Thank God for Bishop Christopher

H/T to Episcopal Cafe.

Shepard hate crimes bill signed today

Here is the sermon by the Rev. Anne Kitch at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, (H/T to Louie Crew's Anglican Pages):

St. Mark's Church
October 16, 1998 Casper, Wyoming
John 14:1-6
The Rev. Anne Kitch

Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says. How can we not let our hearts be troubled? How can we not be immersed in despair? How can we not cry out against this? This is not the way it is supposed to be. A son has died. A brother has been lost. A child has been broken, torn, abandoned. We become lost in a turbulent stream of emotions. Grief. Anger. Guilt. Fear. Shame. Outrage. Bewilderment. Loss. Our hearts are deeply troubled. They cry out, No. No. No. Not Matthew. Not now. No this way.

We come here today to mourn Matt. We come here today to offer our broken hearts. We come here today in the name of love. Because ultimately it is love that binds us to Matt: the love of a family. Matt's family is like any family, sharing life, family meals, arguments, games, Christmas trees. We come here today, in the name of family love. We gather in this church, in the name of God's love. Because in the midst of this horror, in the midst of this hateful crime, Christ's love abounds.

Make do doubt about it. Matthew is loved: by his parents, by his brother, by his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, family all gathered here -- by God. It is that love, which has radiated out of the midst of this tragedy. Love which empowers his parents to speak compassion, rather than condemnation. Love which inspires his friends to acts of prayer and witness. Love which is more powerful than any voice of hate. That is God's love.

We are able to love one another, because God first loved us, created us out of love, lovingly breathed life into us so that we might be part if this good creation. We are able to love one another because God showed us how, sending a Son into the world to live with us, love with us, die for us. Love one another, just as I have loved you, said Jesus as he prepared to die. And Jesus died, and Jesus rose again overcoming death and fulfilling a promise, offering eternal life to all. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ abundant life is promised for Matt.

Matt: a young man who met the world with eager expectation, who offered trust and friendship easily, lived honestly. Matt trusted in the goodness of God's world, reveled in God's creation, allowed people into his heart. When you met Matt, you met Matt. For a small person, he had great presence: one of the things that made him shine on the stage. Matt was not always a winner according to some of the world's standards. He struggled in many ways: to survive as an infant, to fit into a world that is not always kind to gentle spirits. But Matt was a light to the world according to a different set of standards. What was important to Matt, was to care: to help, to nurture, to bring joy to others in his quiet, gentle way. I think Matt would be somewhat bewildered by all this attention to his account.

Dennis and Judy have said that Matt believed if he had made one person's life better in this world, then he had succeeded. I think judging from the world's response over the past few days, Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.

And I believe Matt has shown us the way out of the abyss into which his murder has plunged us. Matt has shown us the way from violence, hate, despair. We may doubt that now. Like the disciple Thomas doubted when Jesus spoke the words we heard today from John's gospel. Jesus was saying farewell to his friends. He was preparing them for his death. So he gathered them together around a family meal and he spoke: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in me." And he promised that they would be able to follow him to eternal life in God';s loving house, that they would be able to sit around God's kitchen table. But Thomas cried out in his fear and despair, "How? How can we know the way?"

Today we may cry out, How? How can we know the way out of the abyss? How can we love? How can we live? And the answer is there. "I am the way, the truth, the light." Jesus has gone before us. Jesus, a beloved son whose body was broken, torn, abandoned, hung in bars of wood by his accusers. Jesus who stood in the face of hate and offered the door to eternal life. This Jesus is here for Matt, is here for each of us. This Jesus promises to prepare a place for each of us in God's heavenly kingdom. All we are asked to do is believe. Believe in God. Believe in Christ. Believe in a love that conquers all -- even death.

Matt believed. Matt believed enough to become baptized in this church as a teenager. Matt believed enough to bring his family with him to church. Matt believed enough to see the overwhelming goodness in God's creation and in each person he met. Matt believed. Matt lived. Matt loved. And we can too, because God loves us and nothing can separate us from that love. That is God's promise. This is what the apostle Paul wanted so fervently for us to understand. That we could count on this promise to change our lives. As Paul says, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So I invite you to come, offer your broken hearts here. Lay down the burdens that you have been carrying for Matt's sake. Allow yourself to fall into the loving arms of God, who will hold you, keep you, comfort you while you begin to mourn Matthew as he deserves -- as you deserve.

And I invite you here to come to this family table. Share in the life-giving food of Christ's body and blood. Share in the promise that Matt has already received. Morning has broken for Matt. Morning in the place where there is no pain or grief. The bright morning of everlasting life.

Bishop Marshall on the "most dangerous woman in America"

A monument to Mother Jones stands at the corner of Route 209 and First Street in Coaldale, Schuylkill County. Politicians dubbed her the “most dangerous woman in America” – when she was 83. In the coal regions she is remembered somewhat differently.

The Coaldale monument (one of those blue highway markers) recalls Mother Jones leading a march of 2,000 wives and mothers from McAdoo to Coaldale in support of striking miners. This unsuccessful strike of 1900 led to the great strike in 1902.

Mother Jones worked for better conditions for miners and their families for 50 years. President Theodore Roosevelt had reasons not to care for her: she led a march of children from Philadelphia to his Oyster Bay home protesting child labor. Their placards – “We want to go to school, not to the mines” – suitably embarrassed the president, but he would not meet with the marchers.

They went back to their miserable existence leading mules, operating doors, and sorting coal in the breakers. Mother Jones kept on working for children. Her subsequent children’s marches prompted the U. S. Senate to investigate child labor.

Up and down the Appalachians, Mary Harris Jones spoke for, was jailed for, and worked for miners seeking improvements in their working conditions that you and I would consider minimal at best.

Sometimes, but not often, it was a matter of educating the owners. When she met with John D. Rockefeller after the 1914 Ludlow Massacre she convinced him actually to visit the mines he owned in Colorado. When he did, he was appalled and made changes immediately.

It took until 2002 for Mother Jones to get her blue marker in Coaldale, just a hundred years after she got the title, “most dangerous woman in America.” Consider taking a drive on 209 to the Mother Jones marker this fall. Besides taking in the beauties of that road, there might be something to be gained from pondering the miners’ struggle. Stop in the coal museum on the way, and Jim Thorpe for contrast.

In the last thirty years the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has widened enormously. While the rich are temporarily a little less wealthy, poverty continues as strong as ever, consuming the lives a children as surely as did the dark past.

I was one of the religious leaders who met with our then-new governor in Philadelphia upon his election. He promised that education was his priority and that our schools were going to change. Those promises have not been kept for the most part, and Pennsylvania still hovers very near the bottom in per-student state spending. Good schools are still for the rich in Pennsylvania, and will remain so as long as property taxes fund education.

In their injustice to children, these forgotten promises bring us right back to Mother Jones. Potential new employers look for more than tax breaks: they look for a region with an educated work force. The future of tomorrow’s workers in this Commonwealth depends on our leaders keeping the promises they make to children. Would Mother Jones be marching for families today? I think so.

Those whose families have escaped low-wage jobs and whose children are headed for college often quickly develop amnesia. They forget that many of their ancestors worked for next to nothing, and struggled to get along in a culture that was hostile to them because they spoke another language or were of a strange ethnicity. A few individuals made their own way out, but by and large the masses needed a Moses or a Mother Jones.

The same secularism that forgot that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a preacher, forgets that Mother Jones was driven from Chicago to the mines in part by the encouragement of her brother, a priest. Although it is slightly anachronistic to put it this way, she stands at the head of the great Catholic Workers’ movement in this country. Nonethless Dorothy Day considered herself Mother Jones’ disciple.

For Mother Jones, putting faith into action meant enduring slander, jail, and 50 years of hard work. This month of September, during which we celebrate Labor Day, is a time to ask what our generation will do to increase equality, compassion, and education in present day America.

--Written by The Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall, Bishop of the Diocese of Bethlehem.

H/T to DioBeth newSpin and Episcopal Cafe.