Dream along with God, Presiding Bishop tells Union Theological Seminary convocation
Episcopal News Service. September 11, 2007 [091107-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg, Daniel Webster, Director of media relations for the National Council of Churches USA
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told the incoming class at Union Theological Seminary September 5 that they need to consider "how theological thinking is going to help to shape the rest of your life."
"The task of theological education really is to help us learn to do theology -- to relate our own stories, and the stories of those around us, to the great stories of our faith, so that we may be able to give an account of the faith that is within us," she said. "Theological education can bless us with the ability to see the need and hurt and injustice of the world, the ways in which God's dream is not yet being realized."
Jefferts Schori based her address, titled "Theological Education and the Dream of God," on Isaiah 61:1-9, saying that the verses sum up God's dream for humanity.
"This vision of a restored world, this dream of God, is what drives me," she said.
It was the 172nd time that new students at Union had formally begun a new academic year. James Chapel, on the 100-year-old Morningside Heights campus of the seminary, was bathed in a vesper light with the setting sun illuminating the grey, gothic building's west-facing stained glass windows.
The chapel balcony was filled and the main floor was standing room only, as friends, faculty, returning students and neighbors from the surrounding Columbia University/The Riverside Church/The Inter-church Center neighborhood gathered to welcome nearly 100 future leaders of religious communities across the country and around the world.
As new students and faculty gathered for a call to worship in the quadrangle, those waiting in the chapel heard a lone saxophone play a slow, jazz melody in a minor key as a single sacred dance artist moved through the space embodying the music.
The future church leaders demonstrated a broad diversity of age, race, ethnicity, national origin and gender. Faculty members, some wearing their academic robes and hoods, followed their newest members of their academic community. Jefferts Schori was clad in rochet and chimere with her black tippet and doctoral hood.
"What you gather in this place will inform and undergird the rest of your ministries, in church and out," Jefferts Schori told the incoming students. "And, God willing, you will find challenge enough here to keep you restless for the rest of time."
Introducing Jefferts Schori, UTS president Joseph C. Hough Jr. said her election is "emblematic of the determination of the Episcopal Church to embody a new church for the 21st century and to forge a model for a prophetic church in a radically changing world."
Hough said that Jefferts Schori's election is a "prophetic statement to the church and the world at a time when aggressive misogyny has reared its ugly head in many Christian communions, determined to restore the full grip of male hegemony in the leadership of Christian Churches."
"She and her church in full view of the world have defied this trend and engendered hope for many of us Christians who abhor this sort of male exclusivism," Hough continued.
Hough said that "since misogyny is almost always accompanied by homophobia, it is hardly surprising that she has been the object of virulent attacks for her openness to gay ordination from some of her fellow bishops and clergy in the Anglican Communion."
"What is so wondrous for me to see is her refusal to engage in white hot polemics in response to this ecclesiastical skullduggery," he added.
In her address, Jefferts Schori urged Union students to use their seminary community as a laboratory for confronting injustice and oppression. Such communities can "dream big dreams, to equip its members to see the interwoven tentacles of evil in this world, the injustices wrought by global economies and state-sanctioned violence."
The passion of those who learn, study and teach is "driven by a taste of God's overwhelming yearning for a healed world" and that passion is a blessing, she said.
"It can also be a crippling wound if we miss the homeless person on the bench outside, or the hungry child of a fellow student, or the faculty member who is overwhelmed by the demands of the academic career ladder," Jefferts Schori said.
Noting that the word blessing derives from the word meaning blood and injury, she said, "All of the members of this institution -- students, faculty, and administration -- will at some time feel that [they] are being treated unjustly."
"May God continue to bless you with the ability to know what injustice feels like," Jefferts Schori said. "Being bloodied, even figuratively, can be a gift that elicits passion."
Episcopalians frequently attend Union and Jefferts Schori met with Union's Episcopal students prior to the start of the convocation for a question-and-answer session.
A short video clip of portions of the convocation is available here.