Holy Dying

OK, let’s ditch all that Lambeth stuff and talk about something happier.  How about death and dying?  Now that’s a subject right at the center of our faith, but one that we generally try to avoid at all costs.  Why is that?

On the one hand most Christians seem to have a basic understanding that life is not ended at death but changed, and that in Christ that change is one of new life and wholeness of being.  On the other hand, it seems to me that most of us have a very hard time letting go of loved ones who are nearing their time of death.  Extreme efforts are made to apply every possible medical option to keep a body from dying, and “hope” is never relinquished that our loved ones will recover and become well again.  

Modern medicine has enabled us to live longer healthier lives, and it is not always possible to tell when one is nearing the end.  All of that is good.  But keeping someone from dying is not the same thing as making them well, and I wonder about what is going on.  If our lives are sacred gifts of love from God, why cannot our deaths be the same?  A recent New York Times article discussed the growing practice of “slow medicine” for those who are nearing their natural end.  We’ve had a lot of practice with that in the hospice movement, which treats those dying of terminal diseases with the loving dignity they deserve.  Now something like it is also being practiced with the elderly for whom extraordinary measures are more than unlikely to produce restoration to health and only prolong their period of increasing dependency on chemicals, machines and high levels of support from aides of all sorts.  It is not a matter of casting them into some sort of dump of uncaring.  It is just the opposite.  It is a matter of surrounding them with love, the best of palliative care, rejoicing in the many blessings of their lives and fully living with them to the very gate of heaven.  

Henri Nouwen (Bread for the Journey) suggests that the dying can do something to help as they prepare themselves with grateful hearts, grateful to God and their families and friends, to make their deaths gifts for others.  What about the bereaved who are literally left behind?  Can they also help to make the deaths of their loved ones to be moments of grateful thanksgiving to God full of all the dignity we can offer?  

Well meaning but unrealistic expectations of renewed youth and vigor in which to enjoy restored relationships of years gone by too often lead to greater pain and suffering for both the dying and the living.  So how do we, as pastors and ministers of God’s redeeming love unto eternal life deal with that?  That’s a question.

Thoughts on an Anglican Covenant

For my non-Anglican readers, we Anglicans have been agonizing over whether it would be a good idea to support a covenant that would give more structure and discipline to world-wide Anglicanism, essentially creating a world-wide church.  The third draft of such a covenant has been issued and will be discussed by a world-wide gathering of bishops this summer at their once every ten years Lambeth Conference.  What follows are my thoughts on the matter, complete with terms and acronyms that will be a mystery to you.

One of the arguments against any sort of Anglican covenant is that the Communion has never been anything but a fellowship with no central governing authority and passionately protected provincial autonomy.  Having reviewed the resolutions of the last thirteen Lambeth Conferences I now believe that that understanding of the nature of the Communion is more myth than reality.  There was a movement from the very beginning to discover and articulate what it is that binds us together as Anglicans.  At first it was the centrality of a single BCP that bound together the English Speaking Races, but it quickly moved toward the vague understanding that bishops gathered in convocation could somehow exercise a collective authority over the whole Communion.  The development of the idea that Primates should meet more often added strength to that direction.  In time the idea mutated into something more democratic through the development of the ACC as a body representing bishops, other clergy and the laity, a request that primates be consulted on the "election" of the next ABC, and a request that Lambeth be held outside England from time to time.  It's not as if any of this was planned.  With Lambeth held only once every ten years or so there was always a new crop of bishops who carried little of the baggage of their predecessors.  Rather, I think, it is the natural maturation of an Anglican movement toward an Anglican Church.  The process is a normal one. 

Consider America's movement from independent colonies to states bound by Articles of Confederation to a nation under a Constitution.  In a less orderly way we have seen the slow movement of the role of Presiding Bishop gravitate in a direction that more firmly binds the diocese of the Episcopal Church together.  Even at the local level we recognize that the church cannot be an effective steward of its ministry without constitutions and canons.  Moreover, we are not, nor have we ever been, congregationalists.  Rather than opposing any form of Anglican Covenant, I'm inclined to favor using all our collective skills to get the kind of covenant we desire because I think a covenant, by whatever name, is inevitable.

Finally - A Helpful Statement on Racism

In preparing for a workshop on Lambeth I took a look at each of the resolutions considered by the Conference since 1867.  I was particularly taken with this statement from the World Council of Churches included in the 1968 record, and offer it for whatever value it may have to you. 

Lambeth 1968

Resolution 16

Racism

The Conference commends the following statement of the World Council of Churches meeting at Uppsala: 

Racism is a blatant denial of the Christian faith. (i) It denies the effectiveness of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, through whose love all human diversities lose their divisive significance; (ii) it denies our common humanity in creation and our belief that all men are made in God's image; (iii) it falsely asserts that we find our significance in terms of racial identity rather than in Jesus Christ. 

The Conference acknowledges in penitence that the Churches of the Anglican Communion have failed to accept the cost of corporate witness to their unity in Christ, and calls upon them to re-examine their life and structures in order to give expression to the demands of the Gospel (a) by the inclusiveness of their worship, (b) by the creation of a climate of acceptance in their common life, and (c) by their justice in placing and appointment. 

Further, the Conference calls upon the Churches to press upon governments and communities their duty to promote fundamental human rights and freedoms among all their peoples. 

 

 

The Curmudgeon Addresses Evangelism

I just finished reading David Gortner's book Evangelism and was delighted to at long last discover something written with an understanding of the life-long aversion that most Episcopalians have against the word.  Everything he recommended was eminently doable by the ordinary pew sitting church goer, but for one thing.  It all required the discipline and commitment to actually do something, and that cannot happen without decisive, competent and willing leadership.  Sadly, his current research suggests that most clergy are ill equipped by training or nature or both  to provide that leadership.  Nor are they very good at creating the conditions under which alternative lay leadership can be discerned, raised up, equipped and empowered.  It appears that we have become quite adept at using the language without actually doing the work.  So where do we go from here?  This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, and for most of us that means a recitation of The Great Commission.  What does that mean for Episcopalians? And, if you are going to offer some answers, please don't ramble on with the same old platitudes of excuse that have been lolling around for years sipping tea (or gin) and harrumphing.  We've developed that to a fine art of evasion.

The Question of Holy Orders

Of late the church has been doing what it can to bring the ministry of all baptized to the forefront.  We are, after all, members of a priesthood of all believers, something we reaffirm in each recitation of the baptismal covenant.  It is important and nothing good can come of evangelism or discipleship without it.  But in so doing the term Holy Orders seems to have been discarded with a goodbye note of disregard and near disrespect.  I want to take issue with that.  There is something extraordinary about being called by God out of the community and into a particular role received through a life profession, the laying on of hands and Spiritual anointing, which, by our tradition, places us into a line of direct physical contact with all the generations that preceded us and all the generations that will follow.

None of that means a retreat to the so-called Father Knows Best practices of former decades.  What it means is that there is something of the holy that marks the ordained priesthood in a way that is not present in other offices of ministry, and that it is to be respected and honored as one sign of God’s presence among us.  It also means that, whether you like it or not, ordained priests are called to be leaders in the church, and are accountable for successes and failures.  Within the institution of the church, as is the case with all true leadership, it requires an ability to create conditions in which others have the greatest possible opportunity for success in their own ministries.  It’s not a top-down sort of thing.  It’s all about providing the knowledge, skills training, information, resources and support that others need to do well in whatever they are doing. 

Suppose, for instance, that Joseph’s carpentry business grew large enough to employ a handful of others but there were no gifted craftsmen available.  Could he, as leader, get quality production out of new employees who were given no training, not provided with quality tools, told to go out and get their own wood, given no information about what was happening, nor told much about whether their work was any good but always told about how bad it was? Could he make things better by “motivating” his people with slogans and nifty videos?  How about some punishment?  Would his situation improve if he announced that leadership obviously did not work so from now on everyone would be a leader and he would just be another carpenter, albeit one who specialized in altars, cups and plates?

Think about it.

 

 

Lambeth Dead Ahead

Note:  some significant portion of what follows was first written as a part of “Reflections from the Floor” at the 2006 General Convention.

The continuing arguments leading up to Lambeth seem to me to be all wrong headed as first one side and then another bash away about which branch of the Anglican Communion is the largest, fastest growing, most orthodox, most strict about damning homosexuality and which is most inclusive.  It’s all wrong headed.  We are to be centered on Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit in companionship with our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion.  At the same time we must recognize that what is and what is not understood to be authentic and orthodox Christianity is always determined in part by cultural definitions and expectations.  We cannot avoid that, and to do so is to be blind to the most common weakness and sin of the church, which is to consider our own culturally influenced understanding of the true Christian faith to be true understanding for all people at all times and in all places.

There was a time when Europe and North America were perceived to be the largest, most important, strongest, and most influential powers on earth, and no less so than in religion.  It was expected that the rest of the world, especially the colonized lands of the so-called Third World, would simply follow where we led because it was obvious that God had called us to be the leaders.  When European missionaries took the Anglican tradition of Christianity throughout the world, they did their best to make those “native” churches mirror images of the true faith, which looked a lot like England or America, with all the cultural baggage of the 19^th century firmly attached.   Through them the Christian faith did take root and thrived.  But the foundation was also set for those new churches to come into their own, and with the end of formal colonization they did just that, and not as Europeans or North Americans.  The African church, for instance, has grown and prospered as an African church, and in like manner so have the churches of other nations throughout the world.  They have become strong advocates of the Christian faith in a way that is responsive to the cultural needs and norms of their respective countries.  They have firmly rejected any suggestion that they are, or should be, imitations of Europe or North America in their politics, economics, cultural norms or religion. 

Indeed, in our day there are some who believe that the natural leadership of the church has passed to Africa and that God has called Africans to be the leaders that North Americans and Europeans once thought was their natural and God given right.  They strongly desire that the North American and European churches become imitators of the Africans, which would mean to become Christians in the African tradition following the cultural norms of what Africans believe represents a true expression of the faith.  That can no more work for Europe and North America than it did when we tried to force the Africans to become ersatz Europeans.  Our understanding of the Christian faith is formed in a cultural milieu to be sure, but if we make cultural norms the primary measurement of orthodoxy we end up displacing Christ and Christ’s gospel as the center of our faith.  We must get to the place where we can admit that we can be authentic and orthodox in our faith in the reality of a very wide variety of cultural contexts and norms.  It is incumbent on us to permit the authentic and orthodox expression of the Christian faith in the Anglican tradition to develop and prosper as appropriate to each particular cultural ethos. 

This is not a new idea.  Fully authentic and true expressions of the Christian faith grew up in the earliest years of the church in significantly different ways in significantly different cultural milieus including Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, among others.  Honesty compels us to admit that those early centers of Christian learning often accused each other of heresy and claimed for themselves an orthodoxy that they would deny to others.  And yet, because at its heart the church is the Body of Christ, it persevered and prospered by the more powerful guidance of the Holy Spirit so that today we often talk fondly of the imaginary days in which the church was unified in every way.  What about our own day?  Let us learn from our ancestors and cease these accusations altogether in order to get on with the business of proclaiming the gospel as appropriate to each place of proclamation.

 

Let's Finish With Hagee Before Moving On

I just returned from a clergy conference where David Gortner of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) conducted a very worthwhile workshop on evangelism.  Sooner or later we Episcopalians have got to get with the program in a way that suits our theology.  More on that later, but I want to finish up with the John Hagee question.

What discourages me about the lack of response to the Hagee endorsement of McCain is the strong implication that it is not news because it is not threatening to a majority of white Americans.  It stuns me that for all his bombastic preaching filled with hatred and threatening God’s wrath on anyone who is not an ultra-conservative Christian, Hagee is not controversial.  To the contrary, he is popular enough to be on daily national television, and it appears to me that he, and others like him, are understood to represent Christianity at its nationalistic best.  His damnation of those who are not of his brand of highly politicized evangelicalism is not seen as an abomination but as a proclamation of the core self-identities of good, white, conservative Americans sheathed in the name of Christ.  His is the voice of a nation acting out of fear, and a nation that acts out of fear is a nation in decline with little hope for the future. That really bothers me and leaves me deeply troubled about the future of our nation.  Now I’ve got a treasured friend, a wheat farmer east of town, who will go ballistic if he reads this, but I also know he will think about it, and that’s all I ask.