Presiding Bishop's Address from the Chair to Executive Council in Savannah, Georgia, January 29, 1991
Episcopal News Service. February 14, 1991 [91044]
Early on the morning of January 16, while still in bed, I received a call from the office of the secretary of state. James Baker, an active member of our church, wanted me to pray with him later in the morning as the crisis in the Persian Gulf neared its climax. Early the day before I had spoken with the president by telephone, asking to pray with him. We had a conversation for several minutes. Both calls filled me with some foreboding -- and well they should have. For on that evening what I had most feared and dreaded began.
I have much to say to you this morning, for much of importance is happening in the life of our community -- plans for the General Convention in Phoenix, an historic ecumenical initiative with the Lutherans, and the ongoing work of this council in its long-range mission planning. But I am sure you will understand that we cannot -- I cannot -- address these matters until first I speak -- we speak -- of that which weighs so heavily on us at this moment. For war is our reality, and we cannot ignore it.
On the day hostilities began, our staff at the Church Center gathered for prayer in the chapel. I told them two stories -- which was a way for me to share some pretty powerful emotions I felt at the moment, emotions I feel compelled to share with you as well.
One story comes from Baghdad. Patti and I were there just before Christmas as part of the Church Leaders' Pilgrimage for Peace. The plane into Baghdad from Amman was packed, and we were jammed four or five abreast at the immigration counter. A young couple was next to us, and they literally had their hands full. The mother was holding one child with one arm and holding another with her other hand, while the father held a third child on one arm and was also wrestling with an enormous package. I asked him if I could hold the package. He gratefully handed it over. Then I lost him in the crowd. Now, I have to tell you the question that flashed through my mind: What's in this package? What if it is a bomb? But then I found him, and I remember the smile on his daughter's face as he retrieved the package. As the bombing of Baghdad continues, I can still see that child's beautiful, innocent face.
Another memory keeps coming back from several years ago. I was in Japan for the centennial celebration of the Nippon Seikokai and was asked to lead a peace pilgrimage to Hiroshima. If you have been to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, you know what a powerful tale it tells of the sorrows and horrors of war.
I'm not sure I'm a pacifist, but visiting the Hiroshima museum has come as close as anything to making me one. The first time I visited the Peace Museum I literally had a conversion experience. I remember returning to the Diocese of Hawaii and spending my time in prayer and study about the nuclear arms race. I said then, and I say now: Nuclear arms, chemical warfare, anything that destroys creation and brings to naught that which God has intended, is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One of the people we met in Hiroshima was Tazu Shibama, an 81-year-old survivor. Shibama was a tiny lady, badly stooped, who looked every bit her age. She told us of her experience on that fateful day when the bomb fell. Hers was a graphic and moving story, spoken, if you can believe it, in a soft Tennessee accent. (She had learned English as a student at a Methodist school in Nashville.) Shibama believed she was spared because God wanted her to be a witness for peace. And then she said: "I ask your forgiveness for December 7." I was shocked, speechless, moved to a sense of shame and deep repentance that this dear little woman, who had suffered so horribly, would ask for our forgiveness.
If anything is important for us as peacemakers, it is prayer. I believe that because, even though there is so much about which we could despair, God does lift us up and renew us through prayer.
It is to prayer, then, that I would call this council and all members of our church. I would ask you to join me now in a moment of silence. (Silence)
Let us pray, in a spirit of humble repentance:
- that the war come to a quick end, and that all those in danger -- those under arms and those who are innocent -- be safely delivered;
- that prisoners of war be treated humanely, according to international law;
- that weapons of mass destruction not be used;
- that refugees find safe haven;
- that the families and loved ones of our brave young men and women in the Gulf be granted strength and comfort in their anxiety;
- that our spirits not be inflamed by hatred;
- that our president, George, be upheld in our prayers, and that he and all the leaders of the nations be guided in their decisions by the spirit of mercy and peace.
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Some people have been disturbed that I seem to have been disloyal to our president. There were news reports about the president's bishop being on "the other side." Well, in some degree those reports are correct, and in some degree those reports are very misleading. George Bush is a child of God, he is my brother in Christ, he is a member of this body, and I love that man -- even though I have held from the beginning that going to war was not the answer to the crisis in the Persian Gulf. I have met and talked with the president twice about this. Both he and I have been clear about our positions, and each of us has recognized that we are both acting in integrity and speaking as we must. I could not live with myself had I not spoken as clearly as I could to Mr. Bush, and had I not done everything in my power to urge a negotiated political solution to the crisis. Patti and I pledge to continue strenuous peacemaking efforts in cooperation with other religious leaders, with whom I am in weekly contact, and with all who refuse to give in to despair. Even in the heat of battle Christians are called to be peacemakers.
As you will have seen in my message to Episcopalians issued just after the hostilities began, I have directed the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief and Episcopal Migration Ministries to join in worldwide ecumenical efforts to provide humanitarian aid to all in need, especially refugees and other displaced persons. The Presiding Bishop's Fund is also acting in concert with the office of the suffragan bishop for the armed forces to provide material aid and pastoral care to dependents of our personnel in the combat zone, where there is need beyond that provided by the armed forces themselves. I have a special concern for these dependent family members, as for the members of our own staff who have relatives serving in the Gulf.
The future is unclear. The casualties and damage inflicted by this war will likely be great -- certainly in human and material terms, but perhaps even more so in the things of the spirit. I fear a great rupture has been opened in our relationship with the Arab world and peoples -- not only with Muslims but with fellow Christians. My heart breaks when I think of our own Anglican family in the Middle East -- especially those who are Palestinian, who find themselves in a particularly cruel position in this conflict. How do we reach out to them, now and when this war is over? Are we prepared to ask their forgiveness for January 16?
Only from such a spirit of repentance will reconciliation be possible. If ever repentance and reconciliation were called for, now is the time, especially among our own brothers and sisters in the family of God.
These themes of repentance, reconciliation, and witnessing to God's love in this darkness seem to be the motif of our common life right now.
They are always there, like the beat under the melody, but they seem particularly loud now, and particularly insistent. I speculate that our common consciousness is in many ways being formed by this war.
We, God's warring children, need to repent, to be reconciled to one another, and to witness to God's love.
This was all very much on my mind last week while I was in Phoenix. The visit to Phoenix had several purposes, one of which was to march to the State House to honor Dr. King and witness to the need to continue working towards the vision of racial equality he articulated so well.
The original purpose of our Phoenix meeting was a meeting of the Planning and Arrangements Committee, including a report to them from this council on our sense of the need for a General Convention to gather in Phoenix as a community of faith doing the work this church is called to do. I am very happy to tell you that we had an excellent meeting. The committee, under the leadership of Dean [David] Collins, made good progress in shaping a new vision for General Convention.
I have asked David to report on that meeting, and he will do so later in this meeting. I would like to commend him on his superb leadership of that committee, and say that the progress we have made is very much the result of his steady hand, his wise counsel, and particularly his faithfulness.
I would also like to thank, on behalf of all of us, the Ad Hoc Committee of Council chaired by Randy Dales. Howard Anderson, Lloyd Casson, Bettye Jo Harris, and Rusty Kimsey carried forward the concepts and ideas coming out of our January 5 meeting in New Jersey, and developed them further for the consideration of Planning and Arrangements.
Though David will give the report, I want to say one thing. That is: After the time spent in Phoenix, I am more sure than ever that the decision to go to Phoenix was right. This convention has given us a special opportunity to put the issue of institutional racism back on the front burner, where it belongs.
I believe that our convention in Phoenix will be transforming -- for us individually and for the church corporately. Further, I believe that some of the new ways of being we take on in Phoenix will stay with us for years to come.
Even in war, life goes on. On the second day of the war I left the beehive of my office to travel uptown to St. Peter's Lutheran Church. It was the second day of the war, but the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. At a news conference, Bishop Herbert Chilstrom of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and I announced a plan of historic ecumenical implications. The proposed "Concordat of Agreement" between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, if approved by our two churches, will lead us to full communion by the middle of this decade. It is not a proposal for structural or organizational merger; it is a proposal for full fellowship and joint mission. I am excited about this powerful ecumenical witness, and I could not be more grateful to the members of the LutheranEpiscopal Dialogue for their hard work over more than two decades.
I would like to make two brief observations about this proposal. First, we are part way through a process. The proposal comes out of a long period of conversation and joint activity with the Lutherans, particularly since the 1982 agreement on interim eucharistic sharing. If the Concordat of Agreement is agreed to by our two churches, we will have the further reaches of the journey towards full communion before us. The proposal requires at this convention careful study and reflection, through the next triennium, for there are points that will raise concerns for both Episcopalians and Lutherans. We are now being asked only to move one step further in a healthy process.
Second, I hope members of our church will not become so focused on the mechanisms proposed by the concordat -- having to do with mutual recognition of ordained ministry and the historic episcopate -- that they lose sight of the end proposed. That end is the mission of the church. The more I work with Bishop Chilstrom, the more aware I am of how our structures inhibit us from effective cooperative mission. The aim of the concordat is to increase fellowship and enrich the catholicity of each church so that both will be better vehicles for mission.
Dr. [William] Norgren is here with us in Savannah, and he will be able to speak to the provisions of the agreement. Bill deserves our particular thanks for the guidance -- and good spirit -- he has brought to this enterprise over the years.
Bishop Chilstrom and I were privileged to visit the Lutheran churches of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland in early December. Although I would not recommend that you-go to Scandinavia in December, I must say that it was a marvelous trip, primarily because Patti and I had the chance to know Herbert and Corinne Chilstrom better.
And while it's true that I have never seen so many Lutherans in my life (about 95 percent of the population there is Lutheran), it is also true, I think, that many of our hosts were surprised to learn that Anglicanism exists outside of the Church of England! Perhaps for that reason alone -- and as a sign of the progress Lutherans and Episcopalians have made in the United States -- our trip was worthwhile.
I have to slip in an aside here. On the way to the Nordic countries, we visited Canterbury, in order to brief the archbishop on our trip and to hear about the relations of the Church of England with the European Lutheran churches. I had a few minutes in private with Robert Runcie before our meetings began. He looked marvelous, as if a tremendous weight was about to be lifted from his shoulders.
Robert Runcie retires on Thursday. I'm sure I speak for all Episcopalians when I say that God has blessed our communion with a leader of uncommon wisdom, compassion, and grace. I think this man will be missed greatly.
Much of our work in Savannah, as at recent meetings, will be devoted to mission planning and development. We are being asked to discern our church's direction on issues of the environment and sustainable development. Before we begin, let me offer a few thoughts on leadership -- how this council leads, and how council members remain accountable to one another and the church at large.
Leadership is not simply a matter of telling anyone what to do, or being in a position of power. It is a matter of being in a position of utter service. We derive our authority as a council from the trust placed in us by the members of our church who have called upon us to serve them. And the question always is: How do we serve them?
In many ways. One of the very important ways is by listening to their hopes and fears, their best and worst experiences, their doubts and their faith; by moving them, through a process of discernment, from where we now are into a future of continuing faithfulness as the body of Christ.
If we listen to those we serve, then we must hear with more than our ears, and we must weigh and measure against more than our personal feelings. We do this first by keeping our own grounding -- and that is in Jesus Christ. So, we pay heed to our individual prayer lives, and we worship together as a council. We share the Bible message for us and pray together. We begin our gatherings with prayer, knowing our prayer is an integral and necessary part of the agenda for all our meetings. When we pray for guidance, we expect that guidance. And, let us be very sure that we are prepared to be led by the Spirit, as Paul was, down paths we would not have thought to take.
We lead best when we are ourselves examples of how the body of Christ is meant to interact. This council is a diverse group, surely as diverse as the church we serve. We have various gifts, experiences, points of view. You could say we represent the many kinds of thread in a tapestry, silk strands and hemp ropes, and all the colors of the rainbow. It is God who does the weaving.
Thus, we must measure our individual goals against the common good of God's pattern. We must examine our personal agendas, and set them aside when they do not contribute to the upbuilding of the entire body. With faith and fearlessness we can take the risk of hearing each other with our very souls, of walking into each other's stories to feel the joy -- and to know the pain, and bear it in our own bodies, as Christ did.
We are embarked on a journey that our faith assures us will lead us to our true home. As we travel along together, let us remember that the Spirit of God is the ultimate leader, the Word of God the ultimate authority, as it is spun out in the Scriptures, as we receive it anew moment by moment in prayer. Remember too that the Wisdom of God is discerned and tested within the community of love and compassion to which we have dedicated ourselves.
Let me close with a thought for Epiphanytide by returning to what I see as the themes for these days. As we live through these dark days in faithful awareness of our need for repentance, our hunger for reconciliation, and our call to witness, we will feel the presence of Christ. I believe that with all my heart. As we try in our own lives to show forth Christ's light in the world, we will be made increasingly aware of that unfailing, enduring light. I proclaim that with all my strength.
Recently I reread Martin Luther King's sermon that he gave on April 14, 1967, at Riverside Church [in New York]. As some of you remember, that was the time when the Vietnam War was at its peak.
"I am convinced," King said, "that if we're to get on the right side of a new world order, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person- oriented' society. When machines and computers" -- and I add the word "technology" -- "profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are impossible of being conquered." And I leave that for a thought as we conclude.
These are uncertain times, but of some things we are certain, and one is this: Against the light of Christ, no darkness can prevail.