General Convention - Back home

The trip back home on Sunday was uneventful. Gassed up the rental car, turned it in at the airport, waited for the flight, no problem SNA to ORD. In Chicago a previous flight to LGA had been canceled and many unhappy people were trying to get on the flight I was booked on. The waiting list was more than 100! Needless to say, the flight was full. I was seated next to a delightful young woman who joyfully shared that she was six months pregnant. That was really nice. I took the shuttle bus to Grand Central and the 8:45 train to Poughkeepsie, where our Superior met me. Thank you, Robert! I was really tired, and "peopled out", so I cocooned most of the day on Monday.

I have been processing what I saw and what has been happening at General Convention. In a lot of ways it is easier to do it at home than on the site, at least in part because the unfiltered experience lacks perspective and is too filled with incidental detail. So what follows is a meditation on what is known as D025, the resolution passed by both the Bishops and the Deputies, and now the official policy of the Episcopal Church.

D025 says that the Episcopal Church will no longer, at the national level, exclude homosexual people from the processes leading to ordination as Bishop simply because of the nature of their sexual orientation. If you have read my blogs at all faithfully, you know that I am concerned for the unity of the Anglican Communion. There are many issues confronting Anglicans, but this is the one that is most controversial and divisive.

In his sermon on Saturday, Ray Suarez, of the PBS Nightly News, listed all the ways that the Episcopal Church seems to be out of step:

"So let’s stop clinging to that outmoded prayer book that happens to be one of the crown jewels of the English language, we’ve got the get rid of that hymnal, with all those tricky tunes and old-fashioned words… stop those long sermons delivered by people who always seem to want me to feel bad about something… the organs, the outfits, it’s so archaic in a world where religion bestsellers are trying to convince me that Jesus wants me to be rich. I thought Jesus wants me to be holy, and it just goes to show you how wrong a guy can be. But hey, while we’re jettisoning all these things that are leading us to what is called marketplace failure… let’s also stop the radical welcome… Let’s stop the willingness to live, sometimes uncomfortably, with the ambiguities of modern life."

I guess that Suarez is from the more traditional end of the Church, for which I give thanks. His point is, If Jesus wants us to be rich and successful, we're barking up the wrong trees. We should stop being what we are and became conservative megachurches.

But actually, Jesus does not want us to aim at becoming rich and successful. Jesus wants us to be holy.

And there's the rub. How can we as a church be holy when we are departing from the traditional standards of holiness?

Perhaps a church convention is not the place to go searching for holiness. For sure, that great besetting sin of churchmen down the ages is on full display: Ambition. It would be easy to lampoon this, but it would also be unjust and cruel. The Holy Spirit has always used ambition to get the work of the Church done. Are ambitious or proud people excluded from ordination? No. Are vainglorious people excluded? Check the Wippell's booth. They are not. Are people who want more than a moderate salary excluded? Surely you jest.

There are so many stony paths lined with temptations to sin that lead to ordination. So why single out one category of human behavior (sexual identity vs. desire for prosperity or worldly respect) over all the others and insist that God cannot work in and through it to accomplish His work?

I think the most brilliant line in D025 is the one that catalogues ways in which homosexual relationships can be channels of grace. It quotes a resolution from 9 years ago in doing so: "the General Convention has come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships "characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God" (2000-D039)"

It reminds me of St. Paul in Galatians 5:22-23: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (KJV). Fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, holy love: against these there can be no law.

What the Church needs is more holy people, and right now, more holy gay and lesbian people, people who show forth Christ in their lives, who are self-sacrificing, whose words and deeds are activated by the Holy Spirit, people through whom the love of Christ flows and to whom seekers after the goodness of God are drawn.

My beloved Episcopal Church has taken another step in the prophetic direction. This time it may be a step too far, if unquestioning unity on other peoples' terms is the criterion. If so, then we will need to throw ourselves into the arms of the Gracious Lord of us all. In this moment, I think we need more than anything, more than daring words and acts, more than brave (and perhaps over-brave) stances, more than self-congratulatory back-patting on one side and ungracious muttering in the other, what we need more than anything is the irrefutable evidence of holiness. Gay and lesbian holiness of such goodness that no Christian can deny the Spirit's anointing.