The Final Four

I decided last week to use my final four Sunday sermons at Saint Matthias Church to lay out what I think are four essential characteristics of the Church. I think that the four are clearly discernible in the texts for the Sundays in the Revised Common Lectionary, although one could draw other characteristics from the texts. On this past Sunday, reflecting on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, the sermon was about the Church as a Community of Welcome.  God willing and the creek don't rise,  the three remaining sermons will be about the Church as a Graced Community, the Church as a Listening Community, and the Church as a Community of Companions on the Way.

The Presiding Bishop Responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury

In a Pastoral Letter to the members of The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has commented on the Archbishop of Canterbury's Pentecost Letter to the Anglican Communion.

I think Bishop Katharine's letter expresses very clearly two characteristics that I have always believed to be written into the DNA of Anglicanism: the ability to hold in communion members with profound disagreements on important matters; and an awareness that we may be wrong in our reading of Scripture and our discernment of the Spirit. This latter characteristic is, perhaps surpisingly, affirmed, at least by implication in the Articles of Religion. Article XIX states, "As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." Anglican humility would suggest that this assertion can be made about all Churches, including our own and the other member Churches of the Anglican Communion.

The Bishop of California Responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury

Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California has posted on his blog,  Bishop Marc: on contemplation and living for justice, a response to Archbishop Rowan's Pentecost letter. There have been comments from many people about the Archbishop's letter, but I find the brevity and clarity of Bishop Marc's response refreshing.

Why Not Leave?

A question was posed recently at Mark Harris's blog Preludium to those who support the blessing of committed same-sex unions and want the Episcopal Church to remain a member church of the Anglican Communion:

Why not following the leading of the Holy Spirit you are hearing and sever ties with those who do not hear the Holy Spirit saying this but indeed its opposite?

While I have stopped arguing with people about same-sexuality (see The Discipline of Silence), this is a question that deserves an answer. I can see two reasons to stay in communion with those with whom we disagree about this issue.

1. They are sisters and brothers in Christ with whom we share a common tradition within the Church. While we disagree about what it means to be Anglicans, we all are. But beyond this admittedly absract connection, many Episcopalians have friendships of long-standing with Anglicans who disagree with them about same-sex relationships. Those friendships are of great value and we are unwilling to abandon them.
2. I am aware that I might well be wrong about same-sex unions. I have come to my convictions about them through study, prayer, and conversation with other Christians. I don't think that I'm wrong, but I am honest enough to admit that possibility. Remaining in communion with sisters and brothers with very different convictions about the issue holds out the possibility that I will discern the Spirit's leading more faithfully and see where I am wrong. Having remained in communion with Episcopalians who aren't pacifists, as I am, has been a very good thing, good in ways that I don't even see. I trust that reamining in communion with Anglicans who are convinced that I am wrong will also be a very good thing.

I continue to pray that the Anglican Communion will find a way to live with diversity of convictions on this issue as we have on other ethical issues. I am not naive enough to think that this is likely, but I live in hope.

The Dance

I am the first to admit that I am a hopeless romantic. I like books with happy endings, books like Pride and Prejudice, and am much less favorably disposed to books, like Tess of the D'Ubervilles, where the possibility of a happy ending is always just out of reach. In reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time earlier this year and in watching the 2005 movie adaptation of the novel, I was struck by how important balls were to the characters. These people loved to dance and, if the movie was at all a reflection of reality, they all knew how to dance very well.

I don't dance well. I once knew how to waltz, thanks to an eccentric junior high music teacher and a recording of Strauss waltzes, but I haven't waltzed in decades. I used to go square dancing with friends when I was in high school and I even learned to call a few dances, but I haven't done that in more than forty years. Even though I don't dance well, dancing still fascinates me. The ball scene in Pride and Prejudice and Gene Kelly's dancing in puddles in Singin' in the Rain are among my favorites.

Dancing is about relationships. Even Kelly's solo performance in Singin' in the Rain is an expression of the joy that Don Lockwood is experiencing in his relationship with Kathy Selden. It is no wonder then that the metaphor of dancing has been used by theologians to describe the Trinity. Beginning with Gregory of Nazianzus in the 4th century, perichoresis has been a word used to describe the relationships within the Trinity. The word can be translated as a round dance suggesting that the relationships of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not static but dynamic, fluid like the movements in a dance.

In the Incarnation, the Triune God has invited us to join in the dance, to "participate in the divine nature," (2 Peter 1:4) and "to be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19) This dance is not a solo performance, nor even a dance that is just God and me. It is a dance in which my partners are the members of the Body of Christ, first in its most local expression, but ultimately in its widest expression, drawing me into relationship with people I don't particularly like, with people whom I have hurt and who have hurt me, with saints in heaven and on earth. But is also a dance in which my partners are those of other faiths or no faith at all, as well as all creatures great and small, all creation. We are all part of the world which is beloved of God, of the creation which God calls good, the creation that is redeemed in Christ.

In this dance I am perhaps a bit less clumsy, but I still step on the feet of my partners. I still hurt people, by sins of commission and omission, and I still do harm to this wonderful creation, acting too often as if I am its owner and not simply a steward. The dance, to our joy, is not dependent upon us, upon our always getting the steps right. It is dependent upon God, it is a dance of Grace alone, and God invites us again and again to join the dance in faith.