Episcopal Press and News
Presiding Bishop's Address from the Chair to Executive Council in Omaha
Episcopal News Service. April 25, 1994 [94099]
My dear friends, as I speak to you this morning I am so very aware that this group, this body of elected leaders from around the church, this blessed company of friends, of sisters and brothers, will not gather again as the Executive Council. I begin this morning by letting you know that I thank God daily for the blessing I have been given of walking this road with all of you. It is a privilege I will never forget.
For nine years I have been your Presiding Bishop. Before that, I served on council for six years. Before that, I attended council meetings for two years as a member of Bishop Allin's staff. This, my friends, is the amazing equivalent of a 17-year-term! So, I know something of what an Executive Council is all about, and I can say to you that I have never known a finer, more committed, more faithful Executive Council. I commend you. Your ministry, individually and collectively, has meant more to me than I could possibly say.
In the fall, a new council will meet, a different group. Some of us will be part of the new council; some will not. They will have to make their way, as we have made our way together over these last six years. They will have to make choices, as we have had to make choices. They will have to mold themselves into a faithful community, as we -- by God's grace -- have done. I pray God that they will build on the good work of this council, and make an offering to the church, as you have made an offering.
As I prepared for this meeting, I thought a great deal about our life and work since those of you who are now leaving us first gathered with me. That was in the fall of 1988. I have been thinking about where we have been, who we have been, who we have become. I have thought about how we have tried to respond to the leading of the Spirit. I have thought about the choices we have made, particularly during this last triennium. I have thought about how hard we have worked for the furtherance of Christ's mission here on earth, which, at the end of the day, is what it's all about.
My thinking in recent days has been informed by Roger L. Shinn, who is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics emeritus at Union Seminary. He recently brought out a new edition of his book Forced Options: Social Decisions for the Twenty-First Century. Roger borrowed this term from William James, who describes "forced options" as decisions that allow no escape. In a situation of forced options, not to decide is to decide. That is, delaying a decision is in itself a decision, as much as choosing one of the alternatives would be.
As Professor Shinn writes: "The forced option is a simple point of logic. Some options are avoidable and some are forced. That is, some decisions can be put off indefinitely or evaded forever; others cannot. To recognize a forced option is not to say that any single course of action is forced. On the contrary, James emphasized human freedom, not fatalism. What is forced is a decision." We can relate to that, can we not! In fact, I believe in large measure, the good work of this council has been the result of living and working with conscious intention. We have not drifted through the triennium. We have discerned well in which areas hard choices were called for, and we have not flinched. We have not put off decisions, or evaded them.
At the same time, we have been careful to recognize those moments when we have not been called to make a choice, to "shoot from the hip," as the old expression goes, but, rather, to live in the tension of ambiguity. We have worked hard on knowing where we are in agreement, and recognizing that more unites us than divides us. We have worked at not choosing up sides and becoming polarized. We have tried hard not to disempower those with less popular opinions.
I want to say parenthetically that I believe our whole church is struggling to honor our Anglican understanding that sometimes the most faithful course is to live in the tension of ambiguity, contradiction, however anxiety provoking that may be, however disagreeable that may be for those of us who value closure, resolution.
Certainly our House of Bishops is becoming a covenant community that is trying to live the questions. The progress of the House since you last saw us all together in Phoenix has been nothing short of remarkable.
I thank God for our Anglican heritage. We are well served by it at this time when some within our household of faith -- perfectly well-intentioned -- are ready to offer easy answers and simplistic solutions to complex problems, as if "the faith once delivered" had been delivered like so much milk to the door. But, that is a sermon for another time.
My point is that we, the Episcopal Church, as a household of faith, can take some satisfaction in the fact that we are trying to live the questions before us, in faith, and in hope of God's guidance. We don't think we have all the answers, or that we have found at last the perfect structure, and the most effective way to be on mission. This Executive Council -- the way we have conducted our life -- has been a very positive influence on the whole church, reinforcing the faithful path of mindful, conscious living, of deliberation, and of respectful listening. We have balanced forced options and open questions. What we have been able to accomplish, I believe, is the fruit of a faithful path.
At our first meeting of this triennium, in October just after the Phoenix General Convention, I began my address to you with a meditation by Eric Symes Abbott, former dean of Westminster. I chose this meditation because it said something about life as a faith community. I want to read it again now, thus ending in the way we began.
We are all persons in the making
and in a real sense we are
making and re-making one another.
But how often personal relationships
are marred by hasty, partial or
over-severe judgments.
We must help one another,
not judge one another, and
we must leave the final judgment
to the Divine Patience.
One of the greatest promises
in the New Testament is that
we are accepted in the Beloved.
Let us try to be the ministers
of acceptance.
My dear friends, over these last three years we -- persons in the making all of us -- have made and remade one another. We have accepted one another. We have valued one another. And, we have become a community of disciples. It is out of the strength of our community that we have made our offering to the church. It is so important to acknowledge and affirm that, as we move along, the foundational choice that we made was to pay attention to our life together such that we could become a community of disciples. Out of this, all that we have done, all that we have become, has followed.
I want to share with you now my sense of some of the critical turnings on the path over these last years, the choices we have made when we set off on one road, and left other roads behind.
As I said, our foundational choice was to recognize that, above all, we are called to be a faithful community of disciples, mindful that we are here to do the work of the Lord. Because of this we decided to spend significant time each meeting in prayer, in worship, in Bible study. Our decision to go on retreat to Mundelein was a direct result of this choice.
We also chose to be serious about long-range planning. It wasn't always easy to follow through on that. Some of us had had about enough of those cloud drawings. But, we stuck it out. Planning is not an easy exercise. Sometimes you feel as if you are in a muddle, but we muddled through. We kept at it until it made sense, until it bore fruit. That was the high point of our last meeting together. Our Partners in Mission consultation in February of 1993 was another way of expressing our commitment to partnership. We have chosen to draw the circle wide. And we will continue to do so. Our recent visit to the Middle East, on behalf of us all, is a symbol of our commitment to our partnership. If only I could share with you what the support and prayers of this church mean to the tiny struggling church in Egypt. If only you could spend an hour with me in the Diocese of Jerusalem, where, under conditions that make you want to throw up your hands in despair, faithful Christians follow in the steps of Jesus -- loving and healing on a daily, hourly basis -- in the very land where he walked. Our love, our caring means everything in the world to our partners in the Middle East, just as their witness, in the face of almost indescribable adversity, means everything to us. That kind of witness brings fresh springs to nurture our faith. We must never abandon one another, anymore than God will abandon us.
I think today of our partners in South Africa, where at this very moment history is being made. I rejoice that we have been a part of making that history. We have stood with our brother Desmond, and the church there. We have stood with the people there. We will never abandon the struggle against the evil of institutionalized racism that has been the dominant characteristic of South African life for longer than any of us can remember. Today, we thank God for how far we have come, how far the people of South Africa have come, and we ask for continuing help as the church works to bring healing and reconciliation.
About two weeks ago I was asked by the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches to head what is called an "eminent persons group" to South Africa for the elections and the period immediately following. Konrad Raiser extended this invitation to me when health problems caused the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie to withdraw from the group. Unfortunately, other commitments, most particularly this meeting in Omaha, meant that I was not able to accept the invitation. I share this with you because it is reflective of the recognition of the world religious community that the churches of North America, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, stand with the oppressed around the world.
I would ask now, if before I continue, for just a moment we might join in silent prayer for all of the people of South Africa. Let us especially call to mind those men and women who will be free to vote for the very first time in the history of their land. Let us give thanks for the developments in South Africa, for the witness of the church, for the persons, living and dead, who have made their witness of hope, of justice. Amen.
Most certainly, the program planning that we have been doing over these last months has been full of choices and decisions. It is a prime example of forced options. As we have planned what we as a national entity will do, we have also looked at the dollars. Budget building forces choices. Fuzziness is not an option. We have made hard choices and tough decisions. I don't need to rehearse for this council the process we have gone through in making our choices: the listening, reflecting, figuring, juggling, consulting and praying that have been part of this process. This is a bit of recent history none of us will soon forget. I suspect that you have heard a word or two about the proposed budget since we last met. I have heard quite a few words, received quite a few letters, had quite a few conversations. Fortunately, most of the response has been positive and encouraging. For the first time in my memory, the budget will be one of the major issues at General Convention -- and I don't think that's at all bad. I have felt a great deal of affirmation for the work of this council, and for the fact that our decisions were informed by what we heard in the listening process. That was another choice we made. We decided to go out to where the members of this church are carrying on the mission and find out first-hand just what they need and hope for from a national program.
However, I have heard from some unhappy people as well. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to any of you, who have had letters and conversations of your own. We wouldn't have done the things we did in this triennium if we hadn't thought they were worthwhile, and it is hard to let them go. It is painful to change. Most of all, it is very hard for any of us to hold onto a total perspective of income, expense, needs, opportunities and possibilities within the various entities of our church. We have had to do that and we know how very difficult that is to do.
Budgets are sometimes graphically illustrated as pie charts. Wedges are marked off in the total pie. Playing with that image, I would say that we are the chefs who were responsible for making the pie. We decided how many apples, and how many raisins, and how many walnuts and cranberries to put in this pie. We measured out the flour, and the butter. We put in just enough sugar. We mixed it all up so that we would end up hopefully with a harmonious, and delicious, whole.
Now, continuing with this rather simply analogy, what if the apple growers decided that we needed more apples? We would be changing the proportions and would soon hear from the growers of cranberries. What if those who were responsible for providing the salt thought that a pinch wasn't enough? What if the sugar refiners felt if a half a cup was good then two cups was surely better? And then there are the people who don't like raisins. You get the idea. We have had oversight of the whole process. We have had to keep all of the ingredients in mind. We have had to carefully balance things, measure, plan, and attend to the whole. Many of the people we are hearing from, though not all certainly, are focused on one of the ingredients. They don't yet have a clear picture of what we are trying to do: that this is a cranberry, apple, raisin, walnut pie -- not just one of those things. And, it is a pie of a certain size -- not a pie in the sky.
Now, the responsibility of putting that all together has been passed on to the Joint Committee on Program, Budget and Finance. They have been involved with our work at every step of the way -- the first time that has happened, to my knowledge -- which has given our process a superb continuity. I have every confidence that they will now take up the task with integrity and care. I have the same confidence in the General Convention. That confidence allows me to sit a little easy with all of this, even though I care terribly and am certainly full of opinions.
Right now, I believe we have another choice to make. I believe we have to decide what is the most faithful response over the next months to the comments we hear, particularly to the negative ones. It is terribly important that my staff and I be clear about this as we prepare for General Convention. I don't have a simple response, but I do have a certain perspective that I would like to share with you. It is a perspective that, in the way of the choices we have made up until now, is consistent with being faithful disciples.
First, I believe we need to stand behind what we have done. That is not hard to do, given that we came out of our Norfolk meeting enthusiastic and hopeful about how the proposed new way of doing business will strengthen the mission of our church at all levels.
However, equally important, we must recognize that there are valid criticisms to what we have produced. Undoubtedly, there will be more than one right way of doing this. We must not for a minute demean those who have reservations or criticisms about the budget. We must honor and value their opinions. We must hear the pain of those for whom this proposed budget means program cuts. We must help, in every way we can, personally and corporately, to bear the pain.
As we reflect on what we have done over the last years I hope we choose to do it in a spirit of sober satisfaction, not of triumphalism. We did our best with the available ingredients. We have been faithful, diligent, and careful. We have recognized a forced option when we saw one and we have known when patience is the better part of valor. Satisfaction is appropriate. At the same time, we have had to come to grips with the fact that there are approximately one-third fewer positions on the national staff than there were in 1991. A toll has been extracted as we have walked along this road, both in terms of staff and program. Triumphalism, I believe, is inappropriate when some who have walked this way, some of our partners, have been sorely wounded by actions that have been forced for the good of the whole enterprise.
I want to say another word about partnership -- extremely important at this meeting and for the new council. We made a major choice to work in partnership. Our structure now is a giant web of connected strands. Having done this, let us remember: committed partners need to challenge one another. Being challenged, lovingly challenged, is one of the ways we are, as Dean Abbott wrote, "made and remade."
Just think about this for a moment: The General Convention and Executive Council have been challenged by our partners -- provinces, dioceses, parishes, individuals -- to do fewer things better, and to do through the national program those things that are best done on a church-wide level. We have been challenged to recognize that the people in the congregations (and I emphasize that we are also those people in the congregations, as well as being members of this council) of our church want to be disciples. They want to know God's love. They want to share the message of Jesus. They want to know that life is full of meaning, of grace. They want to catch a glimpse of the kingdom and know that they are not forever bound in these material realities. They want this for themselves, and for their children. They want their faith to mean something. They want to be disciples. They are challenging us, General Convention and Executive Council, to be with them on the path to discipleship.
And the challenge goes both ways. We must challenge parishes, dioceses, individuals to carry out the mission that discipleship implies. There is a great deal of work to be done. As the task is being portioned out in new ways, many of those things once part of the program of the national church must be taken up by provinces, dioceses, congregations, and other groups gathered around particular concerns. We must challenge one another to work together in these new partnerships. We must hold one another accountable. We must encourage one another. And, over the next years, we must keep testing to see if we have the balance right.
Most of all we must trust. I think trust is the key to all we are about. Trust that all the various entities of our church must have in one another. Trust in the process. Most of all, trust in God, who makes all things possible.
One of the things I learned from Barbara Harris is that a poem is a good way to end a sermon. I want to close with a wonderful poem by John Coburn, a friend of many of us, who is the retired Bishop of Massachusetts and who served three distinguished terms as the President of the House of Deputies. It is from his book Feeding Fire, and is called "The Swing."
It's sitting on a
trapeze, Lord, pumping
away, letting it swing.
buffeted, blown, the old
cat dies, and over again
up and up and up.
Hanging on, knowing it
will never break.
The bar alone to
hang on. The ropes
above, out of sight, beyond
the canvas, anchored there
out of sight, firm, secure...
so you believe, and so
you trust.
All you can do is trust
what is above is beyond
sight, beyond control -- and
nobody's business but God's
if there be God.
So I sit and swing, pull
on the ropes, to go higher
and higher
and sing to you
for you not there,
and if you're
I'll put you there.
So, my friends, let us sit, swinging, holding on just tight enough, and thrusting all the while in the one who, far out of sight surely holds us.