Author Archives: djgrieser

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About djgrieser

I have been Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, WI since 2009. I'm passionate about Jesus Christ and about connecting our faith and tradition with 21st century culture. I'm also very active in advocating for our homeless neighbors.

Advent 4, Year C

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Pondering

Advent 4, Year C

Grace Episcopal Church

December 20, 2009

Finally, we are back to Luke’s narrative of the Christmas story. We’re not quite there, yet. For that we have to wait until Thursday, Christmas Eve; but after weeks of focus on Jesus’ teaching concerning the end times, and on John the Baptizer’s birth and ministry, we are finally into the heart of the story.

The gospel lection is a brief one and omits, this year, the larger story of what comes before. The angel Gabriel has announced to Mary that she will give birth to the Son of God. After hearing the angel’s words, Mary goes to visit her cousin in the hill country of Judea.

Mary’s song, the Magnificat, has been running through my head all of Advent. That’s not new. If I reflect back to past years, I soon realize that the words she sings in response to her visit to Elizabeth are a recurrent theme for me this time of year. They provide something of a framework for my personal meditation on the season. Partly it’s been running through my mind because of the choir’s marvelous performance of Biebl’s magnificat at lessons and carols on the two weeks ago.

Some of us have been reading and talking about Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan’s book The First Christmas. In it, these two prominent biblical scholars take a close look at the stories of the birth of Jesus, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, and try to look for the larger meaning behind each author’s version of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. For Matthew and Luke tell very different stories—different in details major and minor. We tend to overlook those differences and combine the two stories into a single whole. Thus, our crèche, our nativity scene has wise men and shepherds, though Matthew has wise men and Luke shepherds. It is also a stable, as in Luke’s gospel, while Matthew refers to Jesus’ birthplace as a house.

These differences are important, not so much for trying to nail down what really happened—we can’t know that from the distance of two thousand years, but rather, what the gospel writers, Luke and Matthew were trying to say about the birth of Jesus. Luke’s version is probably even more familiar to us than Matthew. The central episode in the story, the trip to Bethlehem by Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ birth in a stable, the visit of the shepherds, is what we think of when we think of Christmas.

But Luke is not interested only in telling the story of Jesus’ birth. He is interested in putting that story into a larger context, or perhaps it would be better to say contexts, for there are several larger issues at stake. First of all, there is the Roman Empire. Luke takes great care repeatedly to place his story in the story of the empire, something he does by repeating at several points, the name of the ruling emperor, and other Roman officials. He is going to contrast, throughout his gospel and into the book of Acts, the military might of the Roman Empire with the kingdom of God that Jesus preaches.

The other important context for Luke is Judaism. Like Matthew, Luke is interested in tying the story he is relating with larger Jewish history and biblical narrative. Where Matthew does this by linking events in Jesus’ birth with quotations from scripture, Luke does it by using motifs from scripture in his story. The barren woman, for example, appears again and again in Hebrew scripture: Sarah, Abraham’s wife, like Elizabeth, the mother of John, was long past child-bearing age. Hannah, too, whose story we heard some weeks ago, was barren and prayed to God to give her a son. Her prayers were eventually answered and she gave birth to Samuel.

The song Mary sings in response to Elizabeth’s words is itself a reformulation of Hannah’s song. The connections between past and present are deep and strong. When Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the lord,” she goes on to mention God’s mighty acts in saving God’s people:

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

These are not single actions of God, they are the way God acts in history; the force of the Greek is to make these things aspects or characteristics of God. In other words, this is the kind of God that God is. It is in God’s nature to do these things.

Luke stresses this in another way. Here, for a moment, all of our attention focuses on these two women—Mary and Elizabeth. Our tradition has so overwhelmed the story that it is hard for us to recapture what Luke had in mind. Elizabeth’s words “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb” have been memorized by millions, perhaps billions of Catholics over the centuries and the Magnificat itself has been a part of Christian worship for centuries. When we think of Mary, we think of those images of her as the theotokos, “the bearer of God” or the eternal virgin, sitting in heaven beside her son. Those of us who visited the Chazen with Maria two weeks ago, or heard Tom’s talk last week have all of those medieval, renaissance, and baroque images of Mary fresh in our memories. She has long been a focus of Christian devotion and piety.

None of that is what Luke intended. When he turned his focus to these two women, he was turning away from the obvious political and imperial history that was his context. It wasn’t simply a change in subject matter. The contrast between the powerful men he names, and the centers of power, his focus on Bethlehem and on these two women was meant to highlight the contrast between the way of empire, the way of the world, and the way of Jesus Christ.

In these last few days before Christmas, when our attention is directed at all of the final preparations we need to make—the shopping, cooking, last-minute decorations, and for many of us travels, too, the world of a peasant girl, two thousand years ago, awaiting the birth of her child, and her cousin’s child, seem remote and unimportant. The clash of empires depicted by Luke seems far-fetched at best. We don’t want to think too long and hard about what it all means, because that might distract us away from what’s really important—the holiday that is only a few days away.

But Luke encourages us to contemplate a God who acts in history in a certain way and acts with a certain kind of people:

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

Our understanding of God may not be able to comprehend this notion of reversal, turning the world upside-down. We are apt to want to reinterpret these words spiritually, to think that what Mary meant, what God does is uplift those who are depressed and humble the proud. But these are to be taken quite literally as well as spiritually.

For that is just what God did in the incarnation. God took what was lowly, a poor peasant woman from Nazareth, and through her made Godself incarnate. God took ordinary human flesh, a body just like ours, and became one of us.

This may be so hard for us to understand because Luke describes a world so very different than ours. One reason we have turned Christmas into an extravagance of cuteness and kitsch is because we cannot get our heads around the notion that God comes into the world in just this way.

Can we really, sincerely, sing with Mary the words of the Magnificat today? Does the God she praises look and act in any way like the God we worship? I’ve been thinking about the Drop-in Shelter a good bit the past few weeks. I suppose it’s been more in my consciousness in part because the weather has turned colder. But I’ll also admit that I’m more aware of it because with the switch to winter hours in November, I’m much more likely to encounter the guys waiting in line at the door when I leave the office at the end of the day.

I see the men and I think about the magnificat and the God of the Bible who intervenes on behalf of the powerless, the homeless, hungry and poor, the God whom Mary praises, and I wonder what connection there is between that God and the God we worship here. Of course they are the same God, but have we so remade God in our image that we cannot hear the force of Mary’s song? Have we so created a God who comforts us, that we cannot experience a God who unsettles us, who scatters the proud and casts down the mighty?

On Christmas Eve, we will gather here again, to listen to the story from Luke of the birth of Jesus Christ. We will sing the familiar carols, we will celebrate with joy; many of us will be coming from, or going to lavish parties among friends and family. All the while, on the opposite side of the courtyard, the guests in the shelter will do what they do every night, wait for a warm meal, a warm bed, a place to rest their tired feet.

Mary’s song challenges us to experience and imagine a God who acts on behalf of just those men standing in line at the shelter. Mary’s song challenges us to consider what our responsibility to them is in this season and around the year. Grace is justly proud that it gives a home to the drop-in shelter. Many of you, like me, come here in part of that presence. But being a landlord is not enough. As we think about a God who acts in, and among the poor and the oppressed, as we worship a God who becomes incarnate in a stable in Bethlehem, we must seek to make that God present, not only in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, but also in the line of men waiting to enter the shelter on a cold winter’s night, and everywhere else that the poor, downtrodden, and hungry congregate.

Surprised by Scripture

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I suppose that by now I should be used to it and even expect it–reading a passage of scripture and being completely surprised by language, concepts, or themes that I hadn’t noticed before.

It happened today while I was reading the text appointed for the Eucharist for the Wednesday in the third week of Advent. The reading came from Isaiah 45, which is a passage I assigned when I taught Intro to Bible. I used it in that context to point out the exilic context of Second Isaiah. It is clearly set during the Babylonian exile; the author is expecting the defeat of Babylon by the Persian Empire led by Cyrus. The chapter begins:

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, …
I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.
5I am the Lord, and there is no other;
besides me there is no god.
I arm you, though you do not know me,
6so that they may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is no one besides me;
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
7I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I the Lord do all these things.

There are two very important ideas here; the first that Cyrus is called the anointed, language used of Davidic kings and prophets, but never of non-Israelites; and second, that God is responsible for everything “I make weal and create woe.” This is a clear sign of the development of monotheism.

But what surprised and fascinated me in the text was something else:

18For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens
(he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it
(he established it;
he did not create it a chaos,
he formed it to be inhabited!):
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
19I did not speak in secret,
in a land of darkness;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
‘Seek me in chaos.’
I the Lord speak the truth,
I declare what is right.

This is obviously a polemic directed against Babylonian notions of divinity and creation. It’s even rather woodenly so, at least in the NRSV’s translation, with the use of parentheses. It draws a sharp distinction between the orderly way in which Yahweh creates and what must have been the author’s understanding of Babylonian creation myths.

Of course the priestly account of creation (Gen 1) shows God creating out of chaos. Creation in Genesis 1 is all about order, dividing light from darkness, day from night, dry land from sea, and this idea reverberates in this passage from Genesis.

The tension between order and chaos is a very human one and we tend to oscillate between two extremes. I remember a roommate whose mantra was regularly, “I’ve got to get my life in order.” It was something he said in the midst of the chaos of unkempt hair and clothes, a room that was littered with papers, books, and dirty clothes.

Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent

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I love this collect for its powerful imagery and especially for its opening petition”Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us”

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Popular books discussing Christmas and Advent often mention that the Third Sunday of Advent was known in England as “Stirrup” Sunday because of the two opening words of the prayer. Whether that is true, I have no idea. In its current form, it is largely the work of Cranmer’s translation, who placed it as the collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. In fact, the Sarum Missal had four prayers on the Sundays preceding Christmas that began with the Latin “Excita”–“Stir up.”

The use of “Stir up” puts me in mind of the opening verses of Genesis:

In the beginning when God created* the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters.

But “stirring up” has many other parallels in scripture. Among the most interesting is in John’s story of Jesus healing the lame man at the Pool of Siloam; he was waiting in vain for some one to help him into the pool when the water was stirred up (John 5).

As an Advent collect, the emphasis on God coming among us in power, is obvious. But like the collect for the preceding Sunday, this one, too, asks for God’s grace to deliver us from our sins. God’s power, with the potential to destroy, can also save.

Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent

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Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

According to Hatchett, this collect is based on that for the Third Sunday in Advent in the Book of Common Worship of the Church of South India, although it expresses ideas similar to those for the Third Sunday in Advent from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

What I like about it is that it begins by invoking “merciful God” and it puts a positive spin the prophets preaching repentance. But all of the action is in God; first, with God’s mercy and God sending prophets. But it continues in the same vein, with a petition for God’s grace that we might hear the message of the prophets, amend our lives, and greet Christ’s coming with joy.

Fear Not: Advent 3, Year C

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Advent 3, Year C

Grace Episcopal Church

December 13, 2009

What is it you fear most? Death, debilitating illness, loss of your job? Homelessness? Are there things you are so afraid of that you cannot even think of them? And how do you deal with those fears? Do you examine and analyze them? Or do you push them away, repress them, ignore them, or try to develop ways of avoiding or not noticing them?

For those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties, we can remember fears of nuclear war. The threat was always there, lurking under the surface. Occasionally it broke through our ordinary lives, during the Cuban missile crisis, for example. But we came to live with it as a reality and as a backdrop to everything we did. More recently, the fear of terrorist attack has played some part in our lives; though again, that fear has receded dramatically since 2001.

Still, it sometimes seems as if fear is everywhere. Certainly, those of us who have been driving in Madison the past few days know the experience of ordinary, common activities becoming fear-inspiring. But it goes much beyond the lingering effects of this week’s snow storm. If like me, you tend not to pay to close attention to the news, it’s because you don’t really want to know what’s going on in the world, it’s all just too scary and depressing.

It’s often the case that when the world seems to be a threatening place, that the future is uncertain, people turn to religion. In fact one common refrain by detractors of religion is that religion both preys upon people’s fears, and survives by inciting fear. People turn to religion when or because they fear death, so it is said. Many people argue that religion creates supporters by inciting fear in people, fear of damnation, fear of hell.

Among the fears that religions, specifically Christianity, (or some forms of it) exploit, is the fear of the end of the world. Advent confronts us with that fear as we hear lessons that promise destruction and the second coming. Such fear drives the perennial popularity of movies like the recent 2012 that try to depict the future according to some religious text, in this case from the Mayan tradition. There was also the recent phenomenon of the Left Behind series that sold millions upon millions of copies. There is biblical precedent for such beliefs; we have heard over the past two weeks imagery of death, destruction, and rebirth that was used by Jews and Christians to make sense of the violent and oppressive world in which they found themselves.

John the Baptizer was an apocalyptic prophet. He foretold doom and destruction, and we hear part of his message in today’s gospel:

“YOU BROOD OF VIPERS! WHO WARNED YOU TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME? BEAR FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE…. EVEN NOW THE AX IS LYING AT THE ROOT OF THE TREES; EVERYONE THAT DOES NOT BEAR GOOD FRUIT IS CUT DOWN AND THROWN INTO THE FIRE.”

John preached what used to be called “fire and brimstone” sermons, promising hell to everyone who didn’t repent of their sins and amend their lives. John is one of those biblical figures toward whom few contemporary Episcopalians feel any sympathy. We like our religion nice and tidy, and usually not too emotional. We certainly don’t want to be pressured, whether it be to repent, or to give money. That’s all too unseemly. And many of us came from Christian traditions where, like John the Baptizer, preachers pulled out all of the stops in order to effect conversions. Some of us may still carry emotional scars from those day, scars that make it more difficult for us to find our way in faith.

And even if you come from a different religious background, or even none, you may have read Jonathan Edwards famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” where he describes “natural men held in the hand of God over the pit of hell” or if not that, perhaps you recall James Joyce’s wonderful description of a sermon preached at a retreat in The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The notion of religion, of Christianity inciting fear and wreaking havoc on the psyches of individuals, and even whole communities, that notion is something with which we are all too familiar and perhaps turned off by.

So we hear the story of John the Baptizer and we hope to get over it and through it, and to the much better story of the birth of Jesus, which we are still waiting for. Yet Luke provides us with detail concerning the Baptizer’s message that shades the image of John as a fearsome prophet.

John delivered those frightening words, “The axe is laid to the tree, everyone who does not bear fruit will be cut off and cast into the fire.” We hear those words and imagine ourselves terrified, caught between fear of eternal punishment, the wrath of almighty God, and our own weaknesses and sin. We wonder about John’s listeners, how did they respond? Why did they come out into the wilderness to hear him preach?

We don’t notice what Luke tells us about those listeners. They don’t fall on their knees in terror, begging forgiveness. They don’t run away in fear. They engage the prophet, they ask him, “what then should we do?” Unlike the televangelist or revivalist, John doesn’t answer, “accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.”

No, John gives his listeners advice. He tells them what to do. But his advice isn’t the obvious. He doesn’t tell those who ask him to come out and join him in a counter-cultural movement. Instead, he gives them rather straightforward, and not at all that radical advice. “If you have two coats, share with someone who has none. If you have food, do likewise.” That’s what John says to the crowds, to all those who ask. Luke has other people, specific groups come to John and ask the same question. And to them, John responds in much the same way. Tax collectors ask him what they should do, and he replies, “collect more than the amount prescribed to you.” And to soldiers, John says, “Do not extort money from anyone, be content with your wages.”

Now, as you probably know tax collectors and soldiers in the Roman Empire were not simply government workers. Tax collectors made their income by taking a percentage of what they collected. Soldiers supplemented their meager wages by extracting money from the people they protected. In other words, they were both part of a deeply oppressive, and profoundly unjust system. Yet John did not demand they leave that system.

Instead, he gave them relatively simple and easy-to-follow advice. Don’t game the system, he said. Do what you can. In fact, it’s not a message of fear at all, but rather of hope. He gives to his listeners a way of living in a corrupt and evil society. The only options are not to either flee from it or to make your peace with it. Instead, you can live within it and do our best. It’s a message many of us might find appealing as we try to make our own way in a difficult world. How many of us find us in situations, in jobs that present us with difficult alternatives, in jobs that are dehumanizing or exploitative, making decisions that are far removed from the ethic of love espoused by Jesus.

Our response is often to ignore the ethical implications of those decisions, to say to ourselves that what matters in the end is keeping the job and taking care of our families. But such decisions, such jobs, can eat away at us. In such cases, John offers us a way through. Do what you can, act as justly, as ethically as possible in this corrupt and evil system.

John’s preaching offers us one set of messages for this third Sunday of Advent. Caught between God’s judgment and the ethical demands of the gospel, we waver uncertain. There is yet another, very different message in today’s lessons. Paul, writing to the Philippians says, do not worry about anything. The rich language of Zechariah includes the advice, “Do not fear, Oh Zion.” More importantly, each time an angel appears in the gospel of Luke, whether announcing the coming of John the Baptizer, or the birth of Jesus, or even the resurrection, each time, the angel says, “Fear not.”

Our faith is not a faith created or sustained by fear. Rather, our faith is a faith that has no fear. Our God offers us salvation, love, not death and destruction, we need not worry about what might happen to us tomorrow, at death, or when Christ returns in majesty.

Fear not, the angel said, fear not the prophet Zechariah said. As we go forth from this place, let us go, rejoicing in the coming of Christ who offers us hope and love in a harsh and fearful world.

New Bishop for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina

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Having left the diocese only four months ago, I followed the election closely. I will admit that I was deeply concerned when the slate of candidates was announced. The addition of a petition candidate did not assuage my fears. Part of my concern stemmed from my knowledge of the diocese and of the state after living there for ten years. I had spent enough time with lay people from across the diocese and knew the general tenor of religiosity and of politics.

I also have enormous respect and deep affection for Bishop Henderson. He navigated an incredibly difficult situation after 2003 with grace and skill and he was a gifted pastor to his clergy. I hoped that his legacy would be a strong diocese, moderate theologically, and diverse in its churchmanship. The slate of candidates seemed not to reflect his wisdom and perspective.

There are those who regard Bishop Henderson as a heretic or as spineless. He is neither. The same people regard at least three of the candidates for the next bishop as “revisionist,” whatever that means.

The election is a clear repudiation of the theology and politics of marginalization and polarization. I found it interesting that Waldo+received a clear majority from the lay delegates from the very first ballot, while the clergy were more divided amongst themselves. What I learned of him from a distance suggested to me that he would be an unlikely fit for the diocese I know so well. That he prevailed so quickly and easily suggests to me that he wa eloquent and charismatic in the walk-abouts, and that he connected very quickly with lay people.

I continue to pray for the people and clergy of the diocese. I count many among my friends. They have done good work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And I pray that they will continue to do such good work. Thanks be to God.

Obama’s Nobel speech

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There was considerable controversy over the selection of President Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Many saw irony, or perhaps a desire on the part of the selection committee to influence events, in the confluence of the award ceremony with the decision to increase US troop presence in Afghanistan. Obama took his critics head on in the speech.

He did more. He addressed the just war theory in the opening paragraphs. Later in the speech, he argued that no war waged as Holy War could be just: “For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one’s own faith.” Alluding then to the “Golden Rule” that has its parallels in most of the world’s religions, Obama continued,

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

He strikes a rather Niebuhrian tone is these paragraphs, recognizing both the fallibility of human nature, and the importance of striving for a goal that lies beyond the natural and obvious.

I am deeply troubled by a number of Obama’s choices in foreign policy and in combating terrorism–among them the reluctance to come clean on torture and especially to prosecute those who tortured, and advocated the use of torture, the defense of the Bush Administration’s justice department, and the reluctance to come clean on what happened overall during the Bush administration.

I don’t know what the answer is in Afghanistan. I doubt whether this expansion of US military presence there will be successful. It seems to me that there are only difficult choices there, and overall in dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. But I suspect Obama’s hands were tied by many factors, including the generals and the hawks on Capitol Hill. It will be interesting to see if he can extricate the troops from that place in 2011.

Having invoked just war theory at the beginning of his speech, the question of whether Afghanistan conforms to just war theory is valid. I think that question would make for a lively debate, even on the limited definition Obama provided. This is what he said. A war is just “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.” I’d be curious to hear his arguments defending Afghanistan’s conforming to those criteria.

more on the election of bishops

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I’ve never voted in the election of a bishop, and as time passes, I’m increasingly grateful for that, and hopeful that I will never be burdened with that responsibility. Seeing the firestorm that was ignited by last week’s elections in the Diocese of LA, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be casting a ballot with the knowledge that all of the Anglican Communion, and perhaps the world-wide press, would be taking an interest.

I almost did vote in the election of a bishop, and even more onerously, I was nominated to serve on the Search Committee for the next Bishop of Upper South Carolina (thankfully, wiser heads prevailed and I was not selected). My prayers are with all of those people who will be casting ballots on Saturday in Columbia. I’m wondering what effect last week’s elections is having on this week’s. How are events in the wider church having an impact on the decision-making by those who will be voting?

I’ve not followed the discussions closely and know only two of the candidates at all. I’m curious to see how the clergy and the laity, after more than ten years of Bishop Henderson, go about choosing his successor.

More on the Archbishop of Canterbury

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There have been a number of blog entries concerning what seems to be a double-standard from the ABC. He spoke out immediately to criticize the election of the Rev’d Canon Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of LA, but continues his silence on Uganda. Fr. Jake points out the timing here.

Ruth Gledhill observed that the Archbishop is in a very difficult spot because of these two events.

Others have contrasted Williams’ statements before becoming ABC with his current stance. Among the most eloquent is from Colin Coward, who was one of Williams’ students in the 70s. Again, Ruth Gledhill has the story.

Perhaps the best analysis of the ABC’s apparent inconsistency is this blog entry. The money quote from Williams:  “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.”

gay bishops and gay bashing

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It was inevitable. Resolutions passed at General Convention this past summer affirmed the canonical process for ordination of priests and deacons, and elections of bishops. Namely, our canons (laws) do not discriminate against sexual orientation. In other words, sexual orientation does not preclude ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, or election, and consecration to the episcopacy.

That reaffirmation for many of us was nothing more than a statement of reality. But it also seemed to affirm the possibility that gays and lesbians might be elected to the episcopacy. For conservatives, that seemed to suggest that the decisions of General Convention in 2006 were being abrogated. In fact, the hotly disputed resolution that was finally passed on 2006, only urged that bishops and standing committees exercise restraint in consenting to the election of a gay or lesbian bishop.

Yesterday, the Diocese of LA elected an openly lesbian, partnered woman to be suffragan bishop. This has again brought the Episcopal Church into the news, aroused the ire of conservative Episcopalians, and led to much confused thinking. We will see whether the bishop-elect receives the necessary consents from standing committees and bishops. That is not a foregone conclusion by any means. You can read about the election and its aftermath in all of the usual places.

While this is going on, Uganda is debating a bill that would punish gays and lesbians with the death penalty. The Anglican Church of Uganda has thrown itself behind the bill, and today, we’ve learned that a Ugandan Anglican priest has equated gays and cockroaches. The Episcopal Church has made its views known on this issue and it is said that the Archishop of Canterbury is furiously working behind the scenes to soften the legislation. At the same time, some of those most actively involved in crafting and pushing the legislation are supported by American Evangelicals.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the “impaired” communion created by actions of the American and Canadian Anglican churches. I, for one, don’t want to be part of a communion in which a member church supports capital punishment for gays and lesbians. Let’s be done with it already.