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Readings (click here for full text of the readings): The year was 1996. I’d just been ordained a priest a few months before, and one bright, sunny Sunday morning I was walking up the steps of my parish in Baltimore when Harry stopped me. Now every parish, I think, has someone like Harry. He shows up week in and week out, and he has an opinion about everything. And usually his opinions are based on some esoteric fact that no one else has ever learned in the first place, let alone forgotten along the way. He’s a delight. “Happy anniversary,” Harry said. Now from anyone else this would have taken me completely by surprise, seeing as I wouldn’t meet Pam for another three years. But since it came from Harry, I knew there had to be a story behind it. “I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about,” I said. “Why, Apostolicae Curae, of course!” For those of you not up on the dirty details of the history of Anglican-Catholic relations, Apostolicae Curae was the 1896 papal edict that Anglican orders were “absolutely null and utterly void.” “Harry, I’m really enjoying being a priest, and now you’re saying I’m not?” “Oh, no, you are. Hence the happy anniversary.” “How do you figure that?” I asked. So he asked me, “Who ordained you?” “Bishop Ihloff of Maryland.” “And who consecrated him?” “Browning, the Presiding Bishop.” “Exactly. And who consecrated him?” “I don’t have a clue. Probably a whole bunch of other bishops.” “Precisely! And one of the bishops who consecrated him was Bishop Rowinsky of the Polish National Catholic Church, which broke off from Rome but can still trace their line back to St. Peter. So since someone who consecrated someone who consecrated someone who ordained you is legit, so are you!” he said triumphantly. So Harry and I walked up the stairs and shared Eucharist together. And somehow I felt relieved, even though when the day began I hadn’t known enough to be worried in the first place.
The Episcopal Church certainly has had its ups and downs over the 450 years it’s been around. 1896 was a tough year, as hopes for increased fellowship and unity with the Roman Catholic church were dealt a severe blow. One can imagine the response of Anglicans after Pope Leo XIII proclaimed that their priests weren’t priests at all: confusion, anger, doubts about the future. That was surely one of the darker dates in Anglican history. But there are also celebratory dates, like 1549, when the Church of England was formed, and 1789, when the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States was born. In both of those instances, a splinter group broke free from a larger church that it no longer agreed with, first because of Rome’s authority, and then because of Canterbury’s. The Episcopal Church you see today is the descendant of that splinter group. Yet at other points the voices of doom and gloom have predicted division, only to see the church stand united and resolute. One can point to the ordination of women in 1976 and the election of the first female bishop in 1989 as times, much like today, when conservative forces foretold a schism. A schism that never came.
Schism was predicted again this week, as the Episcopal Church was front-page news, which usually means something contentious. The confirmation of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire brought tears of joy from the left, tears of anger and betrayal from the right, with seemingly no one in the middle. The Anglican middle way seemed strangely absent, as everyone seemed to have an opinion, which they were convinced was the right one. So history seems to be repeating itself, as Anglicans take a bold step away from the familiar, choosing instead to sail uncharted waters. But we must ask which history is it? Is it the 16th century, when Martin Luther only wanted to reform the Catholic Church by ridding it of its corruption, and never dreamt that he would be forced to leave the church he held so dear and start another? And the 18th century, when retired Scottish bishops ordained priests in an infant, renegade church called Episcopal? Or are we reliving the tendentious conventions and elections of the last quarter century, when the church held fast despite bitter disagreement? When we agreed to disagree, and over time some who opposed the ordination of women have come to accept it. So that the women in our churches know that they are free not only to speak, but to preach sermons, and to celebrate Eucharist, and even to ordain others, as called by God. So that the girls who are baptized and confirmed in our church know that nothing is closed to them, that there’s no stained glass ceiling to prevent them from being all that God wants them to be.
Now is not the time to discuss whether being gay is OK or not. That time is past, and it is future. It’s unlikely that many of us will change our minds anytime soon, and certainly not in this contentious time. What we must do now is decide what recent events mean for us as a church: locally, nationally, and internationally. If we don’t agree with the decision of General Convention, do we leave the Episcopal church in order to find one that agrees with us on this issue? Or do we stay and try to reform the church from within? And if we stay, how do we respond to gay deacons, gay priests, and now an openly gay bishop? And if we agree with Convention’s decision, how do we rejoice, knowing that some of our brothers and sisters are saddened and distraught? How do we talk to each other? More than that, how do we worship together? I’d like to offer three suggestions that, honest to God, I think are so obvious as to be unquestionable. And perhaps because they’re so obvious, we might tend to forget them. First, we’re called to deal with one another in love. Even if the person we happen to be dealing with is spouting off about something being “Christian” that we think is anything but. Today’s epistle commands us, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you.” Especially now, we must put away bitterness and anger, and deal with one another in the spirit of God’s love. Second, we have to recognize that we’re all sinners. Sometimes, it seems, we get so caught up with the sin we see in other people – sexual immorality, judgmentalism – that we forget our own. That would seem to be the only explanation for the statement made this week by the Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney, Australia, who proclaimed that “for the first time, a branch of our Anglican church has knowingly appointed a person [as bishop] who lives in breach of the Bible.” I say that if Archbishop Jensen wants the church to get rid of clergy who live in breach of the Bible, he’s welcome to start here at St. Paul’s, because I proclaim publicly that I live in breach of the Bible: I don’t give enough of my moneys and energies to the poor, I usually think of myself before I think of others, I think I have all the answers and sometimes God has to hit me over the head with a 2-by-4 to get me to stop, listen, and understand. That’s what it means to be a sinner, and I’m definitely one. If somebody wants to argue that homosexuality disqualifies you from being a bishop, let them make that argument, in love and without malice. But nobody can argue that Gene Robinson ought not to be a bishop simply because he’s a sinner. We’re all sinners, and we all need to hear the words of St. Paul himself: “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” And, third, we have to remember what it means to be Anglican. The church was founded on the idea that the law of praying shapes the law of believing. In other words, we’re a community because we pray together, not because we agree on everything. And the main reason I’m an Anglican is that when I was searching for a church, I couldn’t find one that agreed with me on every single topic. Heck, on some topics I didn’t even know what I thought, so how could a church agree with me? But in the Anglican Church I found a place where I could kneel next to people who disagreed with me about this or that, and we’d all reach out our hands for Christ, knowing that He is the answer to the questions we carried in our hearts. We, the people of St. Paul’s, were Anglican in the days leading up to Convention, when I encouraged you to write the deputies and express your views, and it seemed like the only ones who did totally disagreed with me. (Which is one of the most wonderful examples of community that I’ve heard recently.) And we’re being Anglican today, by showing up and praying together and sharing Eucharist together, alongside people who might think we’re as out in left field as we think they are. Community isn’t neat or easy, but it is full of grace.
In the end, while the decisions of General Convention have thrust the Episcopal Church into the headlines, and many of us probably cast tears of one sort or another along the way, we’re the same people we were a week ago. Just like on that Sunday morning in Baltimore 6 years ago when in the space of a few minutes I was reminded that some people thought I wasn’t a priest, but then found out that a Polish bishop from a denomination I’d never heard of had saved the day decades earlier. But even if Bishop Rowinsky hadn’t stopped by to help consecrate Bishop Browning, there was no doubt in my heart that I was a priest. Because the Episcopal Church doesn’t make you a priest, or a Christian, or a member of a community: God does. And maybe in this respect I’m not a very good Anglican, because I don’t believe that bishops are the be-all/end-all of our church. The essence of our church is the body of Christ, the people of God, all of you gathered here. And we’re the same mixed group that we were a week ago, with all of our respective strengths and foibles and odd habits. React as your heart tells you to to the events in Minneapolis, but never forget that there is a home waiting for you here at St. Paul’s. And for all the turmoil of the past week, your brothers and sisters haven’t changed, no matter how much, at times, you might have wished they had. |
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