June 25, 2006
(Third Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 7)

Hedgehogs, Unite!
Carrying Out the Ministry of Reconciliation

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Job 38:1-11,16-18  •  Psalm 107:1-32 or 107:1-3, 23-32  •  2 Corinthians 5:14-21  •  Mark 4:35-41;(5:1-20)
(From The Lectionary Page)

Alleluia! The General Convention is over!
The General Convention is over indeed! Alleluia!

It is great to be home. And it was a privilege to be in Columbus. I cannot adequately express my thanks to those who elected me at diocesan convention to serve as a deputy from this diocese.

As usual, nothing noteworthy took place at General Convention and the headlines were always precise.

I collected many buttons from various exhibitors and church agencies. I was not able to get my hands on the hottest button. Now think about this: It was a pink button with white letters reading: It’s a girl! (You can read about our Presiding Bishop-elect in the bulletin or here.)

The theme of the General Convention was Come and Grow. But the sub-theme of the gathering, mentioned repeatedly, is found in today’s reading from II Corinthians: We have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

Reconciliation has been the major focus of our current Presiding Bishop’s ministry. In his opening address to Convention, Bishop Griswold said:

Over the thirty years [that I have attended General Convention as a deputy or bishop] I have seen our two houses wrestle with difficult matters and make very wise decisions about our mission and our common life. Some of our decisions have been costly and involved difficult choices. This work of reconciliation is costly and demanding: it cost Jesus his life. Yet through the arms of Jesus, stretched out on the cross, humanity in all its variations and singularities is drawn together in a fierce and tenacious embrace of reconciling love.

Love is never an abstraction. Love is expressed in action and webs of relationships. [General Convention provides] an opportunity for us to experience together once again that the truth we seek is larger than any one point of view. Truth is discovered in communion.

In the third century Clement of Alexandria understood this tendency well. "Most people," he wrote, "are enclosed in their mortal bodies like a snail in its shell, curled up in their obsessions after the manner of hedgehogs. They form their notion of God's blessedness taking themselves for a model." (+Frank T. Griswold)

Therefore reconciliation means that we let go of our own model of what is truth, what is the church, what is the right thing to do or say, and enter into a diverse community to learn what Christ is calling us to become.

Bishop Griswold went on to say that as Anglicans, as people of the Book of Scripture and as people of the Sacraments, we have a unique capacity to make room for difference and remember that any one image of the church, however noble or precious it may be to those who possess it, is partial and incomplete.

The Reverend Senator John Danforth spoke at the Presiding Bishop’s Forum on Reconciliation and echoed this same understanding (read his remarks). This was the senator’s first time to attend a General Convention, in part, he said, because he preferred a gentler kind of politics like what he found in the US Senate!

Father Jack said that the center of American politics has eroded and "the common ground has been cut out because the most active and articulate people representing the political parties are on the fringes."

In this vain he observed that virtually all the public attention directed at General Convention had been on the issue of sexual orientation. "I don't want to downplay [that issue],” he said, “... but I want to raise the basic question of whether that issue is the centerpiece of the Episcopal Church.” "I believe that we have a higher calling, a more central message ... ours is a special calling to the ministry of reconciliation." The Episcopal Church has always represented the middle way, "where all sorts of people can come together around the altar to receive the Sacrament ... and have all sorts of different views on scripture and theology.” The title of his talk was “The Right Church for the Right Time.”

We voted on several hundred resolutions, but did not start smoothly. An electronic voting device, looking like a TV remote control, caused problems in the beginning, even for the male voters. It took more than three hours over two days to get the hang of it. A headline in the Diocese of Virginia daily publication called The Center Aisle labeled this problem as “electile dysfunction.” (Write the Bishop of Virginia if you have any comments.)

With reconciliation on our minds, the 75th General Convention has voted to call on Episcopalians to support the Millennium Development Goals by committing .7% of the budget of every congregation and diocese to support these goals. I will be engaging our lay leadership in serious conversation about committing a minimum of .7% our income to supporting the MDGs.

The Convention’s response to the Windsor Report was not divisive, as the Associated Press, Rueters and CNN described, destined to bring about the demise of the Anglican Communion. Debate, deliberations, and discussions were carried out with respect, charity, genuine affection and holiness. To be sure, all the elements of politics were present. With aplomb the Presiding Bishop and Presiding Bishop-elect played leadership roles in leading the House of Deputies to concur with House of Bishops on resolution B033 (ENS article), calling on all Bishops and Standing Committees to show restraint by withholding consent to the election of any bishop whose manner of life would be problematic for the rest of the Communion. (paraphrased from actual resolution.)

The debate prior to approving this measure was a series of holy moments. For some speakers, the thought of not being open to the gifts of gay and lesbian priests who might be elected to serve as bishops tore at their hearts. For other speakers, knowing that Anglicans around the world were looking for a moratorium on partnered bishops for the sake of the Communion’s unity, agreeing to this resolution that did not call for a moratorium meant giving up a dearly held position as well. In effect, nearly everyone sacrificed something in this resolution, leaving most deputies sad for one reason or another. Bishop Jefferts Shori told the Deputies that while she found the language of this resolution problematic, it was the best that we could do at this time. I did not vote in favor of this resolution, but I pledge to work diligently in support of it.

To us has been given the ministry of reconciliation. A book in honor of Bishop Griswold’s primacy, entitled I Have Called You Friends: Reflections on Reconciliation, includes words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He says the reconciliation is exhausting work, so exhausting that, as we heard in our Gospel, Jesus could sleep through a storm ravaging the Sea of Galilee and causing his fellow travelers to scream out for help. Those who take on the demands of this ministry will know the meaning of working tirelessly. There was a measure of holy exhaustion as the convention adjourned.

St. Paul writes: The love of Christ urges us on, for we are convinced that we must live no longer for ourselves but for him who died and was raised for us. In this Cathedral and in this City, we, too, must be about the work of reconciliation. But we must clearly recognize that such a ministry will cost us all something, something we hold dear and perhaps incorrectly consider essential to the faith.

The image of the Church that may be frozen in our memories no longer exists, just as the Church we wish to be dramatically and radically different overnight does not exist. Each extreme leads to idolatry, building a church that reflects our own needs and wants. Such a church as St. Clement says, is according to the manner of hedgehogs.

But for the sake of mission, for the sake of the world and not for the sake of the Church, we can open ourselves and live as servants with undefended hearts, servants present to, and responsible for, the weakest, the most despised, those without hope, those who mourn, those who are denied justice and the liberty God created all to enjoy.

I wrestled with several votes. In each case, I was supported by sisters and brothers who struggled with me, and together, as one community called The Episcopal Church, we are committed to carrying out the work the community has agreed to, regardless of how each voted. I see this commitment to community as being central to St. Paul’s concept of reconciliation.

My friends, ours is a remarkable Church, a life-giving Tradition. For every argument you have with a decision of General Convention, for every church-related disappointment you feel, for any thing before the Church that makes you cringe: rejoice and give thanks! For there is precisely where Christ is calling you to carry out the work of reconciliation.

Search out the truth found in others, for that truth will bring you and all the Church closer to Christ. Marvel at a Church that can take three hours to figure out how to use electronic voting devices, but need only 30 minutes to confirm the election of the first presiding bishop named Katharine.

Alleluia. The General Convention is over – but the work of Convention has begun. Hedgehogs, unite. There is work to do. Reconciliation is its name.

 

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The Untouchables

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

One of the benefits of taking a loved one to a series of medical appointments is that you get a chance to catch up on a lot of magazine reading. As I am now on a first name basis with the receptionists at 4 of my dad’s healthcare providers, believe me, I know whereof I speak. My favorite waiting room magazine, of late, has been National Geographic – largely because there is usually something of interest in every issue AND it doesn’t really matter how old it is. And so it was, two weeks ago, that I settled in for a 2 hour wait with a 3-year-old copy of National Geographic. I was immediately hooked by an article. It featured the caste of people in India formerly known as Untouchables, but who are now called Dalit, which translates to "oppressed." Though the caste system was officially outlawed in India in the 1940s, it is still very much a reality, especially in the rural areas. If you are born into an Untouchable caste, that is your lot. Rigid social, educational, economic, and religious boundaries conspire to keep you and your descendents in that place. And if you get uppity, well, there are ways of dealing with that, including maiming, poisoning, sometimes even murder. It was a chilling article because it highlighted an all-too-human tendency for drawing boundaries, assigning status, and creating social systems whose order and structure demands that such stratification be kept in place. And lest we smugly doubt that such a thing exists in this country, spend a day or two at any corporation or, frankly, any middle school. We're every bit as caste bound as India – we're just more subtle about it.

I found myself thinking about social boundaries as I reflected on our gospel passage. Following a day of teaching by the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the disciples put out to sea, heading for the Gentile side. Jewish fishermen wouldn't normally have strayed that far east. The Sea is Galilee is considerably smaller than our own Great Lakes. Or if you prefer a Missouri comparison, it’s about 25 square miles smaller than the Lake of the Ozarks. But it's still pretty big and, like the Great Lakes I grew up with, prone to sudden storms. But there was more to it than storm danger. Jewish cosmology tended to distrust large bodies of water. Unlike the Phoenicians to the north, the Jews were not generally seafaring. The sea represented the forces of chaos and disorder and, to the Jewish way of thinking at that time, chaos and God were mutually exclusive. Stay where you belong. Don't cross the boundary into chaos. So when the disciples run into the storm, they weren't just afraid of capsizing, they were spiritually afraid. They were where they believed God was not.

Jesus stills the storm, but before the disciples can register the implications of that miracle, they find themselves in a Triple Header of Terror. They are in Gentile country for starters, but worse than that, they encounter a man possessed by demons who lives in a graveyard immediately adjacent to a pasture where pigs are feeding.

OK, let’s review: man possessed by demons, graveyard, pigs.

This is no place for nice Jewish boys to be.

But it's exactly where Jesus is. He casts out the unclean spirits, permits them to enter into the swine, who then return to the realm of chaos which is the sea. The man is restored to soundness. You'd think that his neighbors would be high-fiving each other, bringing out every other diseased person for Jesus to heal. But they are dismayed. It wasn't merely that they were afraid of Jesus because of his power. They were afraid of what that power meant. Every society finds it useful to have an untouchable caste. Once you liberate those who are the least among you, it calls into question everything about a culture that is unspoken but inviolable: status, power, entitlement, the divvying up of resources. A lighted-hearted example: a Kansas City strip steak is beyond the reach of most of us for everyday meals. But if a nice, cold-smoked, dry-rubbed strip steak suddenly were to cost 99 cents a pound, access to it would be universal. It wouldn't be special, and you wouldn't be special for having eaten it. Some other high status meat would have to be identified or civilization would crash around us.

Okay, I'm being facetious here, but you get my point. The human quest to draw boundaries and establish status for some and deny it to others has been evident in just about every civilization since the dawn of history itself. The Jewish disciples, the gentile crowd, the people of India, and, dare I say, the Anglican Communion have that in common. It is not, however, an attribute that Jesus shares. He crosses boundaries with impunity, scattering his grace with wild, prodigal extravagance. No one is too lost or too untouchable to be beyond his care.

The implication for the disciples was astonishing: Jesus was Lord. Wherever he was, God was there, and every unclean force of chaos bowed to his will. For devout Jews who lived compartmentalized lives in obedience to the Torah, this was mind-blowing. Uncleanness was not something to avoid, it was something to restore. Every one and every thing was subject to the gracious will of God.

The implications for us today are a little different, though connected. Long before we leave middle school, we are adept at drawing boundary lines between "us" and "them." We use these boundary-drawing skills throughout our life and often behave as though it is God who draws those lines, not us. Today's gospel reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is in the business of inclusion and restoration. No one is too lost or too untouchable to be beyond his care, and by extension, beyond the care of those who follow Christ. There is no better news than this.

And...as followers of Christ and citizens of our own very complex, stratified culture, there is also perhaps no more challenging news than this either.