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Conservative sermon today, not the 12th
- When you’re on vacation, sometimes you get your dates mixed up
- Droves of people who show up next week to hear it will get to hear about stewardship
- Pretty awesome plan
- Wish I could say that was intentional
Tell a story
- Last month clergy day on PAS
- I argued against
- Paid lobbyist who was a nominal Episcopalian argued for
- Recall: “clergy day” (thus all attendants were Episcopal priests)
- Death with Dignity lobbyist began
- Acknowledged that he didn’t know as much about theology as we did, which got a laugh
- Said that was okay, because if you disagreed with the measure on theological grounds, you should still let people who disagree with you act differently
- He basically conceded that the people there would disagree with the proposal on theological grounds
- Then he went on to argue on the basis of personal freedom
- Then it was my turn
- Since I was the home team, I tried to be magnanimous about it, I spoke about some things that both sides could agree on
- Hospice is a gift from God
- Pain control is a moral obligation
- We should strive to create a world in which no one would want to commit suicide
- I touched on the theological arguments
- That we are children of God, and thus our lives are not our own
- That even when we may seem to have lost all our dignity, we still have dignity because we are God’s beloved children
- That suffering is part of the Christian life
- Christ Himself suffered for us, and rejected interventions that would have minimized that suffering (like the wine he was offered on the Cross)
- Hebrews: Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, [is] now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
- Jesus knows what it is to suffer
- Hebrews: Because [Jesus] himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
- We aren’t promised relief from suffering – we’re promised meaning in suffering
- 2 Corinthians: “A thorn was given me in the flesh … Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’”
- Then I moved on to the non-theological arguments
- It’s not necessary
- Emphasis on pain control
- Can always refuse any treatment
- Hospice
- The potential for abuse
- Netherlands nursing home patients: ¾ fear their doctor will kill them
- The “duty to die”
- The sacredness of the doctor-patient relationship
- Goes against the Hippocratic Oath
- AMA Code of Ethics
- Pretty much every major professional body
- Specific problems with this legislation
- No requirement of any pain
- No requirement that any pain treatment be tried
- “Counselor” provision
- Legal fiction: not considered suicide or physician-assisted suicide
- Then I was shocked
- Of the two of us – the Episcopal priest and the paid lobbyist – I was the one who was grilled by the other priests there
- They didn’t see two distinctions that I do
- Importance of intention
- Difference between doing something and not doing something
- But then came the real shockers
- “You haven’t said a word about quality of life.”
- I thought that’s all I’d been talking about
- God’s own dignity
- Pain management
- Hospice
- Meaning in suffering
- And then
- But what are we supposed to do for people who are terminally ill and suffering?
- My response
- Stand by them
- Don’t abandon them
- Bring the love of Christ to them
- They weren’t buying it.
- And so I left with a lot to think about
- How is it that Christians, and Episcopalians at that, and Episcopal priests at that, and liberal Episcopal priests at that, could disagree so profoundly?
- What did it mean to follow the Crucified Christ, if He doesn’t have the power to change lives?
Message of the sermon
- Don’t want to focus on the Physician Assisted Suicide debate
- Although I’m happy to talk about it
- Want to talk more about feeling alone in a place that was supposed to be a community
- I was surrounded by fellow priests
- I felt like I was on pretty thick ice
- After all, even my opponent conceded the theological ground
- But then I got hit from the left, which is something of a strange feeling for me
- As you know, perhaps all too well:
- I was against the war in Iraq
- I agree with the controversial decisions made by General Convention
- Heck, I even voted for Ralph Nader
- My liberal credentials are pretty strong
- But I’m not a knee-jerk liberal
- Knee-jerk: reflex arc
- Involves no conscious thought
- I try to think things through
- And I felt like the people there
- Were responding instinctively, without seeing the subtleties of the situation
- And they were just giving people what they wanted, without any thought of what God wanted, and the ways that God could redeem us
- I was quoting what I consider to be very orthodox theological positions, and my fellow priests looked at me like I was speaking Arabic
- I felt like they were saying that some people in some situations were unredeemable
- That Jesus couldn’t reach certain people
- That sometimes we just had to give up
That was one of the hardest days in recent memory for me, and also one of the most valuable
- Helped me understand how some of the conservatives in the church are feeling nowadays
- When you feel like something that is central to your belief structure is being overlooked and rejected by your fellow Episcopalians
- Reminded me how radical the gospel of Jesus Christ is
- When even priests seem to overlook the saving power of Jesus that can reach any life in any situation
- Strengthened my resolve to reach out to people in need
- Bringing the living water that Christ talked about
- Letting the state and the church decide what they will, but I continue to preach the word of God as I know it
- Bottom line: with God, there will always be comfort, and always be dignity
- Community can survive
- Through prayer: which is sometimes all we have left)
- Humility: that we could be wrong, and they could be right
- Worship: which brings us all together on our knees before God
- Some tips on how to handle that disagreement
- Focus on what we agree on
- Bishop of S. Carolina: General Convention “endorsed a new religion”
- I felt a little like that on clergy day
- That’s a little like someone saying that ____
- And I ended where I began – by falling back on the things we could all agree on – a little more vulnerable, a lot more uncertain, and leaning much more on faith
- When in doubt, choose the tougher road
- That’s what Jesus did in today’s gospel
- He took the law of Moses, which said that a man could divorce his wife for pretty much any reason, and made it a whole lot harder
- Jesus basically said that divorce is wrong, no matter how good a reason you might have
- And just a few verses later Jesus says that men could commit adultery against women, which had never before been recognized
- Jesus was taking the high and hard road of equality and marriage as a lifelong commitment
- That’s what both sides tend to think in church disputes
- PAS
- Pro: dare to break the rules to relieve suffering
- Con: dare to sit with someone who’s dying, and never leave them, and dare to believe that God is there with you
- General Convention
- Conservatives: stand up for the Gospel in an increasingly permissive world
- Liberals: stand up for the outcasts who are rejected and persecuted by the world and church alike
- I have a sense that if we manage to figure out which is the harder road – the one most unlike what the world would have us do – in both of these situations, we’ll have found God’s will for us
- Finally, it’s not up to us
- We do what we can, and we end the day on our knees, trusting that God is in control
- And we love people the best way we can
- The people who agree with us – easy
- The people who disagree with us – harder
- The people who need us, and need God – most of all
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