What the Church Needs Now....
a sermon about the recent primates meeting
It was a strange day this past Thursday, waiting in the sun and the cold wind along the Thames River outside Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We were a mixture of press and those of us waiting to react to what the 37 men meeting inside would have to say about the future of the Anglican Communion. Passersby could tell something was going on, although it was clear to me that most of them had no idea, and found the scene a bit odd.
Between giving interviews and pacing, I found
myself fantasizing more than once during the day that I was one of them, blissfully ignorant of the goings on across the road in the palace. What would life be like to have no more than a vague awareness of the Church at all? Sometimes I think I would end up feeling closer to God than farther apart.
I guess one could say I was fading in and out
of melancholy, ready at a moment's notice to be disappointed again, knowing that the best of what the men across the road could say was that the Episcopal Church was in its autonomous right to ordain lesbian and gay people, even though it caused the larger Church great pain and was not acceptable.
A priest from Minnesota I know and his wife
stopped by to see if there was any news. They just happened to be in London on holiday. As if sensing exactly my mood he said something like, "This must be hard for you." I put on my brave, in control, face. "I gave that up long ago," I lied. "They can say whatever they want. This Sunday I'll be with my people around our Altar and all will be well. Nothing will have changed for us."
Now that last part wasn't exactly a lie. Truth
to tell, I could not possibly have kept up my public witness over the past seven years without having this place, you, this Altar, to come home to. It is what has restored and sustained me over and over again.
But I have needed restoring each time I have
done these things, even coming back from the last General Convention when we had taken a big step forward. Even now coming back from this last meeting where things went about as well as they could have.
You see even in these steps forward I experience a diminishment of my humanity, and a betrayal of the baptismal promise of human dignity. I am not as a gay man treated fairly by this Church, and my own honesty and integrity continues to be used against me. It was not lost on me that in all the pain experienced all over the Church acknowledged by the Primates, the pain of an entire class of people who continue to be treated as less than human received no word. No one said it was wrong, or that they even had "regret," that one of their own, the Archbishop of Nigeria, had publicly called gay and lesbian people "less than dogs."
In one sense the continuing "miracle" of
Anglicanism happened this past week. Unity held, a statement was made in which both sides of a disagreement could find something to agree with and something to disagree with. I myself stood in front of reporters and told them that I could live with it. (It still amazes me that reporters care what this kid from the boonies of Western New York actually thinks about anything). I told them it was a good thing, and the hope of unity was preserved again. I wasn't "spinning" or even lying. I believe what I said.
And yet . . . do you understand what it costs to say these things--even to believe them--when you are talking about the Church remaining in a place where it is theologically correct for some to also believe that your relationship with God is bogus? That you are simply not worthy of the fullness of life because of your supposedly chosen lifestyle?
In all the honesty among the 37 men last week,
where was that honesty? We were told that they spent most of the first day telling stories about how the decisions of this past summer were affecting their provinces. I'm glad they were telling stories. I'm personally convinced that God most has a shot at telling us and showing us good news when we tell stories. But who was there to tell my story? Or, for that matter, who was there to tell the stories of the community of lesbian and gay Christians in Uganda that Integrity has supported for the past three years, whose only "conversation" with the church has been to receive total condemnation and ostracism? And who was there to tell a story with a feminine touch? No one.
They committed themselves once again to conversation with gay and lesbian persons, as they did five years ago at the Lambeth Conference, but they have yet to have one as a body and I know of only one of the 38 provinces who had not had a significant open dialogue prior to Lambeth 1998 who has had one since. One. Brazil. Gentlemen, you need to prove to me that you are not bald-faced liars.
They set up a Commission to talk over the next
12 months, the only practical thing to come out of their statement, because some talking needs to be done. But what is the Commission going to talk about? Enhanced responsibility for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The potential authority to intervene in the affairs of a member province. They set up a sure process to talk about their authority. No process to carry on the conversations with gay and lesbian people they have promised time and time again. And you expect us to take you seriously? To cede you moral authority over us just because you say so?
The saddest moment of the two days for me
came on the first day when Archbishop of Ireland Robin Eames briefed the press on how things were going so far. "I believe the Anglican Communion will emerge stronger from our time together." Language like this was repeated at the final press conference as well. Here we have a problem.
I am, as I have said to you on more occasions
than any of us can remember, that I am an Episcopalian and an Anglican on the cellular level. That means, among other things, that I have enormous respect for bishops; I consider them to be essential to the church's life. But God save us from bishops who confuse themselves with the Church. There is a fundamental problem when 37 men, important as they are, confuse themselves with the Anglican Communion. And we, of course, feed into that when we wait outside for hours on end for them to speak.
And they want more authority? What I want
from them is not more authority. I want some humility. I want some very clear consistent signals, in action, that they understand their ministry to be as servants to the People of God. They will never have any real authority until they truly take on Jesus' priestly mantle of service.
I can justify this little tirade this morning quite easily from the readings we just heard. The call to humility rings through and through.
Who is this who darkens counsel without words
of knowledge? (I should have carried that around on a piece of poster board outside Lambeth Palace). . . . Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers
and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.
This is the way of Jesus, the (dare I say) clear
teaching of Scripture. This clear teaching does not shine through the statement from the 37 men last Thursday. And their actions over the past five years have too frequently been a repudiation of it.
It is a repudiation of servant leadership to talk
about gay people and not with them. It is a repudiation of servant leadership to set up a mechanism to talk about enhancing your own authority and not to fulfill a promise to listen that is now five years old. It is a repudiation of servant leadership to say only how you will negatively receive Gene Robinson's ministry in the future and not also to trip over yourself to give him public respect as a brother in Christ.
If the Anglican Communion is going to put its
energy into deciding who does and does not sit at the right hand of power, then I, for one, am prepared to wash my hands of it. What the Church does not need is more authority. What this Church needs is more humility. I'll pray for it for myself first, and Lord knows I need it. But it is also the only thing I believe can save this Communion right now.
For the Son of Man came not to be served but
to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.