Sermon for 9.6.09

This week's scriptures are here:  http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp18_RCL.html

Methodist preacher Thomas Long tells the story of a friend of his who “decided to put [today’s Scriptures] to the test. A well-respected leader in her congregation, she chose to appear at church one Sunday in the guise of a homeless person…. Now [Long’s] friend is by no means a “minks and gold rings” kind of woman, but it nevertheless took a great deal of effort, theatrical makeup and thrift-store clothing to transform her into a person whose appearance showed the ravages of the streets.  Her experience at church was remarkable, transforming. Church friends who would normally have greeted her cheerily in the hallway turned their heads and would not make eye contact. When she was not being ignored, she was glared at, and, as she made her way toward the worship space, she could sense the ushers tensing for a possible confrontation. They seated her as far way from others as possible.  There was an anxious moment when my friend stood up to speak during the joys and concerns. When she revealed who she was, this turned rapidly to astonishment, then embarrassment, and finally to many apologies after the service.” (Blog of the Christian Century, 8/31/09)

 

I imagine that church had a lot of soul-searching to do after that day, and this is nothing unusual.  Numerous churches have had to readjust, question themselves and readjust again when confronted with new, unfamiliar, less attractive populations.  And this is not just a modern problem – in our epistle today, James writes to a first-century church that was ingratiating itself with rich while ignoring the poor.  We humans are very talented at sizing people up quickly and deciding whether they belong in our group or not – not just on the basis of wealth and social class, the subject of James’ epistle, but also on the basis of race, education, nationality, religion, family configuration, age, and a myriad of other ways we categorize ourselves and close ourselves off from other people.  It seems to be part of human nature that we organize ourselves into tribes and clans, and close ourselves off from those in outsider groups.  What I find fascinating about today’s scriptures is not that they state what is obvious to anyone who has paid attention to the gospel (everyone is welcome).  It’s how common it is for human beings to close themselves off from others; not just ordinary, flawed human beings like us – but Jesus himself,

 

Today’s gospel gives us one of the strangest, most troubling stories of Jesus’ whole career.  Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee into Gentile country, apparently for a short vacation, but a desperate Gentile woman with a sick child approaches Jesus for healing, and he rebuffs her with the insult, “You don’t take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”  Jesus is willing to heal Jews, but not Gentiles.  Now we could say that calling a woman a dog wouldn’t be the same kind of insult in Jesus’ time as it is today – and we would be right – it would be much worse – in Jesus’ time and place, dogs were not considered friendly, loveable house pets – they were considered dirty, disease-ridden scavengers.  So insulting this woman in this way was an even worse insult then than now.

Jesus seems to be telling her that she is too low and insignificant even to come to God’s notice, that she is beyond the reach of the salvation Christ brings, and that God’s healing is just not available to her daughter or her people.  Yet she persists, and Jesus changes his mind.  Jesus changes his mind, and heals the daughter, and more than that, he keeps his word, and expands his mission to include the Gentiles.  And apparently, realizing the significance of the fact that he has learned to open his ears to an outsider, the next thing he does is open the ears of a deaf Gentile.  Something big has changed.

 

Now this story causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people who just don’t see how the Lord of love can insult and exclude a woman the way Jesus does.  Commentators have tried to account for this story in a variety of ways, from saying that Jesus was obviously just testing woman’s faith (or the disciples’), to saying that this probably didn’t happen at all.  But I have trouble with these ways of interpreting the story – I don’t see anything in the story that says that Jesus was just putting on a cruel act, insulting the woman to test someone; and I don’t think you can just throw out troubling Bible stories when they don’t fit what you already believe.  I think the Bible is something you have to wrestle with on its own terms.  The Bible has given us this account of Jesus, and we have to deal with it.

 

And here, this Bible story seems to say clearly that Jesus started out excluding and insulting a woman, and then he changed his mind.  Jesus changed his mind – and what a bewildering thought this is.  If Jesus could be so wrong about his own mission, and could change his mind, opening up a whole new direction for the church, what does that say about us?

 

Church tradition tells us that Jesus was fully divine and fully human.  We tend to concentrate on the divine part, I think, and forget what it means that Jesus was human.  And yet if we look at Jesus in this gospel story, I think we can begin to understand some things about his humanity, and about our own.  Here we see a Jesus who is in a process of change and growth, who isn’t perfectly wise and all-knowing at all times, but who truly learns and responds at a deep and heartfelt level to the people around him.  It is a Jesus who, in a very human way, allows his human upbringing to make up his mind about someone who is outside of his own social group, who closes his ears to the pleas of someone in need.  Yet he listens, and allows her to move him to a different place, a place where his own ears are opened and he begins to believe something new about who he is and what he is called to do. 

 

It is a picture of the Son of God changing in response to a human, opening his mind and his heart to the outsider, and learning something new about himself.  So Jesus can change – and this, to me, is where hope lies.  If Jesus is fully human, and finds that for him, life is a learning process, a time to constantly discern and re-discern his call, a time to pray and change and grow and respond differently to the world around him; if God can change his whole mission to the world in response to us – then that tells us that we need to be ready to do the same thing. 

 

It is human temptation to close ourselves off from change and growth, to believe that we know truth, close our ears to new ideas; and yet this story tells us that the path to growth is through opening ourselves to the outsider.  Rabbi Edwin Friedman, who wrote one of the most important works about how family systems work, and applied family system theories to congregations and other systems, says that healthy functioning within human organisms depends on people’s ability to do two things:  To define ourselves – say honestly who we are and what we believe; While remaining connected – respecting the humanity and the good faith of those who disagree, and remaining in respectful relationship. 

 

These two skills – defining oneself in a non-threatening way, while remaining connected with those who disagree, are skills that allow for mature and respectful functioning within all human systems.  They allow us to state what we believe, while remaining open to learning and growth in relationship with others who might surprise us, change us, give us a new mission and new outlook on life.  Because it is in relationship, ultimately, that all human beings learn everything they need to survive – relationship with others and relationship with God. 

 

And, if Jesus can change and grow, fully human and fully divine as he was, then maybe we can too.  We can open our ears to the cries of the poor and those who need our help, we can open our minds to new ways of thinking and being and worshiping, we can allow God to speak to our hearts and call us to new missions and ministries.  We can open our church to new relationships and people who will change us.  We can reach out our hands to those who need us.  We can teach and preach and sing and worship and know that God is with us, marveling with us at the unpredictable and amazing things that are happening; we can transform lives and we can be transformed ourselves with the love of Jesus Christ.

 

Sermon for 8.30.09

This Week's Lessons:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html

Gregory Peck, not long before he died, said that if you’re going to play the part of the devil you have to look for the angel in him, and if you’re going to play an angel you have to look for the devil in him.  One great example is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , directed by the recently deceased John Hughes. 

 

Ferris Bueller, HS student and devilish angel, wakes up on a perfect sunny day and decides to ditch school – convinces his loving parents he is sick and takes off on comic adventures with his best friend, Cameron, and his girlfriend, Sloane.  Now Ferris is a slick liar and a manipulator who can get anyone to do what he wants.  But Ferris is also a kid whom everybody likes (by the time he gets home, his home is full of flowers, balloons and candy from well-wishers who heard he was sick).  He can get away with anything because, well, he’s Ferris Bueller.

 

The iconic image of this movie happens as a German parade goes through downtown.  Ferris talks his way onto one of the floats and lip-synchs “Danke Schoen”, then leads the whole dancing, cheering crowd in a rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout” – because that’s just the kind of thing Ferris Bueller does.

 

Ferris has a younger sister who resents him and an officious school administrator who’s on to him.  So a big part of the movie is Ferris weaseling his way out of being discovered. 

 

The funniest thing to me about this movie is that suburban teen adventure movies from Risky Business to Mean Girls have certain conventions.  There are popular kids, who turn out to be foolish and self-centered and have all the wrong priorities; and there are regular, average kids who triumph.  There’s a huge party, things get broken, the parents and teachers find out and there’s major trouble in store, and it all results in a transforming growing-up process for main character, who becomes an adult.

 

This movie doesn’t fit the pattern – first of all, Ferris is hugely popular not because he’s foolish and self-centered, but apparently because he’s sweet, kind and helpful.  His priorities may be mixed up from an adult perspective, but he is truly kind, to everyone from a freshman who he promises to get out of summer school, to his tightly-wound best friend, whose punishment he offers to take.

 

And at the end, everyone around Ferris has had some sort of spiritual awakening – from his sister, who meets a strung-out-looking Emilio Estevez in a police station, and he tells her, “Your problem is you.  You oughta spend a little more time worrying about yourself, and a little less time worrying about your brother.”  To his best friend, who finally gets up the nerve to face his harsh, unloving father; to the officious school administrator who gets his comeuppance by basically falling into the trap he has set for Ferris.  In fact, the only person unchanged at the end of the movie is Ferris, who has had a very pleasant day getting away with all kinds of shenanigans, and ends it untouched.  He doesn’t need to be transformed himself – he is sort of a catalyst, who helps all the people around him grow and blossom.  It’s like, anyone as devilishly sweet as Ferris doesn’t need to grow up – he is already perfect, and perfectly endearing – no need for a spiritual awakening.

 

Strangely enough, in real life, most of us aren’t like Ferris Bueller – so perfectly sweet that we don’t need to grow up and experience a spiritual awakening.  Most of us find that we need spiritual awakening and growth, nearly constantly.  Life isn’t really a matter of getting through high school and then being free to do whatever we want to.  True life presents one challenge after another, which most of us meet with varying degrees of success throughout our lives.  And the biggest challenge of life for most people ultimately comes down to this:  how do we live a peaceful, joyful, fulfilling life in the company of other people? 

 

This is the challenge that individuals, families, communities and nations face.  And it’s one challenge that I think becomes especially important for churches.  Because we are God’s beloved community, the sign of God’s love to the world, and we are called to make that love apparent in the way we interact with each other and with the world around us.  And if there is anything in life that requires spiritual awakening and growth, it is the challenge of loving our neighbors in the church and the wider community.  Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner suggested that our lifelong hope is to "become" Christians, not "be" Christians, as if such a transformation could happen in an instant.  We are all in a process of growth and “becoming,” learning day by day how to live in love with God, and with our neighbors – learning how to live as Christians.

 

Our scriptures have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks now – which is not same thing as knowledge.  We are way better at knowledge in the age of the internet than we are at wisdom.  All the websites in all the world don’t carry the same wisdom as the ancient Scriptures – they may not have had instantaneous worldwide communication, but they understood that the major challenge of life is interacting with others.  Eugene Peterson says, "Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For what good is a truth if we don't know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can't sustain it?"

 

All 3 of our readings today tell us about wise living.  In Deuteronomy, we hear part of  Moses’ farewell speech as the Israelites are preparing to enter the Promised Land without him.  God has given Israelites the Jewish law – a standard of moral and ethical living – not  in order to earn God’s love or be saved, but to provide evidence of God’s salvation and be a witness to the world.  Observing the law is evidence to the world of the wisdom of Israel, and it becomes a powerful demonstration to the world of who God is. 

 

In Mark, we see what happens when people begin to forget the original purpose of the law.  The law can become only outward observance without the involvement of the heart.  Jesus makes very clever remark about what defiles a person: not what comes in from outside, but what goes out from inside.  We carry our own devilishness within us, says Jesus, and we can poison the world around us by allowing our own evil intentions to spill out.  True wisdom, says Jesus, lies in allowing God to transform, to cleanse, our insides, so that what spills out of our hearts into the human community is transforming love that in turn helps cleanse others.  Jesus wants us each to become a catalyst for world transformation – like Ferris Bueller.

 

Our lesson from James tells us something very similar:  God gave us truth and life by planting the word within us.  This seed takes root so that we ourselves become the fruit/harvest.  Then he explains how we become the harvest, how we ourselves become God’s gift to the world.  It may sound like a list of behavior rules, but it is truly a picture of God’s wisdom, lived out in community.  James tells us how to live as the beloved community, including rules for relating to others – listen, speak, be slow to anger; anger does not help the seed grow; only God’s word has the power to save.  James counsels patience, listening, open communication, choosing not to get angry, but valuing each other and treating each other with respect.  James gives us a picture of how we can live out God’s wisdom – letting it transform us in every part of our lives. 

 

James says it comes down to this:  Be doers, not hearers, of the word.  Becoming doers of the word is evidence to the world that God loves us.  The best evidence of true religion is reaching out with love to each other and to outsiders – helping orphans and widows (the most disadvantaged people in James’ world).  For us, evidence that (unlike Ferris Bueller) we have been transformed by God is our willingness to be constantly transformed, constantly undergoing process of spiritual growth, learning how to live transformed lives with each other, and focusing on helping those whose lives can be changed by our help.

 

We have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks straight now, and we’ve talked about gaining God’s wisdom through prayer, through worship, and through living as God’s beloved community, extending love to each other and to the world around us.  And it’s a great time for us to talk about wisdom, as we embark on a journey of discovering God’s wisdom for this congregation, in our visioning process.  In this process, we will be praying for wisdom, and we will be talking and thinking together about it.  But in the quest for wisdom, the most important thing of all is for us to live wisely, to treat each other lovingly, to realize that the caring community we are creating in this congregation is itself the proclamation of God’s wisdom to the world- we are the gift.  And as we allow God’s gifts of kindness, generosity, open communication, valuing each other, and love, to blossom in each one of us and in our Church, our prayer is that our church, living out God’s transforming love, like Ferris Bueller, will become a catalyst that will inspire transformation in all the people around us.  And in our life of transforming love, we will fulfill our mission of transforming lives with the love of Jesus Christ.

 

 

Sermon for 8.16.09

This week's scriptures are here:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp15_RCL.html

On my recent vacation in Austria, I took a tour of the old salt mine outside of Salzburg.  To get into the mine, you go the same way the miners used to go.  You get on a little train which is really just a rail on wheels, so you straddle it, hold on tight to the person in front of you, and take a ride downhill.  After a while, you get off and start walking through small, dark tunnels.  Then comes the fun part:  you slide down a slide.  Like the train, the slide is nothing more than a rail that you straddle.  Nothing to hold onto, and just a dark tunnel stretching downward in front of you, so you can’t see where you are going.  They have you slide two at a time so you can hold onto each other.  I held onto my daughter and we went sliding into the darkness, whooping and hollering.

 

If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that all of life feels like that sometimes:  sliding a little too fast in dark, nothing to hold onto, not sure where we’re going.  I sometimes hear people quote the book of Jeremiah: I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11.  And yet, if it’s true that God knows God’s plans for us, nevertheless it’s one of the challenges of life to figure out what they are, what direction we should be going in, and not to feel like we are sliding into an unknown darkness.

 

And unlike sliding on a slide, life is not something you ride on a predetermined course.  Life is unpredictable and surprising, takes unexpected twists, and presents lots of decisions we have to make – what job to take, what relationship to enter into, what place to live, what is God’s will for us.  If we are Christian people, part of our faith is that the best way to live is in accordance with God’s will – this is the truest path to fulfillment and spiritual growth, even if it leads us to make sacrifices on behalf of others.  To begin to understand God’s will is the Christian definition of wisdom.

 

There’s a lot in scriptures about wisdom today: Psalm, Ephesians, story of Solomon.  Solomon is famous for being wise enough to understand that true wisdom is necessary to govern God’s people, and true wisdom comes only from God.  And Ephesians says that wisdom is knowing God’s will, and living any other way is foolishness; and it counsels us to cultivate wisdom through worship, being filled with the Spirit, singing and praying in community.  

 

So our scriptures today tell us some important things about life.  Living wisely is a matter of being attuned to God’s will through our personal prayer life and relationship with God (how Solomon was in touch with God).  And it is also a matter of living and worshipping in community (Ephesians).  

 

So if we are living a human existence, trying our best to see in the darkness and make the best decisions for our lives, we need to understand how to incorporate these two dimensions of wisdom:  individual wisdom, cultivated in personal relationship with God; and community wisdom, gained by sharing worship with a group of Christians who cultivate wisdom together.

 

The first thing to understand in thinking about wisdom is that wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge.  We’ve all known people with huge stores of knowledge who didn’t know how to function in the world, and we’ve all known very wise people who didn’t have much education.  Wisdom is not a matter of storing up facts– wisdom is a matter of relationship.  A truly wise person knows how to read other people and knows how to manage relationships.  And in Christian terms, ultimately we believe that true wisdom comes when we are in close enough relationship with God to hear God’s voice and understand God’s will for us and others around us. 

 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, says today’s Psalm.  I once had to write an entire 3-page essay on that verse on a final exam in seminary– what does it mean that the fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom.  So I have lots of useful knowledge about this.  First, scripture is not recommending that we quake in our boots at the thought of God – it is not telling us to be afraid of the Lord in the usual sense.  When Israel talked about “fear of the Lord,” it meant something like “awe.”  It meant standing in the presence of the Lord, recognizing “there is something here that is mysterious and unexplainable and infinitely powerful, and it is not the same as me – it is something I have no name for other than God.”  And the beginning of wisdom, the very root of all true understanding of the world, flows out of that knowledge that I am ultimately not in control, that I am not the one who has wisdom, and that true wisdom flows out of my relationship with the source of all wisdom – God.

 

These days, we have lots of technology that makes it easy to stay in touch with each other.  But we don’t have a lot of knowledge about staying in touch with God – staying in touch with our old best frend from 5^th grade who now lives in Shanghai is a lot easier.  The way that Christians stay in touch with God is through prayer, and prayer is a matter of both speaking and listening, cultivating times of quiet. 

 

One truth of the Christian life is that we are in a relationship with a God who is always more ready to communicate with us than we are to listen, says Christian writer Roy Oswald.  This God is also willing to offer us direction and perspective if and when we are ready to surrender our own ideas and be ready to receive God’s.  But, he says, a lot of our difficulty in discerning God’s will comes from the fact that God will rarely overwhelm us with a message so clear and blatant that our freedom to choose is eliminated – which is why we sometimes feel like we’re sliding into darkness, with nothing to hold onto and no idea of where we’ll end up. 

 

God does speak to us in many ways, through Scripture, tradition, community, relationships, and events and experiences.  But we have to be ready to listen for God’s voice, and we have to seek out a very important gift:  the gift of discernment.  Discernment is gift that allows us to distinguish between our voice and God’s voice.  In any conversation, we always hear our own voice loudest, because we spend most of our time thinking up what we’re going to say next instead of listening, and because it comes to our ears from inside our own head, making it sometimes difficult for us to hear anything else.  In the same way, when we try to pray, it is easy to hear only our own voice and not the voice of the God who is always trying to speak to us.  As humans, Oswald says, it is very easy to think we have a “word from the Lord,” when in fact the word comes from our desire, our hubris, our dark side, or the shadow side of other people and community.  And when we listen to our own voice rather than God’s, we can often find ourselves choosing the easiest path, the path of most immediate benefit, but not necessarily the path of spiritual growth, and not necessarily God’s path for the world.

 

That is why prayer must become a lifelong habit for us, not simply something to resort to in times of trouble – we must tune our ears to hear God’s voice and not our own.  We are well-trained in our Western Christian tradition to pray in words – we know how to talk so that God will listen.  The harder task is to listen so that God will talk, opening ourselves to the presence of God, perhaps putting a prayer or a problem before God, and then quieting ourselves to listen for God’s direction.  There are ancient Christian spiritual techniques to help us do this, many of which are outlined in the “Prayer and Spirituality” section of our website, so you have a chance to try different methods and see which is the best for you.  The main thing is to set aside some quiet time for God each day and begin to cultivate a habit of relationship with God so we recognize God’s voice.  This is how we begin to cultivate personal wisdom.

 

At its foundation, scriptures tell us that wisdom flows out of worship.  Ephesians tells us today that wisdom comes from being filled with God’s Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.  And Jesus tells us that true nourishment comes from the soul food he gives us in the sacrament of his body and blood, the act we do in community that makes his own sacrifice present and real for us.  This worship is at the core of who we are as Christians and it is the way that Christ transforms us into his own likeness.  And through our worship, God pours into us his wisdom and his life, and empowers us to transform the world.

 

Back From Vacation

I've spent the last two weeks on vacation in Germany and Austria, and am (somewhat) happy to be home!  If I can figure out how to do it, I will upload some photos from the vacation to the blog - otherwise, if you are my friend on Facebook, the photos are there!  Blessings to all!

Last Things

Convention is winding down.  It is lunch hour on the last day, and we still have a large amount of legislative business to transact - but the major issues have been addressed.  This morning, the House of Deputies took up C056, a resolution to provide for collecting liturgical and theological resources for blessing same-sex unions.  The resolution does not authorize these blessings, but see my previous post - we are effectively on local-option, and a number of dioceses are already performing blessings despite 2006 Resolution B033, which called for restraint (incorrectly labeled by many as a "moratorium").  My read of C056 is that it does not actually lift the request for restraint, but just starts a project of collecting liturgical resources for possible use in the future, while respecting the wishes of dioceses and congregations who do not wish to perform blessings.  But many people will interpret it as a green light for blessings and a lifting of the moratorium.  

To be clear, the vote was taken this morning and the results have not yet been announced.  However, there is little doubt that C056 will pass the House of Deputies.  

I received an email from a parishioner this morning expressing a hope that General Convention is talking about something other than sex - a sentiment I heartily agree with.  Actually, if you were here, you would see that most of our time is taken up with other matters.  Debates on issues of sexuality have been limited in number and in time.  Frankly, I think an extremely important and far-reaching issue discussed here has been the budget.  It did one good thing, which was to restore 0.7% of the budget as a contribution to end world poverty through the Millennium Development Goals.  But otherwise, I am disturbed by the budget, which I believe made cuts in the wrong areas and preserved the wrong priorities.  Here is an excerpt from an email I sent this morning to the House of Bishops and Deputies list-serve:

This budget gives little hope for future growth.  We have eliminated evangelism, funded the terrific Latino/Hispanic initiative (the one we were all so excited about) at less than 10%, and closed down the one office (Mission Funding) that had an excellent chance of raising funds for new initiatives outside of the budget.  The Mission Funding office is now devoted to only one thing - archives.  We have effectively declared that the glories of the past are worth preserving, but that there is no hope or vision for the future.  

I am concerned about the direction our church is heading, not because of issues of sexuality, but because we are not concentrating on the essential missions of evangelism and church growth.  In the face of hard economic times, we have decided to cut the very initiatives that could bring new hope and new vision.  I give thanks that I serve in a local congregation that is still passionate about reaching new people for Christ.  

A Difficult Day

Today was a hard day at Convention, as the realities of tough economic times set in.  At 2:30 this afternoon, the bishops joined the House of Deputies for a special joint session on the budget.  It was exciting as the bishops arrived in their purple shirts, and we all stood and clapped and watched them march in - after we invited them, of course, since even a bishop can't walk onto the floor of the House of Deputies without an invitation!  But then they sat down with their deputations, and the mood suddenly turned very grim as we got down to business - the budget presentation.  

We knew already that the Program, Budget and Finance committee was going to have to work very hard to cut $23 million out of the budget over the next three years.  It turns out that they are doing this by cutting a lot of dead weight out of the budget, such as meeting and travel expenses, which is a good thing.  But they are also eliminating 30 jobs at the Church Center (out of 180 people who worked there).  It was a sad day as the news sank in of good people who will be out of work.  As the budget was passed out, Nick Knisely+, my fellow deputy from Arizona, whispered to me that in prior years, it had always been passed out to lively Beatles  or Rolling Stones tunes (I Ain't Got No Money, You Can't Always Get What You Want, etc.).  This time it was passed out to the solemn tones of the hymn "God of Grace and God of Glory," played at a dirge-like pace, which includes the memorable line, "Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour."  I know many of us will be humming that tune as we work toward budget approval tomorrow.  

In other news today, the House of Bishops took up two resolutions on the subject of same-sex blessings.  They rejected the more radical one, which would have called for immediate authorization of blessings.  They passed a more moderate resolution, which does not authorize same-sex blessings, but calls for a project of collecting them in order to assess them for possible use in the future.  No doubt this will be reported in the press as a far more radical decision than it was.  No decision has actually been made on same-sex blessings; this was simply an agreement to collect liturgies that are already in use.  Whatever the official position of our church on same-sex blessings (they have not been officially authorized), the fact is that we are actually on a "local-option" system, for all practical purposes.  In some dioceses, same-sex blessings have been happening for years; in others, they won't be happening anytime in my lifetime.  It all depends on what the local bishop has allowed.  Some bishops have not seen any particular reason to wait for the national church to make a pronouncement, but have gone ahead with blessings.  The resolution the bishops passed today calls for these liturgies to be collected and assessed for possible future official use.  The resolution will probably come to the House of Deputies tomorrow.  

In other news, we have approved a denominational health plan to assure that any church employee who works more than 3/4 time has access to health insurance (though they can opt out if covered by another plan, such as a spouse's plan).  We have also approved a lay employee pension plan that will take effect by 2012.  These will be expensive to local churches, but they were important for justice to our employees.  

At our noon Eucharist today, we concentrated on the earth and the environment.  Bishop Steven Charleston, a Native American, preached a breathtaking sermon on saving the earth.  What an inspiration!  Tonight the Diocese of Los Angeles put on an event for us called "Genesis: From Breath to Wonder."  It featured prayer, video, art, dance and music, all woven together in a beautiful tapestry of sensory and spiritual wonder.  It was a beautiful ending to a difficult day.  

More Convention News

Today the House of Bishops took up Resolution D025, the resolution passed by the House of Deputies yesterday that reaffirmed our commitment to the Anglican Communion, and at the same time reasserted that all candidates for ordination - regardless of sexual orientation - would be tested by our Constitution and Canons rather than by the views of Anglicans overseas.  Amazingly, the House of Bishops concurred with our resolution, with some minor amendments.  The amendments mean that the resolution will have to come back to the Deputies, but I assume that we will be able to pass their amended version.  

The resolution is a moderate compromise between those who want a complete overturn of B033 (see my post from yesterday), and those who want to take a strict conservative stance.  The truly surprising part is how overwhelmingly this resolution passed both Houses - 99-45 in the Bishops, and about 75%-to-25% in both orders in the Deputies (I would explain the voting process in more detail, but it is quite arcane and it's more than you want to know).  Various proposals regarding same-sex blessings are in the works, but my understanding is that those have to go to the Bishops first before the Deputies see them, so I have doubts that anything substantive will come to us on this subject - but I could be surprised.  

The other big event of today was the approval of a new bishop for the Diocese of Ecuador Central.  Various members of that diocese had challenged his election on procedural grounds.  On the assurance of our committee on Consecration of Bishops that the election was conducted properly, we voted to confirm him, but it was a difficult decision, knowing what a conflicted and unhappy situation he will find himself in.  I pray for his ministry and that of his diocese.  

We have been working on other weighty matters such as a complete revision of the disciplinary canons for clergy, and a number of evangelism proposals that I helped draft in my legislative committee, which all passed the House of Deputies easily.  

I admit that I am fascinated by this legislative process.  The Episcopal Church's governing structure was formed at the same time as the US Constitution, and by many of the same people.  So it follows many of the same procedures - a two-house legislature, procedural rules, legislative committees, Robert's Rules of Order, etc.  It is very interesting to watch it unfold, with a process that is familiar to those of us who read national news - and yet it has a purity to it that I suspect our national government has lost.  People are earnestly, prayerfully, carefully trying to do the right thing.  It can be excruciatingly dull, when we sit through endless amendments and questions of order - but it also can bring tears of joy and inspiration to your eyes, when something truly momentous happens.  Everyone is civilized, courteous and kind.  And, I bet that in the US House of Representatives, instances of someone standing up to a microphone and proposing that we all stand and sing "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" are quite a bit rarer.  All in all, it makes me proud of our church.