episcospeak
Monday Morning Update
Dear Parish
Good Morning. There is a lot to cover this morning so I�ll just dive right in.
This morning I was reading through the book of James and I came across a passage that I have read many times but has, today, come alive for me in a new way.
�Consider it pure joy my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.�
Now this rarely if ever describes my own feelings when faced with crisis. I do not at all consider it pure joy, but most often consider it pure stress. But there is great wisdom and great advice here born out of great faith. Essentially James is telling us that for Christians, for people who have given themselves wholly to Jesus, God allows sometimes even brings crisis, not primarily to trouble our hearts or to take away our peace, but rather to train us, to teach us to abide, to remain faithful and true in all circumstances. We are given perseverance---the ability to stand, not to surrender, not to deny the truth regardless of the cost. I think Winston Churchill once said that fear and violence and intimidation are effective weapons only if your opponent is afraid to lose his life or his fortune. As Christians, we have already given our lives, our treasures, our minds, hearts and souls to Jesus and so there is nothing that anybody can take from us. In crisis time and time again God reminds us that He is all we need. We are disciples in training, not unlike soldiers or athletes.
I remember the pride and joy that surged in my heart when I first enlisted in the Army National Guard and volunteered to be a paratrooper. In my minds eye, I saw myself with a red beret, jump boots, and airborne wings, looking really cool and basking in the admiration of my friends and, of course, members of the opposite sex. It was a wonderful dream and I indulged in it often. It was pure joy. Then I went to boot camp. Needless to say, the dream died�well it didn�t really die---but it was given a strong booster shot of reality. It was tough and hard and not fun at all. The drill instructors made us do hard things that seemed impossible. They broke down my arrogance and my pride and my vanity because those things were in the way of my becoming a soldier. In the end, they had their way. I was completely transformed.
Well, God does much the same thing with his people. He trains them and shapes them and transforms them to be true followers of Jesus Christ. It�s hard work. When I finally got down on my knees and gave myself to Jesus Christ, I felt a rush and a surge of pure joy and wonder. For months afterwards I was floating on air. Everything seemed new and fresh and whole. As time went on, while a deep sort of joy remained and remains today, the ecstatic feeling left me and reality began once more to bear down. The old pressures and temptations and responsibilities were still there. Crisis after crisis came. I failed and fell and failed again. But slowly, something new emerged. After each failure and each fall, there was a little more strength, a little more grit, a little more determination. The Holy Spirit had begun to grant me preseverance born of love. Instead of getting up and dusting off and asking forgiveness for what I had done because I knew that I should, I began to do it because I really hated to have anything come between me and Jesus. A real, tested, tried, and true love for God began to emerge where there had been none and out of this love was born a real and true joy. Over time I came to realize and recognize that there was nothing in this world that I could ever want more than I wanted to be with God. I felt I could lose everything I have, even my life, but as long as I was in a relationship with Jesus, I could bear it, and not only bear it, but bear it with joy and with faith. Christian Joy does not mean happiness, it means feeling deep contentment, peace and satisfaction that rests in Jesus Christ alone. It does not mean that sorrow and deep pain leave you. It does mean that they do not overwhelm you. This sort of joy made it possible for Paul to write from a dark and miserable Roman prison, �Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus�.for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.� (Philippians 4:4-7, 10-13)
This community is right this moment being trained. We have this last year enjoyed a great deal of success and happiness. We have grown tremendously, in numbers and in depth. We began to read our bibles and to learn about God�s Kingdom and his love. Now God has set us down firmly in the middle of a crisis. There is a crisis in the Church on a national level and there are several smaller crises in our own backyard. How do we act? What do we do? How do we treat one another? Are we at the point yet as individuals and as a parish where we are willing to stand faithfully on the Rock of God�s Word assured of his promises and his love? Are we at the point yet where we can look at our brother or sister in the pew next to us, with whom we disagree or agree, and love them? Are we at the point yet where we can put away gossip and rumor and backbiting, and intercede for those whom we have hurt and for those who have hurt us? These times are given to us by God for testing and for training. We must stand firmly upon the truth of God�s word while at the same time refusing to let disagreements and bitterness overwhelm us.
I do not know everything that happened while I was away on vacation, but I have observed upon my return that something is not right. There are many many good things going on and lots of life. But there is also, to be frank, anger, bitterness, gossip, jealousy and resentment. This is not good. But there is nothing, no circumstance or crisis that is beyond God�s power and grace. This time of crisis is a test a period of training. Can we love one another when the heat is jacked up? Can we love God and remain true to his Word when it gets tough? Look upon your brothers and sisters and remind yourself, this is a person for whom God himself hung on the cross and died. God loves you and loves me and loves everyone in our parish and beyond, enough to die, to give his whole self to be reconciled. If time, death, hell, Satan and all of his demons could not stand in the way of God�s love for us, how can we sit back and let our own pride or jealousy or resentment or whatever it is stand in the way of our love for one another? Pray for one another, especially for those with whom you disagree or whom you find disagreeable. Ask God to bless them and care for them and make their paths sure. Give God your thoughts about them and ask him to help you see them in the same way that Jesus sees them. We must not compromise the Truth of God�s Word. We must stand firm. But within the Body of Christ especially, we must stand firmly in love as well. All of our dealings with one another must be shaded with, flavored with, colored with the love of God.
In this way we will pass through this test to the other side and God will grant us perseverance and the wisdom that comes through it so that He can continue to train us, test us, grow us, and draw us more closely and tightly to his breast.
�Consider it pure joy my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.�
Hey, where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?
Remember my parody regarding the genetic predisposition of males toward
promiscuity? I wrote it in order to mock the absurd logic of the left i.e.
if a given desire is "natural" then it must be "good" or, in pop
parlance, "You and me baby aint nothin but mammals so let's do it like
they do it on the Discovery Channel." Well, here is a glimps of the new
horizon, the new step forward, the next frontier of moral evolution:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2087897/
"Hey, where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?"
A request for prayer
If you are reading this today, please pray for me. I have a very important Vestry meeting tonight. The vestry is 8 to 4 against what has happened and yet all of them but 2 have difficulty understanding why this is so important and why it is that we have to do anything about it. There are several vestry members who are vehemently angry regarding my stance and have gone to another priest in the area for advice as how to "handle" me. Several parishioners have already left and I expect others to follow at some point. That is, I suppose, to be expected, but it is hard to take all the same. We have had such momentum as a parish for a whole year. We have grown this last year by more than 25% and attendence is and has been up by a consistent 20%. Now the honeymoon is definitely over and who knows whether there will be any left in the pews after this is over. Perhaps I am being overly dramatic, but I have seen some real nasty things going on in this place over the last several weeks. It may be that like the dwarves of Moria, the Word has dug too deeply and awakened something dark and terrible that has been lurking about in the depths of this place for thirty years. In any case, it is coming out now and there will be a battle tonight and a war that will continue long into the future. MARANATHA!
The Ravages of a Wordless Past
I serve in parish that has been without solid consistent bible teaching for about 30 years. During my first year I have instituted 3 home bible studies and a brand new, first ever, adult education program (this was rather difficult to pull off as the Christian ed. Committee was myopically focused on educating the children and youth and had a difficult time understanding that, yes, adults need to know Jesus and the Bible too) In any case as I have written before, the impact of thirty years of Bible drout has been devestating. The people here are lovely and nice and all of that and I love them deeply, but for lack of better sustenence they have drunk deeply from the poisoned well of secularism (hence my parish letter below) and it has done some serious damage. There is no solidity here, no health, or very little. Persuading them that they have for 30 years been feeding on dung and straw and that real food and drink is to be had in Christ alone and in his Truth (thanks to CS Lewis' "The Last Battle" for the imagery) is proving to be very very difficult.
I just got off the phone with an irate woman. She is angry because I have made it clear to all parents in this parish that we promote and teach sexual abstinence until marriage. The woman, with whom I have up until now gotten along with swimmingly, feels that my proclamations will make it difficult for high school and jr. high kids to "share their experiences" in an open and honest way. I tried explaining to her that teaching abstinence does not mean shutting kids up. They are and ever will be more than free to express their viewpoints, but the Church will express hers as well. Youth, and I know because I was one not very long ago, can take an honest disagreement much better than their parents can. In general kids are more interested in Truth than in whether or not their self-esteem has been damaged by a teacher who disagrees with whatever blessed pearls fall from their cherubic lips. I wish parents, especially Boomer parents, would get that through their heads. Truth matters and will prevail whether or not it accords with their opinions or that of their children.
episcospeak commentary
My Parish Letter Recently Sent
Well, I have not posted at all for a long while, four days. Sorry, but I have been incredibly busy. I am, however, back in the saddle now and will be posting quite a bit this week.
The following is a letter I recently sent to my congregation regarding General Convention.
"Yesterday, in place of a regular sermon, we began discussing as a church family how we will act in the months following General Convention 2003
Let me begin by briefly outlining what happened during General Convention and what all the fuss is about. Two votes were taken at GC that made national news–a lot of other decisions were made but none of them carried the theological significance for our lives that these two did. The first vote was to confirm the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. This was not an unusual vote in that every bishop elected within 120 days prior to General Convention must be confirmed both by the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops at Convention rather than through the regular process of consent. It was unusual, however, in that the Rev. Robinson lives in a relationship–a sexual relationship–with another man. When he was first ordained to the priesthood, many years ago, he was married and had two small children. In the intervening years he has divorced his wife and taken up this relationship with another man. The second vote, following closely on the heals of this first, was to allow local option to bless same sex unions. Now, what is all the fuss about?
You may have heard the phrase, "What’s true for you is not true for me." It’s very common these days to think of Truth as something that is individualized and custom made. I have my truth and you have your truth and everyone else has their truth and we are all here together each with their own equally valid understanding of what is right and what is wrong and what is true and what is false. When this idea of multiple truths or "relative" truths is applied to matters of taste, style and entertainment it is perfectly valid. Some things are truly matters of relative choice. To use a familiar example, there is no One True flavor of ice-cream. I like chocolate, but I cannot impose my flavor on anyone else. Some people like Rocky Road. I find Rocky Road unpleasant, but there is no reason to argue about it or to impose any sort of censure upon those very odd people who indulge in the stuff. Ice cream is a matter of individual choice and "what is true for you is not true for me" when it comes to this very important matter of taste.
But Truth with a capital ‘T’ is something that lies beyond us. We as human beings can understand the Truth, we can recognize the Truth, we can live according to the Truth, and, as Christians, the Truth can even dwell in us, but we do not create or define or decide for ourselves what is True. God alone knows and sees the truth in full because he is Truth. Truth is inherent in Him. Jesus tells us in John 14: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. And no one comes to the Father but through me." The Truth, then is a bit like mathematics, it is not a relative matter up for individual consideration and subject to individual taste. We may not approve of the idea that 2 + 2 = 4, but there is really not all that much we can do about it. We can ignore it, we can deny it, we can even get together and vote the equation out of our mathematics textbooks, but no matter what we do we cannot erase the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. In the same way, we might not like God’s Truth. We may in fact despise and reject it. Society may as a whole denigrate and mock it. But doing so does not and cannot change it. Truth stands, God stands, whether or not we consent.
Let me go another step and talk about the idea of the Fall. We said, on Sunday, that when sin entered the world--when human beings turned from God, the source of light--all of God’s created order subsequently descended into darkness. The darkness effected and damaged every aspect of our nature. Our minds, hearts, souls, and bodies all became subject to ignorance, devolution and ultimately to death. All of us are born in this darkness, with souls minds and bodies turned away from God and toward ourselves. We are all born with an orientation, a twist, toward the darkness. One mournful result of all of this is that we have collectively and individually lost the ability to naturally discern the Truth. We lost the ability to recognize clearly what is good and what is evil. We can see this even today. Our children do not come out of the womb with a moral sense. That has to be taught. We do not, on the other hand, have to teach our children to think of themselves as the center of the universe. They do that naturally. While they are beautiful and beloved and created by God, even they–the most innocent of us–are turned away from God and towards themselves.
But what about our conscience? Yes, God has given us a natural conscience that allows for basic societal order, but no one can plausibly argue that conscience is always a clear and completely reliable guide. Adolf Hitler likely committed suicide in his bunker with a clear conscience. He believed, sincerely, that his destruction of millions of Jews was morally justifiable. He was wrong, but his conscience deceived him so that he thought that right was wrong and wrong was right.
God knows this about us, knows that we have darkened our souls and minds, and for that reason he has given us the Holy Scriptures. In them we find the words of the prophets, the law of God, and we read of God himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The Bible is intended to be that objective standard by which we can judge the moral quality of our actions and spiritual dispositions. The word of God written is True in the same sense that arithmetic is true. We, for example, in our blindness may imagine that the proper stance toward those who hurt us is ruthlessness or aggression. But this blindness is checked when we submit this feeling to the Scriptures, finding there that, in fact, we are to love our enemies and do good to those who hurt us. When we submit our inclinations, thoughts and desires to God in the Scriptures our blindness is given the light of Truth. When we trust in our own moral sense or in our own understanding of what is good we often fall into sin and do damage to ourselves and to others. That’s why it is so important for Christians to judge themselves in light of the Scriptures and why it is so important for the Church especially to remain true to what the Bible teaches.
The Church is founded upon God’s Word and has been given the mission of preaching and teaching and upholding God’s Truth even when the whole world stands against it. In taking such a stand the Church has undergone great suffering and persecution. Over the centuries millions of Christians have died or been killed because they refused to act in ways contrary to God’s Word.
So, back to General Convention and all the surrounding. There are two main theological paths in the Episcopal Church today. The first is the one I just outlined. It is orthodox, traditional and historically based in 2000 years of the Church’s faith and mission. The second is what many call ‘Revisionist’. Revisionist theologians generally do not hold to the ancient doctrine of the Fall. Most believe that we as humans are inherently good, that we are not turned away from God but that evil comes into the world through social structures and various other means. Furthermore, revisionist theology holds that the Bible as we have it is limited and of human production alone–that God was not intimately involved in its’ writing nor superintending its’ truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Many believe that, because it is limited and culturally bound, parts of it no longer are applicable to modern life. In other words, the Holy Spirit may move us as a Church beyond the pages of Scripture toward behaviors and attitudes that Scripture does not sanction, such as sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage, including sexual activity between two men or two women. Revisionists do not see the Bible as revealing God’s Truth, but merely conveying temporal "truths."
Having jettisoned the objective standard of God’s revealed Truth, revisionist theology sets humanity up as the final arbiter. Rather than scripture standing in judgment over humanity, humanity stands in judgment over scripture. Human wisdom and the will of God are seen to be one in the same. History, at least, should teach us to be wary of such ecclesiastical hubris.
What happened specifically at General Convention was the legislation of a revisionist theological position. The majority at convention (although there was a strong and articulate minority) voted, in effect, to surpass the teaching of Scripture and the wisdom of God handed down through the ages. The problem is not that The Rev. Gene Robinson has homosexual longings and desires. As we notes above, because of the Fall people are born with all sorts of orientations away from God and still, by the grace of God, live holy and chaste lives. If The Rev. Robinson were to vow to live in accordance with the revelation of God regarding sexuality (See Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:18-32, and 1 Corinthians 6:9) and by God’s grace remain celibate, there would be no problem. Robinson, however, is a revisionist and believes that the Bible is in error regarding homosexuality and he is now and vows to continue actively living in promoting the homosexual lifestyle as something good and right. To make matters worse, the Episcopal Church voted to confirm his belief and his lifestyle thereby endangering not only Fr. Robinson’s soul and life but the souls and lives of countless others who follow him and believe what he tells them. In sum the Bishops and Deputies who voted for this thing believe that their collective wisdom is greater than that of God and 2000 years of Church teaching. In doing this, the Church has assumed for itself a sort of quasi-divinity and presumed an authority that only God may claim. This is a frightening thing. God is love, but God is also a holy God and just. He does not take usurpation lightly especially when it arises from within his Church. The people who have done this are in grave spiritual danger and have put their souls and the souls of their followers at risk. My wife and I will have no part in it.
There are several things we are planning in the coming months. The vast majority of Anglican Primates (Bishops and Archbishops overseeing all the different areas of the world where there are Anglicans) are against the decisions of the 74th General Convention and will be meeting in October to consider what action to take. They have a couple of options. One, they could set up a second province along side ECUSA (The Episcopal Church USA) in which churches and clergy of the orthodox persuasion can reside in communion with the rest of the Anglican world without compromising their principles on this matter. The other option is that the Primates will declare ECUSA apostate in that it has violated its own canons/constitution in which case it would no longer exist as a body within the Anglican Communion. Either way My wife and I are praying fervently that provision will be made for those orthodox members of the Church who uphold the authority and love of God as revealed in the Scriptures.
I will be attending a conference in Plano Texas, also in October, of orthodox bishops, clergy, and leaders who renounce the actions of the 74th General Convention. There we will also consider what options we have and how to act. We as a parish will have much to discuss and pray about before I go.
Please come and speak with me or my wife about any of this. We want you to know above all that we love you all and that even more than that, God loves each and every one of you. He created you, he made you, he formed you. When you walk through the fire he will be with you; when the flood overtakes you, he will be in the midst of it with you. We know that God is at work in the whole Church, including this parish and that he has a plan and a mission for us in the midst of all this turmoil. We have only to seek his face and he will show us his will and his love.
And now, because this has been very long, I will close.
May the Lord bless and keep each one of you. May he make his face to shine upon you and give you peace."
Love in Christ,
Your Rector
