Address from the chair to the Executive Council, Cincinnati, Ohio, January 28, 1997
Episcopal News Service. February 13, 1997 [97-1694]
The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
If you have children, or grandchildren, or have ever taught Sunday School, you have likely heard this question: "What is heaven like?" I have heard the question more than once, and asked it myself. After a certain age, the image of floating on clouds, harp in hand, just doesn't do it.
And then, of course, the other half of the question. "What is hell like?" We have some images -- more literary than biblical. Personally, I have never internalized the ideas of the "weeping and gnashing of teeth," let alone the red-suited devil, the fire or the brimstone. I confess, I'm not sure what brimstone is.
In our Catechism is the question: "What do we mean by heaven and hell?" And the answer: "By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell, we mean eternal death in our rejection of God." Those answers come to the point. They answer the question in our heads, but, I wonder, do they speak to our hearts? I do know, there are things beyond human comprehension, much in the way that a baby still in the womb doesn't yet know her mother's arms. So, I don't expect to arrive at a full sense of the reality beyond this earthy one. However, I have some images of afterlife that do speak to my heart.
Heaven? God is perfection. God is completion. God is love. And so, where God is, that must be heaven. Our burdens will be laid down. We will be gathered up into that love and into that eternal peace. We will be at-one with God. We will be reconciled to God, and to one another. We will be with our loved ones who have gone before us. We will, at last, have found the unity -- the wholeness -- we seek. We will be home.
As for hell, I have an image of that too, and it terrifies me. It has to do with alternatives not chosen that should have been, good choices neglected, roads not taken that led where God was trying to lead. My image of hell has to do with suddenly, suddenly, coming to consciousness about what should have been and wasn't, because we were tired, or careless, or filled with apathy, or caught in tangled webs of our own weaving. My image of hell is being shown the alternative futures that weren't. The visions of possibilities that never were realized, the relationships that were shattered, destroyed, because of selfishness, or indifference, or the need to control. My image of hell is seeing the tree that should have grown, and the fruit harvested from the seeds God planted, and we failed to tend. My image of hell is seeing the wonderful woman who never grew up because the child died of starvation, or a sniper's bullet. My image of hell is seeing the family that might have been woven together in love, that on this earth fell apart, was ripped apart by fighting, and drowned in alcohol. My image of hell is being forever separated from God, no more chances, and knowing what might have been: the alternative future, the love, the joy that God intended for me to have.
This image, for me, is utterly terrifying. To think that my loving God, who made me and tended me and sent first the Son, and then the Spirit, to think that I have failed God, that I have failed to go where I was being led, that can bring me to my knees. It is an image, truly, an image of hell!
Of course, I pray this is not my eternal future. I pray I am faithfully looking for the hand of God, that I am not blind to the road being pointed out to me. I think we all pray for this. We need to be careful. Our problem, our human condition, is that we see what we want to see and we too easily believe what we want to believe, what feels comfortable.
The House of Bishops is greatly blessed by two very gifted chaplains: Martin Smith, the Superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, and Curtis Almquist, the Senior Brother. At a meeting in December of the House of Bishops Planning Committee, Brother Curtis, in one of his meditations, spoke of a fascinating study on human perception. Research has shown that what people actually see is most influenced by what they have already decided to be and what they have already decided to see. Our eyes don't just pick up information and send it to our brains. What our eyes see accounts for only twenty percent of what we use to create perception. At least eighty percent of what the brain works with is information that is already there. In other words, we each create our own worlds by what we choose to notice.
As Brother Curtis said, we create "a world of order and distinctions that makes sense to us, that preserves our sense of reality, that preserves the image we have of ourselves. We then 'see' the world through this self we have created, and we take only selected amounts of new information from the outside to piece together our own particular version of reality."
I find this absolutely fascinating, and it rings true, I'm afraid. It reminds me of a story a friend told me. She lived in New York and had become accustomed to the sight of people sleeping on cardboard boxes on the sidewalk, even in winter. In fact, not far from her apartment, someone had set up housekeeping in a large cardboard box, the kind that a refrigerator comes in. Well, one weekend she was visiting in a very pleasant suburban community and as she and her host drove down a tree-lined street, she saw a large cardboard box in front of one of the houses. She said to him, "Look, someone is living in front of that house." He was puzzled, of course, but almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth she remembered where she was. She realized the difference between what she had seen, and what she first thought she had seen, because she had expected to see it. In fact, the people who lived in that house had gotten a new refrigerator and put the box out front to be picked up in the trash collection.... There are no people living in boxes in that suburban community. But, in her brain, a large box had become a possible home.
We see what we expect to see. We see what we want to see. We believe what we want to believe. We take in information that serves our own particular version of reality. And, this, this is why we need each other. We each have our piece of the truth. We each have our screens and blinders. Only by sharing our images can we begin to see a larger vision, a fuller reality, and how God is calling us into the future. Only by being in community can we live into the possibilities God is preparing. Together we have a better chance of making the right choices, putting aside the lesser alternatives.
As individuals, as communities of people, as a nation and as a church we are confronted with choices all the time, paths to follow, paths to ignore. As we approach our General Convention in Philadelphia this is very much on my mind.
In the middle of January, a meeting took place in Philadelphia in preparation for General Convention. The President of the House of Deputies and I did something I don't believe has ever been done before. We called together our two Councils of Advice to talk about how the mind of the church could be expressed in the most, creative, healthy possible way through our legislative process.
We began with two assumptions. First, that we honor the legislative process and trust the working of the Spirit through the process. Second, that our General Convention is more than a legislative body. It is as well a community of people who live under the discipline of the gospel, who are called to serve God's people, and who have been given the ministry of reconciliation.
Our two councils met over the better part of two days with a good cross-section of lay and clerical deputies and bishops. Pam and I agree that it was an excellent meeting, and the participants all shared that assessment. We left with a heightened sense of positive expectation about our convention and a feeling that the decisions made there will be made carefully and faithfully. We are in the process of preparing a brief letter to all bishops and deputies about this meeting, and we will see that Council members receive a copy as well.
Some tough issues are coming before our convention. And we have some polarization around these issues. There is also a perception out there, particularly held by those at the ends of the spectrum of opinion, that at this convention we will decide, that at this convention possible alternative futures will disappear, and one clear answer will emerge. Well, I will leave it to you to think about the accuracy of this perception. I will have more to say about this as we move closer to convention.
For now, I want to say this: if I took one word out of our meeting in Philadelphia, if I took one word to meditate on and to pray about it was reconciliation. Reconciliation.
I think the operative question for Christians is: do you choose reconciliation, or division? They offer alternative futures. Which do you choose?
The answer should be quite simple. Our God is a God of reconciliation. We are thus called to the work of reconciliation. God as revealed in Jesus is a God of reconciliation. Even the weeds that had been sown with the good seeds were to be left until the harvest, not divided out. We do not separate the sheep and the goats. God's work is a work of reconciliation, and reconciliation is something that is always happening.
We are following Jesus who is the Way, not the rule, not the resolution, not the canon but the Way, and the Truth and the Life, whose ministry was always one of invitation, not of rules and answers.
Now, how do we take this and live it in our lives? How do we make our choices and choose our futures? How do we, please God, save ourselves from the terror of one day, in eternity, coming to know the glory that could have been, and will never be?
Of course, there is no one answer to this question. However, I believe we have, several choices in front of us as a church right now that present alternative futures. I believe we have some opportunities to say: Yes. Yes. We choose reconciliation, not division. I will name three such opportunities. They have to do with our understanding of stewardship, of our sense of the role of the church in our national life, and of our efforts against racism.
First, our stewardship. The Administration and Finance Committee along with staff met with several members of the Program, Budget and Finance Committee earlier this month to prepare for this meeting. They discussed the budget for the next triennium and the funding required. The data they reviewed indicated that giving to parishes, and from parishes to dioceses, has risen steadily over the past several years. During that same period, diocesan support to our General Convention budget has remained steady or gone down.
Why is this? We have some answers about changing patterns in the church that need to be understood and addressed. One pattern is the large percentage of people who join the church from other denominations, or who were previously unchurched. These new Episcopalians don't have much knowledge of church structure or Anglican tradition. They may have little interest in either, and have joined the church for a variety of other good reasons. They may be very faithful members of their local parish, but not see themselves as members of a broader fellowship, or the need to support that common mission. They have yet to capture a vision of the partnership we are called to at all levels in the life of our church.
Also, the changing patterns in our national life reverberate in the church and other institutions as well. We are mired in a time of self-interest. The government itself seems to be losing a sense of responsibility for the common good and the general welfare. This is a tremendously unhealthy sign. It leads to a future where a nation models just the opposite of all Jesus came to teach us. In such a time, is it not our responsibility as followers of Jesus to show a different way? Is it not our responsibility to pull together and live and show the values of the covenant community? Of the alternative futures, I have no question which I pray we choose.
During this meeting, we will grapple with choices about the spending of funds, and also with the fact that we don't have the funds to do what we believe we are called to do. Of all the reasons for this, the most painful reason is that several dioceses are withholding funds from our mission program as a way of making a political statement. This is poor stewardship based on flawed theology. The fact that the money may be used for other worthy things doesn't make it any better. Christian giving is not a sign of approval but a mark of love. It is a following of the example of Jesus. The withholding of funds as a form of protest is contrary to our received understanding of what it means to live in a covenant community, a community where reconciliation is the way, not division. There have been disagreements within church bodies since the beginnings of the church. That is unlikely to change. How we live in the struggle, how we use the tension in ways that are healthy, that is what we must choose. Is it to be reconciliation, or division? That's the choice.
Of course, where does the Executive Council come in here? I think our decision to visit the dioceses was creative and productive. Our visits were a source of enormous encouragement to us all. We can't tell the dioceses what to do, but we can let them know that we -- and when I say we I mean the elected leaders of the church who have fiduciary responsibility -- we are with them. We are listening. We are honoring the struggles they engage in to make their own choices, and we are showing the path of reconciliation. We must continue in dialogue. We must show that our vision of partnership in mission must be reflected in our budgets.
Another choice, a critical one: what is the role of the church in the world? I believe, and I pray you agree, that we can see the church is called to usher in the reign of God for these times, which means a commitment to issues of peace and justice. The church is not an island separate from the world. The church is to serve the world: God's creation. Yes, we have a choice. We can live the gospel values of love, compassion, healing, peace and reconciliation, or we can sit by quietly while the forces of greed, violence, suffering, oppression and injustice do their evil work. It is our choice. The choices lead to very different futures. Where do we want to go? Where do we want to go?
Our country has just installed a Republican Congress and inaugurated a Democrat as president. There is the possibility of more gridlock in Washington. I have heard of efforts in both parties to work on reconciliation. Let us wish them well. Trust in our government must be restored because trust is the glue that holds us, the diverse citizens of this nation, together in some sense of a common life, in some sense of the common good. Without the trust that unifies us, we fall into every man for himself, every woman for herself, and let the children just take care of themselves. And I say again, it is the responsibility of those who follow Jesus to show another way, to exhibit the marks of the covenant community.
Whatever hope we may have for the future, and as Christians we are people of hope, the last two years have seen an erosion of our nation's concern for the poor. This is another sign of our national forgetfulness of the general welfare. We were already in trouble and then came the so-called welfare reform that now threatens to flood our nation's streets with more unemployed and homeless people. Looking abroad we find devastating foreign aid cuts.
At home, the issues of assisted suicide, the death penalty, and abortion are being debated. Moral issues all. And these debates are being carried out often in a tone of rancor, in a climate of moral decay, and in a spirit of political expedience. The church's voice needs to be heard in these national discussions. I am not talking partisan politics. I am saying that the insights of our faith need to be brought to the table. Our Washington Office is doing an important work in helping us to be heard in the corridors of power, but they can't be truly effective unless the importance of this witness is well understood around the church.
While I am speaking of abortion I want to say for the record why I supported President Clinton's veto of what is called by its opponents "the partial birth amendment," which is abortion in the last trimester of pregnancy. First, I did it because it affirms the position of General Convention that this church does not believe in legislation that would abridge the decision of a woman's access to medically safe abortion. Secondly, I supported the veto because it would have removed the right of a woman to an abortion where her health was threatened. Abortion in the last trimester is rare, and certainly not to be supported unless the health of the mother or the viability of the fetus is at stake. I regret that there are voices in the church which would suggest that I would support such an action under any other circumstance. Abortion is always a tragedy, and the agonizing decisions around it are appropriately left to the woman, her priest, doctor and family, not the government. That is the position of the church and I stand by it.
On February 27-March 1, the President of the House of Deputies and I, along with members of this Council, will return to this city, to this same hotel, for the Justice Summit. I hope this will be a time when Episcopalians from all over the country can affirm the centrality of justice for the life and mission of the church. Too often this work is assigned to a committee for people who care about these kinds of things, as if peace and justice were optional activities for Christians. But, I pray this Justice Summit will in some way call us back and challenge us that this work is at the very heart of who we are and what we are meant to do.
Judy Conley, Earl Cavanaugh and Fran Toy from this Council will be among those who will attend the Summit. Their assignment will be to bring back a report and possible recommendations to the April meeting of Council. What we decide then may have ramifications for Council's presentation to the General Convention.
Whatever the outcome of the Justice Summit, I continue to give deep thanks for those in our church who have shown an unwavering commitment to peace and justice issues. Without a quest for love, peace, justice, and reconciliation, God's people will sorely suffer. Without a vision, the people perish.
I hope my voice, and the work of many of my staff over these past eleven years, has made a difference, however small, to the life of our country and the life of our church. Until my last day in this office I will continue to do all I can to proclaim the values of the reign of God. And, I will continue to challenge the church to join me in this holy task. When we ask why we would engage such issues, the answer is: Jesus passed this way.
Do we choose division, or reconciliation? Our choice means vastly different alternative futures, especially when we think of the sin of racism, which is the ultimate division. As our nation honored Dr. King this year, our church began a new way of rooting out the sin of racism that lies within us and sickens our very body. First reports are just now coming in on our churchwide dialogues. Let me share with you just one example which is right from this diocese. The people of St. Andrew's church here sponsored a community forum using the materials provided through our Anti-Racism Task Force. More than 75 people from a cross-section of races and ethnicities and economic, educational and denominational backgrounds participated in a two-hour program of panel discussion and open forums.
The discussions were energetic with a high degree of participation. People told their stories of how racism has effected their lives, and of their hopes for the future. This is one small example of how we as followers of Jesus must show the way against racism.
No matter what else we do within the life of our church, no matter how much we try to reflect the covenant community, no matter how many positive choices we make, as long as we are victims of our own racism everything else we do is tainted. That is a strong statement but I mean it to the bottom of my heart. We are consciously choosing, intellectually committed to, the eradication of racism from our church and our society. We must reflect this choice in every other choice we make. If we don't we are victims not only of racism but of our own hypocrisy.
Surely one of the benefits of the proposed Concordat of Agreement for Full Communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is that together our efforts against racism will have greater power. The concern for an inclusive community is at the center of the ELCA's life. Our two churches share a common understanding of the community to which Christ invites us. We need to keep this front and center as we study the implications of the Concordat.
What a hell on that judgement day to be forced to confront the beautiful future we could have made, free of racism, and to know we had not done it. Instead of seeing the dream of Dr. King, we would see the nightmare of our own indifference. I am encouraged by the progress we have made, but let us not grow weary. We have a long way to go.
My dear sisters, brothers, fellow pilgrims, you who walk this path with me: I realize I have spoken to you for a long time this morning. I had a lot to say. I am coming to know that there is something precious to me in these final such opportunities. I feel a certain urgency to share with you what I can, to be for you all I can, and to be with you all we can be together, all for the sake of the gospel.
Right now, we are choosing our future. Out of God's gift of free will, we are making choices, taking one road and leaving others behind. We are on a journey in faith, from what is to what will be. Guided by our baptismal covenant, emboldened by the love of God, we choose from alternative futures. In this middle time, let us be on fire with the possibilities. Let us be courageous, of good heart. Let us be guided by the example of Jesus, who lived reconciliation, not division. Who lived justice, not oppression. Who lived community and wholeness, not fragmentation and brokenness. Who lived compassion and not indifference. Surely, following in that holy path we will, together, find our way to the Kingdom, to the eternal vision of the blessed face of Christ.
The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning
Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church