Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
March 25, 2007
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C
The Reverend Peter R. Carey
Isaiah 43: 16 - 21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3: 8 - 14
Luke 20: 9 - 19
 

     “Behold, I am doing a new thing.”

     In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

     “We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. We proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.”

     What wonderful words! What joy they bring! How proud those words make us to be Episcopalians! What hope for the future they represent!

     They are of course the words of our bishops who met last week and who issued their initial reply to the primates of the Anglican Communion who have been trying for the past five years to force us to capitulate to demands that we could never in good conscience submit to.

     I believe that the long hard struggle to get to those words was worth every bit of the pain and suffering and anxiety and self-examination that our church went through to get to them.

     The conflict that led to those words is a conflict that matters. And the final outcome of the conflict, which still remains in the future, also matters.

     Some people say that the Episcopal Church doesn’t matter any more. We’re too small to count for much--less than two million members in the United States. But we do matter. We matter a lot. The New York Times didn’t publish five major articles in the past month about the Episcopal Church because we are unimportant. We have always been small and yet we have always managed to excercise an influence on our society and around the world in ways that far exceed our small numbers. There’s much more at stake here than mere numbers.

     We matter to the gay and lesbian people of Nigeria who are right at this moment facing the passage of laws that have been compared to the anti-Semitic laws of the Nazis in pre-war Germany. Proposed laws that have the full backing of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. What our bishops did was to give those gay and lesbian people hope. That’s no small thing.

     We matter because we are demonstrating that it’s possible to be a fully catholic church that is also fully inclusive and fully committed to progressive and democratic ideals. A church where the historic orders of bishop, priest, deacon and layperson are maintained, where the sacraments are celebrated, the scriptures studied, the Gospel proclaimed, the great creeds affirmed, community life lived, common prayer prayed, but where power is shared and where freedom and democracy and common sense flourish right alongside sound doctrine. An inclusive church where all are welcome. That enterprise matters. It has never been done before. God is doing a new thing with us.

     We matter to the Lutherans, with whom we are in full communion, who are also struggling with issues of inclusivity. We matter to the Presbyterians, to the Baptists, to the Methodists, to all the mainstream Protestant churches.

     We matter to countless numbers of Roman Catholics and Orthodox. We offer a home to those who feel they have to leave those churches and we offer hope and solidarity to those who choose to stay and struggle on.

     We matter to many other provinces of the Anglican Communion. To Canada, to South Africa, to Australia, to New Zealand, to Brazil, to Scotland, to Ireland, and even to the Church of England. What our bishops did was to immeasurably strengthen those Anglicans around the world who want their own churches to be open and progressive churches not fundamentalist sects and who don’t want the Anglican Communion to be hijacked by the fundamentalists.

     My partner David and I spent a few days earlier this month on the island of Malta, which lies in the Mediterranean off the southern coast of Sicily.

     Malta was the scene of several extremely important conflicts in world history and I’ve been thinking about those conflicts for the past few days and comparing them in my mind to our conflict within the Anglican Communion. I think a comparison of the two can shed light on our own present conflict.

     Before World War II began, Malta belonged to Great Britain. During the 1930s Britain spent a lot of time and energy trying to appease Hitler and Mussolini, but the Fuhrer and the Duce kept upping the ante; the price of appeasement kept getting higher and higher. Finally, Britain had had enough and said so and drew a line in the sand. The Fascist dictators were furious at this and so, because of its strategic location, the first thing they did was to attack Malta. Hitler and Mussolini knew that they had to control it if they were to control Europe, so to bring Malta to its knees, it was bombed for 154 continuous days and nights. And it was completely cut off from the outside world by a naval blockade. In the end Malta held out heroically against the siege and with America’s help, was saved. Had it not been, the history of Europe would have been far different.

     The story of Malta is the story of conflict on an epic scale. But it contains some lessons for us. After all, we too--you and I and this congregation and our church--have been engaged in a conflict (a conflict of a quite different sort for sure) but a true conflict nevertheless, and one whose outcome will affect history. It is a conflict that matters.

     Our struggle with the fundamentalist provinces of the Anglican Communion, who vastly outnumber us, is not a conflict we chose, but one that was forced on us in an analogous way to the conflict between Malta and Italy. The Maltese people hated the idea that they were at war with Italy. Italy was only 60 miles away and deep bonds of affection existed between the two peoples, bonds that went back literally thousands of years. Above all, they shared the same Christian faith. It was hideously painful for the Maltese to be attacked by Italy. And yet they absolutely would not capitulate to Mussolini or to his friend in the north.

     Our church has also found the present conflict extremely painful. We did not ask for it and we have never wanted it. But we cannot do otherwise than to remain faithful, as our bishops said, to what we understand to be God’s call to us. Guided, we believe, by the Holy Spirit, we have come--all of us together--to an understanding of what the church is and who it embraces and we cannot now retreat from the place that we have come to. I really believe that the words spoken in today’s first lesson by God through the Prophet Isaiah are words about us, the Episcopal Church, and are words spoken to the rest of the Anglican Communion: “Behold I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it?” And so for that reason, here we stand. We can do no other.

     Our willingness to stand firm and not to capitulate is solidly grounded, we believe, in the Bible and in the teachings of our Lord. It is unquestionably true that Jesus preached a doctrine of love and peace and reconciliation, but he also preached a doctrine of justice and implicit always in Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom of God and in St. Paul’s epistles is the idea of struggle and of conflict and of sacrifice to make the world a better world and to make the church a better church and in doing so to hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom at the end of time.

     Jesus never said that it was going to be easy and Jesus never promised perfect concord among his followers. On the contrary, he told them it was going to be hard and painful and costly.

     Another lesson to be learned from the great conflicts of history is that conflict usually brings with it a need for great sacrifice--even heroism--and hard work and close collaboration.

     It seems to me that largely because of the hard work and close collaboration of all kinds and sorts of people in our church--not just our bishops--that we have arrived at a turning point in our conflict with our fundamentalist brethren. The tide has unquestionably turned. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the conservative primates now know that we are really no longer interested in appeasement.

     But the conflict is far from over. We don’t want to leave the Anglican Communion. Our affection for it is genuine and our historic connections to it run deep. Our bishops have made it very clear that we’re not going to leave voluntarily. They’ll have to put us out and if they do, it won’t be pleasant. Evictions and family breakups are always messy. Who gets the kids? Who gets the house? No, there will almost certainly be plenty of conflict and plenty of struggle and plenty sacrifice and hard work to be done in the days ahead.

     We need to remember also that the principal topic of the bishops meeting was the issue of the autonomy of the Episcopal Church, not matters of human sexuality.

     So, we shouldn’t be overly euphoric this morning. Rather, we should simply be grateful to God for bringing us this far. And we should be prepared to make the sacrifices and to do the work necessary to continue to remain faithful to what we understand God’s call to us to be.

     Yes we can surely find real joy and hope in the words of our bishops, but there is an even deeper joy, an even deeper hope, to be found in God’s word spoken this morning through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I am doing a new thing! Do you not perceive it?”

     They are words about us!

     Amen.