Posted on 01/16/2004 12:12:24 PM PST by Eala
LOVE EPISCOPAL STYLE
Last Sunday at Washington's National Cathedral, on the occasion of the celebration of the Baptism of Our Lord, Frank Griswold delivered a sermon that demonstrated once again that whatever his religion is, it isn't Christianity:
And of course, distinctions, and differences do exist among us and are embodied in us: our cultures, our languages, our life experiences. As well, divisions exist among us based on our various points of view, some of which we create and sustain and justify out of our fear, arrogance and sinfulness. That we have such distinctions, differences, and even divisions, is neither surprising nor negative. However, baptism overrules these ways we have of separating ourselves from one another. In baptism God declares that we are profoundly one and that our distinctions and differences and divisions are all brought together in order that we might form one gigantic body spanning the world.
We in the church have "various points of view, some of which we create and sustain and justify out of our...sinfulness" Can't argue with that. But something that emerges because of sin is not a negative thing, Frank? To me, that is something to live with and to overcome, knowing that I too am just as much a sinner as the person with whom I disagree. But that is certainly not something we both ought to celebrate as a positive good.
As we are baptized, each one of us becomes an indispensable limb or organ, without whom the wholeness of the body would be incomplete. Paul calls that body, the body of Christ. He speaks of the need for difference and distinction among the limbs and organs if the body is to function properly. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?” he asks. Or again, “If all were a single member, where would the body be? He then continues, “At it is there are many members yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”The very fact that we are all different, that we are not all eyes, or hands, makes possible patterns of relationship and interaction that could not exist if we were all the same. The sacrament of baptism helps us to see that our differences, when they are brought together in Christ, are an amazing gift which will allow us to do amazing things in Christ’s name.
Very true. Although I seriously doubt that Paul meant that repentant sinners were to be joined in a body with people who think they have no sins to repent of.
And yet, because all the limbs and organs form one body, nothing can happen to one of them that does not in some way affect the whole. “If one member suffers,” Paul tells us, “all suffer together with it;if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” In more homely terms, if I stub my toe or pinch my finger in a door, my whole body reacts, is involved and bears the pain. Our baptism means we can no longer say that what is good for me, one member of the body, is necessarily good for all.
So please quit quoting Scripture to Gene Robinson.
“We must grow up,” Paul tells us, “in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
And we're off.
Love. Love is the life force that orders and determines the body’s growth. Love binds and knits the various limbs and organs together in a such a way that the function of each contributes to the overall soundness and heath of the body as a whole.So, we are called to love one another, all the while knowing that the proper functioning of the body, be it our own bodies or Christ’s risen body, the church, requires among its many parts degrees of tension, opposition and counterbalance.
The problem is that what Frank means by love and what serious Christians mean by love are two mutually-exclusive concepts as he demonstrates here:
In the waters of baptism Jesus encounters God’s delight, God’s pleasure, God’s joy. There is no hint of duty or command. There are no oughts, no shoulds or musts — just: I love you. I delight in you. You are my joy. This overwhelming sense of belovedness was the ground of Jesus’ life and the guiding force of his ministry. His speech, his actions, his courage, his confidence, his undefended heart and his freedom with respect to custom and convention when they thwarted a free flowing of mercy and compassion, all of this, all of Jesus’ way of being, found its source in an abiding awareness of God’s love.
Good Lord. "There is no hint of duty or command," Frank? "There are no oughts, no shoulds or musts?" Wonder why that was, Frank? Might that possibly have something to do with the fact that Jesus was the Son of the Most High God and, well, didn't need them? Do you think that Jesus was just some Galilean carpenter's son that the Creator of the universe took a liking to? Do you seriously believe that the Lord said all those great words and did all those miracles simply because He was aware that God loved Him a whole bunch?
Baptism is about being loved. “As I am loved by the Father,” Jesus says to his disciples in the Gospel of John, “so have I loved you.” Jesus’ capacity to love is the consequence of being loved. “We love because God first loved us,” we are told in the First Letter of John. Jesus loves because God first loved him. Baptism is about being loved: profligately, wildly. It is the church’s ritual act through which God in Christ says you are my beloved, in whom I delight and in whom I rejoice.
Baptism's about a bit more than that if these words of Peter's are any indication:
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call.(Acts 2:37-39)."
Or these words of Paul's:
So Paul asked, "Then what baptism did you receive?""John's baptism," they replied.
Paul said, "John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus(Acts 19:3-5).
But to Frank, trivialities like awareness of one's sinfulness, repentance of one's sins and the fervent desire to obey God's commandments apparently don't matter in the slightest. To him, you don't have to do anything or think anything or change anything about your life(except if you're a racist, a sexist, a homophobe or a Republican voter). All that's necessary is that an Episcopal priest sprinkled some water on you when you were an infant and God can commence loving the dickens out of you.
Rooted and grounded in a renewed awareness of our own belovedness, we are then called to renew our witness to that love, and to name our willingness to act in the world around us out of the power of that love at work in us — that love which supplies us with capacities for courage, compassion, truth, imagination, insight which exceed all that we might ask or imagine. Such is the power of God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It has nothing to do with our deserving. It has everything to do with God’s indiscriminate loving.
See? There's nothing at all wrong with any of us. If we want to have more "courage, compassion, truth, imagination, insight," than we can possibly imagine, all we have to do is realize how gosh-darned much God loves us. But the one thing we most emphatically shouldn't do is burden ourselves with a bunch of rules:
None of this is easy. A religion based on duty and obligation with clear standards we can seldom meet, a religion which invites us to continual judgment of ourselves, a religion which provokes us to judge others — such a religion is much more comfortable for many of us than a faith grounded in liberating love which overrules judgment in favor of compassion.
You learn something new every day. I never knew that a faith which clearly teaches that certain activities are, well, evil while others are good:
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law(Galatians 5:19-23).
Some years ago the great Dr. Karl Menninger was asked what he thought was the primary cause of mental illness. After some thought he answered that in his opinion the primary cause of mental illness in the United States was the inability of people to forgive themselves for being imperfect. Unable to forgive ourselves, we are unable to forgive others, and so we become weighed down by a great burden of judgment directed against ourselves and those around us whose imperfections and personal vagaries occasion in us a kind of dark pleasure in thinking that we are not quite as imperfect as they are.
I've personally never found forgiving myself for the sins I commit all that hard, Frank. I don't know about you but I'm much more concerned about whether or not God forgives my sins since He's the One Who determines where I'm going to spend eternity.
Julian of Norwich, writing in the 15th century, understood this only too well. Out of a series of intense visions of God’s ruthless and unbounded love she wrote of what she had been shown. Her insights continue to inform and encourage men and women of faith and seekers in our own day. Fundamental to her thought is the uncompromising belief that anger and wrath are utterly foreign to God. She wrote: “I saw full surely that wherever our Lord appears peace reigns and anger has no place. For I saw no whit of anger in God — in short or in long term.” Not only is anger completely absent from God but “the love that God most high has for our soul is so great that it surpasses understanding.”
Someone whose theology is as thin as Frank's is simply has to get the idea of God's wrath completely out of the way as fast as possible. The problem is that Julian of Norwich was, to put it bluntly, wrong. Here are a few reasons why:
I have commanded my holy ones; I have summoned my warriors to carry out my wrath-those who rejoice in my triumph(Isaiah 13:3).See, the day of the LORD is coming-a cruel day, with wrath< and fierce anger-to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it(Isaiah 13:9).
Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the peoples who do not call on your name. For they have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him completely and destroyed his homeland(Jeremiah 10:25).
O house of David, this is what the LORD says: " 'Administer justice every morning; rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done- burn with no one to quench it(Jeremiah 21:12).
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath(Matthew 3:7)?
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness(Romans 1:18)
But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed(Romans 2:5).
There are a great many more examples than these, Frank, if you'd care to look for them.
Growing up in all ways into Christ is not an easy process. It involves continual discernment and a testing of spirits. It requires the awareness that Satan frequently “masquerades as an angel of light.” Beware of zeal in the name of righteousness devoid of mercy and compassion. Beware of visions of an “unblemished” church built upon judgment rather than love.
Beware even more of a "church" in which evil doesn't exist. Beware of a "church" where you don't have to repent of any sin you've committed. Beware of a "church" where they don't care if you openly sin or not because God "loves" and "accepts" you more than you can possibly imagine and isn't that what's really important? Beware of a "church" that hides behind the skirts of a vacuous, unscriptural notion of "love" because it is afraid to confront evil and perhaps make someone feel bad. Run away from such a "church" as fast as your legs will carry you.
In virtue of our baptism we are bound together in what Rowan Williams, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, describes as “solidarities not of our own choosing.” I did not choose you, nor did you choose me, yet each of us — given our different life experiences and ways of appropriating the gospel — are indispensable limbs of Christ’s risen body. The questions before us then are: What is God saying to me through you? What is God saying to you through me?
That's an easy one. God is saying to you through me that you desperately need to repent of your sins and return to the Christian faith. God is saying to me through you that you are what an apostate sounds like.
Frank Griswold had better re-read the part in Luke, where Jesus is so upset about doing God's will that he sweats blood. "Not my will, but Yours be done." And Jesus does God's will.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:8)
Mister Griswold, I think it's time you sat down and shut up.
Frank Griswold delivered a sermon that demonstrated once again that whatever his religion is, it isn't Christianity:
And it isn't mine any more, either. I miss it, but it's dead and gone.
Baptism is the very definition of separating. It is a sacrament, a setting aside of ourselves from sin.
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