Non-sequitor: Welcome to heaven

Shepard hate crimes bill signed today

Here is the sermon by the Rev. Anne Kitch at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, (H/T to Louie Crew's Anglican Pages):

St. Mark's Church
October 16, 1998 Casper, Wyoming
John 14:1-6
The Rev. Anne Kitch

Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says. How can we not let our hearts be troubled? How can we not be immersed in despair? How can we not cry out against this? This is not the way it is supposed to be. A son has died. A brother has been lost. A child has been broken, torn, abandoned. We become lost in a turbulent stream of emotions. Grief. Anger. Guilt. Fear. Shame. Outrage. Bewilderment. Loss. Our hearts are deeply troubled. They cry out, No. No. No. Not Matthew. Not now. No this way.

We come here today to mourn Matt. We come here today to offer our broken hearts. We come here today in the name of love. Because ultimately it is love that binds us to Matt: the love of a family. Matt's family is like any family, sharing life, family meals, arguments, games, Christmas trees. We come here today, in the name of family love. We gather in this church, in the name of God's love. Because in the midst of this horror, in the midst of this hateful crime, Christ's love abounds.

Make do doubt about it. Matthew is loved: by his parents, by his brother, by his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, family all gathered here -- by God. It is that love, which has radiated out of the midst of this tragedy. Love which empowers his parents to speak compassion, rather than condemnation. Love which inspires his friends to acts of prayer and witness. Love which is more powerful than any voice of hate. That is God's love.

We are able to love one another, because God first loved us, created us out of love, lovingly breathed life into us so that we might be part if this good creation. We are able to love one another because God showed us how, sending a Son into the world to live with us, love with us, die for us. Love one another, just as I have loved you, said Jesus as he prepared to die. And Jesus died, and Jesus rose again overcoming death and fulfilling a promise, offering eternal life to all. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ abundant life is promised for Matt.

Matt: a young man who met the world with eager expectation, who offered trust and friendship easily, lived honestly. Matt trusted in the goodness of God's world, reveled in God's creation, allowed people into his heart. When you met Matt, you met Matt. For a small person, he had great presence: one of the things that made him shine on the stage. Matt was not always a winner according to some of the world's standards. He struggled in many ways: to survive as an infant, to fit into a world that is not always kind to gentle spirits. But Matt was a light to the world according to a different set of standards. What was important to Matt, was to care: to help, to nurture, to bring joy to others in his quiet, gentle way. I think Matt would be somewhat bewildered by all this attention to his account.

Dennis and Judy have said that Matt believed if he had made one person's life better in this world, then he had succeeded. I think judging from the world's response over the past few days, Matt will have made a difference in the lives of thousands.

And I believe Matt has shown us the way out of the abyss into which his murder has plunged us. Matt has shown us the way from violence, hate, despair. We may doubt that now. Like the disciple Thomas doubted when Jesus spoke the words we heard today from John's gospel. Jesus was saying farewell to his friends. He was preparing them for his death. So he gathered them together around a family meal and he spoke: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in me." And he promised that they would be able to follow him to eternal life in God';s loving house, that they would be able to sit around God's kitchen table. But Thomas cried out in his fear and despair, "How? How can we know the way?"

Today we may cry out, How? How can we know the way out of the abyss? How can we love? How can we live? And the answer is there. "I am the way, the truth, the light." Jesus has gone before us. Jesus, a beloved son whose body was broken, torn, abandoned, hung in bars of wood by his accusers. Jesus who stood in the face of hate and offered the door to eternal life. This Jesus is here for Matt, is here for each of us. This Jesus promises to prepare a place for each of us in God's heavenly kingdom. All we are asked to do is believe. Believe in God. Believe in Christ. Believe in a love that conquers all -- even death.

Matt believed. Matt believed enough to become baptized in this church as a teenager. Matt believed enough to bring his family with him to church. Matt believed enough to see the overwhelming goodness in God's creation and in each person he met. Matt believed. Matt lived. Matt loved. And we can too, because God loves us and nothing can separate us from that love. That is God's promise. This is what the apostle Paul wanted so fervently for us to understand. That we could count on this promise to change our lives. As Paul says, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So I invite you to come, offer your broken hearts here. Lay down the burdens that you have been carrying for Matt's sake. Allow yourself to fall into the loving arms of God, who will hold you, keep you, comfort you while you begin to mourn Matthew as he deserves -- as you deserve.

And I invite you here to come to this family table. Share in the life-giving food of Christ's body and blood. Share in the promise that Matt has already received. Morning has broken for Matt. Morning in the place where there is no pain or grief. The bright morning of everlasting life.

The need for creeds

On the American Public Media show "Speaking of Faith" Krista Trippet and Jaroslav Pelikan explore "The Need for Creeds."

The late great historian Jaroslav Pelikan devoted his life to exploring the modern vitality of ancient Christian doctrines and creeds, which all revolve in some sense around the Easter events of the life death and resurrection of Jesus. And Pelikan believed that even modern pluralists need strong statements of belief. This hour we revisit my 2003 conversation with him.

Here is an excerpt:

Ms. Tippett: So what is it about Christianity that has needed creeds?

Dr. Pelikan: Well, what it is about religious faith that needs creed is that religious faith in general, prayer addressed "To Whom It May Concern," sentiment about some transcendent dimension otherwise undefined, does not have any staying power. It's OK to have that at 10:00 on a Sunday morning when you're out with your friends somewhere, but, in the darkest hours of life, you've got to believe something specific, and that specification is the task of the creed, because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another. To say yes is also to say no. And clarifying what the yes is and then finding a way to say what it is we believe and the experimentation involved in that, I've made a very good living studying the experimentation, trying — how they tried on particular words for size. There are words in the Bible — important words — which didn't get into the creeds. You see…

Ms. Tippett: Like what? I mean, give me a…

Dr. Pelikan: Like the designation of Christ as logos. Logos means both "word" and "reason," as in logic. And the gospel of John begins with the words that many people know: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." And it was, in many ways, one of the most important terms in the arguments about the identity of Christ during the third and fourth centuries, and yet, in the only creed that all Christians or almost all Christians have in common, the so-called Nicene Creed, the term doesn't appear.

Ms. Tippett: And why was that?

Dr. Pelikan: They wanted rather to make use of terms that would clarify simultaneously the distinction between God and His Son, that when I say I believe in Jesus Christ, I am not saying I believe in two gods. The doctrine of the Trinity was the effort to preserve monotheism. The real Unitarians were the Trinitarians.

Read the rest here. Here is where you can download an MP3, realPlayer or a podcast.

The burglar admires your decor

Revised: The following is what I have written to my congregation about the recent news that the Roman Catholic Church is putting in place a process to welcome to their fold unhappy and disaffected Anglicans from around the globe. Here it is:

You may have noticed the story which supplanted the “balloon boy” as this week’s “holy cow!” news event: the Vatican has announced a process to receive en masse disaffected Anglicans around the world into the Roman Catholic Church. I have received enough inquiries, questions, and news stories forwarded to me by e-mail from parishioners that I feel I need to say to all of you what I have said to some since yesterday morning.

What the Pope has done, apparently (if some press reports are to be believed) against the advice of his ecumenical advisers, has set up a process wherein whole groups of unhappy Anglicans and other long separated former Anglicans can now become Roman Catholics in such a way as to allow them to keep their prayer books and the clergy to keep their wives . A denomination which broke from the Church of England in 1991 applied to Rome for recognition and became the occasion for this new scheme.

The intent of the new rule is scoop up newly separated Episcopalians and other Anglicans around the world who are mad over the ordination of an openly gay bishop, the ordination of women and prayer book revision. Some of this unhappiness stretches back forty or fifty years!

What appears to be envisioned by Rome is an “English rite” church-within-a-church, which would have its own Anglican-style liturgy, married priests and even the possibility of their own seminaries. The idea is somewhat reminiscent of the Byzantine Rite Catholics, who worship in a manner similar to the Orthodox but who live under the Pope’s authority. There is a catch. Every Episcopalian or Anglican who availed themselves of Roman hospitality would find that only their baptisms and marriages would count: they would be confirmed anew (no big deal) and the clergy would be ordained again as if they never were (a bigger deal).

The Pope’s plan does nothing to regularize Anglican orders which were declared “null and void” in 1898 by a previous pope. The current Bishop of Rome had a chance to fix that and instead reiterated the dogmatic nature of that move. If anything, the new policy exacerbates the divisions between us.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops already has a so-called “pastoral provision” that allows unhappy Episcopal clergy to become Roman Catholic clergy, which this new policy would more or less regularize around the world. In the three decades that this “provision” has been in place, something like 30 formerly Episcopal clergy have availed themselves of it.

It is sad to hear that the Bishop of Rome did not have the courtesy to include the Archbishop of Canterbury in his consultations but not terribly surprising. This reveals another aspect that this plan does not change which revolves around the intangible question of ethos. One priest I know, a former Roman Catholic, said in response to my question “Does this change anything for you?” said essentially “Why should I give up Anglican freedom?” The Roman Catholic Church may try to create an Anglican-style ‘church within a church’ but they cannot re-create what has taken 450 years with intervening American and industrial revolutions to form.

The way we Episcopalians live into Catholic tradition, read and “inwardly digest” scripture and make our moral choices will not—and by definition cannot—be carried over to this new thing the Pope is inventing. The Episcopal Church has a unique charism of both Catholic order and democratic polity that few other Anglicans, let alone Roman Catholics, fully appreciate.

Certainly the Roman Catholic Church disagrees with us on a number of things and chief among them is our understandings of what constitutes Christian unity. The Roman Catholic Church defines Christian unity entirely on recognition of the office of Pope as authoritative and they see the entire deposit of faith emanating from there. We understand Christian unity as a present gift of the Holy Spirit, conferred by Christ and it is on us to live into what Christ has already achieved on the cross.

Often what divides us from other Christians is not what we believe, but where we see the implications of our beliefs taking us. One example is how we interpret the meaning of the outward signs of how Christian life is ordered—the community of baptized Christians, the three-fold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop, the nature of the sacraments. Both Catholics and Episcopalians understand that these point us to a greater unity of mission which is not our sole possession but Christ’s. At the same time, we see implications that our Roman Catholic counterparts do not: we welcome all baptized Christians to communion, we do not limit ordained ministry to just males, and we know that it is possible for all kinds of people, gay and straight alike, to live as a wholesome example to Christ’s people.

To note what we share is not to say there isn’t a certain sting when we read the headlines. Benedict XVI has managed all at once to intrude into our own church’s internal struggles for a very narrow strategic purpose; insult the very validity of who we are; and, at the same claim to value what we offer. The move seems designed to divide us. Some may take joy in this, but I do not. It feels something like coming home to find that the burglar has left a note on the coffee table complimenting us on our decor.

It would be a shame for this turn of events to further deepen the divide between our churches and between our two traditions. Certainly, we owe a great debt to Roman Catholicism with which we share much. The most important thing we share is our common calling is to serve as Christ’s ambassadors to a world that still suffers poverty, war, disease, starvation, and limited but misused natural resources.

My experience tells me is that the vast majority of ordinary believers will not be fazed by this. Most laity know intuitively what we clergy often forget: that God is bigger than all this and that the Holy Spirit is present every day in ways that transcend mere denominational differences.

I want to emphasize to those parishioners who have joined Trinity, Easton, from the Roman Catholic Church either through marriage or for reasons of conscience, and to those members whose partners remain Roman Catholic, that nothing has changed. Christ is still present to you in this community and in the sacraments. All baptized Christians are always welcome to Holy Communion, “commonly called the Mass,” in the Episcopal Church. The pastoral care of your parish is still here. Your parish family here at Trinity embraces you. This parish and our diocese will still do the often amazing ministries that God has called us to. We remain a church where Catholic order and tradition is uniquely mixed with freedom of conscience, genuine hospitality, and Christian charity.

Here is the original.

Ninjapalians around one table

Updated with Version 2.0. Some folks in the Episcopal Church took a couple of years to quantify and describe what many everyday Episcopalians already knew: that much more unites us than divides us.

Episcope described the findings:

• “Episcopalians passionately want their church to hold Christ as central and believe their church attempts to do so.
• “Episcopalians see the Church both actually and ideally as a people of the book whose faith is united by and expressed in their Book of Common Prayer.
• “Episcopalians view their Church as both aspiring to hold and successfully expressing a sacramental understanding of the Christian life and relationship with God.
• “Episcopalians view the church as committed to sacramental and incarnational understanding.
• “The Episcopal Church gathers around the Book of Common Prayer as one of its core unifying features and most profound expressions of faith.
• “Episcopalians see their Church as holding multiple theological perspectives, both locally and broadly, and have a deep appreciation for this aspect of Episcopal life.
• “Episcopalians would very much like to de-emphasis any notion of their church as elite.”

“Even among those who most strongly disagree with one another, there is some deeply held common agreement about core themes that are most central to Episcopal identity – holding Christ as central, ordering around the Book of Common Prayer and a sacramental life of faith, emphasizing scripture, holding incarnational theology as important, and being pastoral in response to life’s challenges,” observed Gortner. “The findings also provide some exciting opportunities for deeper discussion about how Episcopalians choose to live and express what is most central, enduring, and distinctive about their shared Christian life and faith.”

A video was created to tell us the results of the study and to remind us what we all share. It is very slick and well-produced. I don't know how long it took them to make. Here it is.



Over the period of a week or so, some folks at King of Peace Episcopal Church, Kingsland, Georgia put this video together. Starting this morning, when it appeared on YouTube and then Facebook, it has now appeared on many blogs and web-sites. Here it is:



So, which one better describes the findings of the study? I vote for the Ninjas.

Two new episodies of "Simon's Cat"

Grumpy cat

See more funny videos and Cute Animals Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Trap

One day, a long time ago in a land far, far away, some Pharisees and religious scholars set out to trap Jesus in his own words. Jesus escaped their trap. But preachers have been falling into their snare ever since.

Marriage in 1^st Century Palestine was no laughing matter. John the Baptist went to the gallows railing against Herod because Herod had married the woman who divorced his brother. John the Baptist could not let Herod get away with breaking a rule that no other Jew in 1^st century Palestine could get away with unless they had money and power.

There were also two main schools of rabbinic thought about divorce in those days, one lenient and one severe.

This was the context of the "test" that was put before Jesus. They wanted to trap Jesus in his own words. They wanted to find out when he would permit divorce, his view of the rules, how harsh or lenient he would be, and—if they were lucky—get him to say out loud what he thought of Herod's scandalous marriage. They knew that whatever he said, they'd be able to criticize him for it.

This was not the first time they set out to trap Jesus in his own words. And while Jesus was able to avoid their net, their trap has been catching up preachers (like me) and ordinary Christians ever since.

They asked Jesus about money: is it lawful to pay the occupying and heathen Roman government their taxes? And we preachers have been scratching our heads about money ever since.

They asked Jesus about eating or healing on the Sabbath, and we preachers have been hung up on rules on food and work and rest ever since.

Today they ask Jesus about divorce. And ever since they tried to trap Jesus in his words back then, Christian preachers have been falling into that very same bear trap for the next two millennia.

Unlike the rest of us, Jesus would not get hooked into a question about when it is allowable to escape a marriage. Instead, Jesus answered a different question: what is marriage—what are these special, intimate relationships—for in the first place?

Let me gently but firmly put aside some of the ways that preachers and the Church have fallen into the trap they set for Jesus.

Remember that there is no single, uniform teaching in the Bible concerning the permissibility of divorce.

• Moses says that you can divorce a wife (Deuteronomy 24:1)
  
• Paul says that divorce is permitted in some instances -- when an unbelieving partner requests it (1 Corinthians 7:15).
  
• Jesus says that you can't separate what has become one (Mark 10:8-9)
  
• In Ezra, it is the sign of a good husband to divorce his foreign (unbelieving) wife (Ezra 10:2-3, 44).
  
• On the other hand, Paul says that it is the sign of a good spouse not to divorce his or her unbelieving mate (1 Corinthians 7:12-13).
  
• And don't forget Joseph, a "righteous man" who felt that it was his duty to divorce Mary as quietly as possible(because he assumed she had been unfaithful to him) (Matthew 1:19).
  

It is important to remember that the Bible is in motion on this subject. Also bear in mind that the Church had no formal marriage rite until the middle ages, and at first it was reserved for those with land and means.

Eventually, we came to a point where we tried to enforce the impossible by doing the ridiculous. Here is the rule that we came to: we decided that God said that every person was entitled to only one marriage per person per lifetime. When relationships broke down and divorce happens, we in the Church have had to find ways to accommodate that reality while still holding on to that rule. And so we'd look into the past to find some moral defect, some reason that allowed us to say (sometimes contrary to all outward evidence) that what was apparently a marriage was not really a marriage at all.

Here is the truth. People make promises and sometimes they just don't work out. So we try again.

Here is another truth: the church has often beat up on people who have not met our ideal.

The Episcopal Church requires pre-marital preparation for everyone seeking marriage or the blessing of a civil marriage in our church. We will be taking at least three, if not six, years to think study and pray over how to bless same sex unions precisely because we take marriage seriously. We want marriages to be healthy and to last and grow. We know that when everything works, we see something of the mystery of God and the Church reflected in it. And we also know that not every marriage is healthy, not every marriage works and that faithful people divorce and often, against all past experience, re-marry, seeking after what God has in mind for us. We want people who do experience divorce to find healing and hope.

The Episcopal Church teaches that the purposes of marriage are for mutual joy, for help and comfort given to each other in good and bad times and, if it is God's will, for having children and raising them in the Christian life. The question is how we can best live into the purposes for which God created marriage—and everything else.

Because the Bible, like the cultures it came out of, evolved on marriage Jesus reminds us to step away from rules and exception dealing with how to escape marriage and focus instead on what marriage is for.

Jesus holds out an impossible ideal to drive home the point that God wants something more for us in our relationships.

When Jesus is asked about the Roman money, he changes the question from taxes to how we use our wealth, our stuff, and our time for God. When we render to God what is God's, he is saying that we must live as if everything we have belongs to God.

When Jesus is asked about whether it is okay to eat or heal on the Sabbath, Jesus turns around and says that the law is made for man; man is not made for the law.

This is what we see at work here today: When Jesus is asked about divorce; he focuses on the purposes of marriage and says what God has made something that is more than what humans can make or break. Marriages then were based on family ties, honor and property. Jesus says that God wants more for us than to treat each other as property.

We preachers and the church as a whole has been tripped up by the trap laid for Jesus, because sometimes (okay, lots of times) we forget the main question. The question is not how we get out of stuff: whether it is paying taxes, working or our relationships.

The most important thing is this: that we see God at work in all that we are, all that we have been given, and all that we do.

If everything we have is from God, then strive to do God's work with what we have.

If all our time and all our skill and talent is from God, then strive to make all our time God's time and strive to make a difference in God's world.

If our relationships reflect God and show off God's presence among us, then seek God's face in the people God has given to us and pray for the grace to be the face Christ to those who seek him.

When we see God blessing and transforming our relationships in our homes—however they are constituted—in our friendships, and in our communities, then we see that God is building something that no one on earth can put asunder.

Jesus is doing what Lily Tomlin once joked, "If love is the answer, could you please re-phrase the question?"

It is to re-phrase the question that Jesus brings the children into the equation after talking about divorce and God's purpose for marriage. We have a choice: we can try to figure out a spiritual protocol for every possible contingency. Or we can enter the kingdom as little children.

We can say, for example, that the goal is "One marriage per person per lifetime" and then come up with exceptions and contingencies for every possible thing that can happen in life—good and bad—to make the rule look good. Or we can allow Christ's redemptive love to not only transform our relationships when they go right and heal us when they go wrong.

The Episcopal Church gave up the annulment game at least 40 years ago because we gradually came to the realization that marriage was made for people; not people for marriage.

We can try to look perfect, or we can come to God as little children. We can choose to come with openness, trust, playfulness, and wonder. We can come to God in Christ not knowing anything except that we love and need love, and that we nurture and we need nurture. We can come wanting to learn and try new things.

Our baptisms, often as little children, tell us that when we come to Christ (whether as infants or as adults) we are helpless, we are new, and we are dependent. And while we have many skills and much history as adults, before God we need to come as one ready to learn, ready to discover and create, and ready to play.

The cross and resurrection, in healing the breach between God and humanity, tells that God starts with us where we are and draws us, nurtures us, encourages and empowers us to become more and more like him. We don't start out perfect. We start out both small and helpless and ready to grow at the very same time. Kind of like children.

Preachers like me and Christians like all of us get trapped when we try to turn God's ideal into intricate (often goofy) human rules. Guidance is good, but let's not get carried away. If we would let go of our anxiety about loose ends and listen, we'd discover that the way that we reach Jesus' impossible ideal is coming to him with the sense of wonder and awe and anticipation that only a child can bring.

Mean kitty