The Circle Begins to Close

Uh-oh: maybe this could have been predicted, but then again, hindsight brings the connections into sharper focus:

The Episcopal Church
Office of Public Affairs

Bishop Stacy Sauls named Episcopal Church Chief Operating Officer

May 31, 2011

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has named Bishop Stacy F. Sauls as Chief Operating Officer for the Episcopal Church.

“The Episcopal Church Center exists to support the Church in serving a diverse and changing world,” noted Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. “The churchwide staff has achieved new levels of excellence and innovation as the Church Center has been reorganized and some staff has been dispersed to offices in other geographic regions of the Church. This transition represents a healthy and forward-looking opportunity to build on that good work. Bishop Sauls brings a unique set of gifts to the next chapter of this ministry, particularly his distinguished service as a diocesan bishop. I am deeply grateful that he will join us in facilitating this work.”

Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori made the announcement May 31.

As Chief Operating Officer, Sauls will oversee the staff of the Episcopal Church Center in New York City as well as offices located in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, CA, Seattle, WA, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. Sauls will coordinate the work of the Church’s mission program, communication, finance and administration duties while assisting the Presiding Bishop in her role as Chief Executive Officer. Also, he will be an ex-officio member of the Executive Council and an active member of the board of Episcopal Relief & Development.

“This is the most interesting and rewarding time I can imagine to serve the Episcopal Church,” noted Sauls, Bishop of Lexington for more than a decade. “I am anxious to collaborate in the transformative leadership being provided by our Presiding Bishop and the devoted service being offered by Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, and to bring my own creativity in challenging situations to the team. I am grateful to the Presiding Bishop for her confidence and the Executive Council for its endorsement.”

To think: the author of this Memorandum, which sought to justify the Presiding Bishop's uncanonical actions after the fact, is now to serve at her right hand.

The head of the Episcopal Church Property Task Force, who "expressed his concern that the [Episcopal] organization only has available to it 20 hours per week of legal counsel and is increasingly concerned that the church does not have a lawyer", is now the chief operations officer for that organization. As a former attorney, he will now not be able to become that lawyer, because he will be taking his orders from the Presiding Bishop -- in connection with whom he remarked, in the same quote linked above:

The EC does not have counsel, even though the PB does have and, it seems, everyone assumes that the PB’s counsel is everyone else’s counsel.

Will he now make that same assumption?

Did anyone else hear the sound of a clasp snapping shut at 815?

Time to get out of the bubble

It was for me an Areopagus moment. Maybe you have had one of those? No, huh? I'll bet you might have, and didn't know it. My moment came when I was forced me out of my religious bubble and into the real world.

Last year I had an encounter that I still think about. Some of you may remember me talking about it. It happened one day last summer when I was walking through the mall. I was wearing my "official" clerical garb. I went to the cell phone kiosk to do something or other, and while I was there both another customer and the clerk treating me with a noticeable deference and even with good humor. After a lot of banter about phones with some religious humor thrown in, we parted company smiling.

As I was walking out of the mall, I saw a group of high school aged young men. One of them made eye contact with me and would not let go. This was not a friendly connection. His friends noticed his stare and turned to look. They all folded their arms and watched, waiting to see what would happen next.

He was wearing a black T-shirt that had on the front a red circle and slash over a cross over the caption "no bad religion." I decided that his stare and his shirt were connected. He was clearly trying to draw my attention. Maybe he wanted to stare me down. Instead, I decided to stop and ask about the shirt. After all, if I am going to wear the symbol of the church’s ordained ministry in public, I had better be able to take the brickbats as well as the bouquets.

I complimented him on his shirt. Then I asked him, “Tell me. What do you mean by ‘bad religion’?” What he said was "no bad religion, man!"

“Okay. I hear that. But what makes religion to you?” My hunch was that if the two of us could compare our lists of what constituted "bad religion", our lists would be more alike than different.

My list would start with violence and persecution perpetrated in God's name. I would also add the many examples of hatred that some justify on religious grounds. I also think that "bad religion" is religion that is uncritical or reactive or which puts institutional life ahead of people's well-being. Religion that excludes or belittles people based solely on race, gender or sexual orientation would be on my list of “bad religion.” Religion that doesn't drive us to leave a world better than how we found it is to me "bad religion".

Most of all, I wanted to know his story. What were his encounters with bad religion and what would constitute good religion to him? My hunch was that we probably shared a lot on that score, too--maybe more than he might have expected.

But we never got that far. His answer to my follow up query was only this: “Bad religion stinks.” (That’s not how he said it, but you get the idea.) And then he and his friends walked away. I guess he was not ready to step outside of his bubble, either. Which was a shame.

I thought of this as I read about the Paul’s encounter at the Areopagus, located on a place called Mars Hill in the ancient city of Athens, debating the philosophers in this religious marketplace. As I thought about the young man and his t-shirt in the mall—the Areopagus of our day—I realized that Paul stepped out his religious bubble and entered into a new world to share good news in a new way.

Paul had gone to Athens, the center of intellectual and religious life in Greece, and, for that matter, in the whole Roman world, to meet some friends. This was the place where Greeks worshipped their pantheon…their line-up of gods…they had a deity for every purpose…rain, war, fertility, you name it. To hedge their bets, they set up a temple to the god they had not discovered yet, the one that covered some reality that had not yet occurred to them.

In terms of religious experience, Paul may as well have been from another planet! Paul was a Jew—a Hellenized, cosmopolitan Jew, trained in both Greek philosophy and Hebrew tradition—and that meant that for him there is only one God. And the first commandment says that Jews only worshipped the one God and did not use idols of any kind. But he thought he knew who that Temple of the Unknown Deity might have pointed to.

Problem was that any one from the Greek and Roman world would have considered Paul at best strange and at worst a crazed zealot. Believing in only one God was foolhardy, narrow-minded and sacrilegious. They has strange and strict rules about food and things. Like all Jewish males, he was circumcised which was considered both gross and barbaric.

And Paul was one of those Christians who believed that God not only became human but that he died and rose again. He believed that everyone would experience resurrection someday.

Paul has some choices here.

He could have stayed away from Idol Central and stayed with his own kind. Which is what happened a lot: in many cities right up to our own day, people who think and worship alike often end up living in the same neighborhoods, or hang around the same pubs, or friend each other on Facebook.

Or he could have started trashing the place. Tearing down false idols certainly would have attracted attention! But he would have simply turned his space into an attack bubble...kind of like that thing that used to chase down Number 6 whenever the Prisoner tried to leave The Village. But he didn’t go there.

He could have just gone along to get along, as some of the folks back home in Jerusalem accused him of doing.

Instead, he chose to leave his bubble and engage them. He decided to tell them about Jesus of Nazareth, the messiah who lived and died and rose again. He decided to talk about how God was at work through Christ and wanted a relationship with everyone.

And if any kind of real meeting was to take place, everyone would have to step out of their bubble...at least a little bit.

Where do we start? How can we communicate the Gospel with any kind of effectiveness when we are all floating around in our own little bubbles? Paul’s encounter teaches us a few things.

The main thing is that all of us—each and every one of us—communicates the Gospel. Like it or not, once someone figures out that you are a Christian and that you take your religion even a little bit seriously, then you are communicating the Gospel. You don’t have to ring doorbells. And you don’t need to wear a clerical collar or a habit. Every day we all communicate the Gospel.

That’s good because, as Paul noticed about the Athenians, everyone is on a search for God. Know it or not, every one of us seeks meaning and purpose for their living. And when we do that, we are seeking to fill a God-shaped space in our hearts. And since that search is not always conscious, it affects our choices and behavior. So our quest for intimacy is also a quest to be known and loved. Our quest for more stuff is also a yearning to have our hearts filled. Our quest for recognition reflects a longing to be understood and valued. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Just as Paul looked around and saw in all the idols and temples a religious people yearning for meaning, purpose and connection, we can look around and see a lot of spiritually hungry people.

Today's Aeropagus is everywhere, not just on Mars Hill and not just in the mall. Only 17% of Americans go to church, synagogue or mosque, and yet the Gallup people tell us that 90+% of Americans think of themselves as spiritual. 78% say they pray and three quarters of Americans say they believe in God. So, just as we always communicate the Gospel, there are people all around us who are searching to fill a god-shaped space in their lives. We could rest on advertising or Facebook to get out the message and hope people step into our bubble. But as important as marketing is, it is not really what tells the story.

What fills the God-shaped space is when one person meets another person who is also on a journey of faith; because Jesus shows us that Godself is best shown in relationship.

God calls each of us—seeker and believer—to step out of our safe zones and to explore discovering God in the real world.

That means that, sooner or later we will have to step outside our bubble. Maybe you won’t encounter the stares of young men wearing t-shirts the way I did. But you might encounter a thank you from a person you’ve cared for, or driven to the hospital, or brought a meal to. You might have helped fill a God-shaped hole when you listened to a person when they were sad, or comforted them when they were alone. Maybe you have communicated the Gospel as you have been present to a person in trouble or as you have taught a child.

And you’ll know you’re out of the bubble when you have to name who it is you are serving and why. Maybe you’ll be asked why you did that small act of kindness. Maybe someone will tell you of a need and you will offer to pray for them. Or maybe in some small way you’ll be asked about God who animates and fills that space in your heart. Maybe you will have a talk about how you can have both strong faith and big questions at the very same time. Whatever happens, we all have the power to be a messenger of good news in the middle of God’s hurting world. Whether they ask you why you’re doing it or not, it will help you be and live the Gospel when you know the story of how God is filling your God-shaped space.

Sooner or later, you’ll have to leave the bubble.


6 Easter A, May 29, 2011 - Acts 17:22-31

Two Children, Both Boys

(in keeping with the Visitation)

Saint John was a precocious child; a womb-
borne prophet, quickening as his Lord came by
—Mary bearing Jesus standing nigh—
Leaping up with hardly any room.

Two very different boys: the first was born
just after summer’s sun stopped in the north;
the other, as the sun stood south, borne forth
into a winter world cold and forlorn.

The barn is cold; the animals stand round,
and shepherds kneel, adoring what they’ve found.
There; listen! You can hear it if you try—
the newborn John, his first breath in a cry
—a prophet's cry of joy, and not of fear—
salutes his Lord from half-way round the year.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 05.30.11

Primus inter pares — “first among equals” — is, as a term, an oxymoron that appears to convey meaning but which is a logical contradiction. In reality it is an absurdity and an impossibility. Instead of “first among equals” the Archbishop of Canterbury — or, let’s face it, any bishop or cleric — should be “last of all and servant of all.”

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t to Mimi for the inspiration!

Memorial Day 2011

Perhaps it began as "Decoration Day." Probably it was a memorial for the dead, like Samhain or Dios de los muertos. Now it is to remember that "freedom is not free," even though it was not won by war for the Founding Fathers but simply one's birthright. The militarism of society is a problem for another day. Today, as we honor soldiers we should also honor the dead, whoever they are. Because of them, we lead the lives we lead.

The characters are two African American Marines in the bush in Vietnam.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said "Ever'one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin' Mammy, and since I be this stupid country nigger with the big faith, I don't have no troubles. Well, it just don't work that way." He paused. Jermain said nothing. "I see my friend Williams get ate by a tiger," Cortell continued. "I see my friend Broyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What do you think I do all night, sit around thankin' Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? You know what I do? I lose heart." Cortell's throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. "I lose my heart." He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. "I sit there and I don't seen any hope. Hope gone." Cortell was seeing his dead friends. "Then, the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin'. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway." He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. "It ain't no easy thing."

--Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 2010).


A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.--Walt Whitman


PEACE

O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
Arise, O Christ, and help us,
And deliver us for thy Name's sake.

AMEN.

O Christ, when thou didst open thine eyes on this fair earth, the angels greeted thee as the Prince of Peace and besought us to be of good will one toward another; but thy triumph is delayed and we are weary of war.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the very earth groans with pain as the feet of armed men march across her mangled form.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life, not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the people who are called by thy Name are separated from each other in thought and life; still our tumults, take away our vain imaginings, and grant to thy people at this time the courage to pro-claim the gospel of forgiveness, and faithfully to maintain the ministry of reconciliation.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, come to us in our sore need and save us; 0 God, plead thine own cause and give us help, for vain is the help of man.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ of God, by thy birth in the stable, save us and help us;
By thy toil at the carpenter's bench, save us and help us;
By thy sinless life, save us and help us;
By thy cross and passion, save us and help us.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

Then all shall join in the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Posthumous Rooftop Shout

The Guardian’s revelations of the late Colin Slee's observations about leaks and tantrums and tears in the English Episcopal Appointment Process is almost old news at this point, but I do have some thoughts.

The reported behavior of the Primates reminds me of Basil Fawlty, whose leadership style was evident when he said, “You people swan in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot! Well I'm trying to run a hotel!!!” Or the unnamed staff person at an unnamed seminary who complained that it actually cost the institution over $10K per student over what they took in, and if only they could get rid of the students they'd have a perfectly solvent school.

This is the sort of Institutional Blindness we see far too often. The purported good of the many comes to outweigh the actual good of the few, and in the long run no one is either well served or well taught. But the Institution, ah! the blessed Institution, slouches on towards its Byzantine goal, quite the opposite direction from Bethlehem of Judea.

Let us remember a simple truth: Institutional Unity is a false God to whom quite enough sacrifices have been made to satisfy even the most jealous god. As it is an idol, it cannot even appreciate the offering, so much as to mumble a "thank you" or a "not enough."

When the idol in question is a church or communion, how much the worse. It might just be barely comprehensible in a church that completely identified its sectarian self with the sole body of Christ on earth -- if there is such a beast -- but for Anglicans?! How soon we forget that the motto of the Anglican Communion is blazoned round the compasrose as “ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς.” They really ought to have spelled it out in plain English: "The truth shall make you free."

In the one conversation I had with Rowan I told him, in spite of his fears that allowing Jeffrey John to go forward might mean a walk-out of half the bishops, that the Truth might liberate the real power of the Spirit. As I put it at the time, “What would happen; what wave of opportunities for new ministry might break forth across the Anglican Communion if we were to take off our masks — all of us? What would happen if we were to be set free by truth for Truth? I am reminded of the eponymous line from CS Lewis’s great novel, ‘How can we truly know and love each other face-to-face, until we have faces?’”

Since then, however I'd come to imagine Rowan, painfully shackled as he is by his own idolatrous bondage to the false god of Institutional Unity, saying to TEC and C of E leadership, "I have betrayed my conscience and my friends for the sake of unity, and I don't see why you bloody well shouldn't do the same!"

Thus, the Slee memo comes not as a surprise, but a confirmation.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Breaking Down the Rule of Law

What is one to say about the current instances of lawlessness at all levels of society? Consider just the following:

Young punks feel they can get away with vandalizing a donut shop just so they can help themselves to donuts and drinks. The police have no suspects, and doubtless their ineffectiveness emboldens the punks.

A divided (3-2) New Jersey Supreme Court decides that the precise amount which the legislature should appropriate to "poorer" school districts is five hundred million dollars -- never mind what the legislature thinks, or where the money is to come from; the court orders the legislature to authorize the spending of the money. (Should the legislature take the $500 million from the budget it allocates to the courts?)

The United States Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, orders that California immediately release 37,000 of its incarcerated inmates, in order (ostensibly) that California might be able to provide better medical care to its inmates who remain incarcerated. (In other words, California should release only the most able-bodied of its inmates -- the ones who are presently able to cause the most harm, but who do not, accordingly, require any ongoing medical treatment. Either that, or it should release the sickliest inmates for other California communities to care for, allowing it to spread its limited health care options among the ones who are not as sick. That is a Hobson's choice.)

President Obama, after pushing strongly to enact universal health care reform, has allowed his administration to issue 1,372 exemptions from the legislation's requirements to provide universal coverage to their employees, thereby encouraging widespread cynicism about the sincerity of the so-called "reform."

Despite his contentions in 2007 (as Senator Obama) that the presidential power did not include the ability to order a unilateral attack on a country posing no current threat to the United States, Barack Obama (as President) did precisely that in regard to Libya in 2011.

President Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, apparently feels free to authorize criminal indictments against the very CIA employees whose interrogation techniques violated (so he now claims) the law. Those techniques, authorized by the same DOJ which he now heads, indisputably contributed to the recent location and killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Is it any wonder, then, given the widespread disrespect for the rule of law in our society, that the same kinds of lawlessness are seen in the church? And not just in any church, but in the Episcopal Church (USA) -- again, at all levels?

At the highest level, there is an entire page of links on this blog to posts which catalogue the multiple canonical offenses committed by the Presiding Bishop and those around her. The canonical offenses committed by General Convention and by the House of Bishops are catalogued there, as well.

But there is lawlessness at the diocesan level, too, as when the Bishop of Massachusetts conducted a wedding ceremony in violation of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer.

Or as in the case of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, who, after his reinstatement following the dismissal of "conduct unbecoming" charges on narrow statute of limitations grounds, has continued his long-standing feud with the diocesan Standing Committee, has ignored their requests, and insists on remaining Bishop even though all meaningful communication between him and his Diocese has broken down.

The lawlessness extends, alas, down to the parish level, where many priests openly welcome "all persons" to the rail at Holy Communion, baptized or not, and brag about their violation of Canon I.17.7 -- now with the backing of the national Church.

According to most political philosophers, religion (from the Latin re-ligio, meaning "bind again") has been the most frequent source of the formation of communities with shared values.

Thus the question becomes: if the church herself cannot observe the rule of law, who -- or what -- will set the standard for the community which enables the church to function? And how long can any institution last without the rule of law?

Thought for 05.26.11

There is a huge difference between a hermeneutic of suspicion and a veil of suspicion. The former brings clarity, the latter confusion. The former exposes a hidden reality, the latter cloaks it further. One seeks honestly better to understand, perhaps to exculpate, the latter further to project, and further implicate.

This marks, in part, the difference between investigative and yellow journalism.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Slee memo and the Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury

Yesterday, Andrew Brown wrote a report in Guardian describing a memo from the late Dean of Southwark Cathedral, the Very Rev Colin Slee, in which Slee describes the machinations of the House of Bishops in the Church of England over the question of whether a gay man can be elevated to the Episcopate.

It is not a pretty picture. We see the Archbishop of Canterbury, a man who can be given to great kindness, as well as the Archbishop of York, brow-beating, intimidating and threatening other members of the nominating committee who disagreed with him. We see Williams' throw a friend, the Very Rev. Jeffrey John, under the bus--not once but multiple times. (Even though Williams' claims to have "no problem" with celibate gay men being bishops.) We hear how England's Equality Law is manipulated and parsed for the state church of England. We see how Episcopal appointments happen in back rooms and in secret. (Which makes me appreciate our sometimes messy electoral system with the checks and balance of Standing Committees and/or General Convention.)

It appears that Williams and Sentamu will apply the same technique to the ordination of women to the Episcopate. They plan to ignore the General Synod and continue Flying Bishops after female bishops are regularized, ensuring at once the continuance of division and the demeaning of women clergy.

Let's assume for just a moment that the motivation for this behavior is a passion to hold the church together. Let's assume that this is done to allow those who don't agree with the ordination of gays or the blessing of same sex unions (or the ordination of women) room to stay in Communion. The way to do that is not to give into bullying, neither is it to bully those with whom you disagree.

Over the last decade, we have seen Williams' approach to this whole crisis. We have seen that it has made everything worse by rewarding bad behavior and consistently promoting a legalistic solution to a pastoral problem.

Every time he has given in to the folks most angry at "these issues" they have not only demanded more, they have participated less. At the end of the memo, Slee wrote the Archbishop about the Jeffrey John fiasco in 2003: "I still believe that had you stood your ground at the time, all that has followed would have been a short-lived blip instead of a deeper and deeper morass."

He has ignored the power dynamics--and the reality that the division in this country was funded by outside right-wing political groups--as so much "conspiracy theory" and still has given in to them. He has rarely refused a chance to insult or ignore the Episcopal Church.

I used to think that those who sowed division counted on Williams' good intentions to be used against him. I used to think that he "understood" the obscure levers of power in Lambeth and was really working for a good outcome, but in secret. But no more. What may have started as a failure of nerve has now become the ground he chooses to make his stand.

This memo demonstrates that the task of preserving the institution is not the same thing as preserving unity. He is choosing institutional stability over the hard work of Communion every time; and, sadly, it only makes the problem worse.

I don't understand how it is that a smart guy like Rowan apparently can't grasp that Communion is neither the same as conformity nor dependent upon agreement. Christ's promise that we all will be one has in fact been accomplished--on the Cross, in the resurrection and in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our communion is built on common role the baptized share as disciples of Jesus Christ. The fact that we follow Christ and carry out His mission even when we disagree, that we share in His body and blood even as we differ, is the real sign of our unity.

(Lesley's blog talks about this, too.)

Today I found this reflection by Lowell Grisham, on the feast of Augustine of Canterbury (which is today), which describes well--and in thoroughly Biblical terms--what it really means to be in Communion and how the earliest Church handled clashes over apparently life-or-death theological and pastoral issues.

On the day we hear about the ugliness inside Lambeth, this comes as a useful corrective:

Paul wrote to a mixed community of Christians who came from different backgrounds and who had strongly held opinions. The major conflict in Paul's churches was between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Jewish Christians observed the sabbath and the kosher laws of their tradition and of the Hebrew scriptures. For Gentile Christians, every day was a workday, the sabbath was no better than another day.

Gentile Christians did not observe kosher dietary laws. However, for some Gentile Christians, their conscience was bothered by meat sold in the public market, for that was meat that had been dedicated to Apollo or one of the gods that they formerly followed. For others, there was no bother because they now believed there was no such thing as idols.

"Let all be fully convinced in their own minds," said Paul. Diversity in many of these beliefs is fine. Everyone does not have to come to the same conclusion about everything. Honor your conscience, and live together in unity with charity toward one another, Paul advised. "Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.... So then, each of us will be accountable to God."

Pope Gregory gave Augustine great flexibility when dealing with the various traditions that he encountered when he arrived as "Archbishop of the English Nation." Augustine was not charged with enforcing Roman customs on the indigenous Celtic churches, but rather he was to honor whatever he could "profitably learn from the various Churches." People are more important than things.

Later in Romans we will see Paul urge those whom he calls the "strong" to be especially flexible with those whom he calls the "weak." He urges those who have a more mature freedom in the faith -- those whose consciences are not bothered by kosher laws or scruples about meat from the public markets -- to be charitable toward their more scrupulous brothers and sisters. When you are eating at home among your own family, feel free to eat what you wish. But when you are eating among the scrupulous, the "weak," refrain from eating what might trouble their conscience, even though your conscience is free.

Yet elsewhere, Paul does draw some strong lines. Especially over circumcision. Jewish Christians, following their tradition and the requirements of the Hebrew scripture, were certain that circumcision was a required sign and practice for those who would be acknowledged as God's people. They pointed to the testimony of scripture and tradition, and demanded that uncircumcised Gentiles be circumcised in order to be incorporated into the community of the church. Paul was vehement in his opposition. "No!," he said. Life in Christ was liberation from such legalistic traditions. Jewish Christians could not require circumcision from their Gentile brothers and sisters, regardless of their convictions, their traditions, scriptures or beliefs. For Gentiles to do so would nullify the glorious freedom that Christ has gained for us through the cross.

Paul did not say that Jewish Christians should refrain from circumcising in their own families, nor did he say that they should remove the signs of circumcision, as some Hellenized Jews did. But he also did not say that the Gentiles should be "flexible" with regard to the scruples of their Jewish Christian neighbors a be circumcised themselves for the sake of the scruples and conscience of their brothers and sisters.

I think these discussions and controversies are helpful guides for the present church and our own Archbishop of Canterbury. We are in a discussion in the Anglican Communion over the scruples of those whose consciences are troubled by the grace and fruitfulness that others have found in the faithful committed relationships of their gay brothers and sisters. "Let all be fully convinced in their own minds," seems like good counsel from St. Paul.

Those of us who recognize God's blessing in gay relationships may believe that heterosexual marriage is "no better than" the lifelong commitments of those of homosexual orientation, while other parts of the church may not. Let those who observe their commitments, observe them in honor of the Lord. Let those who are strong, whose scruples are not troubled by heterosexism, be charitable toward those whose consciences are troubled by the freedom Christ gives us. We need not require an acknowledgment that violates their consciences.

But, there is a line, as Paul insisted in the controversy about circumcision. Those who have scruples about their tradition of heterosexual-only relationships may not require "circumcision" of their gay brothers and sisters. They must not force their gay brothers and sisters to be circumcised "like them" in order to be welcome in the church's fellowship. Heterosexually oriented Christians cannot demand of homosexually oriented Christians to be either celibate or married unnaturally to someone of the opposite sex in order to be part of the Christian fellowship. To do so would nullify the glorious freedom that Christ has gained for us through the cross. To do so would ignore the fruits of the Spirit that we recognize in the committed, loving relationships of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things." (Galatians 5:22-23)

Apocalypse Not Just Now

Part of the unacknowledged problem of Harold Camping is right here in this CBS sub-headline:

May 20, 2011
How Harold Camping marketed the Rapture
Self-made prophet with $117 million radio network spreads worldwide message that the Apocalypse will begin at 6 p.m. ET Saturday

Harold Camping, as CBS goes on to point out, is "a civil engineer and self-taught Biblical sage." Of course, "self-taught" and "sage" are, or at least should be, a contradiction in terms, like "Jumbo Shrimp" or "Military Intelligence."

No, seriously.

There are no "self-taught" sages, not in the sense of learning from their own store of knowledge, and there is no wisdom that is not gathered from and approved by, the larger community, and by community I don't mean self-selected groups of persons, i.e., "followers." We know what's happened to the followers of Harold Camping, the ones who approved of his sagacity:

"I don't understand why nothing is happening. It's not a mistake. I did what I had to do. I did what the Bible said."

Poor Mr. Fitzpatrick has become the poster child for Camping's disappointed followers:

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick of Staten Island said he was surprised when the six o’clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

“I can’t tell you what I feel right now,” he said, surrounded by tourists. “Obviously, I haven’t understood it correctly because we’re still here.”

That community almost represents Godel's theorem of incompleteness, as their method of reasoning has produced questions their method cannot provide answers for; that is, "What is the world doesn't come to an end?" They refused to accept that as a possibility. Some of them still do:

Family Radio's special projects coordinator, Michael Garcia said he believed the delay was God's way of separating true believers from those willing to doubt what he said were clear biblical warnings.

"Maybe this had to happen for there to be a separation between those who have faith and those who don't," he said. "It's highly possible that our Lord is delaying his coming."

I'm reminded of the story in the gospel of John when Jesus addresses God and God answers from heaven, but some people hear the voice of God, and some only hear distant thunder. And I'm also reminded that "apocalypse" doesn't mean "catastrophic ending of the world in pain and turmoil," but more simply "revelation." It is the promised revelation that every eye will see, and every ear hear, that is usually anticipated in any eschaton. Surely there was an apocalypse this weekend; and just as surely, some only heard distant thunder. The difference is in my understanding, and the community that provides an explanation to me.

When "I" haven't understood "it" correctly, it is the community that supplies the answer and even surrounds one with the comfort. You can understand incorrectly and make a mistake in your life choice; you can understand incorrectly and make a mistake in your marriage choice; you can understand incorrectly in so many ways, and there are no bootstraps by which you can lift yourself out of that problem you have created. There is only the community. There is only the rest of the world.

"World," of course, has taken on a new connotation in modern times. "World" now means the entire community of humanity dwelling on all the continents; but we can no more imagine that community than we can literally imagine the 19 million people who live in New York City. We can't even imagine the crowd they would make could they assemble in one place; it's nothing more than a number, one we know is large because we compare to other, equally abstract, numbers. We no more live in the "world" today than our ancestors did, than did the people of Jesus' time. We live in a place, and we imagine the world as some extension of what we know. The world is too big, too vast, to incomprehensible at once, to be a community for anyone. But community is not limited to just the people we know, either.

"Community" cannot be a wholly self-selected group, although that principle has become one of the bedrocks of Protestantism. The revelation is never known to an individual; the revelation is known to all, and the community needs skeptics just as it needs doubting Thomases, just as it needs Peters to balance Pauls. Mr. Camping is "bewildered" and "mystified" now because he is a self-taught Biblical interpreter who draws inspiration from his own predilections, not from the discipline and decisions of a community. He is a community of one, and only those who think as he does have any importance for him. That sounds to some like the very definition of a religious community but it isn't; it isn't at all.

Community is more than the people you know, but less than the world. It is the people you can reasonably be in relationship to, but that doesn't have to be just the people you can possibly know. Christians speak of "the Church" and can mean anything from the body judicatory that ordains or authorizes priests, pastors, sacraments, and doctrines, to the "clouds of witness" which are believers in time and across both time and space. What the community cannot be is a group cut off from the presence and the knowledge of that larger group. It cannot be a self-selected body convinced of the rightness of its cause because it likes that cause. That's like building a tent with only one main pole. No matter how tall the pole, or how sturdy, it cannot hold up a tent large enough to include all the people who need to be inside it. And "need" is a crucial aspect of community; a community must not only be the people who want to be there, it must be the people who need to be there. Not necessarily for their sake, but for the sake of the community. The community needs people just as people need a community.

I was watching yet another filmed version of "Murder on the Orient Express" as I worked on this, and in this version Poirot, upon discovering the identities of the murderers, tells them that the judge and jury cannot appoint themselves. By the same token, neither can the religious leader. But that's precisely what Harold Camping did. And apparently he is figuring out there are consequences to being self-appointed:

Before May 21, many believers quit their jobs, left their families and gave their savings to Family Radio, which then sent out caravans and put up billboards announcing the end. Evans, the Family Radio board member, says now that the date has passed, all they can do is pick up and move on.

"I don't know what the future holds for Family Radio or for any of us," he says. "We just have to pray that God will be merciful."

Evans says he hopes the organization will repay people who gave their money to the cause. But at this point he can't guarantee it.

There is something bitterly ironic about hoping for God's mercy for yourself after expecting God's cosmic wrath being visited on everyone else. But then there is an appalling strangeness to the mercy of God. That's another consequence of a self-appointed community: you set yourself apart from everyone else and declare your group protected and privileged over all others, if only because it is "yours." Which is yet another warning against doing so. We do not know God in a vacuum, nor in a self-contained unit of our own making. We know God in the world. The sad followers of Harold Camping learned that lesson this weekend; at least, I hope and pray they did.

And the world is not laughing with them; it is laughing beside them.




P.S. Oh, and now it's October 21, 2011 for the "end." See you then.

With What Do You Test the Touchstone?

A major concern I continue to have in the whole Covenant process is that it seems the individual provinces are becoming (and we are no exception) closed in on their own reactions to the Covenant. There is a kind of silent auction going on, in which no one really knows what anyone is bidding until they open the envelope, if I can provide an image.

This leads me to wonder — I'm thinking out loud here as I so often do — if we don't need more time to engage in more dialogue with our current communion partners, a step in the process that seems to be missing from the start: we had individual feedback to the various drafts from provinces, now individual adoption/subscription/accession by the same. Why isn't there more talk about this across provincial boundaries, at least regionally? It seems odd to adopt a document that is supposed to be about wider consultation before taking action, before engaging in wider consultation before taking action, no?

Maybe what we need to say at General Convention is that TEC is still considering and "in process" about the Covenant, but that we want to consult more widely with our Communion partners, rather than simply adopting. This is in itself a "Covenant Principle" — as each province commits itself

to spend time with openness and patience in matters of theological debate and reflection, to listen, pray and study with one another in order to discern the will of God... (3.2.3)

and

to seek a shared mind with other Churches, through the Communion's councils, about matters of common concern... (3.2.4)

and

to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy, which by its intensity, substance or extent could threaten the unity of the Communion and the effectiveness or credibility of its mission. (3.2.5)

Shouldn't we be testing the Covenant by means the Covenant suggests?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Be Not Ashamed of Your Faith

Today's Gospel reading was from the famous (or, depending on how you interpret it, infamous) fourteenth chapter of John, verses 1 through 14:

Jesus’ Parting Words to His Disciples

14:1 “Do not let your hearts be distressed. You believe in God; believe also in me. 14:2 There are many dwelling places in my Father’s house. Otherwise, I would have told you, because I am going away to make ready a place for you. 14:3 And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too. 14:4 And you know the way where I am going.”

14:5 Thomas said, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 14:6 Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 14:7 If you have known me, you will know my Father too. And from now on you do know him and have seen him.”

14:8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be content.” 14:9 Jesus replied, “Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father! How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds. 14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, but if you do not believe me, believe because of the miraculous deeds themselves.14:12 I tell you the solemn truth, the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these, because I am going to the Father. 14:13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14:14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

Why is this passage famous (or infamous)? Consider this interchange between a reporter for Time magazine and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (USA):

Q Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?

A We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.

(And this was not an isolated instance. She elaborated on her answer later with an NPR interviewer -- and in doing so hastened the departure of certain parishes in Virginia from the Church.)

Do you see the mistake here? Simply put, Bishop Schori's answer separates the Father from the Son -- it ignores the Holy Trinity. Jesus and God act independently of each other; Jesus, far from being One with the triune God, is a mere "vehicle" with which to approach God's presence.

It is evident from the context of his words (re-read the whole passage!) that what Jesus was saying (to paraphrase it clumsily) was this: "The Father and I are one -- I am in Him, and He is in me. You cannot approach the Father without approaching me." (Paraphrases -- that is, departures from what the Greek is saying, in an attempt to explain it better to English speakers, are dangerous. That is why translations such as The Contemporary English Version, God's Word and The Good News Translation must always be checked against a literal translation, such as the Net Bible I have quoted here. For example, the former three all translate the Greek phrase erkhetai pros in this passage as "goes to" rather than "comes to": "No one goes to the Father except through me." That unfortunate choice adds to the sense of separation from the speaker, who is Jesus, while "comes" strengthens the context that the speaker and the destination -- God -- are one and the same.)

Those, like the Presiding Bishop, who treat his words as saying: "Unless you believe in me, you cannot get into heaven" are perpetuating the false dichotomy of exclusivity versus inclusivity that has so broken up the Episcopal Church -- and the Anglican Communion, for that matter. Jesus is neither exclusive nor inclusive. Those are the wrong words to describe what he offers us, because they imply that he does all the choosing. (Those who believe in predestination, I realize, will not have any problem with that implication.) The choice is the believer's, to believe or not to believe, to go on sinning, or to strive to sin no more -- and Jesus is simply stating a truism: if you believe in the Father, you believe in him, and vice versa, because he and the Father are one.

Jesus emphasizes again and again in the passage quoted above that he and the Father are one and indivisible. As human beings alive on earth, the only form in which Jesus' disciples could encounter God was in the person of Jesus himself -- that is why he throws Philip's question back at him: "Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip?". To know "me" -- i.e., Jesus -- was to know the Father, whom Philip foolishly asked Jesus to show to them.

All of us, however, who were born after Jesus died on the cross, can no longer encounter God in the flesh here on earth -- at least not until the Second Coming (as of this writing, alas, not yet under way). Our encounters with God, or the risen Jesus, are spiritual ones. But make no mistake: they two, along with the Holy Spirit, are one and the same God. Jesus himself told us so.

To encounter God spiritually is to encounter Jesus, whether one recognizes the latter as such or not. If what Jesus told us was true (and we can be certain that it was), then there is no God without Jesus, and no Jesus without God. God without Jesus is an intellectual abstraction, a god without love, and of no practical consequence to humans, while Jesus without God is a pointless sacrifice of a good and holy man.

Have no concern, therefore, for the ultimate fate of those who claim to find their paths to God other than through Jesus -- it's not up to you. While men may separate Jesus from God in their own minds, rejecting the former while claiming to accept the latter, if it is truly God whom they encounter, then they are also encountering Jesus at one and the same time. Whether they are aware of that truth or not does not make it any less the truth. We who have been given the gospel message are thus doubly blessed, because we have been given also the key to understanding the true meaning of such encounters: since God and Jesus are one (with the Holy Spirit), we reach the one through the other, and at the same time. For that same reason, we do not have to worry about being called "exclusive" or "inclusive" -- one who truly believes in God the Holy Trinity cannot be described by those words, because other people's choices are not up to the believer.

It is ironic, therefore, in light of Jesus' clear message to his disciples, that today's lectionary also included this passage from 1 Peter 2:4-10:

A Living Stone, a Chosen People

2:4 So as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and priceless in God’s sight, 2:5 you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 2:6 For it says in scripture, “Look, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and priceless cornerstone, and whoever believes in him will never be put to shame.” 2:7 So you who believe see his value, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, 2:8 and a stumbling-stone and a rock to trip over.They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 2:10 You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy.

As Peter carefully explains (and who should know this better than Peter?), Jesus is at one and the same time "a chosen and priceless cornerstone", but also "a stumbling-stone and a rock to trip over." Those who stumble on the rock of Jesus are precisely those who would claim that making belief in Him the criterion for admission to heaven is "to put God in an awfully small box." So to speak, I say, is to separate that which cannot be separated, and also to commit the Arian heresy of thinking that Jesus is "smaller" than God.

But it is not just the Presiding Bishop who stumbles over the correct interpretation of Jesus' words in John 14:6. Those who came to the defense of her reading included many of her ilk (including Episcopal Cafe and the usual blogs), as well as even some atheists. And in the attractiveness of such a misreading to so many lies the truth of Peter's description of Jesus as a "stumbling-stone."

Only those, you see, who feel defensive about their faith are the ones who can be made susceptible to guilty feelings about its so-called "exclusivity." The apologia run in this vein: "Well, I know I have my faith in Jesus to get me into heaven, but that doesn't mean you have to think as I do to get there is well. God is very big, and wonderful are His ways -- I am sure He can find other paths for you to get to Him, as well. Now, isn't that inclusive of me?" And if you are defensive about Jesus, then he is a stumbling-stone for you.

The answer, therefore, which I wish our Presiding Bishop had given to Time's interviewer would run something like this:

“‘Belief in Jesus’ is the same as belief in God. So your question really asks if belief in God is the only way to get to heaven. Now, maybe you could think that there is a heaven without God, but that's not very likely. If you don't believe in God, you won't believe in heaven. So the answer to your question is ‘Yes’ -- belief in God is the only way ‘to get to heaven,’ as you put it.”

That is being neither defensive, nor offensive -- it is simply stating a truism. And that the reporter's question could have been answered so simply shows why the question itself is a loaded one: it tries to put Christians on the defensive. "Be not ashamed of your faith."

Christ is the cornerstone -- he does not have to be a stumbling-block, unless you let it happen. Again, "be not ashamed of your faith."

Heaven comes to earth

It is the silly season in the religion world again.

I am assuming since you are reading this then you were not taken up at the appointed hour. By now, you have no doubt heard about the Rev. Harold Camping, the radio preacher who said that the world was going to end starting at 6 pm Pacific Time on May 21, 2011. Everyone has been having fun with this…including me. Late night comics, satirists and columnists, reporters and commentators and clergy have been making all kinds of jokes out of this.

It’s easy to see why. But I have to admit that as much fun as I have been having making fun of those who have been buying billboards and radio time to tell us about the end of the world, I had mixed feelings about all this. The media makes it look like every Christian believes like Camping…or at least every evangelical…when the truth is that Camping and his follower represent the tiniest sliver of Christian believers.

On the other end of the spectrum came an interview with physicist Stephen Hawking. He said that there is no heaven at all and that in his view those who believe in one are only in denial about death.

Somewhere between these two polls—one of total denial and one that envisions a dramatic and violent end at the hands of an angry God—is perhaps where most of us live.

Every week, we say together that line in the creed “We believe that he will come again….” And then comes today’s lessons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is going to prepare to a place for us and that God’s house is made up of many rooms. And in Acts we hear Stephen, the first Deacon of the Church and the first martyr, as the crowd is about stone him that he has a vision of Jesus coming from his throne in heaven to come get him. When he proclaims his vision out loud, it is the last straw for those who have seized him and they pick up stones and kill him.

Acts tells us that the Church was growing in leaps and bounds. Stephen got into trouble for doing "wonders and signs." He is hauled into court for telling people about Christ. You can read his testimony in Acts chapter 7. But before he launches on his re-telling of the history of God and Israel and the story of people’s response to God—a not too flattering picture--we learn but before he speaks, "his face was like the face of an angel."

But an angelic countenace did not save Stephen from trouble. In those days, when someone said something outrageous, they did not drag him before John Stewart and the the internet for ridicule. Nope, in those days when someone said something like “God requires us to change” they did not make jokes. They took him out and killed him in the most up close and personal way they could think of.

In Acts, Stephen’s message of salvation through Jesus Christ was intimately tied to the mercy he helped the Church give to widows and orphans--people who were tossed aside to fend for themselves with no family, no identity and no hope. His vision of Christ coming in glory was also a vision of God ready to forgive everyone, even those who were about to kill him.

There is another vision of heaven in today's lessons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is talking to his disciples, in particular Thomas and Philip, about where Jesus is going. Jesus moves the conversation from GPS coordinates to the way we make the journey...and what God has in mind for us when we make it. Jesus says something outrageous: that when we see Christ, we see God. If we want to know what God is like, see Jesus.

But wait! There's more! Jesus also says that we can do what Jesus does...and more! In other words, if we are following Jesus on the way to God, people can see Christ in us on their way to God. And where is he and we going? To the place God is preparing for us. A home inside of God's home. When Jesus says "in my father's house there are many rooms" he is saying there is room for all us. God looks at humanity and has a vision...a vision where there is room enough for all of us in God's home.

So the lessons today give us two startling visions of God who comes to us: Jesus saw God making room for us. Stephen saw that God is ready to forgive. In both lessons we learn that God is present to us even when things are going wrong. This is the vision of God coming to us in today’s lessons. God is bringing heaven to earth.

One of the problems the radio preacher has is that he thinks that God is out there somewhere faraway and has to come down and rescue us and take us to that faraway heaven before he destroys everything. This misses that the whole point of Jesus’ coming to us was to bring God down to earth…that God is with us.

Retired Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, in responding to physicist Stephen Hawking, described heaven this way:

… in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, [in] the persons of Christians because they, too, [are] ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

In Christ, heaven comes to earth. God’s space and our space meet. And as Christians, as God’s people, we are the ones who show off God’s presence in the world. As people who are baptized into Christ’s body, we are ones who discover and communicate God’s transforming love.

This is a very different vision than either Pastor Camping or Professor Hawking. God is not out to destroy an irretrievable creation, as Camping says, and heaven is very real…it’s just different than what Hawking assumes Christians believe.

As we meet Christ in the sacramental life, as we yearn to know God more and more, as we look for Christ in the face of the people we meet, we develop a different kind of vision of heaven; vision that knows that God is with us in Christ, and see Christ at work in us and in the world we live in, a vision that changes us and makes a real difference in a world desperately in need of healing.

Instead of waiting to be snatched up to heaven in a second, most believers do great things and often unnoticed things that show us how heaven and earth intersect every day.

This week I heard the story of Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel . Their story shows off how God is at work redeeming creation. The story begins in 1994 when Oshea killed Johnson's only son during a scuffle during a party. Oshea went to prison for murder and toward the end of his sentence, he and his victims mother made peace.

The NPR story says:

Israel recently visited StoryCorps with Johnson, to discuss their relationship — and the forgiveness it is built upon. As Johnson recalls, their first face-to-face conversation took place at Stillwater Prison, when Israel agreed to her repeated requests to see him.

"I wanted to know if you were in the same mindset of what I remembered from court, where I wanted to go over and hurt you," Johnson tells Israel. "But you were not that 16-year-old. You were a grown man. I shared with you about my son."

"And he became human to me," Israel says.

At the end of [that first] meeting at the prison, Johnson was overcome by emotion.
"The initial thing to do was just try and hold you up as best I can," Israel says, "just hug you like I would my own mother."

Johnson says, "After you left the room, I began to say, 'I just hugged the man that murdered my son.'

"And I instantly knew that all that anger and the animosity, all the stuff I had in my heart for 12 years for you — I knew it was over, that I had totally forgiven you."

Here is a woman doing what Jesus did…and more. She forgives, yes, and then she took on her son’s killer as if he was her own, and then she founded From Death To Life: Two Mothers Coming Together for Healing, a support group for mothers who have lost their children to violence.

What did Mary Johnson see when she looked into Israel Oshea’s face? What changed when they hugged? Whatever changed…it is a vision of God making room in two people’s hearts. It is a vision of God who is present to us even at the darkest moments ready to receive us and ready to forgive.

If you think that Johnson’s forgiveness of her son’s killer is, well, crazy then let me ask you this: which kind of vision of God do you prefer? The empty vision of no-God, or the fiery vision of a vengeful God? Or can we see God's vision for us? Can we see like Mary Johnson? I think her holy, naïve, risky vision shows us that it is possible to see the face of angels anywhere. It is possible to know right now the place that God prepares for us. When she finally found the place of forgiveness it changed everything.

Over and over again, we see the faces of the holy. It often comes to us in strange unexpected ways. When people saw Stephen, they saw the face of an angel. When Jesus saw us, he saw that God makes room for each and every one of us. In Christ, heaven and earth have come together and when people see us—we baptized, forgiven, people of God--I believe that it is possible, in fact even likely, that they see the face of angels. And as Christian people it is possible for us to see God's vision of making room for everyone, of everyone having a place in God's home.

And this is how heaven comes to earth. This is how God transforms creation. One vision at a time.

The Fifth Sunday of Easter– Acts 7:55-60, John 14:1-14