January 24, 2008
Establishment
Epiphany 3A (Mt 4.12-23)
God and the devil are walking along the road together. God sees something lying there and picks it up. The devil says, “What’s that?” God says, “It’s the truth.” The devil says, “Give it to me, and I’ll organize it.”
Matthew tells the story of Jesus selecting his disciples. It’s a story of both good news and bad news. The good news is to witness the apparently willing surrender of all that these men held dear — work, family, perhaps even their lives — for the uncertainty of whatever it might mean to follow Jesus, the kind of news that might inspire and embrace us all. What Paul called “fools for Christ.” The bad news is to witness what are probably the first steps, albeit nascent and even unintentional, in the attempt to organize truth.
A colleague of mine once introduced himself. He said, “I am a member of no organized religion. I am an Episcopalian.” Don’t we wish. Nevertheless, there is a strange and uniquely Anglican spin on the Gospel and its servant, the church, of which we might just remind ourselves from time to time. It would go something like this:
Perhaps our most important and distinguishing mark is corporate prayer, with thanksgiving (we call it Eucharist, another word for it) at the center of our worship. All that we do and the way we attempt to understand what we do grows out of our corporate worship, powered by grace, implemented by faith, gratitude with legs.
We discover God’s will for us in Scripture. But also in tradition, as says one of our prayers, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to (God) in hope.” We take this Scripture and this tradition and reason we strive to find the meaning in these things. All this is brought together for us in the shape of the liturgy, the work of the people, so that we can share and contribute mutual trust with our inheritance.
We distrust judgmentalism. We have no use for biblical literalism or for the arrogance of election and predestination. All we need do is look to our times to discover how these presumptions always lead to division, then hatred, then alienation, and what we presume to call just war. On the other hand, we embrace inclusiveness, we strive for moderation, we welcome toleration.
We live comfortably with ambiguity and eschew the premature conceit of certainty. We argue. We fight. But then, we come together once more for Common Prayer and Eucharist. For this is our way. We seem actually and rather quaintly to prefer a kind of vagueness and imprecision. We practice a generous and forgiving orthodoxy, an ordered freedom that often drives our fellow Christians bananas. Indeed, we are the oxymoron of the Christian endeavor and view of things.
Don’t we wish. Well, you might say that this description is a model of community to which we all might well aspire. There is a delightfully redundant diversity with a graced pragmatism about it all. As is often said of us, we proceed by the way of “probable persuasions.”
Frank Griswold, Bishop Katharine’s predecessor as presiding bishop, claims as his rule of life these words once spoken by a Roman Catholic archbishop from South America:
“The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.”
This, of course, must not only be true for our bishops, it must also be true for ourselves as individuals and as the church. Only our fear can prevent us from being such a community, and certainly not our capacity for welcoming and affirming diversity. If I must choose, and I hope never to have to, I would choose without question an uncertain church that is loving over a loveless church that is orthodox.
So thanks for listening. For your patience, here’s a blessing from the Franciscans, one you’ve seen here before, but once again simply because they had it so right.
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen
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