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“Jesus came to his hometown… On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue. . .So here I am, back home on our Sabbath day. Some of you who hear me will be astounded, some may take offence. On such an occasion, the pulpit is a scary place. In the same spirit of Jesus which causes astonishment and offence, I’m here today to proclaim the gospel through our actions at the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church. It’s a different sermon than it started out. I’ve decided to give my convention report – what it was like, significant resolutions passed - through EVANGEL and focus today on a defining moment. Though the Windsor Report hovered over us, we were mostly able to keep our focus on the mission of the church, rather than the politics. That report – or “process” as some prefer to call it – was written by Anglican prelates with no hearing from American or Canadian bishops, no lay person, deacon or priest involved. The report passed only because the bishops of the American and Canadian provinces had been asked to absent themselves. Remember that since the Revolutionary war The Episcopal Church has been totally independent. Neither Canterbury nor the “Anglican Communion” has any legal jurisdiction over us. Resolution A163 was OK, maintaining diocesan boundaries, which some bishops have abused lately; authority of each diocesan bishop, and respect for the historical relationships of the separation and autonomous Provinces of the Anglican Communion. A160 called for an expression of “repentance” for actions in 2003, but that was amended to “regret.” After the House of Deputies voted down A161, the Presiding Bishop, +Frank Griswold, convened a joint session on our final day, in which he introduced Resolution B033 – one paragraph of the original 4, proposed by the bishop of Upper South Carolina, endorsed by the bishops of Northern Indiana, Colorado, and Rhode Island. “It’s about the conversation,” Frank said, “not the conclusion.” Our ticket to Lambeth. It also meant hours of procedural wrangling. Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 75th General Convention receive and embrace the Windsor Report’s invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconciliation. Resolved, that this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting 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 debate on the Floor of the House of Deputies was proceeding orderly, pro & con, when our new presiding bishop, +Katharine Jefferts Schori asked to address the House of Deputies. Our Presiding Bishop-elect “did the hard thing that the best leaders do: she said the difficult word to keep us focused on our mission. As powerful as was her first entrance onto the floor of our House, this, I believe, was another level. It had been raining all day, and earlier the thunder and sound of rain on the ceiling made it hard to hear. When she spoke, I could everything but hear the Spirit of God in the room, as loudly as I had heard the thunder and rain. The debate’s tenor clearly changed at this point, and we started behaving a little better. Despite a call for the vote to be by orders – which makes it much harder to pass – the resolution passed overwhelmingly. I am proud, proud to be an Episcopalian today, maybe prouder than I’ve ever been. I appreciate that many in both Houses leave wounded, having given away more than others, but I believe this is the moment and action to which God has called us. . . . The center held.” It was “the moment” of convention. During +Katharine’s address I felt on the verge of tears. It was incredibly emotional, each of us struggling with how to vote on a resolution that – to me - was a one-way street. We were not calling for the bishops of Africa to quite practicing polygamy and actions – unbiblical - which would land them in jail in our society. The (London) Daily Telegraph’s religion correspondent, Jonathan Petre, reported: . . . The election of a woman bishop as leader of the American Anglican Church “could hasten the break-up” of the worldwide body. . . . While it is true that some bishops of the Episcopal Church have more in common with a crystal-gazing Californian housewife than George Herbert, it is also true that “Anglican” dioceses in the developing world have been hijacked by poisonously bigoted Bible-bashers. (And from what I’ve read of Archbishop Akinola’s own words, that statement is true.) The entire issue came into focus when the same bishops who had opposed +Gene’s consecration walked out after +Katharine was elected. This group – well financed - had been planning their action for years, even refusing to break bread with us each day, having their own Eucharist in a nearby church, which – I think – was particularly sad, and telling. Immediately that group appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury for an APO: Alternative Primatial Oversight, under the jurisdiction of that Nigerian Archbishop. In an editorial in the Wilmington (Ohio) News Journal, Mary Thomas Watts of Christ Church, Dayton, described the reaction to +Katharine’s election by the House of Bishops: Cal Thomas was pretty tough on the Episcopal Church on this page last week (June 28, “Church Lite”), giving us Episcopalians an editorial thrashing for daring to elect ourselves a woman. . . as our denomination’s new Presiding Bishop and for being too progressive on the issue of full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the church. . . . As Bishop Jefferts Schori herself pointed out in a recent interview, the worldwide Anglican Communion, to which the U. S. Episcopal Church belongs – rumors of schism though there be – “has always embraced comprehensiveness,” which means we value being a “big tent” with room for all sorts and conditions of people. This vision of the church, however, really gets Cal Thomas’s goat. He even called (her) unorthodox and a biblical illiterate when she preached that Jesus’ great message was to include the un-included. Why the Lord Jesus himself was all the time welcoming contaminated, outcast, and everyway undesirable types into the fold: lepers, cripples, tax collectors, Gentiles and, Leviticus forbid!, women.“The Revealer” magazine added this interesting insight: . . . the conflict narrative misses an equally significant story. Schori’s lasting impact may stem not from her gender but from the complex mix of personal qualities and life experience that equip her for leadership in a deeply divided society and the communion that reflects those conflicts. In the course of her odyssey to ecclesiastical leadership, Schori has taken on three of the nation’s most pressing issues: the growing gap between science and religion, the surge in the religiously unaffiliated Americans, and the swelling numbers of Hispanic immigrants. If she can convince her co-religionists to meet these challenges, Schori could move the church from debilitating internal debates over sexuality to re-engagement with the larger society.As most of you know by now, I believe that Jesus ’ message was – as Mary Watts noted – radically inclusive. The Reverend John Paddock, rector of Christ Church, Dayton, spoke these words from his pulpit last Sunday: “We are very aware of the headlines following our attempts as a denomination to respond to the call of Jesus to push open the doors of our churches even wider.” Then he quotedMartin Luther King, Jr., “’Our vocation is not to serve as a thermometer, registering the temperature around us, but as thermostats, changing the temperature around us’ When you fiddle with the thermostat, somebody always hollers.”You may have seen this morning’s MERCURY NEWS (page 18A) the headline: CHURCH OF ENGLAND VOTES TO LET WOMEN SERVE AS BISHOPS, and underneath, But First Ordination Not Likely for Years – maybe 2012. Why? A traditionalist faction is adamantly opposed. Why? “The practice is not consistent with precedent or scripture. The Bible insists that both at home and in the church there are differences between the role of men and women.” “They are equal in terms of salvation and status, but their roles are supposed to be carried out differently.” How can we deal with a mentality like that, buried in the culture around the year 70-85 A.D.? On the House of Bishops/Deputies list-serve I suggested last week that it may be time for a second revolution against Mother England; that I’d like to stay in the Anglican Communion, but only with our integrity in tact. The whole thing boils down to how we differentiate between what is of spirit and what is of culture in scripture. We live in 2006!! Our challenge at General Convention was to reflect, project, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I believe that’s what we did. But, what happens there at General Convention or even in the Anglican Communion, is not as important as what happens here. That is crucial for each of us, for Saint Andrew’s, and for the Kingdom of God, which is not limited to one branch of Christ’s holy, catholic Church. Can we keep focused on Jesus’ mission and not be distracted by politics, nor be afraid of rejection in the Name of Christ, able to “shake off the dust” when and if we believe we have done God’s will? Can we be challenged by the amazing resolutions from General Convention that send us into the world, two by two, parish by parish, diocese by diocese, to serve the world in the Name of Christ? Elizabeth Kaeton invited us to sing an old song: What though my joys and comforts die? No storm can shake my inmost calm My hope and prayer is that with all our differences and similarities, agreements and disagreements, we can keep singing together to the Glory of God in a wonderful harmony, singing to a world that desperately needs to hear our voices proclaiming that every person is a child of God, loved, totally accepted, and welcome. Ernest W. Cockrell+ Clergy Deputy #2
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