Episcopal Press and News
Presiding Bishop's Remarks from the Chair to Executive Council in Minneapolis
Episcopal News Service. June 23, 1993 [93130]
I want to begin by saying that I am delighted to be in Minnesota. My first visit here was in 1976 for the Minneapolis General Convention. At that Convention we took the historic vote on the ordination of women. Seventeen years ago. I have changed. You have changed. The church has changed. And now, just two weeks ago, Mary Adelia Mcleod was elected Bishop of Vermont, the first woman in the Episcopal church to be elected a diocesan bishop...
Minneapolis was not the site originally envisioned for the June 1993 meeting of the Executive Council. We had planned to meet in Haiti, but the very tragic and difficult conditions there have made that impossible. Two weeks ago I was in Haiti for the consecration of the bishop coadjutor, the Rt. Rev. Jean Zache Duracin, who is the ninth Bishop of Haiti and the second Haitian to be elected as bishop. He is strong in his faith, and that faith will be much needed in the face of the incredible poverty and political instability in his country. The church in Haiti is one of those bulwarks of faith, a beacon of hope in a dark landscape. They are our partners in proclaiming the gospel, and I ask that you remember Bishop Duracin and the people of Haiti in your prayers.
Those of you who have listened over the years, as Patti and I have, to Garrison Keillor know that, as we meet here in Minneapolis, we are in the vicinity of Lake Wobegon -- the little town that time forgot. Though Lake Wobegon existed first only in the very creative imagination of a native Minnesotan, the town and the people who live there have become as real to a large and faithful radio audience as the neighbors next door -- and perhaps more real in these days when so many of us don't know our neighbors. Since 1974, Garrison Keillor, who could be called a humorist, or a writer but whom I know to be a theologian as well, has been on American Public radio sharing with us his observations of life in Lake Wobegon. This is the town where, as he tells it "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."
...Lake Wobegon may not be on the map. Even so it exists in the context of the experiences of all of us, in our commonality as we move along the road of our own lives. The appeal of Garrison Keillor is in his universality, in the gift he has for taking the particularity of the experience of one person and so describing it in its essence that we know it as our own experience as well. When we hear about Lake Wobegon, we learn something of our own lives. We listen to the stories, and we hear something of who we are too.
My friends, over these last years I have come to know that there is nothing more important we can do in obedience to God than listen to our own lives. God speaks to us in the daily. Our faithful response is to listen.
I want to share with you something from another of my favorite modern writer/theologians, Frederick Buechner. These are extracts from a book called Listening to Your Life.
Buechner writes: "I [have] discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even...a limited and limiting life.!.open[s] up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him...If I were called upon to state a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments and life itself is grace."
Buechner goes on to say that the reason God's words are almost impossible to capture in human language is that they are ultimately always incarnate words. "They are words fleshed out in the everydayness no less than in the crises of our own experience."
"All moments are key moments and life itself is grace." That is enough to make us sit up and pay attention. To listen to our lives. And, as we do, I would like to pose what I believe are the operative questions we might ask ourselves while we are listening.
These questions are two, and simple they are. The first: "Where is God in all of this?" Where is God in pain, in joy, in disappointment and frustration? Where in those situations and twists of life that seem inexplicable? Where is God?
The second is equally simple: Are we becoming more who God means us to become, or less? This calls to mind the plumb line. And the Lord said to Amos: "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel." We are being measured, tested, judged and, as we attend to it, we receive a judgement of grace.
These two questions, though simply stated, are not simply answered. In fact, I am not so sure they get answered at all in any ordinary or straightforward way. Rather, we live them. And the answers that our lives give are tested within the community of prayer. We address these questions both individually and as a community. God moves through our individual lives but we don't stop with that personal relationship. That is a beginning, not an ending. The God of the Gospel challenges us to draw from our inner life, our private life, so we may live fully in, learn from, and serve in the outer world, the public sphere, God's world. We -- you and I and the churches -- have a great deal of work to do to reconnect the public and the private.
Parker Palmer, in a wonderful book called The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America's Public Life, speaks to the role of the churches in making this reconnection. He notes that the concept of a public life has become distorted, is misunderstood and equated simply with politics and the activities of government. As he says: "Even if one believes that religion and politics don't mix, there is still strong reason to believe that Christians should concern themselves with public life. For the church preaches a vision of human unity which means very little if not acted out in the public realm. Surely that vision applies to more than family and friends. Surely it is a vision which claims more than the commonality of those who think and act and look alike. Surely that vision reaches out to include those who are alien, different, strange. If so, then the church must incarnate its vision in public, for there and only there is the stranger to be found."
Parker goes on to say that "the churches of this country still possess the potential for the greatest power of all: the power to infuse life with meaning, or to articulate the meaning with which life is already ripe."
My conviction is that life is indeed ripe with meaning and we have had much to listen to, to make sense of, individually and as a community, in the four months since we left Mundelein. Beginning with the perspective of our world, we have seen conflicts deepen and suffering increase in some of the most troubled lands: Liberia, the Sudan, Somalia, the Occupied Territories. And on, and on. Most certainly, and visibly, in Bosnia.
The situation in Bosnia has been an agonizing spectacle played out nightly on our television sets. So appalled have I been by the atrocities that I issued a call to my counterparts in other denominations that we seek some common wisdom to share with the wider community. Bringing that together was difficult. Dialogue was agonizing, as we struggled to find agreement and bring the perspective of our Christian faith to that conflict. In the end, we issued a statement which moves us toward seeing humanitarian intervention as a reluctant, but legitimate, option.
As terrible as the situation in Bosnia, other areas of the world are equally distressed, even if not judged as newsworthy by those who select our daily burden of news. Liberia has known nothing but hardship, fear and death for three years. And the situation is worsening. The Sudan though less publicized than Somalia, is embroiled in war and devastated by hunger. Socalled religion serves as a source of brutality rather than a mediator for peace. We must support in every way our church partners in these places of suffering and death in their work of reconciliation.
Whether it is Haiti, Bosnia, the Middle East, Liberia, the Sudan, Zaire, Angola, Cambodia, Burma, East Timor, Tibet, South Africa or Los Angeles or wherever mass suffering exists, we are at a time when the church must articulate where God is in all of this, and in response, seek to understand our role in God's purposes.
The suffering we see is inhuman and cannot be ignored or talked away. We as a people of faith have a perspective to share with the family of nations as the international community grapples to define its role in a post cold war world. How are we to respect the dignity of all mortals and strive for justice and peace in the face of such horror? We are called to hold up a vision of the world as God would have it. We as a council, as a church, are standing next to the plumb line.
Though it is sometimes hard to make out the shadow of God's hand through the veil of tears, of this we are clear: God is present with those who suffer. And our own prayers are with the suffering, as well as our help in ways that seem, and are, pitifully limited.
As we listen to our lives, and look around us, it is plain that we must look for the connections among the issues of racism, economic injustice and environmental degradation. We struggle with these issues because we know God demands it of us so that we might participate in ushering in God's reign.
When we met last February, our nation had just welcomed a new President and the honeymoon was in progress. Well friends, that honeymoon is over. We are now witnessing an intense round of what I call the "politics of got-cha." Got-cha! I'm right! You're wrong! This game can be, and is, played by both political parties and, regrettably, is part of the institutional life of churches as well.
We are under the sway of the politics of got-cha when those holding differing points of view take on as their main work the dubious activity of making the other side look bad. When this happens there is a risk of losing sight of what our efforts are meant to point toward. Those in political life risk forgetting that what they are meant to care about is the common good and the general welfare. In the case of the church, those preoccupied with discrediting other points of view risk forgetting that we are meant to advance the mission of the church, bring souls to Christ and usher in the reign of God.
The real tragedy of such tactics is that both accuser and accused are diverted from what they are truly called to be. Everyone becomes less than they are called to be. And our mission suffers. Is this not sin?
In times of got-cha, appearance has more substance than reality. Looking good gets the prize and leadership means telling people what to do as if you had no doubt about it rather than allowing for ambiguity, and waiting on the Lord -- rather than listening to the various voices, and weaving the rich and varied strands together.
I look to the Executive Council, as leaders in the Episcopal Church, you were elected by the church, even though they sometimes forget that, to be aware of these dynamics and name them for what they are. It is woefully off the mark for groups within the household of faith to attempt to promote their points of view by diminishing the points of view of others. I will not give examples, though several spring to mind. It is not the role of the presiding bishop to chide the over-zealous by name. It is the role of the presiding bishop to point to a dynamic prevalent today in our society, and around the landscape of our church as well.
We -- as leaders of the church -- need to help the various constituencies within our body understand that what they espouse will be accepted, or not, based on its own merits. Forays into the politics of got-cha do not well serve the community of faith, and are certainly antithetical to our understanding of Anglican comprehensiveness.
Just a footnote about our Anglican heritage because it relates to my sense of where God is in all of this. As we look around our church, we know that many of our number are fairly new to the Episcopal Church and perhaps have not had an opportunity to learn what it means to be Episcopalians and inheritors of the Anglican tradition. We can attribute this to the happy news that our parishes are doing the work of the evangelists: inviting people to be part of our church community and to join with us in mission. Consequently, we have an enormous task educating those who become part of our household of faith about what richness they have in it. It is my deep sense that God is pressing us to recover the treasures of that heritage, to look with gratitude at what we have been given, such as our comprehensiveness, and to share it with others. In fact, this is one of the messages given us by the partners at the Partners in Mission Consultation when we were last together. Our consultation was a serious exercise in paying attention and asking how God is calling us. Our work proceeds through the PIM Continuation Committee and we will be hearing more about this later in the week.
Living in our comprehensiveness is a true way as we receive the gifts of ordained women. We are also living in our comprehensiveness when we accept that there are persons of good faith in our church who remain unconvinced of the theological rightness of the ordination of women. These hands that consecrated Barbara Harris, and Jane Dixon, and hopefully Mary Adelia, were also placed on the head of Jack Iker. And God was there in all of that.
Surely as we listen to our lives we know that we are being called to attend to the problem of sexual abuse in the church. We have a problem. That we know. We as a Council had to deal with it within the year. We will be talking about it again later today. Again and again I ask myself, where is God in all of this? Are we becoming more who God calls us to become? We are not meant to find words of answer. We are meant to live the questions. I believe we are living them.
I am not proud of the problems. I am proud of the way we are facing them. We are facing them. We are trying to be open. We are trying to make the church a place of safety -- where vulnerability is a gift, though it may lead to the cross. We are trying to be open and we are trying to be honest. We are doing more as well. We are trying to educate ourselves, about boundaries, about what it means to be in a position of trust. We are trying to look closely at who we place in those positions. We are also trying to live as if we believe that where there is sin, there is also redemption. Where there is contrition and amendment of life, there is forgiveness and healing. It is not easy, but then we have no right to expect it to be easy. The way of the cross is not easy.
Over these last months many of you have done a lot of listening to the lives of dioceses as part of our planning process. I am enormously grateful to each and every one of you who have participated in these visits. You have made a tremendous gift of your time and energy -- neither of which is limitless. It is my hope, and I would not be surprised if this is the case, that you have received a great deal as well. I know you have heard some affirmation, some harsh words too. We need to listen to both.
The learnings from these visits will be distilled over the next months, helping us to respond as a Council, and a church, such that we are partners in the ministry of the church. If we pay attention, truly listen, as I have no doubt we will, it will not be business as usual. Our budgets won't look the same. Our programs won't look the same. When we next meet, in Hartford in November, we will have in draft form program and budget recommendations which reflect our active listening. I pray they will reflect as well our asking: Where is God in all of this? Are we becoming, individually and as a community, more who God intends us to become?
We do not have the answers. We are living the questions, and we live them in the midst of grace upon grace upon grace. God's grace is with us. God's spirit is upon us. Let us live in accordance with that knowledge. And, let us listen to our lives. "...All moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."