for the past couple of years has done is reacquaint me with the concept of sin. Lutherans don’t believe they have been to church if they have not been made aware of their sins and then told that God has forgiven them. We, Episcopalians on the other hand, are likely to say, “Sin, do we still talk about that?”

But we must be willing to recognize that we are being tempted by an economic-political sphere that would have us believe that we can fiscally control the world. The adage “he who dies with the most toys, wins” is not only NOT true; it is remarkably leading many of us away from trusting in God. We are creating false gods to follow. At some point we are going to have to hear: ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

There is a story going around that I heard at Luther leadership camp a week ago. A wealthy man was dying, and he made arrangements with the local funeral home for his burial. He asked that a specific picture of his family that hung over his mantle be buried with him. The family all gathered around the man when he died. At the funeral home, the director could not get the picture and its frame into the coffin so he took the picture out of the frame. Out of the frame fell $160,000. The family was so angry that they refused to go to the funeral! Taking it with us is not an option.

It was this kind of fight over money that Jesus refused to get involved in. He chose instead to bring the focus of the man back upon his own greed. It is a difficult task, to look upon our sinfulness. But unless we do, we can never repent. We can never come to know the real joy that comes from knowing the benevolence of God’s grace. And we can never choose to be better and happier trusting in God’s grace to save us from want.

I invite us all this week to look at the places where greed has seeped into our lives. Allow yourself to acknowledge the sin of trusting in things rather than God’s loving- mercy by changing your consumer habits. And let us rejoice, unlike the Lutherans who don’t rejoice much, that we are saved by the grace of a loving God. AMEN.

Halleluia! It is Finished!

The whole saga of the trial of the Rev. David Bollinger was finished today. The ecclesiastical court dismissed the case.

Since 2005 this case of alleged fiduciary misconduct against Fr. Bollinger has hung in the wind. Bollinger a veteran priest of 24 years and almost 20 years at St. Paul’s, Owego has served as a district dean, and on the Diocesan trial court.

This began when allegations of sexual abuse of minors by a previous rector began to surface in the congregation. Fr. Bollinger went to the bishop and asked for an investigation of these allegations. At the same time an auditor found irregularities in the parish accounting system. Bishop Gladstone, “Skip” Adams, ordinary of the Diocese of Central NY refused to deal with the abuse and focused the attention on the financial irregularities on Fr. Bollinger. He called for a forensic audit of the Discretionary accounts of the parish at the cost of $30,000 to the diocese . In 2005 the Standing Committee brought charges against Fr. Bollinger and then turned the case over to the State’s Attorney for prosecution of alleged crime. Fr. Bollinger was inhibited, removed from his parish and the parish declared vacant without a trial. He was disallowed contact with members of the clergy, those who had reported their abuse to him and denied access to the parish buildings. No civil or criminal charge has ever been brought against Fr. Bollinger by state or federal authorities.

From the beginning Fr. Bollinger has denied the accusations leveled against him. Members of his parish have been mystified by the bishop’s actions. All the questioned expenditures by Fr. Bollinger had been allowed by the parish Vestry (lay council). But these explanations by the Vestry and Wardens of the parish were ignored by the Diocese.

For three years Fr. Bollinger was not allowed to work at his chosen profession, denied health care at a time when a member of the family was battling cancer and left without pastoral care or concern. He was basically shunned by the diocese in which Fr. Bollinger had grown up.

He was denied hearings that were required by the canons before the Standing Committee. He was denied legal assistance when the diocese could have provided it when it was shown that he did not have sufficient funds to provide counsel for himself. Fr. Bollinger suffered a heart attack in the ensuing years and is now on disability retirement.

Today, some three years following the inhibition, the case against Fr. Bollinger was dismissed for lack of evidence.

The court in its judgment said that the Diocese had not made its case. Several times in the two-day trial, the court reminded the Diocese that it had made clear the deadlines for providing materials in the discovery portion of the deliberations. The Diocese had not provided the court with a list of witnesses or a description of the evidence that they intended to present in a timely fashion. Fr. Bollinger had met those criteria in all of those occasions.

In June Bishop Adams asked the Standing Committee for a change of venue to another diocese. The Standing Committee voted unanimously to deny that change. The Court said that it took umbrage at the cavalier attitude that the Diocese took regarding the discovery period deadlines. They summarily dismissed all evidence and witnesses of the Diocese saying that it was trying to “even the playing field” so that the process of the trial would be fair.

When the Court judged that the Diocese had not proved their case, some sharp criticism by the Chair of the Court, Carter Strickland, Esq. and member of Trinity Parish, Fayetteville, said that they had strived to make sure that any trial procedures were done in a way that both the Diocese and Fr. Bollinger were treated fairly and with equal access to the legal system.

The Court was made up of the Rev. Jennifer Montgomery, the Rev. William Lutz, the Rev. John Rafter, Ms. Mary Lou Crowley, Esq. and Mr. Carter Strickland, Esq.

Comments: There has been considerable anxiety in the diocese regarding this trial. Many clergy of the diocese watched anxiously to see if the rights of the priest were going to be upheld. Since the changes in Title IV, the disciplinary canons, have been revised, there have been many questions about whether the check and balances that were once in effect would safe guard the rights of the cleric. In this case, it is gratifying to note that the Court upheld the fairness of the legal system. The Court is to be congratulated for the bravery to address their bishop’s or his lawyers’ flagrant disregard for the rules of the Court. It is sad to see the Diocese either resort to such tactics or ignore the dictates of the Court that was elected by the Diocese in Convention when the case is being watched by so many in TEC.

As a result, there will most likely be several resolutions or attempts to change the canons of the Diocese to provide for better handling of matters in which the accused is provided with appropriate counsel and access to pastoral care when there is a presentment is made.

In this case, most likely the irregularities in the financial structures of the parish would have been found to stem from the priest that had crossed the boundaries of conduct with children in his diocese. It is well-known that financial misconduct often is seen when there is also sexual misconduct. It is sad that the jump to accuse the present rector for another’s deeds has led to such pain for the Diocese and for Fr. Bollinger and his family. We as a diocese need to be willing to hold the proper authorities accountable for this affair.