Pentecost III, Proper 7, Year B
Job 38:1-11,16-18
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Mark 4:35-41
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The occurrence of today’s gospel strikes me as providential, and not just because of the torrential rain outside, but because we have it just as the General Convention of the Episcopal Church concludes.
Christian disciples today are a lot like Christian disciples in every age and place. Indeed, repeatedly in his gospel, S. Mark describes the disciples’ bumbling failure to understand who Jesus is and what’s happening. At the beginning of chapter four, Jesus sits in a boat and preaches to the crowd on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The boat serves as a pulpit. The Latin word for boat or ship is ‘navis’ from which we get the word nave. The boat is the Church.
When evening comes, Jesus and his disciples put out to sea. In Mark’s gospel, the boat carries the disciples back and forth across the Sea of Galilee, where on one side Jesus ministers to Jews and on the other side to Gentiles. It’s somewhat comparable to the present day with Israel on one side of the Sea of Galilee and Jordan on the other. Jesus is calling all people to him, trying to unite all people in him, making peace out of our divisions.
As the boat carries Jesus and the disciples to share the gospel, to engage in mission, it encounters a storm. Waves and wind begin to fill the boat with water. Throughout the Old Testament, the sea represents forces hostile to God. At the beginning of Genesis, God begins his work of creation by calling forth light, order, and form from the dark, chaotic waters of the firmament. The Greek word for ‘storm’ is the same word used for ‘whirlwind’ in today’s reading from Job. A ‘whirlwind’ “carries overtones of demonic power.”1
Despite the storm, despite the presence of the demonic, Jesus sleeps. He trusts God. The disciples, however, are not calm; they’re terrified. They wake up Jesus, crying “Do you not care?” The disciples are frantic, undone. Jesus is in control. He stills the seas, and then he turns to the disciples, “Why are you cowards? Do you have no faith?”
In the storms of life, be they storms that toss the Church, the nation, our family, ourselves, the challenge is to trust Jesus. He alone puts things right. We have stress and anxiety about many things, and it comes from not trusting Jesus, from not having a strong enough relationship with him. We should never doubt that Jesus is with us, cares for us, loves us, even when we don’t understand it or perceive it.
That’s the perfect message for us after General Convention, which quite possibly disturbed everyone in the Episcopal Church – and may be a sign of its success. We squabbled quite publicly, airing our dirty laundry on CNN and to anyone who would listen to us. It made me uncomfortable and exasperated to watch it, but I’m grateful to be part of a transparent, if occasionally silly, Church.
I am not an expert or a pundit, but the best I can tell is we did two controversial things, the effects of which we don’t know. First, we elected a woman to be our Presiding Bishop, an act which will almost certainly provoke more turmoil in the Anglican Communion, most of which does not have female bishops or even female priests. In almost amusing understatement, the Archbishop of Canterbury said, “Her election will undoubtedly have an impact on the collegial life of the Anglican Primates; and it also brings into focus some continuing issues in several of our ecumenical dialogues.”
Second, we passed a resolution about sexuality declaring that those in authority should not consent “to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” The resolution passed despite both ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ voting against it, of course objecting for very different reasons.
One bishop called the resolution a ‘fudge,’ that is a refusal to give a full, direct answer. I thought, “Don’t we Anglicans have a glorious, nearly 500 year tradition of fudging? Isn’t that our m.o. with divisive issues? Isn’t that what the Prayer Book does? Isn’t that part of the attraction of Anglicanism?” Other Churches claim much greater clarity and certainty than we do. Historically we have allowed for much latitude.
Still, General Convention sufficiently distressed me that I sent off a letter to our bishop. I did so because I have sufficient trust and confidence in him and because I think that he listens to my concerns. I assured him of my prayers, respect, and loyalty.
My concern about General Convention now that it is over is not so much what was done and not done, but how we as Christians deal with each other in its wake. My prayer is that together we rise to the challenge of working with the Holy Spirit so that the Church’s conflict leads to reconciliation and healing, greater unity and greater faith.
In my letter I urged caution against asserting that the actions of General Convention are indicators of the Holy Spirit’s favor for a point of view. On highly controversial issues, it’s a very dangerous business to claim to know the mind of Christ and the will of the Holy Spirit and to insist that God is on your side.
One of America’s most profound, if unorthodox, theologians – Abraham Lincoln cautioned that we should not be so bold as to assert that God is on our side and that the best we can do is pray we are on God’s side. In his Second Inaugural Address, he said, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The Almighty has his own purposes.”
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe wrote What is the Point of Being a Christian, and last week as I bid your prayers for General Convention, I read a small portion of it.2 The book is now at our parish bookstall, and I urge you to read it, or you can just listen to me quote it every Sunday. Fr. Radcliffe tells the story of having dinner with a friend and his wife and children. His friend had been a Roman Catholic priest, but twenty years before he had left the priesthood. Fr. Radcliffe writes of his friend,
All during the meal, he attacked the Pope, he complained about the Vatican, Opus Dei and all the usual suspects. Then, when we were having coffee alone he lamented that he had been unable to pass on to his children his love of the Church. I wonder why! . . . What young people are going to find their home in a community that is so angry? Who will be attracted to a Church in which people devote so much energy to being aggressive about other members?3
Several years ago, I resolved to try to stop ever saying anything derogatory about other Christians. It seems so much fun, and it is so easy, to be witty and snide about any Christian Church – our absurdities and hypocrisies so ripe and abundant. One of the people who inspired me was a parishioner here, Gracia Brown. Dear Gracia went to the Lord about five years ago.
Years ago, after one sermon when I’d probably been dismissive or mocking or a smart-aleck about other Christians, possibly Baptists (Gracia was a Baptist), she came up to me, obviously upset, almost shaking her fist, and said, “I really like you.” And I have no doubt she did; she was a sweet woman. “But you make me so mad. We’re all Christians. We don’t have to talk about what’s wrong with one another.” I was shamed. Gracia’s right. I fall off the wagon more frequently than I’d care to admit, but I’m trying.
We need not only to observe a moratorium on speaking badly about others, but also to take up the Christian work of praying for them. I urge everyone to pray for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, for our healing and reconciliation, for the Holy Spirit to focus us on mission and ministry, on the good news of Jesus – his joy, love, mercy. As we pray for the Church, we may be tempted to cry to Jesus, “Wake up! Don’t you care what’s happening here?” But we need not fear for the future of the Church or the Anglican Communion.
The Church has endured far, far more dangerous storms than this. Every age faces challenges and conflicts, and we usually think ours are the worst. We need a broader perspective. In parts of Africa and Asia today, people are dying for their faith in Jesus. Our suffering and discomfort doesn’t compare to that. The controversies between S. Paul and S. Peter and the other apostles were more intense than ours. Ours is hardly a minor dust up compared to the controversies of the fourth, eleventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.
Fr. Radcliffe points out that ultimately we all want the same thing in the Church. We want a home, a place to belong, a place where we’re accepted and feel safe and secure. We call our parish a family because it’s a home of love and acceptance. Like families, we don’t choose our members. Like families, people in our parish family can be a bit kooky or difficult or cranky, a challenge to our charity and forgiveness, but of course it’s always the other guy – not me! Like a family, we’re all in this together.
The best thing we can do for the Church, for the Anglican Communion, for the Episcopal Church, for ourselves, for Jesus, is to throw ourselves into the mission and ministry of the parish. And that’s what’s happening here. In recent months, a host of newcomers have become part of our parish family, and others are checking us out; we have had our largest confirmation class in years; we have met with a slew of architects to commission a master plan to improve the parish’s properties; Sam Wood has become our pastoral assistant; we are in the final stages of initiating the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, the finest children’s formation program. There’s lots of good news here.
At our vestry meeting last Tuesday, I began the meeting with my report, and I mentioned the General Convention and made some of the points I’ve made this morning, and when I wrapped up, I saw mostly blank expressions on everyone’s face. We had an almost perfunctory discussion. It certainly wasn’t lively or inspired.
But things changed dramatically when we started to go around the table and vestry members one by one began to give reports about their ministry teams and their plans. The conversation was lively and inspired. Our vestry members were about the business of making a better, healthier home. Despite the storm, they knew where to be focused, where Christ was working. They were engaged, energetic, and excited, and they had lots of good news to share. It made me so proud to be the most boring person at the meeting.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
1 Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark, John Knox Press (1983), p 101.
2 Timothy Radcliffe, OP, What is the Point of Being a Christian?, Burns & Oates (2005), p. 212, the story about Cardinal Consalvi.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
