December 1, 2006
Andrew
Andrew was an advance man and subsequent headhunter for Jesus. He got Peter on board and got his fifteen minutes of fame for the doing of it. We remembered his good work yesterday in the church’s calendaring of things and people. It is good that we have these special days to call up our spiritual kin and how they helped build the church’s foundation for us.
Andrew’s life tells us about trust, for he trusted what he heard about Jesus and followed suit. His commitment, of course, was primarily an act of faith, but his faith informed his trust which is as it should and must be. Faith creates trust, provides it with backbone.
So much of our energy with regard to God these days has to do not with trust, but with distrust and the control it requires to protect ourselves. At some deep level, our increasingly inordinate concern for doctrine, theology, and some elusive thing called “Anglican orthodoxy” seems grounded in such distrust. We want faith to be a dependable system and litmus, not a personal risk. We want assurance of its benefits, proof of its performance. We have our eyes on the prize, not on the giver of the prize.
We gather in our so-called communities of faith, but just like any other secular institution, we insist on negotiating contracts to protect our interests. We don’t call them contracts, of course, but what else are we doing when we argue about budgets, vision statements, liturgical norms, and leadership? We demand commitments, letters of agreement, pledge statements, creeds, and job descriptions.
Take the way we choose our leaders. Fear as much as faith and trust permeates the search process. That process now includes extensive (and expensive) background checks, takes longer and longer, and causes unnecessary delays. Is this a sign that we searchers don’t trust our own abilities, our own hunches, that we worry about the congregation’s trust in us, and that we don’t even trust those to whom we give our trust? One of our church’s sharper theologians once said that the way to know God’s will for us is to trust our hunches.
All of this is embarrassingly doubled in spades in those dioceses where bishops frequently and irregularly intrude into the search process and into the autonomy of the Standing Committee, suggesting that neither do they trust us. But as insulting and patronizing to all of us, especially to the laity, as this is, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe they neither trust those who elected them in the first place nor those officials throughout the church who approved their election and subsequent ordination. Maybe they don’t even trust themselves. How can any good come of such distrust?
I asked one of our recent nominees for bishop what sacrifice he would ask of our diocese. He said, “I would ask you to trust me.” We didn’t pursue the meaning of sacrifice, but I like to remember that its real meaning is to “make holy.”
I wish we could simply trust that the Holy Spirit will do what is right, then listen up in order to hear. I wish some of our bishops could, as well. Then we might really have a net that works. Like the one Andrew used.