Reflections on the Bishop Walkabouts
The race for bishop of California is on. The "walkabouts," a grueling series of 4-5 hour public meetings, six in as many days, between the seven nominees for bishop and California Episcopalians began on Monday night. Approximately 650 people came to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco the first night, and nearly 400 at St. Paul's, Oakland the next. I moderated break-out sessions at each, with the nominees rotating through each room in 30 minute intervals to answer questions.
I'm glad I attended two walkabouts, because my impressions of the nominees changed as a result of seeing them in a different setting and in a different order of appearance. It was quite different to meet in the nave of Grace Cathedral with a "small group" of 150 people as compared to a classroom at St. Paul's School with 30-40 people. I found that, in the more intimate setting, some of the nominees rose in my estimation, while others did not fare as well. Moving beyond a first impression was really valuable.
The Nominees
Overall, I was impressed with the quality of the nominees. All are accomplished priests (or bishop, in Mark Andrus' case), with obvious gifts for episcopal ministry. I was also impressed with the diversity of the nominees, and I don't mean by that the fact that they span the usual politically correct categories. The are all very different people.
Robert Taylor is modest in his demeanor, understated in his speech, gentle in manner. Jane Gould is confident, direct, and bold. Eugene Sutton is spontaneous, almost flip; relaxed, yet passionate. Donald Schell is intense, forceful, and loquacious. Bonnie Perry is pure energy: kinetic, dynamic, fully present. Mark Andrus, too, is fully present, but a grounded rather than live wire; serene yet engaged. Michael Barlowe is focused, methodical, well prepared.
I dwell on these matters of disposition and style, because the differences among them in terms of theology are minimal. Schell, Andrus, and Barlowe are probably the more intellectual of the lot; the others struck me as more pragmatic and politcally savvy in the best sense of the word: but all of them are smart people, no doubt about that. All are deeply committed to compassionate Christian service to the world, to social justice, to Anglican comprehensiveness in liturgical and theological matters. The differences are in leadership style and, I daresay, in their ability to combine the contemplative and the prophetic dimensions of lived faith. With regard to the later, I believe Andrus clearly stood out from the rest.
The social location and life experience of the nominees is also of some interest, I believe, in thinking about their ability to lead in the context of our diocese. Taylor, as a native white South African and immigrant to this country, has a compelling life story and demonstrated capacity to understand and navigate racial and cultural diversity; a sensitivity to the outsider that I suspect gives him moral gravitas. And yet, that is true of all of the nominees in one way or another, particulary Sutton as an African-American in a church shockingly oblivious to its own culture of white privilege. Both of the women have had to struggle with the sexism endemic to church and society (including the tendency for people to confuse them during the walkabouts; a problem that for some mysterious reason didn't plague the men!). And the gay and lesbian nominees have been treated as "issues" rather than as people by many in our church, when they haven't been vilified outright. Surviving such experiences either makes one cynical or compassionate; they have chosen the better path.
It is also interesting to note the ways in which the two "straight white men" have taken risks in solidarity with outsiders in church and society. Andrus has been a strong advocate of racial, economic, and environmental justice, as well as supportive of gay and lesbian people in a diocese that has been notoriously inhospitable to them. Schell's risk-taking is perhaps less obvious, but his affinity for ministry with artists, prophets, and queer folk of all kinds is no less authentic.
All of this leads me to believe that, while I am coming to identify my preferred candidates, all of the nominees would make good, albeit very different, bishops of California.
The Electors
On May 6, the clergy and lay delegates of the diocese will meet to elect one of these seven people. I was as heartened by my experience of the electors at the walkabouts as I was by the nominees. People were attentive, respectful, and prayerful. They asked a mix of pointed and run-of-the-mill questions. As a moderator, they pressed me to keep the playing field level and to ask similar questions of all the nominees so that we could compare "apples and apples."
Some have worried about the "gay question" leading up to this election. I didn't sense that our electors are preoccupied with it though. They aren't particularly anxious or fearful. They seem to me to be genuinely open to figuring out who the best person is to lead our diocese.
Nigel Renton, long-time secretary of our diocesan convention and deputy to General Convention, has commented that the small number of people in our diocese who would automatically vote against gay or lesbian nominees, and the small number who would automatically vote for one of them, probably cancel each other out. This election will be decided by the vast majority of us who will simply vote our conscience based on the best assessment we can make of who we need as our next bishop. And we will figure that out together - through prayer and conversation - without competing factions.
The truth is that all of these nominees are leaders who will push the envelope on a whole range of issues. All of them would challenge us to embrace the stranger, include the outcast, and reconcile with the enemy. Whoever we elect, "the gay issue" is not going to go away in the Anglican Communion. We will be faced with another well qualified, openly gay or lesbian bishop-elect soon enough, whether it is here and now or somewhere else later. But that is not what will drive decisions on May 6. The politics here are local, focused on evangelism, multicultural ministry (which is the same thing as evangelism in our context), congregational and clergy health. Yawn! How unexciting. But there it is. We aren't out to make news for its own sake; just a bishop, and a good one at that.
Me
I've learned a lot about myself through this election process, and it isn't over yet. I'm learning to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, finding myself surprised by the nominees who excite me. I'm learning to let go of my need to be in control - a power far greater than myself is going to determine the outcome of this election. My ego wants MY nominee to win; but in truth, God will bless us - yes, even me - just as well if "someone else's nominee" wins. There can be only one eighth bishop of California. And that makes me a bit sad, because I've come to wish that all seven of them could stay with us. Ain't God good to give us such an embarrassment of riches from which to choose?
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Who Will Roll Away The Stone: An Easter Sermon
[The women] had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” Amen. Mark 16:3
This morning I invite you to linger for a moment with the image of these three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome on their way to the tomb where Jesus was buried. Imagine their grief and their despair. Jesus was a man like no other, a man who had treated them with dignity and respect. He was unafraid to be seen in the company of women – even women with a certain reputation. This was scandalous, of course, but he didn’t seem to care. He was too concerned with justice and mercy to be worried about social propriety. In a sense, he wasn’t very religious.
But then again, in another sense, he was profoundly religious. He made the presence of God palpable. There were the healings, of course, and the feedings, and the forgiveness that he offered; that was part of it. More than that, though, he made you feel like you were in a whole new world. Everything was different. You were different.
Jesus had elicited such love and loyalty from these women, who had risked a great deal to become his followers. He had changed their lives. And now he was gone. Their teacher and friend had died a horrible, dishonorable death – executed like a common criminal. The shame of it was almost unbearable. Most of the disciples had fled in fear and disgrace. Only these women remained.
It had all happened so fast, just as the Passover was about to begin, that the body had been quickly entombed. The shame of Jesus’ execution was compounded by the failure of these women to properly prepare and anoint his body for burial. His burial had been as dishonorable as his death: quickly thrown into a cave covered and with a boulder. Imagine the mixture of remorse and longing that these women felt. They only wanted to touch Jesus one last time, to accord him the respect he deserved, to say goodbye so as to bring some closure to their sense of loss.
So it with some anxiety that they ask one another in tones of desperation, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Their grief and fear and guilt are buried there with Jesus, under the weight of a stone far too large and heavy for them to move. Who will lift this burden from them?
Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome, you and me: none of us are strangers to the burden of grief, and fear, and guilt. Their story is our story: it is the human story. We all push up against stones to heavy for us to move. Perhaps, like the women in Mark’s gospel, your stone is literally a grave stone, the unbearable grief of a love lost to death. Maybe your stone takes the form of fear: fear of the future, fear of dependency and limitations, fear of the things you can not control. Far too many of us are weighed down by the stones of mental and physical illness, of addiction and other diseases.
All of us carry the burden of guilt for personal wrongs we’ve done, and for those done on our behalf. We are complicit in the politics of fear and the economics of greed maintained by violence, which fuels the world’s grief and guilt. All this and more: a stone way too heavy for us to move.
Imagine, then, the women’s surprise when they come to the tomb and realize that the stone already has been rolled away for them. They enter the tomb, and discover that the body around which all their grief, and fear, and guilt was attached is gone. It has been raised up. There is no “there,” there.
This is what Resurrection is like. It is discovering that the stone that has kept you trapped has been rolled away by somebody else. It is discovering that just when you think God is dead and all is lost, you find that the tomb is empty and God is very much alive. In fact, God is way ahead of you, leaving a message to come meet up with him in Galilee.
Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome, you and me: here we are at the empty tomb. Funny how God works, isn’t it? What a strange God this is, who loves us so much that he became human to bear our grief, and fear, and guilt, forcing us to see the violence and greed that structures our world and enslaves our hearts for what it is. Jesus’ Resurrection demonstrated that God is not the divine power legitimizing the world as we know it. Rather, God comes to subvert the structures of this world through a love that is willing to carry our grief and fear and guilt into the grave, so that we can be raised up into an entirely new way of being human.
James Alison describes the Resurrection in this way:
Jesus’ coming back to his disciples was the beginning of the huge cultural shift that brought into being an entirely new perception of who God is and, simultaneously, an entirely new perception of who we humans are. The apostolic witnesses began to be able to perceive that God has nothing at all to do with human violence, or the human social order that is based on human violence. Rather, God is so entirely outside that order that he is able to subvert it from within, by taking a typical human act of violence, a lynch-death, a coming together of all against one who is considered especially guilty and troublesome, and making this into the showing, the revelation of who God really is. He is not the structuring principle of human order, the prince of this world, but the purely benevolent creator of a way out of the order of this world, the self-giving victim who forgives the persecutors, permitting the construction of a non-victimary sociality. God’s goodness is shown, not in his accepting a particular human sacrifice to blot out our violence, but rather in his subversion from within of the whole of our mendacious sacrificial order by himself giving us a sacrifice, so that we need never construct our order sacrificially again.[1]
In other words, the Resurrection of Jesus always comes to us in the form of forgiveness. Like the women at the tomb, we are worried about how to push against the stone, and Jesus is saying: “I’ve already rolled the stone away. Stop worrying about that. Stop being obsessed with the death-dealing ways of this world and come join me in Galilee. We’ve got work to do. There are lots of other people still locked in the cycle of greed and violence. I need you to help me show them another way to be human through forgiveness.”
The earliest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel end here at the empty tomb with the message to go meet Jesus in Galilee. The women flee in terror and amazement. Can you blame them? Can you blame them for being afraid to tell anyone what they had seen and heard? Who would believe them?
I like the way Mark ends this gospel. I think it is true to life. For most of us, there is a gap between discovering the empty tomb and actually encountering the Risen Lord. Resurrection is a process, not an event. It took some time for the women who went to the tomb to trust their experience of the Resurrection.
We need to cut ourselves some slack in that regard too. Many of us have gotten quite comfortable pushing up against our own stones. We have become quite attached to our grief, and our fear, and our guilt. We rather like Jesus remaining in the tomb so that we can just avoid the whole business of forgiveness and transformation. Eventually, though, pushing against the stone gets tiresome.
If you are tired of pushing against the stone, I invite you to come to this table to meet the Risen Lord who has rolled it away already. He comes to us in the form of bread and wine, the very stuff of life, which when shared in community becomes the risen body of Christ – risen in all of us together. He comes as forgiveness, the opportunity to begin anew, and he comes to set us free from our burdens so that we can share that forgiveness with others. It really is a quite different and better way to live.
So don’t just sit there gaping at the empty tomb. Jesus has already gone ahead to meet us in the future of joy and justice and generosity that he has prepared. Let us go to meet him. He’s waiting. Amen.
[1] James Alison, “Being Saved and Being Wrong,” at http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/pdf/eng18.pdf.
This morning I invite you to linger for a moment with the image of these three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome on their way to the tomb where Jesus was buried. Imagine their grief and their despair. Jesus was a man like no other, a man who had treated them with dignity and respect. He was unafraid to be seen in the company of women – even women with a certain reputation. This was scandalous, of course, but he didn’t seem to care. He was too concerned with justice and mercy to be worried about social propriety. In a sense, he wasn’t very religious.
But then again, in another sense, he was profoundly religious. He made the presence of God palpable. There were the healings, of course, and the feedings, and the forgiveness that he offered; that was part of it. More than that, though, he made you feel like you were in a whole new world. Everything was different. You were different.
Jesus had elicited such love and loyalty from these women, who had risked a great deal to become his followers. He had changed their lives. And now he was gone. Their teacher and friend had died a horrible, dishonorable death – executed like a common criminal. The shame of it was almost unbearable. Most of the disciples had fled in fear and disgrace. Only these women remained.
It had all happened so fast, just as the Passover was about to begin, that the body had been quickly entombed. The shame of Jesus’ execution was compounded by the failure of these women to properly prepare and anoint his body for burial. His burial had been as dishonorable as his death: quickly thrown into a cave covered and with a boulder. Imagine the mixture of remorse and longing that these women felt. They only wanted to touch Jesus one last time, to accord him the respect he deserved, to say goodbye so as to bring some closure to their sense of loss.
So it with some anxiety that they ask one another in tones of desperation, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Their grief and fear and guilt are buried there with Jesus, under the weight of a stone far too large and heavy for them to move. Who will lift this burden from them?
Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome, you and me: none of us are strangers to the burden of grief, and fear, and guilt. Their story is our story: it is the human story. We all push up against stones to heavy for us to move. Perhaps, like the women in Mark’s gospel, your stone is literally a grave stone, the unbearable grief of a love lost to death. Maybe your stone takes the form of fear: fear of the future, fear of dependency and limitations, fear of the things you can not control. Far too many of us are weighed down by the stones of mental and physical illness, of addiction and other diseases.
All of us carry the burden of guilt for personal wrongs we’ve done, and for those done on our behalf. We are complicit in the politics of fear and the economics of greed maintained by violence, which fuels the world’s grief and guilt. All this and more: a stone way too heavy for us to move.
Imagine, then, the women’s surprise when they come to the tomb and realize that the stone already has been rolled away for them. They enter the tomb, and discover that the body around which all their grief, and fear, and guilt was attached is gone. It has been raised up. There is no “there,” there.
This is what Resurrection is like. It is discovering that the stone that has kept you trapped has been rolled away by somebody else. It is discovering that just when you think God is dead and all is lost, you find that the tomb is empty and God is very much alive. In fact, God is way ahead of you, leaving a message to come meet up with him in Galilee.
Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome, you and me: here we are at the empty tomb. Funny how God works, isn’t it? What a strange God this is, who loves us so much that he became human to bear our grief, and fear, and guilt, forcing us to see the violence and greed that structures our world and enslaves our hearts for what it is. Jesus’ Resurrection demonstrated that God is not the divine power legitimizing the world as we know it. Rather, God comes to subvert the structures of this world through a love that is willing to carry our grief and fear and guilt into the grave, so that we can be raised up into an entirely new way of being human.
James Alison describes the Resurrection in this way:
Jesus’ coming back to his disciples was the beginning of the huge cultural shift that brought into being an entirely new perception of who God is and, simultaneously, an entirely new perception of who we humans are. The apostolic witnesses began to be able to perceive that God has nothing at all to do with human violence, or the human social order that is based on human violence. Rather, God is so entirely outside that order that he is able to subvert it from within, by taking a typical human act of violence, a lynch-death, a coming together of all against one who is considered especially guilty and troublesome, and making this into the showing, the revelation of who God really is. He is not the structuring principle of human order, the prince of this world, but the purely benevolent creator of a way out of the order of this world, the self-giving victim who forgives the persecutors, permitting the construction of a non-victimary sociality. God’s goodness is shown, not in his accepting a particular human sacrifice to blot out our violence, but rather in his subversion from within of the whole of our mendacious sacrificial order by himself giving us a sacrifice, so that we need never construct our order sacrificially again.[1]
In other words, the Resurrection of Jesus always comes to us in the form of forgiveness. Like the women at the tomb, we are worried about how to push against the stone, and Jesus is saying: “I’ve already rolled the stone away. Stop worrying about that. Stop being obsessed with the death-dealing ways of this world and come join me in Galilee. We’ve got work to do. There are lots of other people still locked in the cycle of greed and violence. I need you to help me show them another way to be human through forgiveness.”
The earliest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel end here at the empty tomb with the message to go meet Jesus in Galilee. The women flee in terror and amazement. Can you blame them? Can you blame them for being afraid to tell anyone what they had seen and heard? Who would believe them?
I like the way Mark ends this gospel. I think it is true to life. For most of us, there is a gap between discovering the empty tomb and actually encountering the Risen Lord. Resurrection is a process, not an event. It took some time for the women who went to the tomb to trust their experience of the Resurrection.
We need to cut ourselves some slack in that regard too. Many of us have gotten quite comfortable pushing up against our own stones. We have become quite attached to our grief, and our fear, and our guilt. We rather like Jesus remaining in the tomb so that we can just avoid the whole business of forgiveness and transformation. Eventually, though, pushing against the stone gets tiresome.
If you are tired of pushing against the stone, I invite you to come to this table to meet the Risen Lord who has rolled it away already. He comes to us in the form of bread and wine, the very stuff of life, which when shared in community becomes the risen body of Christ – risen in all of us together. He comes as forgiveness, the opportunity to begin anew, and he comes to set us free from our burdens so that we can share that forgiveness with others. It really is a quite different and better way to live.
So don’t just sit there gaping at the empty tomb. Jesus has already gone ahead to meet us in the future of joy and justice and generosity that he has prepared. Let us go to meet him. He’s waiting. Amen.
[1] James Alison, “Being Saved and Being Wrong,” at http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/pdf/eng18.pdf.
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