Presiding Bishop's Address from the Chair
Episcopal News Service. June 21, 1990 [90167]
Some wise Californian once said the following: "We cultivate and irrigate, but it is God who exaggerates." God does exaggerate, and God's extravagance commands attention in California, both in its soil and in its people. For this extravagance, and for all God's mercies, we give extravagant thanks and praise.
From the moment I heard the presentation in Kansas City of our Standing Committee on Planning and Development, I knew something of what I wanted to say in this address from the chair in Fresno. I wanted, in a word, to support as strongly as I could the toil and sweat and doggedness of this committee and its consultant. For I believe that what they are about -- creating a vehicle for long range planning and thinking about mission -- is crucial to our future and our credibility as a church.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the future of our church. I want to share some of that thinking with you under the rubric of a phrase that caught my attention and that seems to me to sum up an attitude appropriate to people of faith: Reverence for the future.
We can be reverent toward the future because as Christians we are confident we have a future. We can be confident we have a future because we look to God in hope -- to a God who above all things is faithful to the creation.
Desmond Tutu is reported to have said (whether he said it or not I don't know, but it sounds like him): "I am not an optimist; I am full of hope."
Optimism may or may not be justified. Sometimes optimism is just in your genes, sometimes it's whistling in the dark. But hope, if you're a person of faith, rests on something else entirely. Hope rests on our experience of God -- the same God who brought his children out of captivity and went before them into the Promised Land, the same God who raised up Jesus from the dead, and whose Holy Spirit comforts us still.
We therefore look to the future reverently, in hope, because God is our future.
Lately I've come to think of our future by recalling our past. It seems like everyone these days is celebrating a centennial or a sesquicentennial or a bicentennial, even tricentennials. Everyone these days is telling stories. I've just heard some marvelous stories in Brazil, where I went last week to help celebrate the church's one hundred years of existence in that great country. These anniversaries and the stories they bring forth make me realize how crucial is our present, and what our present presages for our future. Think of those stories we have from our forebears in the faith -- stories of roads taken and roads not taken, of choices made and choices rejected. Because of those choices we are where we are today. Future generations are going to look back at us and recall the choices we made. Will our children and grandchildren "rise up and call us blessed"? Or will they sadly recall a birthright squandered? It's a sobering thought -- and I think it daily.
When Executive Council met in November, on the feast day of Richard Hooker, I tried to recall some of those choices made, some of those precious elements of our Anglican heritage which make us what we are today and that point us toward a future worthy of reverence and confidence.
For me, one of the great strengths of our heritage is our inclusiveness as a community. I tell you with sadness that I think that strength is being sapped today. I think we in the Episcopal Church today are in danger of reneging on our commitment to a truly inclusive church, one in which there are no outcasts. Hooker lifted up inclusiveness as one of the bedrock essentials without which the church is not truly the church catholic. We call it "Anglican comprehensiveness" or "the middle way." We claim it because we believe this way is (in the words of the collect for Richard Hooker) "not a compromise for the sake of peace, but... a comprehension for the sake of truth."
Bishop Bill Spofford blessed me greatly the other day when he sent me a copy of a letter he had written to a brother bishop. I won't go into the contents of the letter, but I will lift up a quote which Bill included. The quote is from the correspondence of William Reed Huntington, another great Anglican whom we honor next month in our calendar. A friend had written Huntington in the aftermath of the Crapsey heresy trial back around the turn of the century. There was a movement in the church at that time to establish some sort of ecclesiastical supreme court, a final court of appeal that would make definitive judgments on matters of controversy. Here is what Huntington's correspondent wrote, as Huntington himself was struggling with the issue:
"[Such] a Court of Appeal is in itself inconsistent with that very genius of the Anglican Communion upon which our Catholic heritage rests. From the dawn of the Reformation in England until to-day, our strength has been that we have not settled doctrinal differences. By our genius for comprehensiveness we have united irreconcilables, and gloried in the simultaneous possession of doctrinal positions radically incompatible.... One of the foundation stones upon which we have builded, is the conviction that the best way to settle our differences is not to settle them."
There are those in our church today -- honorable, well-intentioned people -- who want very much to settle our differences, and to settle them with some vengeance. There seems, for instance, to be a resurgence of a biblical fundamentalism that thinks that a simple, unequivocal "the Bible says..." will settle all our differences. We forget too easily that Scripture is joined to Tradition and Reason as the source of our authority. We forget that interpretation of the Bible is the responsibility of the whole church catholic and not simply of individual Christians.
There has been a movement in a certain quarter to remove a prominent colleague from a committee because that colleague has said and done unpopular things. When we participate in this kind of censuring activity, we forget that the spirit of truth works where it will, that in comprehensiveness and diversity will truth most likely be apprehended.
There are other disturbing signs. In several recent diocesan conventions attempts have been made to impose binding doctrinal propositions -- statements unobjectionable in themselves, though incomplete -- forgetting that our only confessions as a church have been the historic Creeds in their entirety.
There are those in our church who would build impervious walls of doctrinal and ecclesiastical purity. In doing so, they isolate themselves from the rich diversity and strength of their brothers and sisters in Christ in this church, forgetting, in Hooker's words, that we are "parts united into one body..., each to serve unto other's good, and all to prefer the good of the whole before whatsoever their own particular."
Not all the disturbing signs have to do with doctrine. Racism continues to raise its ugly head, refusing to disappear. Homophobia threatens to unleash a hysteria that makes the pastoral care of our people immeasurably more difficult. How easily we forget that in Christ the dividing walls have been brought down, that in God's household "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female."
These are worrisome and dangerous trends. They strike at the very heart and root of our identity and credibility as a community of faith in the Anglican tradition. Our strength has always been in the way we handled crises and remained inclusive, a spacious and hospitable home for all who hungered spiritually and guarded their God-given autonomy as persons blessed with memory, reason and skill.
What am I saying? I am saying that our beloved church may be in danger of becoming something less than a church, competing interests backing themselves into smaller and tighter circles of self-justification and selfrighteousness, attempting to write their prejudices into canon law, pursuing legalisms at the expense of compassion, understanding, and mercy.
Sometimes I feel like a harried mother, beset by squabbling children, bloody-nosed and bruised. I want to love them and wave the magic wand, making everything better. At the same time I want to grab them by the neck and shake real hard!
"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." Saint Paul was the first Anglican. He knew all too well our limitations as fragile earthen vessels of the great riches of God. Paul knew the tension of living between the times, between promise and fulfillment, between the "already" and the "not yet." Can we together, as Paul's heirs, keep ourselves in that tension? Can we make room for the Spirit? Can we resist the temptation to seek a false unity, compromise for the sake of peace? In our better moments we know, with Jurgen Moltmann, that "faith which opens itself to hope does not bring peace, but disquiet." We seek then to remain faithful to the God who goes on ahead of us and calls us always to be something more than we are. The California farmer had it right we water and irrigate, and leave the exaggeration to God!
Having heard this, you will not be surprised to learn that I have had some pretty frustrating moments lately. How to break out of the institutional wrangles and binds and get on with the mission of the church? I see homeless people in rags right outside 815 Second Avenue. I hear of children starving to death. I see families being battered and fragmented by forces beyond their control. I have just witnessed in Brazil the wrenching effects on millions of human beings of the crushing burden of international debt. Bright young people are dying of AIDS. Bright young adults are discovering that the Me Decade is over and that indeed we do not live by bread alone. I want to get going! I want this church to get going! I want to see the Mission Imperatives take on flesh and blood! I want to see every single Episcopalian challenged to do great things for God!
At the May In-House Week I shared these frustrations with my staff. As always, they heard me out with calm and grace and ministered to me. Several ever wrote me letters. One said, remember there is a distinction between the church-as-institution and the Christian movement. Another said, don't even use the word "institution" It depersonalizes. Speak instead of the "community," or use the biblical words "fellowship" and "body of Christ." Still another shared with me an interview of Bernard Haring, the great Roman Catholic moral theologian. Haring has had his share of run-ins with Cardinal Ratzinger, but he doesn't despair.
"If I were to equate the church with the tradition that stretches from the Roman Inquisition to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Haring said, "I would come to rather negative conclusions. I can understand why people who concentrate their attention solely on those institutions become disillusioned and leave the church. But our faith forbids us to take such a narrow view."
For Haring the church "is embodied and made real" in the many exemplary Christians he has known -- both "great prophets" and "humble, insignificant saints." He is nourished and inspired by their stories and witness. Compared with these living stones in Christ's temple, the minor distractions of institutional life are as nothing. Here's what he said:
"I love the church because Christ loved it, even unto death. I love the church even when I discover in it attitudes and structures that I cannot reconcile with the Gospel. I love the church as it is, because Christ loves me with all my imperfections and shadows, never ceasing to encourage me to fulfill the plan he had for me from the first moment of my creation."
Recently I had one of the greatest privileges of my life -- meeting one of the living saints that make the Church of God a true and living witness to the incarnation of Jesus. In Recife, in the far northeast of Brazil, through the good offices of Bishop Clovis Rodrigues of the Episcopal Church, I met with Dom Helder Camara, former Roman Catholic archbishop of that impoverished region. Dom Helder is 81 years old now, very small, and getting somewhat frail. He lives simply, in the little house where he lived as archbishop, foregoing the great palace in which his successor now lives. On the garden wall outside his quarters marks still remain from machine-gun bullets meant for him -- a stark testament to his faithfulness as a shepherd of his people. Much of Dom Helder's work has been dismantled, a sign of these new times in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Even so, Dom Helder talked to me of hope. He touched me, physically and spiritually, and lifted me and made me glad to be a part of this great body -- the very body of Jesus Christ himself.
What then do we do with the wounds and the frustrations that are so inevitable when we seek to be faithful persons? According to disciples like Bernard Haring and Dom Helder Camara, there is a large and roomy place for them. Here's what Haring said: "If we use what the church offers us... we shall be able to place the wounds the church inflicts on us where they belong: in the heart of Jesus."
We reverence the future by honoring our past, by recalling the stories and the choices that make us what we are. We honor that heritage -- we cherish it -- and we stand firmly upon it in times of temptation and crisis and distress.
We reverence the future by attending carefully to our present, to the stresses and the strains, to the hurts and the wounds in our fellowship. We try not to judge intemperately and hurtfully but to understand, to show mercy and compassion as our God shows with us. We try to live in the tension between the promise of God's reign and the fulfillment that is not yet. We try to make our home a welcoming and hospitable one, spacious and inclusive of all who would with integrity walk in the way of Christ.
Let me conclude this reflection with some announcements and comments about our immediate future.
First, we are going to Phoenix. I think you know by now that the Arizona legislature has established statewide observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We rejoice in this and give our deep thanks to Bishop Heistand and the people of the Diocese of Arizona, who have worked so hard and steadily for this outcome. We congratulate the legislature and people of the state of Arizona for what will surely prove to be a wise and far-reaching decision. We also heave a great sigh of relief!
Second, I am happy to announce that the Rev. Charles Cesaretti has agreed to act as our in-house coordinator for General Convention preparations. He will monitor Executive Council staff participation, all those myriad details necessary to the smooth and timely unfolding of events. You will recall the invaluable contribution of George McGonigle in this role for the Detroit Convention. I think Charles will fill the same role and I am certain we will all benefit by his energy and knowledge of our operations.
One of the tasks Charles will assist in right away is to meet with the chairs of our four standing committees, whom I have asked to serve as a drafting committee for the Executive Council's report to General Convention. I hope that at least a draft of the report will be ready for discussion at our November meeting.
Finally, I want to announce that we have a theme for the 70th General Convention: By Water and the Holy Spirit: Seeking and Serving Christ in All Creation.
You can see that this theme is in continuity with that of Detroit, expanding it more precisely to our baptismal covenant. If by water and the Holy Spirit we are incorporated into Christ's body, then our ministry is that of seeking and serving the Christ in the fullness of the created order. I am excited by this theme and by the many possibilities for its development in the program of this Executive Council and in the ongoing work of the Committee on Planning and Development. What better way to show reverence for our future than by recommitting ourselves to the vows we made in baptism, putting our whole trust in the grace and love of the one who ever calls us to where he himself is, in the eternal presence of God, in that reign of glory that renews heaven and earth.