An End to Debate?

On another blog I posted a comment about my hope for the Anglican Communion:

I understand that there are many in the Communion who are upset that TEC acted on its discernment about the election of two bishops and has made some allowance for dioceses to act on their discernment about same-sex relationships. I don’t expect - nor do I think most Episcopalians who share my convictions on this matter do either - that other Anglicans will accept TEC’s actions as consistent with Anglican teaching. I continue to accept that TEC may be removed from the Communion because of actions which I fully support. What I had hoped for - perhaps naively - was that we could continue to be in communion with one another in spite of this serious disagreement. We have managed that with disagreements about other unresolved issues - including the ordination of women - and I hoped that we could live with this disagreement as well. In that hope there was no insisting that others accept TEC’s actions as good, no demand that any member church recognize Gene Robinson or Mary Glasspool - or Katharine Jefferts Schori - as bishops. There was only the hope that we could continue to work together as Anglicans, sharing our common commitments in mission, and engaging in a continuing conversation about human sexuality.

This brought the following comment from a conservative cleric:

TEC has ceased the discussion and ended the debate by its actions.

The fact that the debate goes on on that blog and elsewhere calls this cleric's assertion into question, but the cleric is right that for some Anglicans the discussion is over. In fact, for some Anglicans any serious discussion of human sexuality never began. The Episcopal Church did not end the debate. Some Anglicans decided to respond to our actions by withdrawing from the discussion, but that was their decision and not ours. Our actions did not create the reactions of others, and adults don't blame others for their own decisions. In the words of President Andrew Shepherd, "We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them."

What Is One To Do?

Over at the Covenant blog  I posted some comments in a thread, "You Can Be Right or You Can Be in Relationship"  The thread was started by a priest for whom I have great respect, Fr. Nathan Humphrey, and his post is well worth reading. Here is part of one of my posts:

I disagree that those of us in TEC who want to remain in relationship with siblings with whom we disagree are demanding that our “vision of biblical interpretation and discernment is considered right and good” by others. No one has to agree with me to remain in relationship with me.

A few hours later someone responded to my post and began with these words:

You are insisting that the rest of the communion change its teaching such the status of homosexual sex is not part of the adiaphora of the Church.

Aside for the fact that the sentence is badly written, something which is true about many of the sentences in my posts, this brother in Christ has misunderstood or - could it be? - willfully mischaracterized my position. Reading such comments I wonder if it is possible for Anglicans to have reasoned conversations about sexuality or any other controversial issue.

A Picture Is Worth....

Thanks to Jim Simons at Three Rivers Episcopal for what Jon Stewart might call a moment of Zen.

Special?

Over at Preludium Mark Harris has posted a thought-provoking piece, What Makes the Episcopal Church so "Special" in the Archbishop's Eyes? I think Mark is right and that there is something very odd about the decision of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion to dismiss only representatives of the Episcopal Church from the various committees that the Archbishop mentioned in his Pentecost letter. That decision raises a question about whether the problem is violating the moratoria recommended in the Windsor Report or something else. Perhaps, as Mark suggests, the real problem is that the Episcopal Church broke an unwritten moratorium by electing as its Presiding Bishop and Primate a woman. Misogyny is not a stranger in the Anglican Communion - nor in the Episcopal Church - and it seems to me that there are some fairly clear links between sexism and heterosexism. Patriarchy dies hard and at least some Patriarchs (Primates?) may want to keep women and LGBT sisters and brothers in the kitchen and in the closet.

It's All Grace

From time to time I have serious problems with the shorthand that people use for Paul's central theological point. Justification by faith can be misunderstood and people can fool themselves into thinking that it is their faith that justifies them, thus turning faith into another work. While Paul did himself use that shorthand ("justified by faith in Christ" in Galatians 2:16), we need to guard against pulling the phrase out of the larger context of Paul's theology. In Romans 3:22-24, we can read a fuller exposition of Paul's understanding of Paul's understanding of justification: "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

All have sinned. It's all Grace.

In the Lord of the Rings there is an interesting reflection of the theology of Grace. During the long and difficult journey to Mordor and Mount Doom, Frodo Baggins comes to see that his unwelcome travelling companion, Gollum, is more like him and other hobbits than he had originally thought. Although Smeagol's humanity had been corrupted by his love for his Precious - and by the evil of the Dark Lord who forged that ring - Frodo could see in Gollum the vestiges of the humanity of Smeagol. Having sought to be more by stealing the ring from his cousin, Smeagol had become less than fully human.

The same thing happens to us when we sin and fall short of the glory of God. Perhaps, like Adam and Eve, we want to become like God, or, again like Adam and Eve, we let someone else do our thinking for us, but whether our sin is pride or sloth, it corrupts our humanity and alienates us from God and one another and the creation. And there is nothing that we can do about it.

Grace happens.

Although we can never justifiy ourselves, never reconcile ourselves to God or one another or God's creation, God can, has, will. It's pure gift with no strings attached. All we have to do is accept the gift, surrender to God's love, trust Jesus. That sounds simple, even easy, but surrender is difficult for us. We want to earn our way, to be deserving of the gift, perhaps even to yield to the temptation to thnk of ourselves as better than others because we've been saved. But if have been saved, one of the things that we've saved from is the arrogance of thinking that we are better than other sinners. And one of the things that we have been saved for is community with other sinners, not only those who are receiving the gift of Grace, but also all those who have yet to surrender to Love Incarnate.

The Germans have a word for it - as usual. It's mitsein, being with. The glory of God, as Irenaeus asserted, is humankind fully alive. We see that glory in Jesus, but it isn't about talents or gifts or abilities but about relationships, about being with, about mitsein. Jesus reveals to the world that God is an accompanying God, One who desires to be in relationship with us, One who, I believe, wants to be God only in relationship with us. Created in the image of God, reconciled by the Cross, we are given the Grace to live in right relationship with all creation. It is the gift that we need to accept and unwrap and enjoy. It is the gift that Paul was pointing to when he wrote to the community in Rome:  "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God...." (8:19) In the words of the African-American poet June Jordan, "we are the ones we have been waiting for."