July 12, 2015: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
So good to be back with all of you! For those who don’t know, I was a deputy to the 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church that took place over 12 very busy days in Salt Lake City, Utah. General Convention was amazing, but nothing beats being here with all of you at Christ Church.
Now about General Convention… The Deseret News, the local paper of Salt Lake City, ran a front page article the day I arrived that read like so many others – the mainline denominations are in decline it said – the Episcopal Church is dying. I am sure you have read it all before – or perhaps, even felt it. It really is nothing new – the media has been saying God and the church are dead since the 1960s. But, I have this to say – if you thought the Episcopal Church was in trouble, dying, or any of the other things the media likes to tell you…you are in for a surprise. As one deputy put it, this was not the convention of a dying church. Or, as the South Carolina Deputation had on their buttons “We’re back!”[1] Folks – if there is one take away from the entire 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, it is that we are not only alive and well – we are on the move, ready to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now, I know what you’re thinking… “I’ve been to conventions before, maybe not church conventions, but I’ve been to them…I don’t come home all giddy with excitement – what exactly was in the water out there in the land of the Latter Day Saints? Did something happen to your brains in that 104 degree heat?” (and oh yes, it was THAT hot all the time we were there). Did the Mormons infuse some sort of tonic in your food? And those who have been at other General Conventions, you may be wondering if I even went to one given the often contentious nature of the proceedings at past conventions.
The short answers are – yes, I was there – no, the Mormons did not feed us all a dose of intense optimism (though they were generous in their hospitality) – and yes, the church in the past has been far too interested in fighting rather than proclaiming. But under the leadership of the Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori, our Presiding Bishop – whose election back in 2006 was the first to break barriers, not only in this church, but in the entire Anglican Communion as the first and only woman ever elected to this high a position in the church…under her leadership we have moved from divisiveness to determination, from recrimination to reconciliation, and from frustration to fearlessness…and even to fun.
Now fun is not something you think about when you think of 12 days of legislative sessions on the church, but it was, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but back to convention for a moment. For the past three years our church has been awaiting a report from the Taskforce for Reimagining the Church – or TREC. TREC was created at the last General Convention in the hopes that from it, we might be refreshed with new structures and ways of being that would enable us to follow the Holy Spirit’s call. In other words, if we look inward, we will restart the heart of the church. TREC – the church’s version of a defibulator. Hmmm…
Well, the problem was TREC did as we asked – they looked at governance and structure, and came back with a whole boatload of resolutions from cutting the size of Executive Council to making General Convention a Unicameral rather than Bi-Cameral body. Yeah, and THAT is what God is calling us to do. Most of us wanted to cut off our own heads when we saw that, but keeping them on, and somewhat level, we realized that all we needed to do really was remember who we are. Yes, the body of Christ, but we also have a legal name that one usually only sees if you get a check from the Episcopal Church drawn on the account of the DFMS. Does anyone know what that name is –we are first and foremost the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society – see, it says so right on the iPad case they gave all of us for our Virtual Binders used at convention.
The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.
We started to understand that this inward facing church only needed to turn around and live into who we are – an outward facing missionary society – founded on Jesus Christ. I would never say that we shouldn’t reform within our structures, and we passed many good resolutions to do just that, but at the core, if we remember who we are – the body of Christ, and do what we are called to do – proclaim by word and example the good news, there is nothing that can stop us. Why? Because we don’t exist for ourselves, but to do the work God calls us to do, and nothing can stop God – nothing – not a sword, and not a cross.
Now about the texts for today. Our King David, he gets a lot of things wrong, we will hear more about that in the coming weeks, but here he gets it right…well, sort of. David is above all things a very emotionally intense character – never one to hold back, even when he should, and that is why we hear such passion in the Psalms, some of which he composed. And so, in the text we heard this morning, he dances with joy that God is with him – if only we all did as much – because God is with us too. Imagine if we went through life with that kind of joy? What would the world look like? And what about King Herod from our gospel reading? Well, it seems Herod started to believe his own press – that his power was absolute and more important than anything else. He valued it over doing what was right. In other words, he valued the institution of his kingdom more than the responsibility he had as a child of God.
The church can sometimes be far more like Herod than David. We can start to believe the press, hold tightly to our ways of doing things, believe that the governance is more important than the work. And perhaps most important of all – we can forget to dance. The thing is, not only is the press was wrong about us, but at General Convention we began to realize, I think, that we were wrong about ourselves. We could do the work, and we could dance and sing and have fun while doing it too. The atmosphere of Convention was relaxed, collegial, and a lot of times hilarious, not the sort of thing one would expect for a church on life support. And that is because, as I said before, the news of our death is not only premature, but in some ways, ridiculous. Because, as we have come to realize, Jesus is NOT easy to kill! Despite the dancing media’s desire to cut off our heads, the body of Christ – all of us – aren’t going to show up on any patter.
Our Chaplain, Lester MacKenzie at General Convention, had us singing and dancing in the aisles, as he continually reminded us that “God loves it when we pray.” The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, the President of the House of Deputies, started twitter contests, asking us to tweet new Rules of Disorder. My entry was that anyone offering multiple trivial amendments, must support those amendments through interpretive dance. I didn’t win. The winning entry was from a deputy who said that whenever the President instructed the House to be at ease, we were to all stand and sing “Let it Go!” from Frozen.
Now all this may seem silly, even out of place for a church living in a world in need. Yes, there is work to do, but if we are to be the church God needs us to be, it all must start with love – God’s love – filling our hearts, and folks, when you start with that – when you start with Jesus, when you start with the Holy Spirit, with God – there will be so much joy that it should be hard to keep from smiling, laughing, dancing, or singing (though I suggest NOT “Let it go” for fear every parent of a child under the age of 12 will slap you silly). And it is that joy that we experienced at General Convention – and we did our part to bring that out into the world, as we are called to do.
At this General Convention we – your church – broke barriers once more – electing as our Presiding Bishop the Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry of North Carolina, the first person of color to hold that position in the Episcopal Church.
At this General Convention we – your church – “in the wake of the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage for all Americans, followed suit on July 1 with canonical and liturgical changes to provide marriage equality for [all] Episcopalians.”[2] We upheld that love is love and love wins above all things.
At this General Convention we – your church – passed a budget that funds programs for racial reconciliation, Hispanic ministries, immigration reform, and more. We discussed and passed legislation on policy in the Middle East (in this I feel we fell short), sexism in the language of the church, and gave out of our own pockets to help rebuild the burned churches in the South, and to support the work of Episcopal Relief and Development.
At this General Convention we – your church – voted to fund new church plants – …let me say that again…we voted to fund new church plants…a funny thing to do for a church on life support, right?
At this General Convention we – your church – did all it could to be good stewards of all of God’s creation, passing resolutions calling for our divestment from investments in fossil fuels, while investing in environmentally sustainable companies and products. We also worshipped together every day – a couple of thousand of us – without using a single piece of paper! Everyone used their iPhone, their tablet, whatever, to follow along. If you think we were all young things doing that, you’d be flat out wrong. Add to that was the use of a virtual binder – each deputy given an iPad with the entire Blue Book on it. The Blue Book is the report of all the CCABs-Committees, Commissions, Agencies and Boards of the Episcopal Church and all legislation. It is usually given out on paper in a notebook the size of two encyclopedias. All these efforts reduced our paper consumption by the hundreds of thousands of pages, saving trees, saving the oxygen they produce, and saving our backs from not having to schlep it all. Not only that – but folks were able to participate in General Convention right from their homes or offices. Several folks caught me testifying on the floor or at worship – so we became accessible to the world – open and transparent.
At this General Convention we – your church – went out into the streets. On Sunday, June 28th, led by the Bishops United Against Gun Violence, of which our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith is a co-convener, 1,500 convention attendees participated in the “Seeking Common Ground” march in the streets of Salt Lake City – which called for an end to gun violence in our streets and around the world. We were a force that was heard!
And yes, at this General Convention we – your church – also passed resolutions to restructure, and to finally revise our aging prayer book and hymnal, and to the delight of every attorney present, made some changes to our Constitution & Canons.
At this General Convention we – your church – did all of this while laughing, praying, rejoicing, and singing.
Does any of that sound like a church on the way out? Hell no!
Of course, if anyone needed any proof that the church is alive and well, they only needed to look right here at Christ Church. Last year we grew by 14%, and this year we will likely do at least that, if not more. To be clear, growth for its own sake is NOT the mission of the church. But growth is a sign that we are following God’s call. There are congregations in decline, there is no doubt about that, but the church – the people of God, we are alive.
See, the only thing being beheaded across the Episcopal Church is the notion that the church was ever ours to kill in the first place – as though humanity had the power to stop the Holy Spirit, to box God into walls, to keep Jesus in the tomb. We all know THAT is never going to happen. Instead, we – your church – all of us – are dancing like David for the possibility of the work we will do in the world in the name of Jesus. Work that will not always be easy, that will carry us sometimes away from the familiar and into deserts that will try us, work that will often seem unending…but it is who we are, it is what we are born to do, and with God, we will accomplish great things!
I am here to tell you folks – to tell the world – the Episcopal Church is alive and well.
We’re not dead. Not even close.
We may have been a bit lost, wandering in the desert of self importance and exclusion, but we have found ourselves again, and we are on the move!
We are a people with a mission. We aren’t stuck inside walls believing we can contain God, or that any earthly institution, the church included, is more important than justice and dignity for all of creation. No. We are the missionary society and we are on fire – because we have good news to share – news that there is nothing more powerful than God’s love – no earthly kingdoms and not even the media who think they are God. News that light overcomes darkness, that love is stronger than hate, that good is more powerful than evil, and that everyone – EVERYONE – is a beloved child of God.
We are following the Spirit and taking Jesus into the neighborhoods.
We are the church alive – loving God, loving neighbor, and changing the world.
Look out everybody – because we are back – and nothing is going to be the same – thanks be to God!
Amen.
[1] Referring to their having left the last General Convention and the Episcopal Church over marriage equality in the church.
[2] Episcopal News Service.
Diana Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
July 12, 2015
Pentecost 7 – Year B
1st Reading – 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
2nd Reading – Ephesians 1:3-14
Gospel – Mark 6:14-29
