|
Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City,
July 9, 2006, The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost:
Year B
by The Reverend
Barry
M. Signorelli
Ezekiel 2:1-7
Psalm 123
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-6
Whether they hear
or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall
know that there has been a prophet among them.
In the Name of God, who bids us prophesy.
Amen.
“He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your
feet, and I will speak with you.” With these words, God calls
Ezekiel the priest to the prophetic ministry. In the years just
before Jerusalem fell to her Babylonian conquerors, leading to the
unthinkable exile of God’s people from the land to which their God
had led them, the Israelites are given a warning. And the agent
of that warning is Ezekiel, whose vivid visions portray a God of
infinite glory and majesty and purpose; yet the totality of God’s
nature and purpose is beyond the comprehension of humanity, and
indeed, beyond even Ezekiel’s power to describe; he can only
relate that “this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory
of the Lord.”
And, like most prophets, Ezekiel is given a hard
message to take to his people. “They are a rebellious house,” the
Lord decrees over and over. Ezekiel is given a life-or-death
responsibility for delivering God’s warning; the people will be
judged by whether or not they heed Ezekiel’s words, but if he does
not fulfill his duty to prophesy, the blood of his people will be
on his own hands.
These days it sometimes feels as if the Babylonians are
gathering at the gates of the Anglican Communion. In the short
time since General Convention – indeed, since even Father Bill’s
prophetic sermon one week ago – it appears that the breakup of the
Communion is all but inevitable, that the long-talked-of schism
may now be close at hand. If ever there was a moment for a
prophetic voice, it is now. But from whence is that voice to
come: from America, or from Nigeria? From our African brothers
comes a clarion call for biblical obedience and adherence to the
tradition as it has been received. From America comes an
impassioned cry for justice and for openness to the new teachings
of the Spirit that Jesus promised would come. To which voice
should we listen, and which holds our salvation?
Let us consider first that Africa has a right to be
suspicious of the West and angry at what the legacy of colonialism
has done to that continent. One can understand the rage of
Africans toward the European powers that subjugated them and
imposed their own culture and morality on the native populations.
Too often even the manner in which African nations regained their
independence resulted in societies unprepared for self-governance,
leading to autocratic dictators and military rule. And the West
should be cautious about acting “imperiously” toward any part of
the third world – indeed, that was the very charge leveled at the
Episcopal Church by the sole Deputy in Columbus to speak against
the election of +Katharine Jefferts Schori as the next Presiding
Bishop, that we were acting “imperiously” yet again.
Except that we weren’t. Politics and religion operate
quite differently, and the American branch of Anglicanism wasn’t
attempting to dictate to Nigeria that they should have women
bishops or primates, any more than we were demanding they have gay
bishops by our consecrating +Gene Robinson. Those are their
internal decisions, to be arrived at through the deliberations of
the counsels of their church, as we did in ours; this is how the
Anglican Communion has always operated (for the 120 or so years
that it has existed) – as a loose gathering of autonomous national
churches, each with its own polity and governing structure.
(Actually the term “autocephalous” is more appropriate, meaning
each church has its own “head,” or Primate.) The Gospel has
always, throughout history, been received in different ways by
different cultures, and it is the flexibility of its central
doctrine, that in Jesus Christ all humanity is brought together
into one, that has permitted Christianity to flourish across the
globe. In Anglicanism in particular, we have never been subject
to a central doctrinal or dogmatic authority, but are gathered
together by our agreement to unity in essentials, and local custom
in everything else.
But what are those essentials? You can find them on
page 877 of the Book of Common Prayer; adopted by the House of
Bishops in 1886, and resolved at the Lambeth Conference two years
later, the things that are “incapable of compromise or surrender”
are:
- The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments as “containing all things necessary to salvation,”
and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
- The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal
Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the
Christian faith.
- The two Sacraments ordained by Christ
Himself – Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.
- The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted
in the methods of its administration.
That’s it. Nothing
about women priests, bishops, or primates, nothing about
homosexuality, nothing about agreeing on all points of doctrine
and discipline, no appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury to
settle internal or inter-provincial squabbles.
But wait, you might say: Nigeria claims that the
Episcopal Church has violated the Holy Scriptures through the
acceptance of homosexuality and the ordaining of an active gay man
as a bishop. And here we differ in our understanding of
Scripture. For Scripture also says many other things that we have
come to understand as culture-bound to a specific time or place:
slavery, usury, divorce, the silence of women in the churches,
avoidance of shellfish, not wearing blended fabrics, and not
working on Saturday (which is the Sabbath, not Sunday). Somehow
we’ve been able to work out our peace with laying these strictures
aside, but so many of our brothers and sisters get hung up on
homosexuality, to the extent that it alone, of all our differences
of opinion over the years, is sufficient to bring us to the brink
of schism.
The American Church, along with a very few others, has
been about the work of debating, praying, arguing, and analyzing
the question of homosexuality in the church for some 30 years.
For much of that time, the rest of the Anglican Communion has
agreed, in principle, to do the same, to engage in a “listening
process,” to be open to what the Spirit might want to teach us in
our time and place, since we believe that revelation is ongoing
(as Jesus himself told us). But most of the Communion has wasted
those years by not listening, by foreclosing any honest
communications with gays and lesbians, by shutting down any
consideration of any possibility other than rejection and
persecution. I don’t mean to suggest that, had these Provinces
listened and talked honestly about this subject all those years
that they would necessarily have come to the same conclusion as
the American church has; we haven’t even reached an internal
consensus ourselves, as witnessed by the several dioceses that
have requested the mythic “alternative primatial oversight.” (Of
course, these are basically the same dioceses that have similarly
refused to listen or dialogue over the years on homosexuality, or
women’s ordination before that). But if they had undergone the
process, they would at least have been open to the possibility of
the Spirit showing them something new. What do we do with our
brothers and sisters who have broken their word and not done their
homework?
It’s been suggested that we may be called to “adjust
our stride” so that we can walk with others; but what do we do if
the other is walking in the wrong direction? Or if, with every
stride, they kick a fellow-traveler on the way? Many of us feel
that this is exactly what is happening, as the Nigerian Primate,
++Peter Akinola, helps to sponsor a law in his country that not
only makes homosexuality a crime, but also criminalizes those who
support gays and lesbians, or even speak or write in support of
it. How does this further the “listening process” that he himself
signed onto at the 1998 Lambeth Conference? How does this fulfill
his obligation as a Christian to respect the dignity of every
human being? How does this square with the prophet’s call to “do
justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God”?
To my mind, it does not, and it cannot. And just as ++Akinola
feels justified in condemning us for acting in accordance with our
understanding of God’s will, so too must I speak out when I see a
blatant disregard for the mandates of the Gospel. To the Anglican
Church of Nigeria, I say, You are a rebellious house! Your
leaders seek power and privilege, yet ignore the basic human
rights of your minority brothers and sisters. You invade the
territory of your fellow bishops and disregard the polity of other
Provinces, yet you cry aloud that our faithful response to the
Gospel as we understand it is tyranny directed at you. You make
promises to listen and do not keep them, but rather deny the very
existence of those you choose not to understand. You claim to be
true to the faith handed down to you, yet you refuse Our Lord’s
command “that we all may be one” by avoiding the sharing of the
Eucharist with those you find distasteful. You sin against the
Holy Spirit by denying that there is anything more you can be
taught by God, and you elevate the Scriptures to an idol,
slavishly, literally, and selectively obeyed even when it means
oppression and death to your brothers and sisters. This I declare
to you, that I may be clean of your blood.
We have tried, so often and so hard, to be
conciliatory, to be agreeable, to go more than halfway to meet
those who disagree with us. So long as there is a partner across
the table who is willing earnestly and honestly to listen and to
talk, such action is commendable and pleasing to God. But when
the time comes that the partner across the table has closed his
ears and shut his eyes and shouts condemnations and curses at you,
then conciliation and agreeableness become nothing more than the
appeasement of a bully. And bullies are never appeased. The
action of the 2006 General Convention in passing the infamous
Resolution B-033 – including the complicity of our bishops and
deputies who supported this legislation consigning some of their
brothers and sisters to second-class membership in the Body of
Christ – this was an act of appeasement, the futility of which is
increasingly apparent. The action of this parish’s Vestry in
passing a resolution calling our bishops to account was indeed an
act of prophecy, and one I am proud to endorse. But prophecy is
ultimately not intended to bring about the doom it declares;
rather, the job of the prophet is to make sure that disaster is
averted, that the people see the truth and turn to it.
God’s purpose is often to us, like to Ezekiel,
incomprehensible and mysterious; there may well be a reason that
the Anglican Communion is brought to its present state. But even
so, the job of each of us here today is to be a prophet of
justice, of inclusion, of the reality of God’s unearned love
toward each and every human being, whatever their condition or
state. It is our job to hold each other to account, to listen
faithfully, to reason soundly, and yes, to walk the extra mile –
but to make no peace with oppression or exclusion, that our
witness to the world may be one of righteousness.
And whether the world hears or refuses to hear, they
shall know that there has been a prophet among them.
Amen.
Back to Sermon Selections |
