(The following is a sermon I preached on June 25, 2006, as my report to the parish on General Convention.)
I’m going to talk about General Convention this morning, but I want to do that with today’s Gospel hovering in the background. It’s an amazingly appropriate reading, one that speaks directly to what I want to say. First of all, we need to remember that boat stories in the Gospels are always stories about the Church, about what it is like to be the Church—then and now. Always. Especially today.
After all, we know what it’s like to live in a great wind storm, with waves beating into the boat, so that it is already being swamped. The last three years have been like that for our Church—internationally, nationally, in our Diocese and in our parish. And there have been times when it really did seem like Jesus was asleep somewhere in the stern, not noticing, not caring.
We all came to General Convention on the winds of that storm—blown, buffeted, bruised and tossed all sorts of directions, but pretty much all wanting to do, together, the same thing.
We wanted to call to Jesus. We wanted to find a way to quiet the storm, and we wanted to find a way to stay, together, in the same boat. I caught that loud and clear from the very beginning. At first, I thought we all wanted this; later on I found out that a few of us didn’t—but more on that in a minute.
What did we do? First of all, the fact is nobody heard on the news what I am totally convinced are the most important and abiding things we did. I’ll start talking about them at the end of this sermon, and keep talking about them for a long time to come.
As for what made the news: Last Sunday the House of Bishops elected the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop of Nevada, as the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Many of you met Bishop Schori at our Diocesan Convention last Fall. She is bright, able, articulate, and committed. The Bishops of our Church chose her as their leader, and the Deputies overwhelmingly supported our Bishops in their choice.
Her election came as a surprise to many of us. Although we have been ordaining women as Priests for thirty years and as Bishops for almost twenty, she is our first woman Presiding Bishop. Personally, I have been very impressed with Bishop Schori, and I look forward to her leadership. Our prayers and best wishes will be with her as she begins this new and demanding ministry.
The other very public part of our deliberations had to do with our Church’s response to the Windsor Report—the Report which the Archbishop of Canterbury commissioned after the General Convention in 2003. The report asked several specific things of our Church, and I believe we responded positively to all of them.
Certainly, the doing of this brought about the most extended, heated, and frustrating debate we had. It was not, in all its particulars, our finest hour. Clearly, the vast majority of the Bishops and the House of Deputies wanted to find a way to respond positively to the Windsor report. But the Rules of the House, and the political and parliamentary machinations of a few, made that difficult, and our first attempt to do that failed. (That made the news.)
What did not make nearly as much news was that the next day, with the leadership of both the Presiding Bishop and the Presiding Bishop-elect, the House of Deputies, by more than a three-fourths vote of approval, joined with the House of Bishops in passing a resolution by which we clearly intended to meet the request of the Windsor Report that we refrain from repeating our action of the 2003 Convention. This is what I wanted to happen, and this is what our Diocese supported unanimously.
For many Bishops and Deputies, on all sides of the issue, this was a difficult and sacrificial choice—one that placed their desire for unity and community above their personal preferences for one sort of wording or another. There were tears and there was hope and there was a willingness to reach out across divisions. The center held, and it was a moving and an important moment. We chose to reach out to Jesus, and we sought his presence in the midst of the storm. Again, I am convinced that we took every step the Windsor Report asked us to take.
But there were heartbreaking moments in all of this, too. As the voting evolved, it became clear that both the most liberal dioceses, those most in favor of what happened in 2003, and the most conservative dioceses, those most opposed to that action, had, intentionally or not, joined together in an attempt to block even the discussion, let alone the resolution, of the most important parts of this process.
This stunning alliance was, it seems clear, willing to divide, even to destroy, the whole Church if they could not get, word for word, what they wanted. Together, they were willing to sink the boat, our boat; and to break it into pieces to make new, littler, boats. And the fact is, most, if not all, of the news stories, interviews, and reports I have seen in the secular press come from one side or another of this peculiar and destructive alliance. It is from there that we hear voices falsely insisting either that we have ignored or flaunted the Windsor Report, or that we have abandoned our commitment to be open and welcoming to all of God’s children.
Neither is true; and I have come to the sad conclusion that both extremes seek primarily their own agenda, and that each is willing to sacrifice both the unity and the mission of the Church for the sake of that agenda. A pox on both their houses. I belong to neither extreme, nor does our Diocese.
But enough of this. We took the steps we were asked to take, and the conversation throughout the Anglican Communion will, I trust and I pray, continue.
In spite of where the press was, as I suggested earlier, the most important thing that came from Convention came from somewhere else. The most important thing that came from Contention was that our Church set for itself a clear and a vital mission. What I think happened was that we looked to Jesus to calm the storm, and as we did that, not only did Jesus see us, but we saw him. We caught a glimpse of his face.
To catch a glimpse of the face of Jesus is to enter a new reality; it is to discover new priorities. It is to see with new eyes. Here are two of the things I am convinced we saw through those new eyes, eyes opened from seeing Jesus.
The first was best articulated in what was probably the most prophetic voice we heard in Columbus. It was that of the Rev. and Honorable John Danforth, an Episcopal Priest and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and Republican Senator from Missouri. Senator Danforth called on our Church to take with deadly seriousness the Prayer Book’s description of the mission of the Church, which is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ." (P. 855). When he said, "I believe that we have a higher calling, a more central message ... ours is a special calling to the ministry of reconciliation." he spoke to and for the beating heart of our Church and of that Convention.
As Episcopalians, we are uniquely positioned to be a source and a model for reconciliation in our own communities and beyond. This should be, and can be, and, God willing, will be, at the center of who we are and of what we are about.
The second, and intimately related, gift that the eyes of Jesus gave us was a deeper and much more immediate sense of the presence of our Lord in the face of our neighbor, especially in the face of "the least of these", the weakest and most hurting of God’s children.
So we left Columbus with a renewed sense of, and commitment to, World Mission, and especially as that is set forth in the Millennium Development Goals—these are an eight-pronged declaration that has at its core the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. These goals have been adopted by the United States, the United Nations, and virtually every other nation in the world. You will be hearing much more about this in the weeks and months to come. As a beginning, let me say that General Convention has asked that every diocese, every parish, and every Episcopalian make a real and tangible commitment to these goals, and that we back that up with action. With God’s help, and in the name of Jesus and with the eyes and heart of Jesus, we can, and we will, make a difference, a difference that matters.
What did we do at General Convention? At the end of the day, in the midst of the storm, we looked to Jesus for calm, and for the gift of staying together in our little boat. I believe, first that he did guide us towards that end and, second, that he gave us more: He gave us a vision that looks far beyond that little boat—to the world that was made through him, and for which he died and rose again, and in doing that, Jesus has called us once more to be his eyes, his hands, his heart, and his servants to that world. This is a vision worthy of our Church, our time, our energy and our resources. I pray that we will catch that vision, and make it our own.
When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (Mark 4.35-41)
Reports and Photos from General Convention
Fr. Jim Liggett
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A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week Preaching, 2006
Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from August 15, 2004
This page last updated on June 26, 2006