My dear sisters and brothers in Christ:
I welcome you to this soggy, historic port city of Vicksburg, the River City with all the rain we have been experiencing, for our 185th Annual Diocesan Council. Do the math. One hundred and eighty five annual gatherings takes us back to 1827 – about the time Bo Roberts became rector of St. Mark’s, Gulfport. Since 1827 we have gathered together to renew our commitment to Jesus Christ and to rededicate ourselves to our common mission within the Episcopal Church in Mississippi.
In a nod to our liturgical, historical roots at this service each year, I wear this black chimere, the one and only time during the year, which was the preferred bishop’s vestment for most of our 185 years.
So we gather with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven who have prepared our way and prepared this church for the challenges of this time. The words of my grandfather to this diocesan council in 1963 echoes still: “These times were made for us,” he said, “and we are made for these times.”
I want to thank our hosts for this gathering – the four Episcopal churches in Warren County – St. Mary’s, Vicksburg; Holy Trinity, Vicksburg; Christ Church, Vicksburg; and St. Alban’s, Bovina. Special thanks to Richard and Susan Price, the chairs of this year’s planning committee. Thanks to the many volunteers from the host churches and the steering committee, and of course to the diocesan staff, and especially Canon Kathryn McCormick, who at this gathering, marks the twenty fifth diocesan council that she has coordinated. And though his work over the past fifteen years has not directly affected the planning of Council, my friend Mr. Ed Thurmond is retiring this year as treasurer of the diocese. Thank you, Ed, for your commitment and gifts so freely given.
The theme of the 185th Council is “Celebrating One Church.” That theme is reflected on the cover of your Council booklet with representations of the processional crosses from each of our four host churches and in the backdrop made in exquisite detail by artists Delores Terrell and James Smitheart and Jim Miller and Wanda Warren. I hope that this theme also echoes in your mind and heart the mission statement of this diocese that we have adopted and I have been preaching since 2004. We believe ourselves, we have said again and again, to be “One Church in Mission: Inviting, Transforming and Reconciling.” During our time here in Vicksburg, we want to celebrate the ways that we have lived into that vision of being One Church and imagine the possibilities as we move ever more deeply into that vision of who we are called to be.
This year we are going to do something a little different with the response to the Bishop’s Address. In addition to the formal response by the Committee on the Bishop’s Address, an action that is required by our Canons, in case you wondered, we will also be inviting all of you to respond to what you heard within your own delegations. You will be asked tomorrow to take a little time and respond to the following questions:
- What did you hear that excited you?
- What did you hear that concerns or bothers you?
- What parts of the address will you want to share with your congregation when you go back home and why?
So…pay attention!
I want to begin this celebration with two death and resurrection stories arising out of Warren County. One hundred and four years ago, All Saints’ Episcopal School was established by Bishop Theodore Bratton as a boarding school on a site next to what is now the National Military Park. As the years went on, All Saints became a joint ministry of the four neighboring dioceses – Mississippi, Louisiana, Western Louisiana and Arkansas. And many of you were touched personally by the ministry of All Saints’ School. Changing cultural realities combined with an enormous debt burden forced the closure of the school in 2006. After staving off bankruptcy and a loss of our school to our creditors, we spent a good deal of time discerning the use of the facility that would be consistent with Bishop Bratton’s vision of an educational ministry to young people. Ultimately, a decision was made to lease the facility to the National Civilian Community Service and to house the southern campus of the AmeriCorps Service Program. Tomorrow, you’ll be hearing more about AmeriCorps, but the word to you tonight is that, at this moment, we are paying down a major debt burden with the possibility of a significant revenue source in the future and the campus is alive with young, idealistic men and women who are offering their lives in service to this country and its communities. A rebirth, right here in Vicksburg.
Continuing the Warren County narrative:
Several months ago a group from St. Alban’s, Bovina came to me with an idea to restart a worshipping community in St. Mary’s, Bolton, a church building that had been locked and shuttered for years before I became bishop. Yes, I know, Bolton is in Hinds Count, but the initiative came from Warren County. And I gave my approval, a spark was lit and the entire community of Bolton – Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians – all came together to rebuild, repaint, re-air condition the building so that it has become a community church for the town of Bolton holding regular Episcopal worship services in which many non-Episcopalians participate. After a long, long absence, tomorrow we will welcome back to this Council, St. Mary’s Bolton, as a reconstituted Mission Station of the Church.
There are many more examples of our doing things together that we could never do alone. Our summer and winter camping ministry at Camp Bratton-Green served almost 1,000 campers over this past year – an all time record. Almost 20% of that number received scholarships – another unprecedented figure. It is not just your financial support that makes this all possible. Indeed it is the hundreds of volunteers – lay and clergy – that staff these camps. The use of clergy at Camp Bratton-Green and in ministries outside of their local parishes is a critical part of the wider ministry we share, though frankly, sometimes their offerings to these ministries are misunderstood by vestries and congregations,.
The Spring tornados that devastated Smithville, invoked an immediate response from churches throughout the diocese. Our response, coordinated by All Saints, Tupelo, provided immediate relief supplies and used the gifts of time, talent and treasure from so many of you to rebuild a home for extended members of our diocesan family.
Earlier this year, the vestry of St. Timothy’s, Southaven, agreed to release their clergy to work with the two other congregations in DeSoto County – Holy Cross, Olive Branch and Resurrection, Hernando – to see if a unified Episcopal witness and ministry in DeSoto County, lived out in three distinct congregations, was a possibility. The early results are extraordinarily positive and hope-filled and are another way that, as the old hymn has said, “new occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient truths uncouth.”
And over this past year, because of your contributions in years past your Servant Ministry Committee made grants to five congregations for startup outreach programs totaling almost $17,000.
In recent years, I have challenged the churches of this diocese to expand the focus of their mission to look well beyond ourselves to discover what it means to be “One Church” in a deeply divided world. I have asked you to respond to the needs of children beyond the membership of your church. Congregations for Children became a way in which to celebrate your efforts. We have recognized more than a dozen congregations by that title for their exceptional ministry to children.
Two years ago, I challenged you to deepen a sense of our common ministry with those beyond our borders within the worldwide Anglican Communion. So many of you have responded to that challenge and have become involved in ministries beyond the borders of this country. Our 31st medical mission, this year sponsored by St. Peter’s, Oxford, leaves next week with participants from a dozen different churches, and contributions of money, supplies and prayerful support from so many more. Trinity Church, Hattiesburg began a micro-industry of craft production in Honduras a few years back, and a team recently traveled to Tegucigalpa to establish a new partnership with a local church. Several churches are participating in ecumenical mission efforts in Honduras.
The Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation, and its host diocese of South Rwenzori in Uganda was the focus of several churches. Bishop Masereka and Dr. Daniel Sambili, the chief physician from the Clinic in Kasese, Uganda, will be our guests again later this Spring, to discuss the next steps in this ministry now that funds have been received to complete the long awaited expansion of the maternal and children’s clinic. I also challenged you to join in a national church-wide effort to respond to the needs of our Anglican brothers and sisters in the wider community of Haiti after its devastating earthquake. More than $20,000 from this diocese, as much as we know, maybe more, was raised by your various efforts.
I was particularly taken by the Delta Convocation of churches led by St. James’, Greenville, sponsoring a walkathon to raise money. And within that particular effort, I was particularly interested in one part of their pledges that allowed someone to make a pledge of a certain amount so they would not have to walk. (Maybe our stewardship campaigns should take note of that?) Church of the Mediator, Meridian has established a partnership with Ascension Church, Beraud, Haiti to support its educational ministry and the rebuilding of its school. St. Pierre’s, Gautier and St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea, Gulfport, had a barbeque cook off to raise money for the rebuilding of the Cathedral in Port-au-Prince.
Several churches have chosen to work with Heifer Project in a variety of ways and St. Paul’s, Picayune participated in a local street fair to raise funds for earthquake victims in Japan.
Good Shepherd, Terry, continues on their own to support a medical student in South Sudan, and so many of you have told me of your prayerful support in wonderful and personal ways to these missions, expanding our sense of what it means to be “One Church.”
We also have two young people committed as missionaries to parts of the Caribbean in partnership with the local Episcopal diocese. However, diocesan budget realities this year have complicated this effort and may require some creative financing. But all in all, to many that are doing things that I have not mentioned, thank you for your faithful and creative response.
I also challenged you last year to walk with me through the 50th anniversaries of some extraordinary events in our common life in Mississippi. I asked churches to use this commemoration of watershed moments in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi as a time to recommit to the difficult and elusive work of racial reconciliation. Many of you have taken steps locally in that direction. Last year, in conjunction with the State of Mississippi’s celebration of the work of the Freedom Riders, St. Andrew’s Cathedral hosted a diocesan-wide eucharist devoted to repentance and reconciliation. Plans are underway to offer another diocesan-wide event in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the entrance of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi.
And, a few years ago, Bishop Hope Morgan Ward of the United Methodist Church and I signed what we called a “Covenant of Common Life” and committed ourselves to an ever deepening relationship between the two churches, consistent with the international ecumenical discussions taking place. We will renew that covenant again this year in a joint worship service in Natchez on March 1, a traditional gathering near our liturgical feast of John and Charles Wesley.
Following the signing of that covenant a few years back, I called this church into an ever deepening relationship with what I call “the Wesleyan branch of the Anglican world” through study, worship and ministry opportunities. It has been a great joy in my life to see you come to me excited about what you are doing with your local Methodist churches, in finding common ground with our Methodist sisters and brothers.
We have established a formal relationship with the Center for Ministry at Millsaps College to broaden and expand a very important initiative for the training of spiritual directors in a program called Journey Partners. A growing number of lay and clergy from this church are being trained for this ancient ministry alongside our Methodist brothers and sisters at Gray Center.
This year we broke new ground in this relationship as the United Methodist Church in Port Gibson contracted with the rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church, the Rev. Margaret Ayers, to be their pastor. Yes, you heard me right. The negotiations were deliberate and intentional and certainly formed by our broader ecumenical conversation. But now, Mississippi, unique so far as I can tell in this nation, has an Episcopal priest serving as pastor to a United Methodist congregation, in addition to her role as rector of St. James’.
And, as if that is not pushing the envelope far enough, Bishop Ward has invited me, and I have accepted the invitation, to join with her later this spring in ordaining her new class of clergy.
I continue to marvel at how the Holy Spirit continues to move among us removing age-old barriers of race and class and denomination – if we only have eyes to behold God’s hand at work.
Later on this weekend you will be hearing about another local program that is breaking down invisible barriers for the poor in order to make the journey out of poverty accessible, real and permanent. It’s called Bridges Out of Poverty and it has taken root in Starkville due to the efforts of Deacon Lynn Phillips-Gaines and the people of Resurrection, Starkville. Preliminary ground work has also taken place for a similar program in St. Philip’s, Jackson.
I could go on and on. There are remarkable things going on in congregations across this diocese. Week after week after week the faithful gather to make their offering of their selves, their souls and bodies to the Lord of their lives. Week after week hope and healing and renewal and recommitment takes place, and the witness of this church is lived out with extraordinary richness and faithfulness. I know it, sisters and brothers, because I have seen it happening in so many, many places.
Now, of course, there have been some disappointments. My hope for an intentional and carefully designed Hispanic ministry in Central Mississippi has been delayed. I had asked Bishop Victor Scantlebury, who was returning from the Diocese of Chicago and coming back to Jackson, his adopted home, to coordinate this ministry. He was willing, but just as we began to talk about all of this, the Presiding Bishop sent him to Ecuador to take charge of the diocese in deep disarray.
Another disappointment is that the Bishop’s Mission Corps has been unable to recruit sufficient numbers of young people to form a class over the past two years. And Camp Caritas, our Camp for Children whose parents are in prison, will not be operating this summer due to the significant decrease in contributions from foundations and churches. And, as many of you know, Lutheran Episcopal Services of Mississippi, our coordinator for Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction shuttered its doors as major funding sources dried up.
There are, of course, many challenges. Some of those challenges are financial. The financial stresses of this past decade are real. Some congregations are discovering that they can no longer afford full-time seminary trained clergy. And thus, an increasing amount of my time is spent with Canon David Johnson working on new, non-traditional models for clergy training and deployment. More on this later.
The financial stresses in congregations directly impact the wider ministries we share together. The percentage of pledged income to diocesan ministries has been on a significant downward trajectory over this past decade even while total local income at the congregational level has been increasing during that same period. There have been notable exceptions to this norm. In fact, eighteen congregations increased their percentage pledge to diocesan ministries this year and four congregations: Holy Innocents, Como; Trinity, Hattiesburg; St. Christopher’s Church of the Ascension, Jackson; and St. James, Jackson have each increased their diocesan pledge over the past two years.
As I have tried to say in our pre-Council convocational meetings, what we do together as a diocese – ministries that we cannot do alone – not only contributes to the vibrancy of our church’s mission, it is also one of those characteristics that gives us our unique identity as the Episcopal Church. We are poorer as a church when we do less together. Though it looks as if we may have to cut back on several programs and once again defer any cost of living raises to your diocesan staff, this year our diocesan budget is fluid. It will not be formally adopted until the Executive Committee meets in March because we have still not heard from several churches about their pledge for next year. Those who have ears to hear …
Related to, though not identical, to the financial stresses is the challenge of aging congregations and the fear expressed about decline and increasing irrelevance to younger generations. The fact that this diocese has actually shown modest growth in the last year or so and we have generally been flat in membership numbers over the past decade even as mainline denominations across this country have experienced steady decline, does not give us solace. We know that things are not as they were 30, 40, 50 years ago in our church. And all too often, as I travel, I discover fear, even paralyzing fear. It is a fear rooted in survival instincts. This fear is very real, this fear is understandable, natural and normal.
This fear is, however, not of God. Nor is it the reason Jesus commissioned those first twelve. Jesus didn’t say, “Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching because we are an aging and shrinking people.” Nor did he command us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner because it would help us to survive.
Sometimes, my sisters and brothers, our fear of survival robs us of seeing God’s movement among us in new, life-giving and grace-filled ways. Now hear me clearly, not everything that is new is, necessarily, of God. The call of the church is ever to discern and test what is of the Spirit of God and needs to be embraced, and what is fleeting and passing. That task of discernment is rarely clear, always very difficult, but absolutely essential.
The challenges of this moment in our common life, embraced without fear, can be the catalyst for enormous creativity and energy. As a bishop colleague friend once advised me, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
The challenges of this moment have forced many of you, many congregations to think new thoughts. Several congregations in the Delta have begun to consider new models of ordained ministry in their region. After extensive conversations with clergy and lay leadership in that region this past fall, we are in the process of developing, both short and long term initiatives to address both clergy and lay leadership issues as well as broader congregational development issues. Some initiatives will be specific to that region, but most will have wide application throughout the diocese.
Let me share some examples of what I am talking about: New initiatives that have grown out of an understanding that the models that have been successful in our past are often inadequate to our future.
- On February 25, in just a few weeks, the Leadership Conference for Vestry, Wardens, and Treasurers will feature a new speaker this year, Mr. Kirk Hadaway, a gifted speaker who tracks the trends in our church and has quantitative explanations and responses for our challenges. I commend this to you all.
- The Lay Leadership Training Institute, the brain child of Alice Perry and Sherry Cox when they both served on the Executive Committee, has just completed a very successful pilot program this year. The LLTI will be expanded next year and available to lay persons in all congregations;
- Next year we will be partnering with the Diocese of Chicago and four other dioceses to dramatically upgrade our mentoring program for newly ordained clergy.
- The Cooperative College for Congregation Development, CCCD, is an extensive, and extraordinarily well-received, congregational development program now in its third year. The Cooperative College for Congregational Development, is a joint effort by Mississippi and neighboring dioceses and is now taking applications through the diocesan office for its 5-day event this summer. This transformational program is hosted at Gray Center and well worth the time, energy and costs.
- Finally, the Iona School, a cooperative effort by the Diocese of Mississippi, the Diocese of Texas, six other dioceses and the Seminary of the Southwest, will open its doors this fall at Gray Center to educate and train our new class of deacons. In the fall of 2013 we look to begin training persons for ministry as bi-vocational and non-stipendiary priests – an emerging new model for ordained ministry in this diocese.
Each of these initiatives is not fear-driven, but bring “best practices” of healthy and life-giving congregations to bear on the challenges of our time. And each is an example of the things that we can do together – across congregational and diocesan barriers – that we could never do alone.
This past year I traveled to several places where I heard not one word of fear. Encouraged by some younger members of our church, I undertook a series of meetings and conversations with young adults throughout this diocese. Some that I talked to were involved in our churches. Others were not. But all were deeply passionate about the need for the church to be a vital part of their lives. They told me that they needed the church to take them deeper into their soul so that they might not just talk about, but experience God; and they needed the church to take them deeper into the needs of the world so they might not just talk about, but serve God. Both inward and outward were what they longed for from this church. But what they too often experienced was a church that appeared, at least to them, to be interested more in style than substance, to fight over non-essentials and to ignore that which was foundational. And above all else, “be real,” they said to me. “I wish my parents would quit telling me why Ineeded to go to church,” one young woman said to me, “and begin to talk to me honestly about why they do.”
Lots of frustration and lots of passion from these young people, but no fear. I wonder, in our fear, do we have eyes to see? Do we have ears to hear? Or are we too blinded by the needs of survival?
Our triennial General Convention, another source of fear for some, will be held this summer in Indianapolis. You elected a fine deputation last year to go as your deputies to this remarkable event, and will be re-introduced to them tomorrow.
There will be many matters that will come before us this summer. Re-visioning and reorganizing of our national structure to make us less a corporate bureaucracy and more agile as an instrument of mission is a high priority of mine and of our Presiding Bishop. One resolution that will be considered tomorrow asks General Convention to undertake this effort.
Another issue that will be discussed extensively will be a denominational health plan that has been the source of considerable conversation since it was adopted three years ago.
But clearly the most attention, in and outside of the church, will be given to a proposal from the Standing Liturgical Commission that offers a particular and specific liturgy for the blessing of same gender relationships. It is my sense that, General Convention, with some amendments or conditions, will approve an authorized liturgy for the blessing of same gender relationships for use in the church.
This, of course, is not new to this General Convention. Indeed, for decades in our church, liturgical blessings of monogamous, lifelong relationships have taken place in certain dioceses under certain conditions with the approval of the diocesan bishop.
Indeed, my own intellectual, spiritual and psychological journey to understand the realities of these committed relationships began in earnest while I was rector in Oxford when I was asked by a number of those couples (one of whom had their relationship blessed by an Episcopal priest) to help them work through problems in their relationships. And so, since 1986 when I was first approached for help, I have sought to find ways to support monogamous lifelong commitments made by same gendered persons – relationships that in their best moments can be vehicles of devotion, love and grace.
As a bishop, I have tried to offer that support in a variety of ways, both institutionally and at more personal levels. Most recently, I have invited the Right Reverend Mary Glasspool, Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles, to be the leader of the Spiritual Renewal weekend at Gray Center in August. This annual event is open to all, but it began and continues today as a spiritual resource for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons in this and surrounding dioceses.
Mary grew up in a clergy family like I did, was enormously helpful to us post-Katrina as a canon in the Diocese of Maryland, is a trusted colleague in the House of Bishops and is in a committed lifelong relationship with her life partner.
Having said all that, it probably will surprise some of you, when I say, I have not been willing to authorize liturgical rites of blessing as part of that support. I recognize to many that this refusal appears to give lie to my professed pastoral care and concern. That perception is a burden I have chosen to bear since I became your bishop. In lighter moments, I prefer to think of myself as a walking paradox.
Despite what General Convention may do, I am still not prepared to authorize such blessings in this diocese. My reasons are two fold:
First, despite our best efforts to make clear the subtle, but significant differences, these rites of blessing will be perceived both in the church and outside, as the sacramental rite of marriage. I am not prepared to make such a perceived change in the sacramental life of the church.
Secondly, our Archbishop of Canterbury has asked that for the sake of the wider church, our Episcopal Church refrain from this authorization. Though I am not required by any canon to abide by his request, I have chosen to do so out of my deep devotion to this “One Church” we celebrate this weekend.
My differences with many of you, and with much of the wider church on matters of theology and sexual ethics has been known for a decade or more. I believe that they do not even come close to being “deal breakers.” They are simply differences between good and decent people seeking to be faithful in their lives and in the witness of Christ’s Church in a very confusing and complex time. And so it is, in a season that will undoubtedly witness the unprecedented shrillness of our election campaigns, we, in this church will talk, pray and listen to each other. And we will assume a love of the Lord and the best of motives in those with whom we disagree. The way we disagree can be a radical countercultural witness to our society.
Regardless of what General Convention does, I will still be your bishop, this diocese will still be an expression of the Episcopal Church and I expect to see all of you back in church!
There are a few more things you can expect of me this year. I will endeavor to reclaim some of the teaching ministry of this calling as your bishop. Even as we seek to respond to the ever changing mission field on our doorstep with new and emerging models of ministry, you will hear me calling us back to our deepest spiritual roots. Our deepest roots are deeper than the 1950’s; deeper than the establishment of this church in this country in the 18th century; and even deeper than the development of what we know as Anglicanism in the 16th century in England.
For, in case you haven’t noticed, much has changed if we stop to notice. We are no longer the established church; no longer the church of the establishment, reflecting the social and economic leadership in a community. No longer can we expect to grow simply through the maternity ward and by the infusion of the upwardly mobile seeking a church to reflect their social status. To those who are spiritually hungry and searching for a church home, the fact that the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Anglicans will mean absolutely nothing to them. They are looking for something much deeper, much more life-giving and life-changing.
Rather, I will be teaching out of the ancient traditions of our church. It is only as we are so grounded that we can be creatively faithful in our age.
Some of you have heard it in the teachings on the eucharist and baptism that I have shared from the pulpit and in other venues. That teaching ministry will continue in my invitation to the church to read the four gospels with me this Lent. If you register through the diocesan website www.dioms.org or through your local clergy person you will receive, by means of a program called “Constant Contacts,” regular personal reflections from me on the scriptural passages that we are reading together. My intention is to issue a similar invitation with another portion of Scripture in Advent. Tomorrow afternoon we will have a “walk through” on what such a reading might be like.
And as part of an ever deepening array of offerings by the Center for Formation and Mission I will be leading three quiet days for silence and reflection at Gray Center beginning next month.
You can also expect to hear me talking more and more about our relationships with our overseas partners. I am hoping to find people in this diocese willing to deepen our partnership with the educational and medical ministries of the Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation in Uganda.
You’ll hear me talking about going to South Sudan again. The young men and women of Sudan who came to this diocese 12 years ago have been encouraging me to work with them to develop medical and other ministries to the Diocese of Twic East, so they might return and serve their own people in their former communities. We will be working with the health ministry office of the Archbishop of South Sudan to find ways to offer medical care to the people of this newly independent nation. I will be looking for a few brave, adventurous souls with some medical training to develop and support a medical clinic in South Sudan.
I want to close with some personal reflections and how all of what I’ve been saying is inevitably shaped by the people who have molded us.
Against all odds and to the dismay of those who assumed he would be here when Jesus returned, Bo Roberts announced his pending retirement as rector of St. Mark’s, Gulfport. I was a camper at Camp Bratton-Green when Bo was a high school counselor. I was a high school counselor when Bo was my cabin parent in a cabin full of very tough kids from the coast. There was a moment during that camp session, between Bo and those campers, that I cannot describe in all its salty detail. But the image that was seared in my memory to this day, was that those junior high hooligans began to take Jesus seriously – because they took Bo seriously.
If Marshall McLuan is right, then the medium is the message. If the church is the medium for the Gospel message, the world will take the Gospel seriously, when it sees the church not as a social gathering, but as a community of hope and healing and transformation.
Last weekend we buried the Rev. Canon Frederick Judson Bush, long time priest, archdeacon and canon to the ordinary of this diocese. Though his gifts, organizational talents and singing are legendary, (old timers remember “Plus John and the Minus Four”) he was known to most as “the Old Goat” who would make his way to the microphone at least once at every Diocesan Council to offer a wise, often piercing, but always hilarious observation on the way we were doing business. His wit helped shaped the way we do our work at Council.
Can this church, with an extraordinarily serious and life changing message, continue to have the capacity to laugh at ourselves and the way God continues to use our human foibles and imperfections as bearers of God’s grace?
And as many of you know, just before Christmas my mother died after an extended illness. Some of you know, as well, that just after her funeral I baptized my first grandson, Joseph Danilo Gray. And as a few of you know, I have preached about the weaving of those two events together over the past few weeks.
But in this context let me offer another perspective. My mom was once asked to speak on those things that had shaped and formed her to a group of bishop spouses. She wrote and spoke of the influence of family, church and her native soil:
I have been molded by the rural South – its traditions, romance,
myths, sins, tragedy and sense of place. I am firmly rooted in
the old South, but I would like to think that I have participated in
forming the new South.
Many of us have been shaped and formed by that same sphere of influences. And, I dare say, many of us were molded in our faith by a remarkable convergence of social, cultural and religious movements in the middle and late 20th century – “its traditions, romance, myths, sins, tragedy and sense of place,” to use her words.
But now my grandchildren – Joseph, Harper, and Sadie – have been born into a time and place where the social and cultural supports of their faith are fast eroding. That has changed the medium of the message and the model of ministry. It is to the church, alone, that they will look to teach them the tradition and the hope and the sacrifice and the joy that is known in the claim and call of our Lord in their lives. Our culture will no longer do this work for us. And it is this church, carrying into this generation the eternal truth of God’s love revealed in ages past, that must find new and life-giving ways to share that transformational message.
I, too, have been shaped profoundly by the church of my past. It has been life-giving and life-changing. I will be forever grateful for its witness. I am who I am because of my past.
I am firmly rooted in the old church, to use my mother’s words again. But I would like to think that I will be a participant in giving birth to a new way of being the church in this so very challenging century. I want to leave a vibrant church for my grandchildren.
I have shared with you on other occasions my understanding that I am a transitional figure in this church – one foot planted in our past and one foot stepping forward rather awkwardly into God’s future.
It is so very scary to imagine what that future might look like. The vision that is emerging in our time is not yet very clear. As we seek to understand God’s providential activity in our midst we will make countless mistakes and will have to ask forgiveness of God and each other.
But I invite you to continue to pray with me that we might be open to God’s movement and renewal of God’s church. And to lean on God’s promise – “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of time.”
Sisters and brothers, we are One Church. We are all in this together. I cannot think of a better community of faith with whom I would wish to take this journey.
May God richly bless you, one and all. Amen.
