Wrong savior syndrome

Do you want to know what my problem is? My problem is that I keep trying to follow the wrong savior. I keep getting my messiahs mixed up. My bad!

You see, I keep wishing that Jesus will come and take away all my troubles as if he were one of those great designer drugs they advertise on TV. You know the ones I mean, right?  The ones where everyone is happily riding bikes or rowing boats or hiking mountain trails while the announcer reads off all the possible side effects. These ads are supposed to tell you that prescription drugs are serious things and that only your doctor knows best. But my eyes and my emotions tell me I want to ride my bike on the mountain trail.

I like my Savior the same way. I hear all the things about taking up my cross and following. But what I really want is for God to fix everything. There is a big part of me that wants a savior who will solve all my problems so life would not be so hard.

Oops.  Wrong savior!

If you have ever suffered from wrong-savior syndrome, you are not alone. We hear in today’s Gospel about Peter having the exact same problem. Even though he has correctly confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, he cannot bear to hear the truth that this same Jesus, this same Messiah, would have to be arrested, handed over to his persecutors, tortured,  killed and then on the third day rise from the dead.
It is too much for Peter to bear. He can’t take it in. His only response: "God forbid!"

You see he wanted Jesus to be all-victorious. The most powerful guy on the block, if not the world. He wanted Jesus to bring down the wrath of God.  This is a classic case of wrong savior syndrome if ever there was one.

Just look at where Jesus has taken his disciples. He has taken then to a Roman garrison city called Caesarea Philippi. A fortress town that the Romans built that would be a sign of Roman power, a garrison from which their troops could march, and a place where Roman gods could be worshipped out of sight of the local religionists. Jesus takes his followers to a symbol of Roman power to confess him as messiah, and then he starts talking about what following him is like. What is following Jesus like? It is like carrying your own cross. Really? You know when people carried crosses, right? On the way to their own execution!

Here is Jesus talking about who he is—the Messiah—in the middle of an outpost of the Roman Empire and he immediately starts talking about the Romans #1 way of keeping people in line: crucifixion!

For those of us prone to wrong-savior syndrome,  Jesus connects the dots so plainly and directly that it is like a slap in the face:

You see, here is the way to keep from getting our saviors mixed up. Instead of Jesus taking away all my problems, he wants us to have the strength, the grace and the courage to take on our problems—to carry our cross. I want a way out of my troubles. Jesus offers us a way through all of life—the hard stuff and the good stuff.

Following Jesus makes a difference because he makes the hard life of faithfulness possible and less lonely.  Jesus blazes the trail for us to follow.  He creates a truly human life possible, lived under the mercy of God, blood, tears, death, and all.

We want life to be easy. The trouble is that it is really only the hard things in this life that end up telling us who we are. The hard things in life tell us what we are made of. They tell us what really matters.  It is only the struggles we work through, successfully or not, that teach us the limits and the grandeur of being human.  It is only the acceptance of suffering as a necessary part of the human condition that draws together and unites us as one in our fragile, bodily, humble reality.  It is only in confronting our death and placing our lives wholly in the fatherly arms, the motherly embrace of God, that we can finally and truly live.

When Jesus tells us that Christians will be persecuted and that we will be called on to show off or talk about our faith in front of hostile audiences, he is telling us to hang in and to trust God. He is saying that we will get the strength to confess Jesus when the chips are down because we have already immersed ourselves in a life of prayer, steeped in scripture, nourished by the sacrament and surrounded by Christian community. He reminds us that we will confidently and boldly confess Jesus when the chips are down because we did not ignore him when things were easy.

But when we decide to let Jesus’ cross take away our own then we give into wrong savior syndrome. The real savior calls us into the hard work of a life of purpose, sacrifice, and loving others. Jesus, the real savior, gives us back our lives.  He saves us from meaningless days and years of having nothing to do. He saves us from going through life as if we are just ticking off check boxes of things we have to do.  He opens our eyes so that when we see injustice and cruelty in the world we can say, “Yeah, I guess if I don’t do something, no one else will.”  He touches our hearts and minds so that can choose to live in honest dialogue with all kinds of people. He gives us the strength to be vulnerable enough to pray with people who differ and even disagree with us.

You see, Jesus’ cross help us carry our cross. When we choose to be open and honest about our faith in a way that tells the truth without being obnoxious, then we discover what is means to not only carry our cross but also how to follow Jesus.

I still get my saviors mixed up. It happens whenever I am tired or overworked or feeling pressed upon by a world changing faster than I can handle. Then I go for the fake savior…the one who will knock heads and take names, the one who agrees with all my opinions, the one who judges everyone else but not me.
And when I don’t want to look at the deep truth of human sin, or when I am feeling really risk averse, then I go for the squishy savior. I will be attracted to his love but not accept the challenge of the cross…the challenge to change.

But when we go back to our baptisms, when we go back to the broken bread and poured out wine of the Sacrament, when we go back to our Christian companions, when we go back and confess Jesus as messiah and savior and, without shame or fear, and orient our lives towards him, then we discover that God has given us in Christ everything we need to follow him. And here’s the best part, even though we are prone to wrong savior syndrome, Jesus, the real savior has never, ever forgotten us.

Second Sunday in Lent B, Mark 8:31-38- March 4, 2012

Knowing

Last week the famous biologist and pop-atheist Richard Dawkins met the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most. Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University to debate belief in God. This is not the opening line of a joke. It really happened.  

The Guardian reported on the debate and said this:

Dawkins played the passionate and inspiring preacher perfectly. …He quoted a poem by the biologist Julian Huxley and launched into his credal statement: "The laws of physics have conspired to make the collisions of atoms produce plants, kangaroos, insects, and us."
"Darwin", he said, "gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing – a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe."

Against this mystery and power, Williams played the part of the humble seeker after truth, looking always for fresh evidence.

"A soul is something that does not cease with death," said the archbishop. "What it is, I have no idea. A number of images, but no idea." More research is clearly needed here.

Dawkins was baffled by this attitude: "Why you don't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that we can explain the world, the universe, life, how it started from nothing? That is such a staggeringly elegant and beautiful thing. Why do you want to clutter up your world view with something so messy as a god?" 

"I am not thinking of God as something extra that must be shoehorned in," Williams replied, stepping back from this slash with Occam's razor.

"When I want to solve problems of 21st century science I use the methods of 21st century science. When I want to understand my place in the universe, I reserve the right to go back to Genesis."

“Why do you want to clutter up your world view with something so messy as a god?”

What many people, atheist or Christian, forget is that the kind of knowledge that science is and the kind of knowledge that faith are different forms of knowledge. They don’t contradict, they overlap. Look again at Dawkins ‘ opening argument: in talking about science, he speaks as a man of faith. He uses one kind of knowledge to describe beauty and wonder of another kind of knowledge.

Episcopalians believe in dinosaurs and the God of all creation. We accept modern science and the person of Jesus Christ.

The trouble with Christians who try to make the evidence of nature “prove” the story of creation in the Book of Genesis is not their faith. It’s just that they are confusing one kind of knowledge for another. We Episcopalians say that the authority and nature of the Bible suffers when we make it into a science text-book. Doing that also harms faith because it assumes that faith and science can’t live in the same room. If this were true, then there could be no Christian doctors, nurses or veterinarians; there could be no Christian pilots, sailors or astronauts; there could be no Christian biologists, physicists, mathematicians, musicians or artists. The fact that there are Christians in all these fields tell us that different kinds of knowledge can operate in concert.

We all have different ways of knowing the world. There is an old saying, “If you think like a hammer, then everything is nails!” The kind of knowledge it takes to be a scientist or an engineer, or the kind of knowledge it takes to be a writer, artist or musician, is not the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of faith. There is a kind of knowledge that is required to be a teacher, a therapist or a social worker. These different kinds of knowledge overlap and certainly do not cancel one another out. This is the reason that a sound education requires exposure to all kinds of knowledge. It makes us a more complete people.

Nothing closes down the life of faith faster than teaching that faith is incompatible with the other ways of knowing. There are a Christians who ban instrumental music, eschew dancing or who think that science hurts faith. But we are a part of a tradition that values diversity, allows hard questions to be asked and discussed, and touches all of our senses when we worship.

We also embrace all the ways that we discover truth. So our faith looks in wonder at a universe where both Newtonian laws of motion and quantum mechanics operate at once. The life of faith revels in a world where all kinds of art and music flourish at once.

The life of faith gives meaning and, therefore, a different kind of structure to the other kinds of knowledge.  This is why Dr. Williams was right when he said “When I want to solve problems of 21st century science I use the methods of 21st century science. When I want to understand my place in the universe, I reserve the right to go back to Genesis."

Sometimes we think that the faith-knowledge should act like other kinds of knowledge. This usually trips us up. The week before he met the Archbishop, Dawkins debated another Anglican cleric, The Rev. Giles Frasier. Dawkins was complaining that in a recent survey most people in the UK who called themselves Christian could not name the first book of the New Testament and could not accurately name the Ten Commandments. He said—sounding a little like a fundamentalist preacher himself—that most people who say they are Christian are just “ticking off a box” but do not have real faith. Frasier asked him to name the full and complete title of Darwin’s text “On The Origin of the Species.” Dawkins could not do it.* If Christians don’t get all the facts right and don’t practice their faith 100% that does not make them less Christian. Just as Dawkins’ inability to recite Darwin does not make him less of a biologist.

What Dawkins, and many other people—atheists and believers alike—forget is that faith is a kind of knowledge we all seek and use. It does not matter if one is an atheist, deist, a Muslim. It makes no difference if one is a Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or Christian. We all have it. We all seek to know the world and make sense of it. I did not say we all agree! And I did not say that it was all equally valid! I did say that one way we all know the world is to some degree through the knowledge of faith.

Faith helps us make choices about how to respond to each other. Whether we choose to see life as abundant or empty, miraculous or scary, flows from the kind of knowledge we call faith.  This is why the Archbishop could sit in contented, agreeable silence while the scientist ticked off the complexity of the universe. Dawkins sees an awesome, mysterious, beautiful world that has always been there. Williams saw the beauty, awe and complexity and behind all that God.

As we enter this Lenten season, and go forward towards Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, and as we as a community of faith enter into the mysteries of Lent and Easter, I am struck by how much knowledge we share.

The fact that we all—not just in our parish, but everybody—use and are drawn towards the kind of knowledge we call faith is for me a sign that God is in fact real. The fact that we all seek after truth, meaning and beauty is a sign of God’s very presence with us.

Christians believe that in Christ, we meet and know a God who knows us.

The opening prayer in our Holy Eucharist talks about God, to whom “all hearts are open, all desires known, from whom no secret are hid.” Think about all the ways God knows us. They mirror and reflect all the ways we know God. God knows how we are made, God knows our abilities and potential, and God has faith in us to become the kind of people God knows us to be.

__________

* = The full title is: “On the Origin of the Species by Natural Means of Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.”

This is the essay for the March-April edition of the parish newsletter of Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA.

Three ways to learn how to "be kind" this Lent

Here is Father Jim Martin, SJ, Cultural Editor of America Magazine with a word on what to take on this Lent.

Two words: "Be Kind."

This is much better than giving up chocolates. But it pretty well sums up the heart of the Gospel.

He says there are three ways to Be Kind:

• Don't be a jerk.
• Honor the absent.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt.

The First Saturday  in Lent

September 25, 2012

Bullying is no longer a "Restricted" topic

Many of us in parish ministry encounters the terrible effects of bullying. Whether it is a kid trying to fit in youth group or church camp, or whose parents are beside themselves trying to get the schools to pay attention, or a kid who acts out because he can't take the pressure anymore and has no place else to go. No doubt some of us have presided at funerals where bullying got out of hand and a kid died or a kid was so harassed he committed suicide. 

In the face of a "boys will be boys" culture or a society that just shrugs saying that sometimes girls can just be mean, it easy to feel helpless. 

What if you created a documentary to describe bullying and you could not show it to kids because the real-live kids in the film use language that adults think kids should never hear.  

This is the problem facing The Weinstein Company over their film "Bully." Linda Holmes at NPR has the story:

The Weinstein Company has lost an appeal to the MPAA, which has smacked an R rating on the painful documentary Bully (which I saw at Silverdocs last year when it was called The Bully Project), from filmmaker Lee Hirsch.

The rating is for language — meaning that the reason the ratings organization is taking the position that the movie isn't appropriate for kids to see without their parents is not that it depicts violence and trauma and the aftermath of the suicides of children, but because an environment full of teenagers, when realistically portrayed, includes swearing.

The intention of the studio who bought the documentary is to show it both in theaters and at high schools and middle schools across the country.  Because he MPAA gave the film an R rating, the film will be shown to the audience at which it is aimed, containing actual dialog spoken by young people who would not be allowed in to see the film.  Yes, a documentary that is about what life is actually like for high school and middle school students was deemed inappropriate for high school and middle school students.  

The MPAA said in a statement:

Bullying is a serious issue and is a subject that parents should discuss with their children. The MPAA agrees with the Weinstein Company that Bully can serve as a vehicle for such important discussions.

The MPAA also has the responsibility, however, to acknowledge and represent the strong feedback from parents throughout the country who want to be informed about content in movies, including language.

The rating and rating descriptor of 'some language,' indicate to parents that this movie contains certain language. With that, some parents may choose to take their kids to this movie and others may not, but it is their choice and not ours to make for them. The R rating is not a judgment on the value of any movie. The rating simply conveys to parents that a film has elements strong enough to require careful consideration before allowing their children to view it. Once advised, many parents may take their kids to see an R-rated film. School districts, similarly, handle the determination of showing movies on a case-by-case basis and have their own guidelines for parental approval.

Of course, an "R" rating does not simply convey information, it determines audience and what theaters will carry the film. Holmes says"

The first thing to understand about this statement is that it's simply not the case that a rating "simply conveys to parents" information. At theaters that choose to participate in the ratings system and in enforcing it, the rating stops kids at the door if they come without an adult. It's patently disingenuous, if not outright dishonest, to refuse even to come to terms with the fact that ratings functionally limit access for kids as old as 15 and 16, many of whom are old enough that they have jobs and substantial responsibilities they take care of every day, arguing that they only convey information to parents. It's just not true.

In fact, the rating has the ability to affect access for kids whose parents never have any idea the movie even exists, so obviously, it doesn't have only the effect of conveying information to parents. It can, in fact, effectively supplant the parents by deciding that if the parents for whatever reason don't know that their kids have decided to head out to a theater to see a movie about bullying, the kids aren't admitted. Nobody, in that scenario, has gotten any information about anything. Nobody. All you have is a kid who's seeking out a documentary about bullying — a documentary that tries to take them seriously, that tries in part to show them that it understands how hard it is to be them, who can't get to it.

The Weinstein Company is considering leaving the MPAA so that they can distribute the film unedited as an unrated film.  Unfortunately that means most theaters likely won't play the film.  News of the rejection is being strongly criticized from several corners.

As one young adult said to me in his e-mail alerting me to situation: 

Anyway, you should watch the trailer.  No idea if the actual movie is any good or actually gets its message across well, but the trailer is pretty moving by itself.  Wish this stuff was recognized the way it is now back when I was in junior high/middle school/high school.  Glad it's getting attention now.

One Moment Meditation

A friend gave me a little card that says "Relieve Stress: take a prayer break!" It came in a little frame and now it sits right in front of my computer monitor.

Here is a good, practical lesson on how to take a prayer break called "One Moment Meditation."

 I like to use the Jesus Prayer but however you do it, it is possible in the midst of your Crazy Busy day to take a moment for God and yourself.

The First Friday in Lent

September 24, 2012

What's the buzz?

Yesterday's noon Ash Wednesday service had a strange buzzing noise.

It was like being in a room with mosquitoes.

Turns out that there is some kind of radio interference with our sound system.

It also turns out that the sound has been there for quite a long time but we never noticed it before because whenever we are in church, we use the organ. Part of the organ leaks air...a kind quiet hiss emanates from beneath the Great and also from under the Positiv. We have been trying to fix the leaks. We can't seem to get ahead of them, they seem to be built-in. Mind you it is not as if you've stuck your head inside a jet engine. It's just a hiss. Some days there are good days and some days not so good. But yesterday we had no organ. We wanted the service to be in silence. No music. No hiss.

But we also needed the sound system for our microphones. And so we get the mosquitoes.

So all through the service I kept thinking "Great. Another service call."

And close behind that "Solemn silent service? Fail!"

You know, I hate to whine, Lord, but I really don't need the technological assistance.

I can distract myself just fine.

When I try to take time for silence, when I sit, take deep breaths and try to clear my head, I want to enter God's presence. In the silence, I want to get behind the noise and listen for that still small voice. But there are always mosquitoes.  They are there.

What phone call have I not returned?
What e-mail do I need to answer?
What step in that project have I neglected?
What person did I not attend to?
What bill have I not paid?

There next to the silence is the buzz. It does not go away.

But neither does God.  No matter what the buzz is, there is God speaking to us. Holding us up. Being our companion. Whatever noise there is, God's silence is behind it always speaking to us.

Which means that sometimes God uses the noise to trick us into silence. Sneaky.

Who knew that those pesky leaks were also a kind of white noise machine that blocked out the electronic mosquitoes? Who knew that just turning on the organ would make its own kind of silence?

So that's the buzz? That's God getting past our own little noisemakers to speak right to our hearts.

The First Thursday of Lent

February 23, 2012

Asserting My Rights

What is it about Lent and me?
I just can’t give up.

When I give up coffee, I eat more chocolate.
When I give up fast food, I watch more TV.

When I put my loose change in the mite box,
I expect the box to be grateful.

Every Lent, I am an errant driver in a field
Striking the tree that I was determined to miss.

Forty days seem like forty years
When I know I will fail in forty seconds.

So this Lent, I am going to give up giving up.
Instead, I will assert my rights.

I will focus wholeheartedly on my rights.
I will hold closely to myself the things that I know are mine.

I will have a good time this Lent
because I will take on what I know to be true.

But, knowing my track-record in past Lents,
I will start with the right to keep my expectations low.

I will insist on the right to be wrong.
For forty days I think I can live with not always being so right.

I will assert my right to flawed.
Do you think for six weeks, I can be free of seeming so terrific?

I will assent to my right to be uncertain
For a month, perhaps I will discover faith.

I will claim my right to be ignorant
After a season of knowing less, maybe I will know mystery.

I will act on my right to be weak
And, for a moment, I won’t pretend I own what strength I have.

I will revel in my right to be foolish
And catch a glimpse of how I am seen.

I will rest in my right to be a creature
And enjoy for a second my part in the creation.

I will exercise my right to surrender
and live, for now, in my right not to be God.

Ash Wednesday, 2012

 Copyright The Rev. Canon Andrew T. Gerns, 2005

Naming holy names

Today is a good day for a baptism.  It is the first day of a brand-new year…and what better way to start?  The weather is unseasonably warm. But the best reason that today is a great day for a baptism is that this is the Feast of the Holy Name—a feast that our Prayer Book assigns as being as at least as important as Christmas and Ascension. Our Prayer Book reminds us, in its usual understated way, that there are moments of Jesus’ life where we need to stop, look, and listen. Next week will be another one.

Jesus being taken to the synagogue by his parents to be circumcised and named is not so different than Benjamin’s being brought here this morning. So let’s take a minute to compare and contrast the nativity stories of Benjamin and Jesus.

Benjamin is a much anticipated child—not only his family but this whole parish community has been pulling for him. Jesus was also a child people were waiting for with bated breath.

Alex and Caswell had to trek a long way—several times –to Philadelphia help him be born safe and healthy. Their journey reminds me of Mary and Joseph’s journey from their hometown to that other Bethlehem.

The Cookes experienced birth and those first days and weeks of Benjamin’s life in a strange environment, not one filled with animals and straw, but one filled with high tech equipment and specialists, nurses and doctors.

Both sets of parents knew about worry and danger—the Cooke’s from the need for major surgery on such a tiny patient, and, according to Matthew, Jesus’ parents had to flee the wrath of a fear-filled, vengeful king.

And don’t forget: Jesus had angels but Benjamin had Grace.

So what you are doing today points us to what happened to Jesus and what God is doing for us.

After the angels sang their songs and the shepherds left, the parents of Jesus gathered up their baby and took him to a local synagogue to have him circumcised and formally named. After your long journey, you have gathered up your family and come here to have him baptized.

On this day, Jesus, with his circumcision, was formally incorporated into the community of God’s Covenant people and given a name.

Today, Benjamin will, through his baptism, be fully initiated into the life of the Church. This is not just the dedication of a baby, nor a thanksgiving for a safe delivery and successful surgeries—although we do thank God for those things—what we do today is the Christian version of what happened to Jesus a week or so after his birth: he is being made a full member of God’s covenant people and will be marked as Christ’s own forever.

Something else that happened to Jesus that day: he was formally given his name. Names in Hebrew culture were important. They described a person’s identity and more. Names described a person’s personality and destiny.   In a few moments I will ask you to name your child. It is not as if, up until now, Benjamin has been a nothing or a number, called something like Cooke Boy #1 or Baby #2. Instead, this naming tells us something about what we think God has in store for us.

Both Jesus and Benjamin were given biblical names. By which I means straight out of the Hebrew scriptures.

Benjamin means son of right or son of righteousness. The first Benjamin was given that name by Rachel because she wanted a son and spent a long time praying and fasting. Also, in this case the parents were very old and, but Jacob and Rachel had a very crooked, rocky relationship with God that had become very intimate. So for Jacob and Rachel a baby boy was an answer to prayer. Both the biblical Benjamin and ours share something: they are both the answer to many, many prayers.

His name, “son of righteousness,” reminds the Cookes, Benjamin and us that faithfulness is always rewarded even if the path is crooked and not very obvious.

Mary and Joseph could not send out e-vites but maybe they gathered their relatives and some friends when they went to the local synagogue for the circumcision and naming of their new baby. Notice that until this little sentence in Luke, the baby is only referred to in the Gospel as “the child.” Now he has a name: Jesus.

Actually, they probably called him “Joshua” or more likely “Yeshua.” Our memory of Jesus’ name comes to us through so many cultures over so much time that a little change is to be expected.  Take a Hebrew name, speak it in Aramaic, record it in Greek and remember it in Latin and you will get “Jesus.” That’s what we call the Son of God. But through all those iterations, his name still speaks to us, right down to our very core.

The name Mary and Joseph gave their baby, in obedience to God’s angelic instruction, was “Joshua,” after the great patriarch, the one who took up Moses’ mantle and brought the people of Israel across the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  Joshua finished the job that Moses’ started but could not complete. Joshua finished the journey of the Exodus and brought the people home after their long desert journey from slavery through exile, testing and into the Land of Promise.

 “Joshua,” or “Yeshua” means “Yahweh, God, is salvation.” Or simply “God saves.” Jesus’ name reminds us of the saving activity of God in ages past, helps us look to the saving acts which will in years to come (long after his circumcision and naming) occur on Golgotha and in an empty tomb. Jesus names helps us look to the present to see what God is doing today and forward to where God is taking us.

I have to say that you two have really great tastes in names. Not only do they sound nice, rolling off the tongue, they will never cause their teachers to stumble whilst calling out attendance. Best of all  your kids names communicate! Their names tell us something about what God is up to in your lives and what you hope will unfold for them as they grow up.

In their baptisms, in the little Christian community you call home, in the parish and in daily life, you will be teaching your children about the power, presence and faithfulness of God. In your parenting, you will show them that Christians are real people capable of profound wisdom, amazing thick-headedness, deep love and great silliness. In your example of faithfulness and ethical living and in lessons of prayer, scripture, worship and good works, you will teach them that having taken the plunge of baptism they are always immersed in God’s love, power and purpose.

And the names you gave your children tell us something about your hopes, their identity and their destiny. Having talked about the meaning of Benjamin, let’s think about the meaning of Grace.

“Grace” is not a biblical name in the sense that it is named after a person so much as it is a biblical name that points us to the fact that God’s love happens. Grace means “free gift.” But more than that, “grace” reminds us God prepares our hearts to love God, “grace” means that God gives us what we need for the journey, and “grace” is that God’s love comes to us whether we deserve it or not. It just is.

So yours is a household that will, for all the riot and unexpectedness that raising children brings, is also a house that by their very names teach us that God’s loves happens no matter what (Grace) and that faith is always rewarded (Benjamin).

In choosing this day to baptize Benjamin and welcome him into the family of God’s people, you have linked him in a special way to Jesus’ own naming and initiation. You remind us—and I hope you will remind Benjamin as soon as he is old enough to hear the story—that he is who he is, and he will do what he will do because God does what God does. Grace happens. Faith and righteousness prevail. God saves.


The Feast of the Holy Name and the baptism of Benjamin Caswell Cooke, January 1, 2012 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania Luke 2:15-21

It only takes a girl

Choosing the anchor of certainty over the sails of comprehension

Joseph Bottum in the Weekly Standard writes about the rumors that Rowan Williams will resign at Archbishop of Canterbury next year and the end of Anglicanism as we know it. In the process, he starts in a useful direction and then drives off an ideological deep-end.

Early in the essay there is a decent, if rather conventional, analysis of Anglicanism today. He writes:

Anglicanism remains widespread, with 80 million members around the world, from the Episcopal Church in the United States to the followers of Henry Luke Orombi, archbishop of Uganda. England is still the largest Anglican province, with 26 million members, at least nominally. But far more Anglicans are in church on a Sunday morning in Kenya and Nigeria than in Britain, and the center of Anglican belief is now firmly in Africa—a major part, as Philip Jenkins noted in his 2002 book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, of the nearly complete conversion of sub-Saharan Africa to Christianity over the last 100 years.

The rise of the African church could have made Canterbury an important player in international relations—not exactly a rival to Rome (Catholicism’s one billion adherents make that unlikely) but at least a second European center with which Africans would have felt a relation and to which they could have looked for intellectual and ecclesial authority.

Then he drives off an ideological deep-end, and in the process misses the point of the importance of Anglicanism to Christianity and our essential witness to the world. Along the way, he missed the disappointment if not the outright tragedy that has been Williams' tenure as Archbishop.

In all likelihood, the forcing of the issue of same-sex marriage will lead the African churches to withdraw from communion with the Western churches—while the churches of Europe and North America will denounce the African churches, choosing allegiance with standard-issue Western liberalism over the orthodox teaching of their own faith.

And thereby the world will lose one more of the old ties that might have bound it together. Freed from their African anchor, the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America will move even further in a pro-Muslim, anti-Israel direction, providing yet more cover for fashionable liberal anti-Semitism. Let loose from their allegiance to Canterbury, the African churches will quickly move toward forming pan-African denominations that will feel entirely distanced from Europe and America—and will help build the belief the global South owes nothing to the West.

The problem with Rowan is not that Africa is an "anchor" and that the Church of England and the Episcopal Church is somehow at once pro-Muslim and pro-gay, and that the African church will march away in its theological purity. The problem is that Rowan did not use his innate voice.

Africa itself shows off the tensions and possibility within Anglicanism. The Continent that contains both Tutu and Orombi is also the Church that shares both approaches to Christianity. The Anglican Communion contains both Katharine Jefferts Schori and NT Wright. The Episcopal Church itself contains both Gene Robinson and Mark Lawrence.

Yes, it is a high wire act. Being Archbishop of Canterbury is no doubt an impossible job. I don't know if anyone can straddle that thin line successfully, and to do so will no doubt mean that someone, somewhere (probably lots of someones in lots of places) will be angry, disappointed, demanding more. That he cannot please everyone is not the problem. That he has not always agreed with any one group's particular vision for mission is also not the point.

The tragedy--and disappointment--that is Rowan Williams is that he chose not use his best possible tool in leading this impossibly diverse Anglican Communion. He chose not to use his own voice.

We all know that Williams wrote eloquently as both a priest and theologian, and even as Archbishop of Wales, for the full inclusion of gays into the life of the church including their ability to marry--or at least have some kind of civil and ecclessiasitcal analog to marriage--and that not only did he put these opinions aside, he has worked very hard to be certain that these views will never come to pass.

Bottum reveals a fact that I had forgotten, and I will bet many progressives did not know, that when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he resigned his membership in the a group called The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

It turns out that Williams himself encapsulated both the comprehensiveness and the tension that is Anglicanism.

Here we have a person who was so pro-life that not only was he a member of a group working to end abortion but, in his youth, he protested the planting of nuclear missles aimed at the former Soviet Union on British soil. And saw so much the dignity of human nature restored in Jesus Christ that he could imagine a church that included openly gay men and women not only serving the church as ordained people but also a church that blessed the unions between same sex partners. He worked for the ordination of women and held to a deeply sacramental life.

Looking at it this way, it is easy to see why he might have been the right person at the right time for the Anglican Communion a decade ago. He apparently held in himself the tensions, the comprehensiveness and the possibility of Anglicanism.

But he traded all that in. In giving up his membership in the pro-life group and in convincing his friend Jeffrey-John to not become a bishop, in repudiating his earlier preaching and writing as if they were a luxury an Archbishop of Canterbury could ill-afford, he gave up the one tool he had to walk that high wire with integrity, his voice.

Oh, there were hints. His decision to make the 2007 Lambeth Conference dialogical and not legislative hinted at a vision of a comprehensive Anglicanism that could continue to be a third way between Catholic legalism and the Protestant swings between literalism and liberalism. His vision of a communion based on a common life of prayer, shared mission and intentional dialogue shows up even in his weak, TINA-based defense of the Anglican Covenant.

But giving up his voice to hold the church together only on what the most conservative voices in the room will agree to, his unwillingness to defend and include those who differ from others in faith--whether it was keeping Bishop Robinson out of Lambeth or telling our Presiding Bishop not to wear her hat whilst in England--showed that his fear of outright conflict only deepened the fissures he most dreaded. Especially after it became apparent that each concession, from Jeffery-John to the Windsor Report through successive Primates meetings and finally the Anglican Covenant, only emboldened those prone to bullying and alienated those who wanted to work with him the most.

And now he has staked his whole reputation--and our future-- on an Anglican Covenant which takes a fairly subtle and nuanced vision of Anglicanism and weighs it down with rules to regulate what happens when one church has an idea that someone else might not like--when the only rule should be "whatever happens, keep praying, keep conversation going, and keep inviting Jesus to the table."

The fourth section of the Anglican Covenant undoes the vision of Anglicanism--takes away our voice--just as surely as Archbishop Williams lost his voice and the ability to lead from the heart of Anglican Christianity when he resigned from the pro-life group and told his gay friend not to be a bishop.

Bottum sees the high-wire act of being the ABC breaking when he gave into a fuzzy western liberalism. But he names the wrong problem because Bottum misunderstands the nature of Anglicanism. The problem was that Rowans had within him the experience and possibility to help us live through complicated times by living into the comprehension that is Anglicanism, by insisting that whatever happens people in communion should live in communion.

Instead he chose a safe institutionalism. I gave up what I believed, he taught us, and you can too. I gave in to someone elses idea of the rules that go with being ABC, you can go with the rules in Section Four.

It was not just a failure of nerve. It was worse. In giving up his voice--his complex sometime contradictory voice--he taught us to quench the spirit, and so we risk losing the heart of what makes Anglicanism an essential witness to Christ to the world. He taught us that conflict trumps comprehension. Fortunately, God is bigger than that.