Report of the Presiding Bishop and Executive Council to the 70th General Convention
Episcopal News Service. June 25, 1991 [91169]
Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning
Before I say anything else, I want to offer my personal word of thanks to the men and women of this Executive Council, and especially to the vice-chairman, Dean David Collins. Their creativity, commitment and hard work over this triennium have been abundantly on display during this past hour. I am grateful not only for their toil and sweat, and for their loyalty, but also for the integrity they have displayed as a diverse body committed above all to the good of this church. There have been some rough places in the road these past three years, but they have walked that road with grace. A good part of that graceful journey has been under the leadership of David Collins. He has won the respect and affection of everyone in this church over the past six years, and we are going to miss him sorely in the chair. We owe both him and the other members of the Executive Council a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Six years ago, to my astonishment, I was elected your Presiding Bishop. The six years have passed more swiftly than I could have imagined, but the joy and wonder have been deep and abiding.
A great part of that joy has been in coming better to know you, the people of the Episcopal Church, and in sharing your ministry as disciples of Jesus Christ. You are a faithful, hard-working and generous people! You have given me heart and courage to proclaim the gospel and to bear witness as the Presiding Bishop. And you have taught me lessons, valuable lessons on which we can all build as we continue to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Let me share a few of the lessons I have learned among you.
First, I have learned, or re-learned, in countless ways, that the church of Jesus Christ is more than the sum of its parts.
Gathered here in Phoenix, we rejoice that our church is a mosaic made up of a rich variety of gifts. Diversity is a quality we treasure. Sometimes we are self-consciously and even defiantly different! Yet, by faith, we, the many and varied and different, can proclaim with the apostle Paul that in Christ we are one. The many are one, for the creator has so arranged our diverse members that the body is a functional whole, one pleasing to God and showing forth God's glory in the world.
There have been times when the body has seemed out of shape. Usually that has been when, to echo Paul, an eye has said to a hand, "I have no use for you." Or an ear has complained, "Because I am not a foot I do not belong to the body." But that is foolishness, and we are given the grace in our better moments to see and feel the interconnectedness and interdependence of all parts of our body.
Frederick Denison Maurice, the great English theologian of the last century, once said that Anglicanism has a special vocation "to hold together things which were never meant to be separated." I have tried in humility to make this a watchword of my own ministry as your Presiding Bishop. I now know that the landscape looks different from 815 Second Avenue than it did from the beautiful islands of Hawaii. I can see that parts of the body that once seemed quite self-sufficient cannot in fact survive without other parts. "If all were a single member, where would the body be?"
It was Maurice who noted that the diverse movements in the church of his day were generally right in the things they affirmed, but wrong in the things they negated. This observation made in nineteenth-century England bears up remarkably well in twentieth-century America. The many movements of our church, the advocacy groups and the caucuses and the synods, are to my mind generally right in what they positively assert and sometimes wrong in what they negate. This is simply to say that while no one group has a monopoly on the truth, advocacy groups spring into existence in order to uphold a partial truth in danger of being neglected or forgotten. We do well to listen carefully to each other, then, even as we resist reducing every mystery of our faith to simple slogans.
History does have a way of repeating itself. Arguments about sin and sinner, about orthodox and heretic, about who is and who is not to be ordained, crop up with regularity. Jesus once said, "you have the poor with you always." We also have with us always the pressing questions of institutional order and procedure. But we cannot be limited by such questions, important as they are. For the church is more than the sum of its parts, and the church has a gospel to proclaim, a mission to carry out. The world little knows and little cares about our housekeeping, for it writhes in its own pain and brokenness. Woe be to us if we are not clear about our mission!
I have learned that the public witness of our national church does make a difference.
Six years ago, and then again three years ago, we, together with other churches in America, stood firmly in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in South Africa. The evil system of apartheid is now on its last legs and will soon be history. I am convinced our consistent and firm witness is helping to bring apartheid down. I am convinced the sanctions we have supported have been effective and should be continued until our partners in South Africa suggest otherwise. I am very disappointed that the President has so quickly abandoned these sanctions despite my recent request not to move hastily, before all conditions have been met. I therefore call on this Convention to send the clear message that we have not abandoned our partners.
I am told that the Episcopal Church operates more soup kitchens than any other denomination in the country. But we do more: we actively advocate on behalf of the poor and homeless, the economically and racially oppressed and those afflicted by AIDS and countless other social ills. We not only reach into the river of despair and rescue people who are drowning, we also move upstream to see who is throwing them in! And it makes a difference! You have just heard stories of the difference it makes from members of your Executive Council.
Christians in the Middle East were heartened and given strength by the remarkably unified witness of our North American churches against the rush to war in the Persian Gulf. I know that for some of you it was difficult to see your Presiding Bishop in the forefront of such a witness. But it made a positive difference in the lives of our Middle Eastern sisters and brothers in the faith, particularly those of our own partner church in the Diocese of Jerusalem. Living in a largely Muslim world, often themselves held in suspicion by their neighbors, these Middle Eastern Christians were able to point to the voice of the church in the United States as a morally distinct voice, anchored in Christian faith and spoken from the freedom of a democratic environment. No witness from the West could have had a more positive evangelistic impact than this.
Now, in a post-cold-war, post-Gulf-war world, the church must not grow timid in advocating for God's new order. Prophets are needed, and God will raise them up, even from among us. These will be prophets who are also evangelists, bold proclaimers of the new life in Christ. Do not shrink from that call when God lays it upon you. It may be a call to resist the spiritually deadly lure o' consumerism, which so afflicts our society. It may be a call to resist the corrosive effects of lives devoted solely to maximizing material profit. The communist regimes of Eastern Europe have fallen, but this is no time for triumphalism and complacency in the West. Now is the time for humility, for a great mantle of leadership has been cast upon us as a nation. Now is the time for careful stewardship of the precious life on earth that we ourselves embody.
Now is the time to seek and serve Christ in all creation.I have learned, finally, that it is to the example of Jesus we must ever look.
Six years ago I called for a more inclusive and more compassionate church. I declared there would be no outcasts in this church. In the years that have ensued, I have been amazed at the number among us who consider themselves to be outcasts! I have been amazed at the fear that creates outcasts - a fear of difference and diversity, a fear that obscures the faces of our brothers and sisters and makes them seem the faces of strangers.
But the good news is that we have no cause for fear of difference. Difference is of the essence of creation. God created difference, and God called the creation good. This is a cause for celebration, not a cause for fear. We honor God as we honor God's creation, in all its wonderful difference and diversity.
Today, at midpoint in my ministry as your Presiding Bishop, I renew my call for a more inclusive and compassionate church, where none need feel themselves excluded from full participation for fear of being different. I do this in the name of Jesus, whose perfect love cast out fear, whose ministry was marked above all by merciful compassion and gracious inclusivness.
The ministry of Jesus is our ministry. It is the one ministry to which we are all ordained by baptism. It is to the ministry of Jesus alone we must ever look. The church catholic is marked by its acknowledgement of the living Christ, a person, not by its acknowledgement of an idea or a system. Ideas and systems come and go, but the compelling figure of Jesus remains, the one who "came not to be served but to serve."
Thirty year. ago, Martin Luther King had a dream. It was a powerful dream, and it made a difference. Dreams can make a difference, for we may encounter in our dreams angels of the Lord.
Do you remember these words of a contemporary of Martin Luther King? "Some see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things that never were, and ask why not."
Let us be bold in dreaming, my dear friends. Let us dream things that never were, and ask why not.
Let us dream of a church that refuses to settle its disputes and divisions by legislation, that refuses to accomplish with law what only the gospel can do. What difference would it make if we held in creative tension our partial claims on the truth, trusting the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth? Would we not thereby "hold together [the] things which were never meant t) be separated?" If it would make a difference, then let us begin by a systematic, critical examination of the way decisions are made in our church. Our life together as a Christian community, our witness together as servants of Jesus Christ and of one another, is too important to be torn apart by binding decisions made in the heat of partisan debate.
Let us dream of a church that recognizes differences as God-given and God-cherished. Let us dream of a church whose members recognize the face of Jesus in those most unlike themselves. Let us dream of a church that resolutely refuses to allow racism a place in its internal life. What a difference it would make! Would not our unity be unshakable? Let us begin by ensuring that our congregations and communities and governing bodies are inclusive and accessible to all, spacious and hospitable havens for any who hunger spiritually and physically.
Let us dream of a church in partnership with every living being on this planet. Would it not make a difference if we consistently and lovingly honored life, from its inception to its end? If it would make a difference, let us begin by challenging every system that would cheapen life, that would shackle the powerless to lives of poverty, crime and drugs, that would consign future generations to an earth abused and degraded.
Let us dream of a church that works resolutely for world peace and refuses to see justice sacrificed to expediency. Let us dream of a church that speaks out boldly and with authority on the place of military spending and armaments in our national life. Would such a church not make a difference? If it would make a difference, then let us begin by joining a national debate to redirect the foreign policy goals of our government and our commerce to ends more worthy of the great nation we are. Let us be faithful stewards of the rich wisdom of our tradition, so that a distinctively Christian moral voice does not fail to be heard in our land.
Let us, finally, dream of a church that cherishes and honors its young people, that cares enough to do unyielding spiritual battle with the destructive values of our society. Would it not make a difference if our children learned peace instead of war, if they learned the joy of sharing rather than the addictive habits of consumption? If it would make a difference, let us begin by modeling for them in our own personal and institutional lives the example of Jesus. And then let us show our confidence and faith in our young people by seriously equipping and empowering them for mission. There can be no more pressing and important task in our church today!
A church that resists settling its differences by legislation, seeking instead a consensus forged by the work of the Holy Spirit; a church that celebrates difference and makes a place at the table for all; a church that enters into partnership with all creation, choosing life over death; a church that struggles unceasingly for peace with justice; a church that honor, its young by entrusting them with God'; mission. Is this not the very church of Jesus Christ?
My dear friends, we can dream of such a church and we can look to the future in confidence and hope. We can do so because we know, come what may, God is in charge. God is faithful to the creation and will not abandon it. The same God who brought the children of the covenant out of captivity and went before them into the promised land still goes before us. The same God who raised up Jesus from the dead still raises us from the death that surrounds and threatens us. The same God who sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, comforts us still, and will yet guide us into all truth. Ours has been a wonderful heritage, and ours will be a wonderful future, because "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."