Today we have the story of two men. A poor man who sits by the gate of the rich and powerful and s rich man who walks through that gate every day. The poor man is named Lazarus; the rich man is nameless in the gospel but our tradition calls him Dives. These men live their lives in close physical proximity but miles apart in their experience. The bulk of the story relates what happens after they die, when the poor man is in heaven and the rich man is in hell. As we’ve listened to this story, you may not have noticed that there is no mention of the sexual orientation of either of the men. You may not have noticed the absence of that information because you’re probably accustomed to the fact that sexual orientation is never the subject of Jesus’ teachings. However, I’ve found myself wondering what someone who has less exposure to scripture than most of the people in this building and who has been—for whatever reason—following the news of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion for the past four years might expect to find in the gospel. Given the amount of energy that has centered on the subject of sexual orientation in these last years, I can imagine that someone outside our faith community might see sexuality as the central focus of Christian scripture and life.
We have once again been in the news about this focus on sexuality. This week
held another landmark event in the discussion that has had center stage since
2003, when the General Convention of the Episcopal Church consented to the consecration
of the Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man living in a committed relationship, as
bishop of New Hampshire. In response to our action, some parishes removed themselves
from the Episcopal Church and joined self-named “continuing Anglican churches”
or placed themselves under the oversight of a bishop of a different province.
International reaction included announcement by several primates that they would
no longer be in communion with the Episcopal Church, and in October, 2003 the
Archbishop of Canterbury appointed the Lambeth Commission to “find a way
forward”. That commission’s work gave birth to the Windsor Report.
Since it was published in 2005, the various parts of the communion and the Episcopal
Church have been in ever-increasing discussion about the conflict we are experiencing.
The heat of the conflict increased last year when our General Convention passed six resolutions in response to the Windsor Report and elected Katharine Jefferts Schori as our presiding bishop, making her the first female primate of the Anglican Communion. A large number of the bishops of the Anglican Communion see our resolutions as non-responsive to the Windsor Report and a somewhat smaller number refuse to recognize Bishop Katherine as their peer. Some of those bishops have recommended or taken actions that have been painful to our Church, and most have consistently urged our bishops to use their authority to bring our Church into line with the perspective of the rest of the Anglican Communion. In response, most of our bishops, including many of those who disagree with the actions of General Convention, have been steadfast in their attempts to help our the rest of the communion understand that it doesn’t work that way here. They have described how the organization of the Episcopal Church differs from the hierarchical model held in other parts of the Anglican Communion. They have emphasized that they can not speak for the entire Episcopal Church, because the Church’s full voice also includes the Presiding Bishop, the Executive Council and the General Convention. They have also described how our Baptismal Covenant guides our thinking and our actions. The covenant that is so central to our Episcopal understanding of our relationship with God and with the world is not found in the prayer books of the other churches of the communion. The covenant’s final promise, which is perhaps the most difficult for all of us, is one of the chief ways we promise to live out the commandment to love our neighbor. Our promise to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being gives us a framework for that love and guides our actions as we search for God’s way in this world.
During the week ending September 25, the House of Bishops gathered in New Orleans to discuss their response to the Anglican Communion bishops and primates who have asked them to make a clear and authoritative statement regarding the place of homosexuals in the Episcopal Church.
This past Wednesday, the clergy of this diocese gathered in Seaside to hear Bishop-elect Mary Gray Reeves describe her experience of the gathering and to hear her thoughts about the statement that summarized their discussion. The statement is titled “House of Bishops response ‘to questions and concerns raised by our Anglican Communion partners’”. Copies of the statement are in the back of the church and can also be found online.
The critical message of the statement is that they reconfirmed resolution B033
of General Convention 2006 that calls upon bishops with jurisdiction and Standing
Committees “to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration
of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge
to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” By
doing so, they refused to interpret the resolution. In addition, they pledged
as a body not to authorize public, that is to say, published rites for the blessing
of same-sex unions, while stating the necessity for provision of private pastoral
care. They commended our Presiding Bishop's plan for episcopal visitors to dioceses
where her visits are not welcome. They deplored incursions into our jurisdictions
by uninvited bishops
and called for them to end. They supported the Presiding Bishop in seeking communion-wide
consultation in a manner that is in accord with our Constitution and Canons.
They called for increasing implementation of the listening process across the
Communion and for a report on its progress to Lambeth 2008. They expressed support
for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his expressed desire to explore ways for
the Bishop of New Hampshire to participate in the Lambeth Conference. Finally,
they called for unequivocal and active commitment to the civil rights, safety,
and dignity of gay and lesbian persons.
Response to the statement has been mixed. Some people believe it doesn’t stand firm enough. Others believe it doesn’t respond to the greater communion. Presiding Bishop Katharine said “No one likes it, so it must be right.”
As Bishop-elect Mary shared her observations and experience with us, she described the action of the House of Bishops as a “sacrificial response” which means shifting our focus from our own needs and issues to the needs of those who live in deepest poverty. It means maintaining a presence in the Anglican Communion that allows our continued attention to those who are in direst need. My first response to the description of this action as sacrifice was the thought that this sacrifice is not uniformly experienced, that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters bear the burden of this action, although the policy in our diocese will not change.
As I reflected further, I realized that the sacrifice is much broader than the impact on our community practices or on one group of people. This is also the sacrifice of a position of rightness, of being right, of holding the Truth with a capital T. This is a sacrifice of perceiving ourselves as the “boss of the world”—a sacrifice of seeing ourselves as winners in this conflict. There have been more than a few times when I’ve thought to myself: “OK, that’s it. We don’t need the rest of the Anglican Communion. They’re never going to see the light. We need to turn our backs on this whole thing and get on with God’s work in the world.”
I was right about our need to get on with God’s work. I was wrong about how we do that. The really hard part of our faith—the really hard part of our baptismal covenant with Christ and each other—is that we don’t get to pick who we’ll treat as Christ among us. We don’t get to choose our neighbor. We don’t get to decide who is worthy of respect. As Bishop Mary reminded us on Wednesday, we don’t have to like anyone, but we do have to live in God’s Grace with everyone. We don’t have to agree with the perspective of some of our partners in the Body of Christ. We don’t have to live their lives, but we do have to live our lives in a way that continues to seek reconciliation—that seeks to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
We are called to be faithful people of God. Faithfulness means living our own lives in the way Christ teaches us to live, not living in response to others’ actions. Remember Dives the rich man? From the misery of his separation from God, he asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers, to tell them that how they live really matters. We didn’t have to ask. Jesus came to tell us that how we live really matters. He came to tell us that we are called to love both Dives and Lazarus—called to live in faithful response to God’s love for each of us—called to love each other. He also assures us that God’s love will enable us to do just that. As we come to this altar, we can know that he is present with us to give us strength—to lift us up—to help us be more than we believe we can be.
Thanks be to God.