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A Brazilian friend told me, as the Diocese of California was moving towards its new Companion Diocese relationship with Curitiba, in the southern Brazilian state of Parana, that many Brazilian Christians wear a dark-colored wooden ring on the ring finger of their right hands. The practice, he told me, was initiated by a Roman Catholic bishop, who took off his golden episcopal ring and put on the wooden ring instead, the same kind of ring worn by the poor of Brazil as wedding rings, because they cannot afford rings made of silver or gold. While Sheila and I were in Curitiba two weeks ago we were deeply impressed by the great commitment of our Companion Diocese’s bishop, Naudal Gomes, to the poor, and the equal commitment of the clergy and lay people of the diocese. Bishop Naudal wears one of the wooden rings, a small sign of this central commitment of his Christian ministry. I was privileged to be invited to attend the Brazilian House of Bishops, meeting in Curitiba, while we were there. I saw that most of the Brazilian bishops also wore these wooden rings. And I came to see, over the several days of the meeting, that this was no mere affect – the engagement of justice for the poor was central to their conversations. There is another Brazilian friend of ours here in San Francisco who has the dark ring tattooed on his finger. When I talked with him about it, and mentioned the context in which it had been introduced to me – solidarity with the poor – he replied simply, “Solidarity with all sentient beings.” Today is Earth Day. It is helpful for me to remember the lessons that have become more and more deeply seated in environmental work – justice for the poor means justice for the earth, and indeed justice for all. We are truly held in a nearly infinite web of interconnected lives and relationships. It is our vocation to consciously and compassionately inhabit this nexus of relationships, living in solidarity with all God has made.
The best manners, the most respectful posture towards another in the range of our relationships is one that sheds light – love – both outward and inward.
Voices that say that San Franciscans, Parisians, all those living where the Olympic torch is being carried on its way to Beijing should respectfully let it pass should be heard as promoting a lesser form of human kindness. A recommendation for silence over injustice means complicity, and finally more shadows and less light.
It matters, though, and greatly, how we protest. It is heartening to see the unafraid, creative, non-violent way in which protesters have been emblazoning the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Golden Gate Bridge. As my friends and co-workers who have been following these protests tell me about them, they do so with a happy light in their eyes, and with a spark of energy to join in.
The late Rabbi Friedman advised meeting anger with humor – not the easiest prescription to follow, as we human animals tend to either fight or run when confronted with threatening anger. It is a genuinely human response to respond creatively, as these protestors are doing. I would say it is how the fully human Jesus responded to his attackers, and how I hope to follow him.
I said that we must take a posture that shines the light of love outward and inward when we protest. This comes from what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from the Birmingham Jail, when he was responding to clergymen who said, “Wait, be polite,” with respect to the urgency of the Civil Rights Movement. When planning a non-violent action, King wrote, one of the deliberate steps he and others in the Movement took was to purify their motives.
It is important that I know the sources of my anger, which seem so righteous to me. How much floats in our individual consciousnesses, in the darkness of pre-creation chaos, and how much more in the willful shadow of our own culture, the places we would rather pretend do not exist. The light of love must shine into these shadowy, frightening places too as we plan non-violent actions.
Several years ago, while I was serving as Bishop Suffragan of Alabama, working each day a few blocks from the place from which Dr. King wrote his letter, addressed to one of the prior bishops of Alabama, I implored Desmond Tutu to come preach in our cathedral in order to help counter the hatred that the then Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, was stirring up towards lesbian and gay people.
After the electrifying sermon, given to a packed cathedral, the pews filled equally by blacks and whites, I took Desmond across the street for lunch with a group of interfaith leaders. I asked the group to share their own visions of reconciliation, one by one.
Traveling with Archbishop Tutu was the Honorable Sheila Sisulu, then South African Ambassador to the United States. She answered the question last. She said, “When I travel around the world, representing South Africa, people say to me, ‘We need Nelson Mandela to come and lead our country to justice as he did for South Africa.’”
“I tell them, ‘No,’” she said. “I tell them, ‘If you want to find your leaders in justice and reconciliation, go look in your own jails and prisons, for that’s where we put Mandela.’”
Her words jolted me, and they have stayed with me. What Mandela, what King is hidden away in my own country’s jails, unseen by me? How does my shadowy knowledge of my own country’s participation in injustice, in torture and terror, express itself in my outward actions? Does my rage at China have roots in my suppressed sorrow and rage at injustice at home?
I would like my own non-violent actions to be as clear and bright with joy and inner knowledge as seems to be animating the protesters in Paris and San Francisco. Let us use our voices, and let the light shine both outwardly and inwardly.
We need to stand against the ongoing injustice of China against the people of Tibet. And we need to stand for the promotion of justice in our own country as we do so.
Just after the Windsor Report came out I noticed that a certain interpretation of the report was already taking on a reality of its own. Just as the report itself, a document produced by dedicated leaders within the Communion but which has taken on a prominence more out of proportion than its sudden appearance on the scene would warrant, the interpretation of the report took on a solidity and reality that seems hard to shake.
In particular, the report was seen as making several demands or prescribing several lines of behavior for the Communion in its internal relations. This interpretation never numbered the recommended exclusion of Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, from "councils of the Communion" in the “official list” of Windsor recommendations.
Immediately after the Windsor Report was released, I and other bishops pledged to Gene that we would not attend the Lambeth Conference if he were not invited, as a stand of solidarity with him.
For some time now Gene has stated that he thinks all The Episcopal Church bishops should attend, so that as many voices can be at the table as possible. I have accepted this as wise and good counsel.
At the same time, it seems imperative to me that I find some creative way to attend that does not seem to support Gene’s exclusion by silent acquiescence on my part. One solution that is being acted upon is being called “Witness at Lambeth.”
Witness at Lambeth is a piece of the listening process called for from the 1998 Lambeth Conference forward. It involves bringing the voices of LGBT people from around the Communion to Lambeth so they can tell their life stories to all who will listen. Some of these stories will be narrated in person, while others will be on videotape. I think it will be a moving, important witness, and I hope many will support the effort.
Also, I have come back from this most recent House of Bishops meeting resolved to have a consultation here in the Diocese of California about other ways witness can be carried out at the Lambeth Conference. I want to receive the creative thoughts and dreams of our people in patterning my and our participation in the Lambeth Conference.
Peace,
MHA
EpiscoPod has a new episode featuring a conversation that I had with a church historian, a sociologist, and a theologian shortly after the release of the St. Andrew's Draft of the Anglican Communion Covenant.
On February 14, 2008, I sat down in the faculty lounge at Church Divinity School of the Pacific with Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Assistant Professor of Church History at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley; the Rev. Dr. Paula Nesbitt, Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; and the Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson, Adjunct Faculty in Theology at Pacific School of Religion and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, to discuss the newest draft of the Anglican Communion Covenant. The conversation covered a range of issues raised by the Covenant draft, and delved into some deeper consideration of the nature of covenant, and what it means to be Anglican.
I invited several theologically trained members of the Diocese of California to join in the conversation. Not all of them were able to make it, but I have received some written responses and others have told me that they would send theirs and I plan to post those here. Following is a written response by the Rev. Dr. John Kater, who is an emeritus faculty member at CDSP. Then following that is the written response by Jay Johnson who is a part of the podcast.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAFT ANGLICAN COVENANT
John Kater
I am sorry to miss the meeting to discuss the draft Anglican Covenant, but happy to be able to offer some very preliminary and probably scattered comments.
Let me begin with a few general thoughts about the intent of the covenant and the understanding of the nature of the relationship between member Churches which it assumes.
I am pleased that the current draft under discussion uses the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral as its starting point, since that is the only ecclesiological document that has been widely accepted by the member Churches and by a number of Lambeth Conferences since it was first articulated in the 1880s.
The early paragraphs of the draft covenant seem to me to confuse God’s mission with the Church’s mission, but later in the text there is a clear awareness of the primacy of the missio Dei over the mission of the Church, which is always subordinate to what God is doing in the world, both through and beyond the Church. I appreciated the reference to the churches as signs of God’s reign.
I also appreciated the clear affirmation of the autonomy of member Churches within the Communion, and while the Instruments of Unity are affirmed, the document makes it clear that member Churches are not bound by any Communion-wide “legislative, executive or judicial authority.” I wonder, though, if the effect of the proposals at the end of the draft, and especially in the draft Appendix, in fact create a set of de facto legislative, executive and judicial structures that temper the strong affirmation of autonomy: While no church is forced to accept the Communion-wide rulings, it is obvious that if they do not, they face – what? Ostracism? Excommunication? The phrases that describe the results of a failure to acquiesce in time of conflict leave the consequences unclear.
Here are a few comments on specific aspects of the draft.
Paragraph 3.2.3: This paragraph assumes that there are some matters of “essential concern” but fails to offer any criteria for deciding what they might be. Para. 3.2.5 seems to allow any member Church or Instrument of Unity to flag any action of any other Church as of “essential concern.”
3.2.5.d.: Doesn’t the process as outlined make the “moral authority” of the Instruments of Unity into “legal authority?”
Draft Introduction: This section claims that “covenant emerges out of communion” and also “serves communion.” While this has quite a nice and pious ring to it, I am unclear what it means. Obviously the Anglican Communion existed for many years – or centuries, depending on when you consider it came into being – without the need for such a document or, indeed, such a concept. Covenant as a principle of Christian relationship or unity is obviously by no means necessary. The Lambeth Quadrilateral specifically declines to take this approach in defining the necessary conditions for inter-communion; a number of elements considered quite significant or even de rigueur by most Anglican churches – for example, the diaconate as one of the threefold orders of ministry or an ordered liturgy – were not, and apparently are not, necessary for churches to be in communion. The concordat with the ELCA makes no mention of either. I belabor this point simply to emphasize the revisionist nature of the very idea of covenant as a necessary aspect of a relationship of inter-communion between churches.
Revisionist innovation is even more apparent in the Draft Appendix. Three spots that particularly raised red flags for me are:
Appendix 3.1.2.3: The role given to the Archbishop of Canterbury is a completely new one; whatever disclaimers are offered, it in fact gives him a primatial role, not only in the Province of Canterbury, but throughout the Anglican Communion.
4.2: In the same way, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, both designed as consultative bodies, are given a new (revisionist!) role as a court of appeal. This would seem to contradict clearly the affirmation made in Paragraph 3.1 of the draft Covenant.
7.6: The credibility of a member Church’s mission is to be determined by outsiders who may have neither insight nor experience that would make them competent to evaluate whether a specific action or policy furthers or fails to further the mission of the member Church.
I have repeatedly used the term “revisionist” in order to emphasize how far this document takes the Anglican Communion from its historic identity, forged and refined over centuries. While the American Church is accused of being revisionist, it is in fact the purveyors of the Covenant who are attempting to make of Anglican Christianity something it has never been or wanted to be.
Faithfully,
John Kater
The Anglican Communion Covenant
St. Andrew’s Draft
Preliminary Reflections
The Rev. Dr. Jay Emerson Johnson
February 14, 2008
Any analysis and reflection on the current “covenanting process” in the Anglican Communion needs, it seems to me, to keep two historical touchstones in view. The first is that what we call the “Anglican Communion” today is a thoroughly modern invention. It is therefore steeped in colonial-era Christianity and especially of the British Empire variety. The second is that what we mean by the “Anglican Communion” has undergone nearly constant change, revision, reassessment and “realignment” from the very beginning. What the Communion is today is not what it was at the beginning of the eighteenth, the middle of the nineteenth, or the even the end of the twentieth centuries. The Communion’s malleability is, I believe, one of its historical strengths; I worry therefore that the current covenanting process could call that strength into question.
I believe there is much to commend in the St. Andrew’s draft of the covenanting process. My concern however is with the process itself and the felt urgency in adopting a covenant at all. The urgency with which this process has been undertaken references, among other documents, the Windsor Report. But in so doing the assumption here is that such documents have achieved a quasi-official status in the Communion that highlights the underlying reservations I have about the process. The Windsor Report, in other words, has barely been digested, let alone “received” by the worldwide Anglican Communion, yet it is now being referenced as an authoritative document upon which the current covenanting process is based. In my view, this is highly problematic from at least a procedural point of view if not an Anglican theological one.
These very preliminary reflections then are offered against the backdrop of those concerns. Broadly and briefly, I want to reflect first on the post-colonial situation in which this process has emerged. Second, I want to highlight some examples in this draft of why more work on notions of ecclesial identity needs to be done before moving forward with the covenanting process. Third, I want to suggest that procedural appendix illustrates well the concerns I have about the process. And finally, I want to make a modest proposal for what the Anglican Communion might want to do in response to this draft.
The Post-Colonial Situation
The felt need for a covenanting process of this type reflects what has been emerging worldwide since at least the 1998 Lambeth Conference, though I would argue even ten years earlier, in terms of a post-colonial situation in the Anglican Communion. This “situation,” however, remains largely unacknowledged and unaddressed in both the Windsor Report and both drafts of the Covenant. One way to frame this situation is to ask whether the communion we seek can derive from and refer to the North Atlantic generally and the Church of England more particularly as its center. The multiple references to Canterbury, the Thirty-Nine Articles and footnotes referencing English canons in this draft suggest that the drafters of the Covenant believe such centering is still possible. And that reflects a thoroughly modern presupposition.
To put this in another way, the fact that this covenanting process is now felt to be necessary at all discloses the extent to which our post-colonial situation must be more explicitly addressed in light of the fact that the Church of England, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and Canterbury no longer work as sufficient touchstones for articulating what it means to be an Anglican Christian. More pointedly: If English canon law is not applicable to Anglicans in Kenya or Singapore – or really anywhere but the Church of England – why cite it in a document like this that is meant for the Communion as a whole? This prompts one of my key questions about this process:
Does this covenant merely perpetuate the avoidance of addressing our post-colonial reality as Anglican Christians? And if so, then much more extensive re-thinking of ecclesial identity is needed before any covenanting process will find significant traction in a worldwide communion of churches. I worry, in other words, about putting the cart before the horse in our rush to ease the sense of “crisis” and anxiety in the Communion.
Re-Thinking Ecclesial Identity
The need for more sustained theological work around ecclesial identity appears in a number of key terms in this draft that are left undefined or uncritically assumed but which are precisely what is at issue in the felt need for this covenanting process in the first place. Just three examples:
“Autonomy”: While I would not say that this is entirely a modern concept, I would say that it is thoroughly western. Neither the Windsor Report nor this draft of the covenant deals adequately with the potential difficulties in translating the notion of autonomy into non-western locales, where more social and communal anthropologies, for example, inform cultural sensibilities. Moreover, even in western, North Atlantic contexts many will find it at least curious if not incoherent to suppose that “autonomy” and “interdependence” can comfortably co-exist in the proposed structure of this covenant, especially in light of the drafters’ insistence on avoiding any centralized juridical authority.
“Scriptural Authority”: The appeal to this notion as a foundation for the Communion is not nearly as self-evident as either the Windsor Report or this draft covenant seems to suppose. “Authority” can be defined and can operate in a number of ways. The authority of a tyrant and the authority of communal consensus are both “authoritative” but with significantly different consequences. To leave this term undefined with reference to Scripture merely begs the question of what kind of authority the drafters have in mind. (This, I would argue, has been at the root of biblical debates for nearly all Christian communities for decades.)
“Common Prayer”: This is likewise treated as a self-evident reality and in some surprising ways. In some instances of it in this draft one might suppose we’re still living in the Elizabethan settlement with a single prayer book. How we understand the remarkable range of diverse liturgical styles and multiple prayer books (the New Zealand Prayer Book and the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer are really quite different) as constituting “common prayer” in the Anglican Communion ought to prompt some serious reflection on how “unity-in-diversity” appears in other areas, but this is both unacknowledged and unaddressed.
The Procedural Appendix
While the drafters are quick to note that the appendix of proposed procedural processes for adjudicating disputes is in its earliest stage, I do think it sheds light on the covenanting process itself. I also think it illustrates my conviction that adopting a covenant like this is premature.
Perhaps any evaluation of the procedural appendix should be done by actually testing it with the issue of women’s ordination. Among many others I was rather startled by the remarkably sanguine posture toward that issue adopted in the Windsor Report, as if there were no longer any controversy over the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion.
If we were to test the proposed procedures appended to this draft with that issue, I believe we would quickly discover how much more preliminary work needs to be done on emerging post-colonial conceptions of ecclesial identity before a covenanting process like this could achieve any significant traction among twenty-first century Anglican Christians.
A More Modest Proposal
Again, while I believe there is much to commend in this draft of the covenant, I do worry (for the reasons noted above and others) that this covenanting process has proceeded too quickly and from a place of anxiety rather than from a place of mutual trust and “affection” (to evoke the Windsor Report). I worry as well that if this covenanting process is perceived as being imposed on the Communion rather than emerging organically from a sense of shared faith and mission, then the very purpose of the covenant would be subverted (and perhaps not even qualify as a “covenant”).
Rather than moving toward adopting a covenant for the Anglican Communion (whether with this draft or subsequent ones), perhaps this St. Andrew’s draft could be used as the basis for Communion-wide conversation on ecclesiology in light of post-colonial sensibilities. It seems to me that we need much more data and personal experience of how Anglicans in, for example, Kenya, Brazil, Hong Kong and Chicago understand and live their faith before we can create a covenanting document among them. Indeed, if such encounters and conversations were engaged and sustained, we may discover that a formal, institutional covenanting process is actually unnecessary.
A rather rich place to begin such conversations and encounters might be found in what seems nearly a throw-away line in the commentary on the draft by the drafters (page 6, concerning clause 3.2.5):
“Communion is founded on the mutual recognition that each Church sees in the other evidence of our communion in Christ.”
In my view, this elegant claim about ecclesiology reflects a biblically rooted approach to the issues we seek to address (this claim, for example, echoes rather strongly the approach taken in the Acts of the Apostles concerning the inclusion of Gentiles in the Christian community). If we were to create opportunities across the Communion for Anglicans to discern and discuss “evidence of our communion in Christ,” I believe we would discover that what unites us is far greater than what presently seems to divide us. We would also likely discover a far richer and more diverse treasure chest of “evidence” for our shared communion in Christ than we have yet imagined and, perhaps, that we are already engaged in covenanted mission through the Spirit – quite apart from any institutional or procedural documentation of it.
The following came in an email from Jon Spangler. There are many versions of this out there, so the original source is unknown by me, but thanks to Jon for sending this along.
Take a good look at the diet of each country and the cost of what is eaten in one week.
Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07
United States: The Revis family of North Carolina (Sure hope most American families eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less junk food than this family.)
Food expenditure for one week $341.98
Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11
Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09
Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27
Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55
Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03
Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
I have been quoting the brilliant Arundhati Roy for several years now to the effect that the non-violent movement, begun by Mahatma Gandhi, is in a crisis – the leaders of the world, particularly the United States (and her own India) have learned that they can ignore mass non-violent actions. We saw that it was not only our political leaders who were ignoring non-violent actions when Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” showed what none of us watching network “news” had seen, the large protests at President Bush’s first inaugural.
Now, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Gandhi’s death, it seems a good time to look at this crisis, and consider how we might creatively respond to it.
First, we need to remember that the word “mass” is often before the phrase “non-violent resistance.” Maybe the emphasis on the leaders ignoring non-violent efforts is an easy answer for me, getting me and us off the hook – maybe just not enough of us are joining in the non-violent movements of our time.
One of the great witnesses to the power of peace and reconciliation living today is Fr. Michael Lapsley. I have blogged about him before. The Pilgrims for Peace met him and heard him speak in South Africa at the TEAM Conference in the Spring of ’08. Something he said then has helped shift my thinking about the origin of the crisis in the non-violent movement.
“Until Apartheid became an issue for the whole world, Apartheid was not going to disappear,” he said. In preaching I have often pointed out that the diabolic is the shattering of an integrated whole. The diabolic is intensified by the deliberate isolation and then destruction of already disconnected “shards.” It would have suited the purposed of the Apartheid regime to keep the oppressed out of the public eye.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains but a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.”
I think for me it is time for all that is holding me back from my solidarity with my brothers and sisters everywhere who are hemmed in by the diabolic to die. I believe the crisis of the non-violent movement rests more on the shoulders of a passive, dispirited public, and Church, than on the shoulders of public leaders and the media. I think it is time for me to follow the Jesus whom Gandhi admired, and who inspired him. Maybe the best way I can honor the anniversary of Gandhi’s death is to prove this maxim of his untrue in my own life: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Mohandas Gandhi
Loving God, the Winter Solstice indicates a growing shadow that many of us find mirrored in our own lives and in the world around us. We long for the birth of the Messiah, once again, in our world, in our hearts.
We are grateful today for Mary and Joseph, courageous parents who helped raise Jesus to be the embodiment of hope for the world.
We thank you for Jesus the child, God-With-Us in a way the world did not expect, shattering equations of authority with power and force.
We pray for the eyes of hearts to be opened so that we might see the birth of the Messiah now, come again in the way we need now. We have learned that you send your love to us in the places we would rather not look, so help us spend a little time on the margins of our lives so that we might be among the first to welcome our expected Savior in this new appearing.
In the name of this mysterious, surprising and entirely familiar Christ we pray,
Amen
jasper is a high school student and member of our saviour, mill valley, where i heard him eloquently participate along the line of the post below regarding the heart of the episcopal church and our place in the anglican communion. i was deeply moved by what he had to say, and by his commitment.
Every year at advent we hear the story of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness that something great is coming. We hear also of how crazy he was, how so few people listened, but we know now that he was right. Something wonderful was indeed coming. That something was a someone, Jesus of Nazareth, who would go on to preach a message of love and equality, echoing John’s call to lower every mountain and fill in every valley. We call ourselves Christians because we dedicate ourselves to loving and serving all that God has blessed.
Today, we are that voice in the wilderness, crying out for the earth to be made flat so that every human being may walk on equal ground. We are shunned by “mainstream” Anglicans, cast out by the community that was supposed to be our home. We are told that the split is our doing, that we are to blame for this schism. And in fact, we are. It was our decision to consecrate a gay bishop, to elect a female presiding bishop, and to insist that it is our right to do these things. But let’s be proud of that. Any communion that would not allow us to recognize the equality of God’s children is not a communion we should be a part of.
We see in the stories of Jesus’ ministries to the prisoners, the lepers and the outcasts of society in his day a message that no one is below the love of God. We are all God’s children, and we know that what we do unto the least of the people of God, we do unto God. Every time that we allow an injustice to be perpetrated against a gay man or a lesbian woman, the marginalized of today’s world, we allow the attacker to harm our beloved God, and in our negligence we are guilty. It is not enough to stand on the sidelines, and hope that someday things will be better. We must make our stand for those that society considers “outcasts” if we are to be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is not easy to take a stand on so divisive an issue. In our fractured world, I would much rather advocate unity and reconciliation. Only one glance at the newspapers is enough to remind me that this world is defined by East vs. West, Shia vs. Sunni, red vs. blue. I do not want to support splitting the world yet another way. But this is not a division on ethnic, religious or political differences. This is liberty vs. inequality. This is right vs. wrong, and there can be no reconciliation with wrong.
This is not just a struggle for members of the gay and lesbian community. I am not gay, but I owe it to my family members and friends who are gays and lesbians to take a stand. I owe it to the individuals who fought and sacrificed for the Goldberg family during the dark years of Nazism. I owe it to all who have taken stands in the past. I owe it to Jesus himself, who gave everything for each and every one of us.
The wilderness is never an easy place to be, but let us not despair as the Anglican Communion leaves us. Someday, those who understand the absolute equality of human life will be more numerous than the stars. In the meantime, it is up to us to proclaim the bold message of Jesus, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Harvey Milk, even if it seems that no one is listening. The Anglican Communion divided will not stand, but the “fierce urgency of now” demands us to stand up. We cannot compromise with what we know is wrong. Forget your fears, disregard the prevailing opinions, remember Christ and join us on the journey to the Mountaintop.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee there was a restaurant called “The Bahoo Container.” The interior of the restaurant was light, airy, with high ceilings, clean-lined windows, and beautiful batiked fabric swooping in the space between floor and ceiling.
One day, when Sheila and I were having lunch there, the owner came by the table to see how we were enjoying his restaurant. I asked him about the name, what did it mean? He said, “Everything in the world is held within a container; it matters what the container is. Sometimes we are not aware of this.”
I have never forgotten his words, and have returned to them many times over the years, trying to be aware of the containers in which I exist, the influence they have on my attitudes and perceptions.
The Gospel reading for Third Advent has brought this back to mind for me:
Matthew 11:2-11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,
`See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.'Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
This year, for the first time on reading this familiar story, I thought of the container from which John speaks, a prison, and immediately thought of the completely opposite container in which we first meet John – the dark, nurturing womb of Elizabeth.
In the latter, John leaps with joy at the presence of Mary and the Messiah-to-be in her womb. I think now that it is Elizabeth, the living, loving woman who bears John who enables this unthinking joyful reaction to Emmanuel.
And likewise, I think that the questioning response of the prophet John, shut up in an enervating, frightening darkness, the antithesis of the womb.
The container, however, whether womb or prison, while powerful, is not all. As Christians, and as Christians in this season of expectation and hope, we believe that God can lighten any shadow, show up in any cell.
Twenty-seven years ago, in Jerusalem, as Sheila and I were getting ready to go to Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, I found a poem by Thomas Merton on the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, while both were pregnant. Here is one of the concluding stanzas, that expresses well the sense I have of this One who transforms our containers, transforms our lives with, as John knew, Spirit and Fire:
Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied
sermon.
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience.
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier.
It was a happy conjunction that on the eve of Reign of Christ Sunday, Sheila and I made our first visit to the San Francisco Opera, to hear Verdi’s “Macbeth.”
First Shakespeare, and then Verdi with his powerful translation of central ideas in the seminal play, and finally this highly intelligent production of the opera, gave me bitter food for thought; bitter, but almost greedily consumed by me, as I continue to struggle with how to be a Christian living in an empire that is showing a frightening reactivity to its dim consciousness of its own increasing weakness.
I will concentrate on a few of the great number of arresting musical and production-based elements that made this “Macbeth” a strong critique of the human lust for power, and the psychological self-deception we practice to cover our own awareness of this otherwise naked desire.
First, the opera opened with Lady Macbeth singing from atop a cube set in the middle of an great space defined by a high curved wall, and a ceiling with a huge, ragged, gaping hole, as from a meteor piercing the vault of heaven. The cube is an abstraction of a castle, a narcissistic personality, the sad prison we create when we give ourselves over to the drive for power. Lady Macbeth moves restlessly over the upper plane of the cube, packing, a caged predator, tethered to the surface by a black rope.
After the murder of the King, Duncan, people and nobility gather in shock bewilderment, and pray to God for a righting of the chaos imposed by the regicide. The voice of Lady Macbeth soars over the chorus, singing the same pleas for divine deliverance from the very deed she had incited her husband to commit.
Similarly, at one point the seemingly mono-focus Lady Macbeth bends piteously over, in prayer, and sings, to a gentle, beatific melody, “The dead have lost their lust for power; give them a requiem and then eternity.” We have been presented in Lady Macbeth a person who has been led into temptation, given over to evil, who yet is aware of her entrapment in the distorting search for dominating power, and who craves release from it.
Finally, after the deaths of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and the triumphal entry of the boy king, Malcolm, who is welcomed with a stirring chorus, the opera’s director provides us with yet one more critique of our cultural addiction to dominating and being dominated – the soldiers of the hailed boy-king, the savior who they suppose will set things right, goose step their way across the stage. The substitution of one monarch for another is not release, but yet more bondage and deep frustration of the submerged dream of liberty.
I found this production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” helpful as I prepared for my annual discomfort on the Reign of Christ Sunday. Rather than attempt to redefine monarchy in terms of the reality of Christ, would it not be better to turn to another model for human life entirely, one that comes from Christ and is free of the besetting cultural addiction. In this way, the Church may move to become the remnant for “after empire.” We may look to Advent as a manifestation of Jesus’ way, that is not a king’s way, nor a way that can fruitfully be compared to kingship. Rather, it is a way we learn by being fully awake and attentive to his voice.
