The Windsor Report

Depending upon how you as individuals access the news media, you will be aware to varying degrees that the Episcopal Church has been back in the news quite a bit this past week. Had it been a slower week in the political arena, I suspect we would have gotten a lot more press, but even so a front-page article in the Tribune is worth noting. Yes, I’m going to talk about it. For a variety of reasons. One reason, and I’ll come back to this, is that I believe it is good for the church, overall, to talk about human sexuality. Second, there is a huge amount of misunderstanding and misinformation floating around in the secular press and in casual conversations that needs correcting. Third, as the still-really-quite-new rector at St. John’s, I feel some obligation (although maybe not eagerness) to share my own perspective. And finally, I have heard from a number of parishioners this week a real anxiety about the Episcopal Church and a fear that we are in great peril. I hope that I can allay that fear and anxiety.

The presenting issue was the release on Monday of the so-called Windsor Report. The Windsor Report is the published report of the Lambeth Commission on Communion. The Lambeth Commission on Communion was established in October 2003 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, largely as a response to stress and division felt within the Anglican Communion precipitated by the development of Rites for the Blessing of Same Sex Unions in the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada and by the action of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church last summer ratifying the election of an openly homosexual priest to be Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Some of the press that preceded release of the report suggested that it would recommend punishing the American and Canadian churches or would decree that we be excluded from the Anglican Communion. Such actions were never within the Commission’s mandate, nor are they practical possibilities. That is not what the Anglican Communion is or how it operates.

I do not know of any other political or ecclesiastical entity quite like the Anglican Communion. Its unique character is undoubtedly what leads to so much confusion and misinformation. The best metaphor, I think, is to a family. A large, extended family. This family’s common ancestor is the Church of England, the Church that was born in England at the time that the Protestant reformation was sweeping Europe in the 16^th century. As the British Empire spread, the Church of England went with it. As the countries that once composed the British Empire gradually established independence, the local, national churches also established independence from the Church of England. Today the Anglican Communion is made up of a group of national, independent, autonomous churches. The Episcopal Church, USA; the Anglican Church of Canada; the Anglican Church of Nigeria; the church in Hong Kong. The Anglican Communion is a collection of cousins. Fairly distant cousins in a lot of cases. A collection of cousins. Think about your own families… your own relationships and interactions with your first, second or third cousins. Within the Anglican Communion, individual churches have no power or authority over other churches. The Anglican Communion is not an organization or an institution. No structure or body exists within the Communion that has any binding power to legislate or enforce discipline. The Archbishop of Canterbury is respected as a symbol of our common ancestry. His only concrete power is within the Church of England.

On the other hand, throughout our common history we have tried to be a close family. We value our common heritage and have cherished what have long been called "bonds of affection" between the various national churches. We have regular family reunions, at least our bishops do, gathering from across the globe for the Lambeth Conferences. We keep in touch and seek ways to share ministry and support one another. The Windsor report is a contribution to this on-going effort to "be" family in the midst of trying times. It offers reflections on the nature of the relationships we share among the churches within the Anglican Communion, and it offers concrete suggestions (it can only suggest) on ways to maintain and strengthen those relationships. It is almost 100 pages long. I have not yet read it. After the service, I will have available in the back copies of two releases this week from the Episcopal News Service. One is Presiding Bishop Griswold’s preliminary statement on the Windsor report; another is a brief summary of the report and a collection of some early reactions to it.

The Windsor report deals broadly with the nature of the Anglican Communion. No one denies, however, that the debates over human sexuality within the church are the context from which the report is written. Sexuality is not my favorite topic for conversation. Yet I do wish to share with you my very strong conviction that it is good for us as a Christian community, as the Episcopal Church in America, to be discussing human sexuality.

I might add as an aside that boilers and tuck pointing are not my favorite topics of conversation either, and they might seem to be a distraction from the real work of the church. Yet those are faith-full, hope-full conversations for us right now at St. John's. Conversations that lead us forward in mission, and to avoid them here would impair our vocation as the Body of Christ.

As I was preparing for my Thursday evening class last week, I was reviewing some texts on sacramental theology. The Episcopal Church is a sacramental church; we cherish the sacraments, and we affirm with joy and certain conviction that the sacraments convey God’s grace to us. A sacrament, the catechism in the Prayer Book tells us, is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace." When we outwardly and visibly splash real, wet water on a baby’s head, we are the means by which God’s grace is given to that child. When a priest takes, blesses, breaks and shares something as ordinary and fundamental and earthy as bread, and it is eaten by the community gathered, we receive God’s grace.

A broad theological principle underlies our experience of the sacraments:  that principle asserts that there is a relation between the material and the spiritual. A relation. The material world (things that we can touch and feel and see like water and bread) can be a vehicle for, an expression of the spiritual realm of God’s grace. Our faith affirms that material things convey spiritual things. Even beyond the specific sacraments of the church, outward and visible signs convey inward and spiritual grace. Jesus became incarnate, took on human flesh, so that grace and holiness might be made real in the material, human world of flesh and blood. He came, not to take away the complexity or confusion of human life, but to bring the very blessing and presence of God into the middle of our physical, human lives. The church is not a spiritual refuge from our physical, material lives and their challenges; it is a place of connection between our human lives and the wonder of God’s divine presence and grace.

Sexuality is an important part of our human lives, and human sexuality can be a source of grace and holiness. Human sexuality and its physical expression can be a way through which God is made present and real in our lives. Not always, of course. Not all forms or occasions of human sexual expression are sacramental. Some are sinful. That discernment is what the church’s conversation is about. But surely a potential source of grace and holiness is something we want to talk about. And what a witness we have to offer the world if our discussions on human sexuality, whatever direction those discussions go, if our discussions are within the context of a yearning for holiness.  The context of our discussions is a yearning for holiness, rather than a political debate about civil rights on the one hand or an unexamined demand for moral rectitude on the other. A conversation about holiness is always worth having.

I know many people wish we didn’t have this conversation in front of us and wish that Gene Robinson and the people of New Hampshire had not forced it upon us. I repeat, I believe this conversation is life giving for the church and will lead us deeper in faith and holiness. It may not be easy, but the dialogue is life giving. And to avoid it would be life threatening.

Also, it’s helpful to remember that Gene Robinson and the Episcopalians of New Hampshire are not responsible for the current state of affairs anymore than Henry the 8^th’s divorce was responsible for the English Reformation. Reformation was sweeping England. Henry’s marital difficulties were simply the administrative occasion for the founding of the Church of England. Reformation was afoot.  Now, concern for a faith-full exploration of human sexuality is a part of the world and time in which we live. Bishop Robinson’s election was simply the occasion, not the cause, of breaking open that discussion. Other openly gay priests had been nominated for bishop’s elections in other dioceses before this. And he was elected by the people of New Hampshire, not because he was gay, but because he had served as a priest among them for many years and they sincerely and prayerfully felt that God was calling him to be their bishop. Roughly two thirds of the Bishops and delegates at General Convention felt his consecration was the right course for the Episcopal Church and voted to ratify his election.

I do not believe that the church is in peril. I believe God is present in our conversations and this will turn out to be a time of renewal for the church. It is also helpful to remember that the number of people for whom this issue is of more importance to them than anything else in the church is really very small. Some individuals will leave and have left their congregations over it. I do not want to minimize their distress, but people leave congregations all the time. Sometimes they leave quietly. In general right now they are not leaving quietly. People leave over issues of money, the quality of Christian education, the personality of the rector’s wife, or because Sunday is the only day they can get up late and read the paper over a cup of coffee. As far as I know, among the 133 congregations in the Diocese of Chicago, no parish has left the Episcopal Church. Among the 144,000 members of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Chicago, a handful of individuals have founded a new congregation out of their dissatisfaction with the course the church is taking. As of August, among the over 7300 congregations in the nation, less than 10 had formally disassociated themselves with the Episcopal Church. I do not have hard data on the number of new congregations that may have been begun nationwide, but one article I read suggested it was between 10 and 20. Again, this is not to belittle the struggle and distress that many people are feeling, but the church is not splitting or rent in two by schism. The church is still here.  For the vast majority of Episcopalians our common mission and bonds of affection are more important than uniformity of agreement on this issue. I am absolutely confident that this is true now, and that it will become more and more visibly true as time goes by.

And once again, we have a remarkable opportunity for witness to the world and to our fellow Christians in denominations who are literally only months or perhaps a year or two behind us on this issue. One of the strongest traits of Anglicanism has always been that we value mutual affection more than enforced conformity, that we treasure unity more than uniformity, that we are courageous and eager enough in our faith to foster dialogue, rather than quash dissent. These traits will carry us through and, incidentally, will also bring new people into the Episcopal Church.

And I pray that these good Anglican traits will characterize the life of this congregation as we move into the future. In this context I want to share with the broader congregation pieces of a conversation I had with the search committee when I first met them, sometime now just about a year ago. I was interviewing with parishes right after General Convention. I am grateful for the timing. It generated conversations that were very helpful and Spirit-filled, but would probably have been easy to avoid at another time. There were things I wanted the search committee to know about me and things I wanted to know about St. John’s.

I would like all of you to know that I personally welcome and celebrate the presence and ministries and full participation of gays and lesbians in the church. That is my position; that is how I will vote should the occasion come before me. It is not my agenda. My agenda is fostering dialogue. Respectful, prayerful, life-seeking dialogue. Not this morning, but if and when this community seems to need it, we, as a Christian community, will talk together faithfully about homosexuality. Within the parish, I do not expect conformity or uniformity. I did not see it in the search committee. I saw a group that was willing to maintain a divergence of opinions on this issue, but a common focus on the more important tasks of mission and discernment.

Finally, briefly, this morning’s gospel. It condemns self-righteousness. There’s a fair amount of that going around right now on both sides of this discussion. Self-righteousness. An individual who takes it upon himself to define and decree his own righteousness, and who is eager to judge others as unrighteous. God is our judge, and before God we are all sinners. And all of us have been redeemed by Christ. There is no stronger bond of unity than our common identity as humble sinners redeemed by Christ. If that remains our focus nothing less than the exaltation of heaven itself lies ahead of us.

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