RINGO WAS HERE

Ringo was with us at St John's Episcopal Church this morning. Oh, and Fr Ron was there, too. Ron preached on faith as a journey, which may be a cliché, but is nonetheless true. The Israelites journeyed away from Egypt once they were set free, and then journeyed until they reached the Promised Land. Those who settled outside Jerusalem journeyed on pilgrimages to the temple in the Holy City. Jesus wandered from place to place teaching and healing, and he went to the temple in Jerusalem on the feast days. And later Paul and the other disciples of Jesus journeyed spreading the faith. So it is for us. When we come to faith, it's not, "Jesus, come into my heart," and I'm saved, and it's done. Jesus asks us to follow him, and sometimes it seems there is little rest in this life, because we never truly arrive at the end of the journey.

A close-up of Ringo

As usual, even during the best of sermons, and Ron's was indeed very good, my mind wonders, sometimes even in good ways. In the Eucharistic service in the Episcopal Church, the priest moves around a lot, especially in the beginning, and when Ron moved, Ringo followed, and, at times, say during the lessons and the Eucharistic prayers, he had time to catch a few winks, because Ron stayed put for a while. But, all too soon, Ringo's human was moving again. I read Ringo's thoughts, and if I could make a large speech bubble, this is what Ringo's would say. "This moving around is all well and good, but I wish he'd settle down, so I could have a long nap." And so we are as Christians; we think like Ringo, "Are we there yet? May we have a rest?" And God says, "All right then, a short one, but then we must move along again."

There you have it: Ringo as metaphor for the faith journey.

THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Collect of the Day

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Psalm 146

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
   I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

Do not put your trust in princes,
   in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
   on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
   whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
   the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
   who executes justice for the oppressed;
   who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
   the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
   the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
   he upholds the orphan and the widow,
   but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign for ever,
   your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

Epistle of James 5: 7-10

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.  Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors!  As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Listen to and/or read Fr Tobias Haller's sermon for Third Sunday in Advent.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Collect of the Day: Second Sunday of Advent

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer)

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,  "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."  This is the one of whom the prophet Isai'ah spoke when he said,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"

Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Phar'isees and Sad'ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:1-12)

I recommend Penny Nash's fine sermon titled "Fire and Light".

JASON COLLINS, NBA PLAYER, COMES OUT AS GAY

I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay.
....

When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue.

This is major good news, and I'm late to the party, as I often am.  I am not a newspaper.  Read the entire article and note the lovely stories about Jason's Aunt Teri and Uncle Mark.  Actually, I was a bit teary as I read the story of Jason's courageous decision to come out, for it makes me sad that anyone still has to be brave in being honest about who they are.  Jay is the first in a major league sport to state publicly that he is gay, but he is, by no means, the only gay player.

Although the great majority of responses have been supportive, there's Chris Broussard, a writer for ESPN, who believes a sermon about sin is the appropriate commentary on the cable channel to Jason's coming out.  Crikey!  What's going on?  From his name and accent, I suspect Broussard is from Louisiana, and, if so, I'm embarrassed by the remarks from a fellow Louisianian.

   

Here's Broussard's non-apology apology:

"Today on OTL, as part of a larger, wide-ranging discussion on today's news, I offered my personal opinion as it relates to Christianity, a point of view that I have expressed publicly before. I realize that some people disagree with my opinion and I accept and respect that. As has been the case in the past, my beliefs have not and will not impact my ability to report on the NBA. I believe Jason Collins displayed bravery with his announcement today and I have no objection to him or anyone else playing in the NBA."

Broussard has no objection? Who cares?

FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING

Matthew 21:1-13 (NRSV)

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them,

“It is written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Schwarz, Wjatscheslaw Grigorjewitsch  - Palm Sunday in Moscow
Russian State Museum, St Petersburg

What have we in the painting above? (Click on the picture for a larger view.)  A historically accurate reenactment of the Gospel account?  No, of course not.  Why then do we see depictions of Jesus wearing a bejeweled golden crown and expensive fabrics when he would have worn the ordinary clothing of working class males in 1st century Jerusalem, which was an undergarment of coarse cloth and a tunic made of wool?  It's true that Jesus' tunic was seamless, which seems to have been unusual, but that's about as far as his finery can be taken.  The only crown Jesus wore was a crown of thorns.  Even after the Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene first saw Jesus, she thought he was the gardener.    

The rule of God—the kingship of Christ—is not about earthly power or political authority, revenge or judgment; it’s about wholeness, it’s about restoring creation to the fullness of peace and justice, truth and love that God intended. It’s about all lands—ALL people—not just a chosen few. It’s about the primary moral value of prizing the interconnectedness of all humanity—of loving our neighbors as ourselves. The kingship of Jesus is AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN vastly different from a worldly kingship. When we celebrate Christ the King, we’re holding up a king who is, first and foremost, a  reconciler, a redeemer, a servant. This is a king who comes to show us how to live as a people of God in the kingdom of God—a shepherd willing to lay down his life for his sheep. (Susan Russell - Sermon 2004)

 Image from Wikipedia.

MARY, SISTER OF MARGINALIZED WOMEN

Eleusa Theotokos with scenes from the life of Mary, 18th century

My friend Ann sent me a link to the wonderful sermon about Mary that Ian McAlister will preach this coming Sunday.  Below is an excerpt.

While Mary was one of the original Jewish Christians, she was never a Gentile. It does her no honour, therefore, to take to her Jewishness with a bottle of White King Bleach. Don’t think we haven’t done that, believe me. We have.

We’ve turned her Jewish complexion into that of a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian. Not content with disfigurement, we’ve also taken to her spiritual life and made her into a 20^th/21^st century version of a Christian woman, which she ain’t.

Mary lived in a rural village, Nazareth, whose population consisted largely of peasants and tradies. Married to a local chippie, her life consisted of taking care of her large household. Besides Joseph and Jesus, Scripture tells us there were four brothers: James, Joses, Judas and Simon and some unnamed sisters.

Her days were filled with the hard, unpaid work of women of all ages: the feeding, clothing and nurturing of a growing household. Like other village women of her day, she was, most likely, illiterate.

Times were tough in l’le old Nazareth. This village was part of an occupied state under the heel of imperial Rome. Revolution was in the air. The atmosphere was tense. Violence and poverty prevailed.

To our shame, it’s only in recent days that we’ve even noticed the similarities between Mary's life and the lives of many others. The Flight into Egypt and the death of her son Jesus by execution compares with those who, among other horrors, have had their children and grandchildren disappear or murdered by dictatorial regimes.

Whatever else Mary is, she is a sister of the marginalized women in every oppressive situation. It does her no honour, then, to take her out of her dangerous historical circumstance and transform her into an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe.

The sermon is one of the best on the mother of Jesus and offers perhaps the most realistic description of Mary and her life that I've known.  I love the emphasis on Mary's sisterhood with marginalized women.  It makes me somewhat ashamed of my rather flip and superficial question about Mary's perpetual virginity in my earlier post on the Feast of St Mary the Virgin.  How on earth did we get from the accounts in the Gospels to  "an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe"?

The icon pictured at the head of the post with Mary and Jesus clothed in finery is hardly realistic, but at least the two are not blond of hair and fair of complexion.

Image from Wikipedia.

WILL IT PLAY IN PEORIA?

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky's sermon at St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Peoria, Illinois, preceding 'A Call to Catholic Men' march. 

For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

May God have mercy especially on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.

As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and be ready to fight to defend our faith. The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.

In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like those first disciples before the Resurrection locked together in the Upper Room.

In the late 19th century, Bismark waged his “Kulturkamf,” a culture war against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany. Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, President Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Now things have come to such a pass in our beloved country that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

Note that the sermon is directed to men.

Note the battlefield rhetoric: fight to defend our faith, a fearless army of Catholic men, this is a battle that we could lose, this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral. 

Note the analogies to Hitler and Stalin.

Is this how Bishop Jenky loves his enemies?

The Catholic Post says that the men demonstrated their fearlessness by standing in the rain for a 30 minute program.  Clearly these men are ready for battle.

Thanks to Ann V for the link.

WELL DONE, ARCHBISHOP ROWAN

During his visit to Zimbabwe, in his sermon at the celebration of the Eucharist in a stadium crowded with 15,000 people, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams struck all the right notes.

It is not only that some refuse the invitation of God to share his abundant love and generosity. It is all too easy for us human beings to try and block that love and prevent it from reaching others. You know very well, dear brothers and sisters, what it means to have doors locked in your faces by those who claim the name of Christians and Anglicans. You know how those who by their greed and violence have refused the grace of God try to silence your worship and frustrate your witness in the churches and schools and hospitals of this country. But you also know what Jesus' parable teaches us so powerfully – that the will of God to invite people to his feast is so strong that it can triumph even over these mindless and Godless assaults. Just as the Risen Jesus breaks through the locked doors of fear and suspicion, so he continues to call you and empower you in spite of all efforts to defeat you. And in the Revelation to John, the Lord proclaims that he has set before us an open door that no-one can shut. It is the door of his promise, the door of his mercy, the door into the feast of his Kingdom.

In your faith and endurance, you have kept your eyes on that open door when the doors of your own churches have been shut against you. You have discovered that it is not the buildings that make a true church but the spiritual foundations on which your lives are built. And as we together give thanks for the open door that God puts before us, we may even find the strength to say to our enemies and persecutors, 'The door is open for you! Accept what God offers and turn away from the death-dealing folly of violence.'
....

This Eucharist is the sign of God's purpose for all of us; it is a feast in which all are fed with Christ's new life, in which there is no distinction of race, tribe or party. In this community there can be no place for violence or for retaliation: we stand together, sinners in need of grace, proclaiming to the world that there is room at God's table for all people equally. What the Church has to say to the society around it, whether here or in Britain, is not to advance a political programme but to point to the fact of this new creation, this fellowship of justice and joy, this universal feast. It is on the basis of this vision that we urge all people to say no to violence, especially as the next election approaches in this country; to discover that deep reverence for each person that absolutely forbids us from treating them as if their welfare did not matter, from abusing and attacking them.

Read it all. It is excellent.

There's more.

Following their meeting with President Robert Mugabe, the Archbishops of Canterbury, Central Africa, Southern Africa and Tanzania issued the following statement at their press conference.

In our capacities as leaders of the Anglican Church in Africa and worldwide, we have just met President Robert Mugabe.

We come here to be in solidarity with our Anglican sisters and brothers at the invitation of the local church – the Anglican Province of Central Africa, which includes the five dioceses of Zimbabwe.

As you know this has been a time of immense trial.

Since 2007 Anglican congregations in Zimbabwe have suffered serious persecution at the hands of the police. They have been intimidated. Their churches have been closed. Properties, including schools and clinics, have been seized.

As representatives of the Anglican Communion, and with the support of ecumenical friends worldwide, we strongly and unequivocally support the efforts of ordinary Anglicans to worship in peace and to minister to the spiritual and material needs of their communities.

Today we were able to present President Mugabe with a dossier compiled by the bishops in Zimbabwe which gives a full account of the abuses to which our people and our church has been subject. We have asked, in the clearest possible terms, that the President use his powers as Head of State to put an end to all unacceptable and illegal behaviour.

We are proud of our church and our people who have suffered so much, but who continue to serve with love and with hope.

For our part we pray, and invite you to join us in praying, that the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe be allowed to carry out its mission in peace, and serve its communities with love.

Gracious Father, we pray for thy Anglican Church in Zimbabwe. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen.

I TAKE IT ALL BACK...

...the snark about the royal wedding. I just finished watching the entire ceremony in Westminster Abbey, uninterrupted, no fits and starts, no commentary. It was beautiful. The Anglican liturgy, the music, the sermon, the prayer composed by the royal pair, the Abbey, the deportment of the bride and groom, all of it was too lovely for words.

And, Leonardo, the Queen's dress was, too, mellow yellow in the softer lighting in the Abbey. I first saw the dress in bright sunlight on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in one of my earlier, disjointed viewings of the celebration.

In the scenes showing the trees decorating the Abbey, as the camera zoomed closer to the gorgeous Gothic stained glass window, the setting seemed to be the outdoors. The pans of the architectural elements of the Abbey and the shots from on high were breathtaking.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Photo by John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images

"...GOD'S LOVE AS THE BE ALL AND END ALL....

Mark Harris at Preludium preached a fine sermon for Lent II titled "God in the midst of death and destruction".

The Tweet summary:

Spirit filled and freed up, we Jesus people know that God loves the world fully and accept God’s love as the be all and end all of life.

Read the rest at Mark's blog. It's excellent.

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.

R. I. P. COLIN SLEE

Sermon by the Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, at the funeral of Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral.

I didn't know Colin Slee. Until his recent death, I didn't know anything about Dean Slee, but after reading Jeffrey John's lovely sermon at his funeral service, I wish I'd known him or, at least, known a bit more about him.

One of the last things Colin said before he died was, ‘I am surprisingly un-scared’. It could have been the motto of his whole life. Colin was always surprisingly un-scared. Unlike the rest of us, he never did let fear or self-consciousness or embarrassment to stop him reaching out to the most unlikely and needy people, or doing and saying what he thought was right and true. All the frightened, careful people said Colin was risky, indiscreet, unreliable – ‘the most dangerous man in the Church of England’ said one, to Colin’s deep delight. But he was not dangerous or indiscreet or unreliable - certainly not in anything that mattered. He was just surprisingly un-scared.

If you ask why he was so un-scared, I think the answer is as straightforward as he was. He really did believe. He really trusted in a good and loving God as Jesus came to make Him known to us; and that confidence set him free to be the astonishingly life-giving, brave, generous and joyous person that he was.
....

The papers and his detractors always portrayed Colin as an arch-Liberal, as if he were the leader of a faction obsessed with a secular agenda. It was never true, and it misses the whole point. For Colin it began and ended with God. The truth is that he was a traditional Catholic Anglican, thoroughly disciplined and orthodox in his faith, a man of profound prayer and penitence. His idea of inclusiveness was not that ‘anything goes’, but that we are all equally in need of healing, and therefore the Church must equally be a home for all. Colin welcomed people because Jesus did. (My emphasis)

Amen, and amen, and amen!

I'm baffled that, all too often, it seems difficult for certain of my brother and sister Christians to understand that one can be "thoroughly disciplined and orthodox" in one's faith and still welcome everyone because Jesus did. How is it arch-liberal or secular to look to Jesus in the Gospels as the model for how we are to "do unto others"?

From the website of Southwark Cathedral.

Photo from the Guardian.

EASTER SERMON BY BISHOP BARRY MORGAN OF THE CHURCH IN WALES

 

GUERCINO - "Doubting Thomas" - Oil on canvas
Residenzgalerie, Salzburg

From The Church in Wales:

Believing in God is like catching a plane or falling in love - it require trust, risk and a leap of faith, Dr Barry Morgan said in his sermon at Llandaff Cathedral on Easter Sunday.

He said, "Without a degree of faith and trust, no one would fall in love, neither would any of us catch a plane or go for an operation or allow our children to walk to school. All these are undertaken in trust and contain an element of risk. Belief in God, faith, is very similar."

But faith, he said, can transform lives and if we want proof of God we should look for "resurrection moments" – signs that show transformation and a confidence in a better world - rather than hard facts or knockdown arguments.

"There are Resurrection moments when parents find it in their hearts to forgive their children's murderers; where church communities cease to look after their own interests and defend the rights of others; where people stand up for truth, justice and integrity at great personal cost across the globe; and where attitudes that limit and frustrate, imprison, degrade and dehumanise people are overcome. Believing in resurrection is refusing to accept the world as it is but knowing it can be changed, it can be transfigured.”

Just as the transformed lives of Christ’s disciples after the Resurrection brought people to God, so people will be drawn to God if they see faith at work in Christians today.

Dr Morgan said, “If people see in us the seeds of resurrection life, they too have a model for its living reality and might similarly be transformed. If people see in our lives hope overcoming despair, light replacing darkness, love conquering hate, and lives being transformed, they too might begin to believe that Jesus is truly risen from the dead and that His kingdom has begun to be inaugurated.”

The full text of the sermon follows.

Bishop Morgan quotes A. N. Wilson in the sermon:

So he says “every inner prompting of conscience, every glimmering sense of beauty, every response we make to music, every experience we have of love, be it physical, sexual, family or love of friends, reminds us of this fact. We are not just a collection of chemicals. How are we capable of love, heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat? There is more to life than we can see or prove. Faith, like love, is to make more of a commitment than one can rationally explain”.

Remember, it's still Easter. Happy 2 Easter and St. Thomas Sunday!


Image from theWeb Gallery of Art.

H/T to Peter Owen at Thinking Anglicans for the link to the sermon.

UPDATE: I bumped up this post, because I want it to remain on top until tomorrow.

I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!

From the AP via the Times-Picayune:

It was the Catholic calendar's holiest moment — the Mass celebrating the resurrection of Christ. But with Pope Benedict XVI accused of failing to protect children from abusive priests, Easter Sunday also was a high-profile opportunity to play defense.

"Holy Father, on your side are the people of God," Cardinal Angelo Sodano told the pontiff, whom victims of clergy sexual abuse accuse of helping to shape and perpetuate a climate of cover-up. Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, dismissed those claims as "petty gossip."

The ringing tribute at the start of a Mass attended by tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square marked an unusual departure from the Vatican's Easter rituals, infusing the tradition-steeped religious ceremony with an air of a papal pep rally.

Dressed in gold robes and shielded from a cool drizzle by a canopy, Benedict looked weary during much of the Mass, the highlight of a heavy Holy Week schedule. But as he listened intently to Sodano's paean, a smile broke across the pope's face, and when the cardinal finished speaking, Benedict rose from his chair in front of the altar to embrace him.

"[A]n air of a pep rally"? I suppose the characterization will be labeled as more persecution by the media.

Jewish leaders, and even some top Catholic churchmen, were angered after Benedict's personal preacher, in a Good Friday sermon, likened the growing accusations against the pope to the campaign of anti-Semitic violence that culminated in the Holocaust.

The preacher, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, told Corriere della Sera daily in an interview Sunday that he had no intention "of hurting the sensibilities of the Jews and of the victims of pedophilia," expressed regret and asked for forgiveness.

He was quoted as saying that the pope wasn't aware of what the sermon would say beforehand, and that no Vatican officials read the text before the Good Friday service.

The apology satisfied one Jewish leader, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

"Now that he has apologized and the Vatican has distanced itself from those remarks, the matter is closed," Steinberg said in a statement.

Since Fr Cantalamessa apologized, I won't say more about the matter, either.

Meanwhile back in Anglicanland comes another apology.

From the BBC:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed his "deep sorrow" for any difficulties caused by his comments about the Catholic Church in Ireland.

His claim that the Church had lost all credibility because of its handling of child abuse by priests was criticised by both Catholic and Anglican clergy.

The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said he was "stunned".

Dr Rowan Williams later telephoned Archbishop Martin to insist he meant no offence to the Irish Catholic Church.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Dr Williams' words represented unusually damning criticism from the leader of another Church.

Did Archbishop Williams speak anything but the truth? It seems to me that he had nothing for which to apologize. Once again, the ABC waffles and ends up pleasing no one.

UPPING THE ANTE

From the New York Times:

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.
....

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
....

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own private thoughts and was not “an official statement” from the Vatican.

Posted without commentary.