Presiding Bishop visits Dallas, commissions church's newest jubilee center
Episcopal News Service. December 14, 2009 [121409-04]
Pat McCaughan
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's Christmas prayer for both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion involves "searching for where the work of God is already going on in places we haven't discovered."
Her prayer also includes "serving the Gospel to the best of our ability" in contexts both familiar and new and "continuing to live out transforming the world as individuals and community," she told reporters after participating in a Dec. 12 forum, "Who is Christ?" hosted by St. Michael and All Angels Church in Dallas.
About 600 people attended the forum, which also featured the Rt. Rev. William Frey, retired bishop of the Diocese of Colorado, who is serving as the interim bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. The bishops were invited to share views of who Christ is for them personally and to discuss the relationship between Christ and the culture.
During a weekend visit, the Presiding Bishop also formally commissioned the Jubilee Park & Community Center Corp., a ministry of St. Michael's, as an official jubilee center of the Episcopal Church. She preached and celebrated communion Dec. 12 at Southern Methodist University's Canterbury Club. On Dec. 13, both she and Frey preached and celebrated communion and taught in an adult forum at St. Michael's Church.
"Prayer and discernment" was also Jefferts Schori's reply to a reporter's question about how the Episcopal Church should respond to the Dec. 5 election of an openly lesbian and partnered woman as a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles, especially in light of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' cautionary remarks following that election.
The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, who has served for eight years as canon to the bishops in the Diocese of Maryland, was elected on the seventh ballot in the second of two Los Angeles elections for bishop suffragan.
"The process isn't finished until it's finished," the Presiding Bishop continued. "It will be several months before results are known because bishops with jurisdiction ... and standing committees of each diocese of the Episcopal Church will themselves decide whether they will consent or not as they do in every episcopal election."
Rejecting violence, avoiding scapegoating
The Presiding Bishop described a postcard she keeps on her desk at the Episcopal Church Center, of a Navajo shepherd as an image of Jesus that speaks powerfully, yet humbly, to her.
"It's from a black-and-white photograph that was taken in 1925 near Shiprock, New Mexico," she told the gathering at St. Michael's & All Angels.
"Most of the sky is covered with dark clouds, but there is light in the distance on the horizon. The herd isn't all that big, but it has white sheep and black sheep, sheep with long hair and short, lambs and old ones. The shepherd is looking out over the backs of her sheep far into the distance. It's both reassurance and invitation for me, reminder that the good shepherd has all of us in his ken, and yet each one of those sheep, each of us, is called to similar kinds of shepherding on his behalf."
She told the audience that she wants "to follow the Jesus who descended into hell, the one who turned hell upside down looking for Judas. I want to follow the Jesus who went to the graveyard and invited Lazarus back into life … who was willing to be taught by a foreign woman that he was supposed to give her good news, too. And I want to follow the Jesus who hung out with the wrong people, and challenged 'the right people' to re-examine their categories," she said.
"I can't do that alone; I need the friend and brother and fellow shepherd I know in Jesus," she said.
Similarly, Frey shared four sources for his understanding of Jesus: Scripture; tradition, as in the corporate experience of Christian Church for 20 centuries; prayer; and finally rational reflection on personal experience.
He shared numerous stories of personal experiences, from a sense of Christ's presence when he was a six-year-old singing 'Fairest Lord Jesus,' to an encounter at 22 during seminary with a homeless woman who "apparently had one dress to her name ... and yet she was the most joyful person I had ever met," he told the gathering.
Yet he startled her when asking what made her so joyful. "After all, in her eyes I was a minister, and then she said, 'Why don't you know? Jesus loves us!' That knowledge had somehow penetrated her heart in such a way that she literally radiated the joy of Jesus. And I wanted that to happen to me," recalled Frey.
"I was still thinking religion" versus faith, added Frey, who wrote the book "The Dance of Hope: Finding Ourselves in the Rhythm of God's Great Story" and who served for 18 years as the dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
Regarding who Christ is for the culture, the Presiding Bishop said it is important to take "the whole incarnation package;" not just Christ's birth, nor the manner of his death or resurrection but also "his living in frail human flesh, and the potential realized in his life as a human being … and the continuing presence of Christ in his earthly body called the church."
She described Jesus' ministry of "restoration at the personal and community level … about healing the soul and the soul of nations. It is a sacrament of God as trinity, God as relationship, God as community in God's own self. It is also a mark of God's yearning for more relationship … of the divinely abundant and more life-giving sort. That's what I understand what grace is all about -- it is the creative energy of God that makes more of itself."
She named as challenges seeking everyday efforts for "holy-making choices [which] change the cosmos," such as avoiding "the ancient human desire to find a scapegoat, with the familiar targets in this society right now being Muslims and immigrants and gay people," she told the gathering.
Other challenges include discovery of "the green savior," she said, referring to honoring the environment, as well as rejecting violence against all creation. "When we begin to see that God intends all of creation for greater, sacrificial or holy-making life then perhaps we can begin to choose the larger good rather than our own more narrowly competitive self-interest.
"We must grow in our love and care for all that sustains life. We must choose life, abundant life, rather than violence, on behalf of all creation."
Frey agreed that Christ is a cosmic figure, found "where there is injustice and oppression. In Darfur, the Congo, in the prison systems -- even in Huntsville -- on the streets of Dallas, and San Antonio, and a thousand other cities around the world. In places of conflict -- Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan -- and even in the Episcopal Church."
He sparked laughter when discussing evangelism. He recalled the 'Decade of Evangelism' as "something like General Motors declaring a decade of manufacturing automobiles. It may have had some effect in other parts of the world but here in the States it was a bust."
Citing the church's "Field of Dreams" approach, he said: "Our idea of evangelism seemed to be to erect an attractive aquarium near the water and hope the fish would jump in.
"Evangelism is our primary calling," he added. "The church that doesn't evangelize the culture gets evangelized by the culture," he added, a statement the Presiding Bishop was later asked to respond to during an audience question-and-answer session immediately following the conclusion of the forum.
The church must "deal with the culture, must not only speak good news to the culture but look for the activity of God already present in the culture," the Presiding Bishop said. "It's not a one-way street. God is at work already. Our task is to discover that, and bless the good. It has always been the Christian task to contextualize the Gospel -- affirming what is of God already present, and challenging what is not of God."
She was also asked if caring for the whole of God's creation includes care for the unborn.
"Yes, caring for all of God's creation includes caring for all," she replied. Inherent in the question she added, is the "tragic task" of questioning whose life is privileged over whose. The Episcopal Church has always said that abortion is a moral tragedy.
"It's a pained, pained choice," she said, adding that providing pastoral care for the women and men who find themselves in that situation is part of the Christian community's calling.
The bishops' presentations are available online through St. Michael & All Angels.
Dallas diocesan Bishop James Stanton and Suffragan Bishop Paul Lambert attended the gathering, but did not make a public comment or attend the media briefing after the session ended.
The Rev. Dr. Charles Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop, said of the visit to Dallas, "We were received with great hospitality and generosity of spirit, and are deeply grateful to the Rev. Robert Dannals, rector of St. Michael and All Angels, for hosting us, and to diocesan bishop James Stanton for welcoming us into the diocese and for his attendance at the event, along with suffragan bishop Paul Lambert."
Bettye Anderson, a parishioner at the Cathedral Church of St. Matthew's in Dallas, said she attended the forum because there was an undercurrent that was "uncomfortable, that the Presiding Bishop might not be welcomed here."
But to Anderson's delight, the Presiding Bishop was welcomed and delivered an engaging address. Anderson, an Episcopalian for 48 years, said of the Presiding Bishop: "She's smart, and she's blessed. But then we share the same birth date, March 26, so I suspected she could hold her own."
Jubilee Park commissioned
Anna Huddleston, 11, was among a cadre of volunteer Santa's helpers who greeted Jefferts Schori at the Jubilee Park & Community Center Corp. (JPCCC). The Presiding Bishop commissioned the outreach ministry as an official jubilee center of the Episcopal Church on Dec. 12.
Huddleston was serving as a "personal shopper" to assist residents of the Jubilee Neighborhood, a 62-block area in southeast Dallas adopted by St. Michael & All Angels Church and other agencies. By mid-afternoon she estimated she'd helped 20 parents select clothing and gifts from among donated Barbie dolls, bumpy grab balls, plastic pop beads, Candyland and other board games, Etch-a-Sketches and hundreds of toys, two per child per family. The gifts were made available free of charge to residents who had volunteered at least 30 hours at the center as part of its "I Believe in Angels" program.
Huddleston said it was important to volunteer because "I'm a girl and if a boy was the shopper for a family with girls he might not know what to get them." Free gift-wrapping services were also available.
Yvonne Granger, a Jubilee neighborhood resident whose six children attended the Jubilee Center since it began 12 years ago, and Oscar Salinas, 15, both told the Presiding Bishop that the center changed their lives.
"It kept my kids doing positive things, kept them focused on homework. My family is doing better in life, period, because of this place," said Granger, who resides in one of the homes built by St. Michael's, in collaboration with other agencies.
Salinas said he spends his spare time at the Jubilee Center because it has made a difference in his family's life. His mother, Miriam Salinas, received an award on Dec. 12 for her dedication to the center. "No matter what I'm doing I will always have time for the Jubilee Center," he said.
Peggy Polk, manager of David's Place, part of the JPCCC, said that through the Head Start program "more of the children are having a better start." But she added: "Now we want them to have a better finish ... to see kids enter college, to add stronger parenting programs, to go into the homes and help in whatever way possible."