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Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City,
August 10, 2003, The
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost ,
Proper 14, Year B
Sunday after General Convention
by The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D.
Deuteronomy 8:1-10
Psalm 34
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:37-51
New York City churches in August are generally pretty
sleepy places—with many regulars away and those who are still in
town taking it a little easier whenever possible. It would seem
to be a hallowed part of the rhythm of our lives—for good or ill.
But unless you were asleep the
last two weeks, this August has been very different indeed. When
was the last time any of you could remember anything about the
Episcopal Church being one of the very top news stories on every
television station and every daily paper for days on end? There
was a similar plethora of news and opinion and emails from all
manner of perspectives on the internet. My “inbox” both at the
church and at home has never seen anything like it.
What was going on at the
Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Minneapolis has shaken
the foundations more profoundly, I believe, than at any time since
the approval of the ordination of women to the priesthood and
episcopate, and the sorting out of what happened there is only
beginning. Since so many members of this parish are so deeply
involved in the issues before us, and since the social ministry of
this parish is so much a part of our commitments and our heritage,
I feel constrained to spend still more time on this topic, fully
realizing that over the two preceding Sundays, Peter Carey and
Barry Signorelli have both spoken eloquently. But the drama keeps
on unfolding.
Last Sunday we knew that the
Reverend Canon Gene Robinson was on his way to having his election
as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire ratified by the
convention—and our church saying “yes” in electing the
first openly gay bishop in our history. On Sunday, the House of
Deputies of the Convention duly voted for Robinson. And then
there was the bombshell on Monday, just before the House of
Bishops was to vote.
An 11th hour protest
was made by a man in Vermont who complained that Robinson had
inappropriately touched him at a conference two years before. It
turned out that Robinson had touched him on the elbow and shoulder
while publicly talking with the man. Gene Robinson may have been
a bit overly familiar or friendly, but that this could possibly be
considered sexual misconduct seemed far fetched in the extreme.
A second charge was that a gay
and lesbian teen program Robinson helped start several years ago
had a web-site with a link to pornographic material—thus
ostensibly connecting Robinson with pornography. It didn’t seem
to matter that the web site wasn’t even established until two
years ago, long after Robinson’s connection with the organization
had ceased. And further, the ostensible link turned out to be
several links through unrelated sites.
Happily, it took just 24 hours to
investigate what seemed for all the world delaying tactics, to
dismiss them, and to move on to a vote by the bishops. Gene
Robinson was easily confirmed in both houses of the Convention,
but there were sufficient negative votes to indicate that the
issue was going to continue to convulse the church. Canon
Robinson is scheduled to be consecrated a bishop on November 2.
The other major issue before the
convention was the blessing of same sex unions. There was a major
effort to finally produce a formal liturgy that would be published
in what is called the Book of Occasional Services. In the
light of all the controversy and feelings over Robinson’s
ratification, a move was made to move such a liturgy to the less
widely used Expanding our Worship, the same book that
contains the expansive language liturgies we use here each summer.
What ended up happening was that
the convention decided not to move officially toward creating new
liturgies, but rather to continue the dialogue and, very
importantly, to recognize that liturgies and ministries are
already happening in many places of the church. These efforts
will feed into the continuing dialogue and we will see where we
are in three years.
I had initially seen this as a
real blow to the church’s finally recognizing and affirming what
we and others have been doing for years. But curiously, both
quite a few conservatives and liberals ended up applauding
and voting for this approach. Conservatives could claim that the
new rites did not pass, while liberals could claim that what is
already happening is being acknowledged officially and the
movement goes forward.
Being translated, what this
really means is that in supportive dioceses with supportive
bishops, things will continue to progress steadily. In more
conservative dioceses with non-supportive bishops, nothing would
have happened even if a move toward developing rites had passed.
And so we live in two very
different worlds, depending on geography. A great deal can happen
in supportive dioceses. Almost nothing can happen in
non-supportive areas. It is not too much to say that in parts of
our country, a great many gay people and their friends feel
devastated, even embittered—for they are still, as it were,
consigned to the rear of the bus, while their friends in liberal
areas are in a very different place, and can feel at least
partially vindicated. I think there is a message here for those
of us who are blessed to find ourselves in such comfortable and
affirming places such as Holy Apostles—that a part of our mission
and ministry is to work to incarnate in all our church some of
what we so easily take for granted here.
But there is still more. There
are quite a number of entrenched conservatives, including some
major diocese and parishes, who are also deeply embittered. And
many of the Third World churches in the Anglican Communion are
very nearly apoplectic. A clearly worried Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has called for a meeting in
mid-October of all 38 Anglican Primates from around the world to
discuss this crisis in the Anglican Communion, brought on by the
actions of our just-concluded General Convention.
The primates and, indeed, the
Archbishop of Canterbury have no legal authority to stop anything
from happening in the Episcopal Church, but the issues of
maintaining communion and even of creating a second, more
conservative official “Anglican” province in the United States are
under discussion. I am not sure it is too much to say that the
future shape of the Episcopal Church in America and the Anglican
Communion worldwide are at least somewhat uncertain.
The genius of Anglicanism has
over and over again been demonstrated, at least in my opinion, by
that fact that we have not been possessed by legalisms, by
narrowly defined confessions, much less by a biblical
fundamentalism. We have been united by an evolving Book of Common
Prayer and by an unbroken Christian tradition meditated by our
common heritage with the English Church and the Archbishop of
Canterbury. That means we have always been a bit “fuzzy,” if you
will. Historically, that has always given us a lot of
wiggle-room, and generally a fair degree of tolerance. That is
the distinctive Anglican ethos and sense of style, of all things
done “decently and in order.” That meant that our various “low
church lazy,” “broad church hazy,” “high church
crazy” predilections could still be subsumed in one great, but
admittedly diffuse communion.
The other side of the coin is
that on those occasions when we have been pressed, when we have
needed to take a stand with real specificity, we have a very
difficult time of it. Our church was the Tory church in the
American revolution. It took a good while to establish the
Episcopal Church in the United States as a truly American Church.
Like many other churches, we fudged over the issue of slavery and
racial justice, maintaining our unity while several other
Christian churches split in two. We eventually approved women’s
ordination and managed in this case both to hold ourselves and the
Anglican Communion together. What this has meant is that we have
often moved much more slowly than many of us would like—but the
center has held.
I honestly don’t know where we
are today. I am absolutely with and support those who say we are
not moving to the back of the bus any longer. We have had
enough. It is time to move forward on this issue. But I would
also beg us to consider that not all is black and white in how
best to move things forward as expeditiously as possible. I
believe many bishops in this church and in our own diocese very
much want to move this process forward, but they also want to
bring along as many people with them as possible. In the words of
our presiding bishop, used in referring to the war in Iraq, they
want to “wage reconciliation.” For good or ill, they want to be
reconcilers, not polarizers. And yet it is hard, very hard, to
have open-ended patience in the face of injustice. At the very
least, the road ahead is going to be bumpy.
Needless to say, there is much to
chew on here, much to talk about in the coming days, weeks, and
months. I hope as many of you as possibly can will stay for our
forum following the coffee hour today. It will be chaired by
Father Carey, and you will likely hear more from your clergy and
also from Bruce Parker who attended Convention in his capacity as
Director of Communications for General Seminary. But it will give
us all a chance to talk—and also a chance to listen to each
other.
I would also invite you to mark
the evening of Tuesday, September 16, in your calendars. For at
our eucharist that day and at a special forum following, we will
once again welcome Bishop Cathy Roskam in discussing all these
issues.
Finally, not everyone here may
realize that our own parish has an ongoing, online discussion
forum that enables us to keep abreast of these and other issues of
concern. It has been a wonderful resource through all this
craziness. It is sponsored by the Social and Economic Justice
Committee, and everyone on what is called the SEJC Listserv gets
regular emails from any of the other members whenever they wish to
comment or share something with the rest of the listserv. You can
join by signing up at the SEJC table just under the pulpit during
the coffee hour, or by speaking to one of the clergy or the church
office.
In these uncertain times, I close
with the wonderful “prayer for the church,” found in our Book of
Common Prayer.
Let us pray: Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy
Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all
peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error,
direct it; where it is anything in amiss, reform it. Where it is
right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where
it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son
our Savior.
Amen.
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