Sunday, January 30, 2011

WEARING HER MITRE


Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the Very Rev. Dermot Dunne, dean of Christ Church Cathedral
Christ Church Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
30 January 2011
Dublin, Ireland

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

Can you remember back to Christmas? It seems a long time ago, yet it hasn’t even been six weeks. Today we’re remembering the feast of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, which would have taken place 40 days after his birth. It’s an occasion for dedicating the child to God, once enough time has elapsed that one can be reasonably certain the child will survive. Think for a minute about what it must have been like in a world where a third to half of children died in infancy. That’s still pretty much the reality in some parts of the world, like Angola, where nearly 20% of children die before they’re a year old. Compare that to Hong Kong, where the death rate is under 3 per 1000, or Ireland, where it’s 3.5 per 1000 live births. In a context where children die so readily, parents struggle with how much emotional investment they can make in each newborn child – there has to be some real hesitancy for the first days and weeks: is this child going to make it?

There was a human interest piece in the New York Times the day I left on this trip, about a urologic surgeon who spends most of his time treating cancer patients. He decided some years ago that he wanted to be trained as a mohel, the minister who celebrates the bris, and circumcises newborn Jewish boys, usually on the eighth day after birth. Again, the tradition is to wait long enough to be reasonably certain this new son will live. The story was about a very sick newborn, whose bris was delayed. The parents did not want to subject this fragile baby to any more pain or stress. When it became clear that the child would likely die, the parents asked if the bris could be observed after the child died, and the mohel agreed. The child was circumcised, named and prayed for as a part of the family, and then given over into God’s welcoming arms.

Jesus’ bris and naming took place 8 days after his birth – and we celebrate it on 1 January. By the time 6 weeks have passed since the birth, the child should be nursing well and growing, and strong enough to leave the safety of home. That’s what we remember today – Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, his dedication to God. It’s also a time to be explicit about the hopes for this child. In Malachi and the letter to the Hebrews, we heard the great expectations laid on this child Jesus – the hope and dream for a savior of the nation.

What hopes and dreams are laid on new members of our families today? Will this be the child who will achieve more than her parents, the first one to go to university, or will this be the one who emigrates? We hear occasionally about later children whose parents hope they will provide healing for older, sick siblings through the gift of stem cells. This child Jesus is the hoped-for healer of his nation, and indeed, all nations.

We respond to new leaders in the same way. When we elect or install them, we load them up with quite phenomenal expectations. The United States invested amazing hope in our first African-American president – and President Obama bears the desire of generations for healing of prejudice, injustice, and the ancient wounds of slavery. Those hopes went far beyond the United States. At the service in the national cathedral the day after his inauguration, I spoke with people from Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana who had come across the ocean for 36 hours, just to attend the inauguration. Yet when people discover that one human being cannot possibly fulfill those enormous hopes, disillusion follows.

What hopes is this nation laying on its next Taoiseach? Will your next prime minister be expected to solve the entire fiscal crisis in his or her first week in office? That person will take office overloaded with urgent desires for healing and resolving all the ills of this nation and maybe even larger parts of this world.

We already have a savior. Be gentle with your new leaders – but not too gentle. If we’re going to cooperate with God’s ancient vision for a healed and reconciled world, we have to have a sense of urgency. People are dying, including too many newborn children, because we haven’t been urgent enough. Lives are lost through sickness, war, neglect, and murder because we avoid the hard realities. Thirty thousand children die of preventable illness every day. Those deaths wouldn’t happen if there were clean water, effective health care, adequate food, and vaccinations – and another child dies every 3 seconds because we haven’t worked hard enough to prevent it.

We already have a cosmic savior, yet those who share God’s dream are all partners in healing the world. God can’t do it without us. As Desmond Tutu is fond of saying, when God said feed the hungry, he didn’t mean to stand around and wait for pizzas to fall from heaven.

Sometimes the partners in healing end up sharing Jesus’ road to Calvary. An Anglican was murdered in Uganda this week, a man who has been a strong voice for the basic human rights of gay and lesbian people. His voice has been silenced. We can pray that others will continue that work, or be challenged by the brutality of his death into some conversion of heart. Will we challenge the world to respect the dignity of every single human being?

The healing of the world needs the participation and leadership of all parts of the body of Christ. It starts with urgent voices, and changed hearts, our own conversion, and our challenge to systems that perpetuate all kinds of sickness and death around the world.

Saviors and leaders are all around us – in these disciples of Jesus, and in similar communities far beyond this one. When we came to the baptismal font, each one of us was presented and dedicated to God to share Jesus’ healing work. We’ve shown up here today to be fed and encouraged for that ancient work of healing the world.

Those urgent voices continue to show up. More than 30 years ago, one of those leaders was at work in El Salvador. He raised his voice to challenge the oppression and murder going on in that nation in the 1970s. When a reporter asked him if he was afraid, he said, “I have often been threatened with death. I must tell you, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.” And indeed, his assassination lent enormous energy to the quest for justice in that land. To this day, when the people of El Salvador gather, they claim his presence by calling his name and answering for him: Oscar Romero, presente. Oscar Romero, present!

Most of us will never confront that kind of death-laced fear. Yet our names are being called all the time. We’re challenged in this very body to “show up,” to present ourselves ready, willing, and able to help heal this broken world. That is what it means to be part of the body of Christ.

Body of Christ, are you here? Will you answer?

Body of Christ?


H/T to Torey Lightcap at The Lead.

UPDATE: Bishop Katharine's sermon is better for the hearing and seeing of it, than simply for the reading of it. Watch the video posted by Jim Naughton at The Lead. Click on the "Presiding Bishop preaches in...." portion of the video. In my humble opinion, she is an excellent preacher.

19 comments:

  1. This is a trivial question, inspired by shallow motivation. If you want a mitre made of mixed rows of lilac and fuschia, where on earth do you get it made?

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  2. (possibly given the entirely pointless shenanigans in the UK about whether she can wear her mitre or not should make one grateful she has a mitre on at all? ...)

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  3. Cathy, I was looking for info on the vestments that Bp. Katharine is wearing, which are the vestments she wore for her installation as Presiding Bishop. They were specially designed and made for the occasion by professional vestment makers, but I could not find the story or the names of the designers in a quick search.

    The PB has worn them many times since, which is only right, since the silk vestments must have been quite expensive. I like them very much, but others dislike them intensely. I'll look further to see what I can find.

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  4. It is reported that at the end of her sermon, those in the congregation responded "Present!" [Though personally, I would have gone w/ the original Espan~ol, "!Presente!", which has a stronger sense of "We Are HERE!"]

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  5. JCF, thanks for that lovely bit of news. You're never satisfied, are you? :-)

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  6. The mitre that attracted widespread, not-altogether-undeserved derision, particularly from the radical right, was the celebrated rainbow-colored fish-head. It was, as I recall, a gift at a church that she visited. I doubt that it has been publicly worn since.

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  7. Yes, that mitre was particularly awful, Lapin. I think mitres are silly anyway, and if I were a bishop, I'd refuse to wear one.

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  8. JCF, kudos for being the only person to mention the sermon in a comment. Poor Bp. Katharine! She's DOOMED to have every discussion about her veer off into what she's wearing.

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  9. Of course she is, Mimi - she's a girl.

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  10. What about Dean Dunne? Does he look fetching in his chasuble?

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  11. Look more fetching without the abomination of the midi-length alb under it.

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  12. Lapin, indeed, the dean's alb should have been longer. Our Kate has it about right.

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  13. To be fair, Kate's clothes get mentioned a lot not only because she is a girl but also because they are generally rather loudly patterned, to say the least.

    The blokes do come in for the same treatment if they attempt anything notable in the sartorial department. The Pope has quite often had his special red shoes mentioned and last time John Sentamu appeared in a pic on OCICBW wearing an outfit featuring multicoloured stick-on flora and fauna, he came in for a grilling too.

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  14. Not forgetting, Cathy, Jeffrey John beaming radiantly in a cope from a St Albans vestment set that is not, to my way of thinking, aging gracefully.

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  15. Its a wonderful sermon! She has the ability to dish out reality...splat!!! Jesse Jackson used to do that regularly.
    For a minute, try to imagine our country/world as it would be if all of the R. Wing and Tea Party ideas became reality! Millions without health care, dying - young and old. No abortion for any reason, people of color and immigrants without power. Education slashed and history re-written for political gain. Chaos because police and firefighters budgets are stripped, Veterans denied health care and other benefits.....you name it!
    And we see a bit of what it would be like in the murder of David Kato.
    Seems we need more ++Katherines and voices for reality!
    Nij

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  16. Lapin - ooo no!! Dearie me, whose idea was that? ... :-( It honestly looks like bad fancy dress.

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  17. In fact I think the only John who could carry off that outfit is probably Elton.

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  18. Actually, most of the the outfits mentioned so far today would look better on Elton.

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  19. Nij, you're spot on. Our Kate is a woman for the times.

    About the vestments, they're all vestiges of another time, whether they're bright and loud or suitably subdued.

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