At Convention: Fear and Joy

Last night, I attended an open hearing on the proposed resolutions on marriage that will come before our Convention this week. The dissenting voices (or those willing to speak) were fewer than I expected. I couldn’t help but notice that most of these voices were cloaked in some degree of fear: fear of what a too-sudden change would do to society, to our parishes in parts of the country where today’s Court decision is unpopular, to the reputation of The Episcopal Church, to our polity, to our theology, to our relationships with other Christian bodies. I can’t see fear, but I can feel it in a room. It is a low-lying shadow that creeps along the floor and slithers into your body through the feet, making the heart race and the mind freeze. Last night, fear, not passion or antagonism, wafted from the “what if’s.” 

Fear made a brief appearance today as we remembered the victims of the terror attacks in France, Tunisia, and Kuwait. Even in prayer, fear can hover in the corners. But, oh my, today it didn’t linger long. Today there was palpable joy in the air at Convention. There were more smiles in the hallways, more clever repartee in the House of Deputies, and more voices singing during worship than I noticed earlier this week. It was another 97-degree day in Salt Lake City, but the news of the Supreme Court decision on marriage started to spread like a whispering breeze through the crowds lined up for early morning coffee. It pushed through the heavy metal doors of the worship area and, gaining momentum, wrapped itself around the jazz ensemble playing the prelude. Those who stood in drooping solemnity during yesterday’s Eucharist started clapping along to an impromptu, “We are Marching in the Light of God.” Young adults, grey-haired bishops, and collared clergy started dancing down the aisles, all waving their arms like a bunch of Pentecostals on fire. The funny thing was, the show of emotion didn’t seem forced or staged. There was none of that, “Oh-look-at-us-we-are-Episcopalians-but-we-know-how-to-be-cool-too” air that often accompanies mandatory innovation in worship. It was all authentic today. In the hallways, I didn’t notice any of the self-congratulatory back-slapping that can accompany a political victory, either. It was just pure joy, an exhaling of breath held in too long.

I don’t know how Convention will vote when it is our turn to vote on marriage later this week, and I don’t intend to debate the issues tonight on Facebook or on my blog. I intend only to celebrate a joy that I see too little of in this world, even in the Church. Fear is too familiar. Tonight I pray to borrow just a portion of my LGBT brothers’ and sisters’ sudden sense of the freedom to soar, the freedom to love.

Writing What I See at General Convention

I am serving as a deputy to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention for the first time this week. I thought that this would be as good a time as any to “write what I see.” So instead of sermons, I offer here my off-the-cuff impressions of life at Convention. If you’re looking for substantive reporting on the issues, there are other much better blogs to read! If for some reason you want to know what’s going on in the heart and soul of one inexperienced deputy, then this blog is for you.

While other deputies and bishops have been working out the intricacies of legislation, I have been serving as the “TSA agent” of Convention, checking the credentials of deputies from the dioceses beginning with the letters “M” and “N.” (Including the “North” and “Northern” folks, there are quite a slew of them.) For the first and probably only time in my life, I wielded the heady power of the command, “You need to show me your picture ID.” But the best part of the experience was that, from my perch behind a high counter, hidden from view except for my eyeballs and the top of my head, I was quietly able to watch Convention participants in all of their infinite God-given variety as they arrived and began their journeys in Salt Lake City. It was like filming an episode of Candid Camera, as I watched the faces of tired travelers gape slack-jawed with exhaustion, squint in confusion, scowl in annoyance, and break open with joy upon seeing old friends. I will try to remember this warm feeling of our sacred humanity as my introverted heart is challenged for the next 10 days to interact at close quarters and for long hours with my fellow Episcopalians.

After two whole days of shuffling small squares of personal information in triplicate around dozens of manila folders, I was excited about beginning the first legislative session today. Finally, a chance to dive into the meaty issues confronting the Church. Unfortunately, after the first day in the House of Deputies, the image that comes to mind has nothing to do with a hearty stew. Instead, I am reminded of the writing process at its worst. You know, you have a sermon or a paper to write—a long and important one, one that will require a great deal from you as you dredge words up from your deepest and most hidden places. So what do you do? Do you sit down at the computer and start to put words on paper? No! You find some files on your computer that need arranging before you can get started. Then you decide that you absolutely have to clean out the junk drawer in your desk. Then you allow yourself to read what everyone has posted on Facebook. Then you wonder about what to cook for dinner and decide to look up and catalog some new dinner recipes online. And so on. And before you know it, a whole day (or more) has passed before you have written a word or even engaged your topic to any extent. Convention seems to be set up in such a way that we start by doing everything we can possibly imagine in order to stall getting down to what matters. 

“Let’s just clear this little detail up before we begin ….. Let’s just get some things in order…. Let’s just do all of the easy, “technical” stuff, and when our desk is completely clear, then we can get to work on the “adaptive” change.

“Will the desk ever be clear enough?” I began to fret at about 6 p.m. tonight. I pray that it will.

I know, I know. To follow proper parliamentary procedure, we probably have to do it this way. I just hope that we will have time to debate any of the things that matter while we still have some wind in our sails.

Waking Jesus in the Face of the Charleston Murders

PROPER 7, YEAR B

Job 38:1-11

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41



O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving­kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

          All week, I have been watching Jesus sleep in the boat. At first I didn’t want to wake him. I wanted to feel faithful enough to let him get some rest. But my heart was grumbling silently, “Don’t you care if we are perishing?” as I watched the waves churn around us.

Early in the week, I learned that it is “world refugee Sunday” today. Immediately, I could see in my mind’s eye all of the rickety, under-equipped boats  guiding furtively from the shores of oppression to the longed-for lands of freedom. I could hear the hungry cries of the children inside the boats. I could see the adults packed in together like sardines by unscrupulous traffickers out to make money from the affliction of others. I could see how the boats hung too low in the water. I knew that their engines were fueled by a volatile mixture of thin hope and sticky greed. I could see the clouds gathering on the horizon; the wind beginning to pick up; the waves getting taller; and the boats beginning to take on water. I could see the Holy One in the back of those boats, too, cloaked in the robes of Jesus—or maybe even the prophet Muhammad? Anyway, God had been invited by the faith of the refugees to make this difficult journey with them.  And God was sleeping. “Wake up!” I wanted to holler. “Don’t you care if the boats are sinking? Don’t you care if these little children drown?” But I didn’t say anything.

A few days later, I read part of Pope Francis’ encyclical about caring for creation. He doesn’t mince words about the precarious physical state in which our rampant consumerism is leaving our world. Immediately, I could picture the earth, floating in space like you see in the NASA photos, a big blue and white boat filled with 7 billion people, bobbing obliviously as the storm clouds gather and the celestial waters threaten to rain down chaos once again. And there at the right hand of God, asleep on cloud pillows, is Jesus. “Hey, how can he be sleeping at a time like this?” I wondered. “Hey, Jesus, don’t you care if we are all perishing by our own hand?” I mumbled in prayer. But not loudly enough to wake him.

And then, on Thursday, I heard about the shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston. Even in my shock and sadness, I remembered right away that the boat is a common metaphor for the church, that “nave” is from the Latin word for “ship.” And I could see my brother and sister disciples gathered in that historic Charleston nave with Jesus, listening to his teaching. They were floating along and trying to get to the other side, to the side of faithful life and practice. They could hear the distant rumbles of the thunder of racism, the storm of hatred that circled around them every day. How well they knew that the waters they navigated were dangerous ones, waters that could indeed turn deadly in an instant. But they invited Jesus into their boat with them, just like they invited the young white man with the backpack. “Come on in. Join us on our journey, friend,” they offered. Out in the middle of the sea, far from the safety of any shore, the tortured face of their white guest closed off like a bank of gray clouds. He took a gun out of his backpack and waved it in their faces. The storm was suddenly upon them in all of its destructive force. The winds howled and the historic boat sank precariously under the waves of blood. And there in the back pew, their beloved Jesus was asleep. Asleep amidst the din of gunshots. Seriously, God? This time, it was all too much for me.

“Wake up, Jesus!” I screamed over the winds. “Don’t you care that they are perishing? You’re supposed to calm the storm! You’re supposed to save the disciples in the boat! You’re supposed to bring peace! Wake up now!”

I would like to make this sermon all about God. In my indignation about all of the storms that plague us, I would like to kick the can back up to heaven. I would like to turn on God and shake God with my words until some sense drops down into my trembling hands. After unspeakable suffering has crushed Job’s body and soul, that’s what he does. He finally cries out to God to wake up and answer him. In today’s first reading, we finally hear God rouse himself and come to Job in a whirlwind. But God comes full of questions, rather than answers. God’s rush of unanswerable questions about the mysteries of heaven and earth is not meant to crush Job, however. It is meant to encourage him to believe that the Creator of the universe can construct new possibilities where none seem to exist, where we cannot even fathom them—even in the midst of horrible suffering.[1]

How difficult it is to have faith in new possibilities when everything seems impossible—when refugees drown and the earth sinks under its own filth and racism kills right and left! How difficult it is to hang onto Jesus’ quiet, steady faith in God—the faith that allows him to sleep peacefully in that storm-tossed boat! No matter how much I long for a divine miracle to fix our problems, I have had to admit to myself this week that it is much easier to fall down on my face in response to sky-shattering divine action than it is to imitate Jesus’ trusting faith in the hidden power of God’s love. By beating on God’s door for a miracle, I am taking the easy way out.

It was a quote from St. Augustine’s 4^th century sermon on this Gospel story that drew me up short. Augustine, reading scripture as allegory, writes that the Jesus who is sleeping in the boat is the Jesus in each of our hearts. “The people sailing in the boat are souls crossing the present age on a paltry piece of wood,” he writes. “…We are all of us temples of God, and every one of us is sailing a boat in his heart … So as the wind blows and the waves break, the boat is in peril, your heart is in peril, your heart is tossed about…[B]y giving way to someone else’s evil, you suffer shipwreck. And why is that? Because Christ is asleep in you. What does it mean that Christ is asleep in you? That you have forgotten Christ. So wake Christ up, remember Christ; let Christ stay awake in you, think about Him.”[2]

          Is Jesus asleep in the boat of my soul, I wondered? Like the disciples, I have invited him in, made him comfortable. I have asked him to travel with me. I have been especially glad of that invitation during times when I have entered dangerous seas, assuming easy protection. But have I so bored him by lack of attention that he has fallen asleep? Is my inner life so carefully protected that he has no choice other than slumber? When did I quit talking to him? When did I quit listening? I understood, suddenly, why I was afraid to wake Jesus in the boat this week. It wasn’t that I wanted to let him rest. It was because I knew that he would expect something out of me if I woke him. He would expect me to change. He would expect me to act.

The families of the nine murder victims in Charleston were certainly not afraid to wake Jesus in their souls this week. Crushed and crying, half-dead themselves with grief, they cried to Jesus, “Wake up! Don’t you care that we are perishing?” And he rose in their hearts and said, “Peace, be still.” And filled with the strength of Almighty God, they faced their loved-ones’ killer, and they raised their trembling voices to the nation, and they forgave the man who killed their parents, husbands, wives, and children. They asked God for mercy on his soul. They begged him to repent. They let God replace hatred with love. They showed us all what it looks like when we live out the teachings of our Lord in our lives, what it looks like when we are brave enough to imitate Jesus. They showed us the possibilities that arise even out of suffering when we trust in the power of Love, rather than the power of guns, to make all things new.

          St. Paul knew that a Christian life is no charm against suffering. He tells us in today’s epistle that we are in for “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, [and] hunger” when we let Jesus in the boat with us. But Paul, like Augustine, also knows that the real miracle of peace takes place without fanfare when we open up the tenderness of our hearts to him and to one another. “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

          Before suffering can be transformed, we need to dare to wake up Jesus—not to find out if he loves us, but to ask him to change our hearts. 

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              [1] Samuel E. Balentine, Job (Smyth and Helwys 2006), 634.

[2] St. Augustine of Hippo, “Sermon 63” found at http://corinquietam.blogspot.com/2012/08/st-augustines-sermon-63-wake-up-christ.html.