Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 21-28; Matthew 15:10-28

 

           Whom do we want to treat like dogs these days?

 

            The Canaanite woman, this descendent of the original inhabitants of Jerusalem and its surrounding territory, got the moral better of even Jesus in this story from Matthew today….But we haven’t learned the lesson. First Canaanites were treated like dogs, along with Samaritans…Then, sure enough the tables were turned and Jews were treated like dogs for centuries. I’ve been reading a history of Britain (mostly in order to avoid reading I’m supposed to be doing for my graduate work) and I’ve gotten to the part where it’s become clear that the core of the British Empire, and the whole dominance of the West in modern times, was built on a foundation of slavery and the dehumanization of people who happened to be different from us…African slaves were treated like dogs, Moslems and Chinese were treated like dogs, South Asians and Indigenous Americans were treated like dogs…And not like Carmel dogs mind you, but mangy street dogs you could kick at your will.

 

            Whom do we want to treat like dogs these days?

 

            The Lambeth Conference was held last month…the once every 10 year gathering of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion, coming together at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury… with the exception of the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, who wasn’t invited because he is gay.

 

            A number of so-called “conservative” Bishops boycotted the conference, because they didn’t want to associate with bishops who associated with the Bishop of New Hampshire.

           

The Archbishop of Canterbury set up the conference in such a way that there would be no votes or established positions that would draw the line of irreparable break and schism, which is really a very Anglican approach. 

 

We have had serious disagreements before…A king was beheaded and an Archbishop hung. We agreed to disagree on the small issue of the Civil War, but we haven’t had a vote that would break us apart. It’s said that the Anglican Church doesn’t so much sit on the fence as try to talk the fence out of existence. I think they ought to have formed a study group to report back in 50 years and let things go as they do. But that’s not what they did.

 

The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago that the Archbishop of Canterbury believes there is now an understanding that, until a “covenant” is accepted…in two years, three years, five years or more…that will deal definitively with the issue, that, until then, all parts of the communion should refrain from ordaining homosexuals or blessing same sex relationships.

 

So now we know whom we’re supposed to treat like dogs (except that every St. Francis Day I can, at least, bless the dogs.)

 

Our Bishop, Mary, has invited the clergy to a meeting on September 10 to talk about Lambeth, and my hope and prayer is that she will tell me that I misunderstand the Archbishop’s understanding…that our own Joanna Hollis will be ordained in the order to which she has been called by God. But this is more than just personal.

 

The issue of including gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender Episcopalians as full members of the Church has strangely become the most pressing moral issue of our time…equivalent to the rejection of anti-Semitism in Germany, and Jim Crow segregation in the American South.

 

I wish that weren’t true. I wish we would find an issue with more human gravitas than peoples sex lives, the issue of war and peace perhaps, or the inequality that leaves some nations rich and powerful and others impotent and starving. Surely third world Anglicans have more to complain about than a gay bishop in New Hampshire… But this is the challenge of justice and fairness that has been presented to us, and we must meet it head on.

 

Gene Robinson was elected by the people of the Diocese of New Hampshire, and his election was ratified by a vote of both House of Bishops and the House of Deputies at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, with the full knowledge of his loving, committed relationship with another man.

 

So the issue here is not the ordination of homosexuals to the Episcopate or the Priesthood or the Diaconate. The issue is the ordination of honest homosexuals to the Episcopate, the priesthood, and the Diaconate. There have been homosexuals in all orders of the Church since there have been orders in the Church, and I would much rather have such people out of the so-called closet and in open, committed, loving relationships than in denial and repression with all the problems that has caused.

 

The Episcopal Church has an excellent track record for reconciling reason and revelation, science and theology that needs to be applied to our understanding of human sexuality regardless of the reactions from homophobes in Nigeria, Argentina, Virginia, or Fresno. I think we need to lead on this issue and stand by what we believe is right. We did it with women. We need to do it with gays.

 

A lot of this has to do with my particular reading of “sacramental theology.” The Episcopal Church is a sacramentally based church. But I don’t think the sacraments are magic acts. A sacramental act involves the witnessing and blessing of an already existing spiritual reality within the world of space and time. When someone is baptized, I’m no making them a child of God…They’re already a child of God. When someone is confirmed, the Bishop is not making them a full and active member of the Body of Christ…They already are a full and active member of the Body of Christ.

 

 When someone is ordained the Bishop is recognizing an already existing call to Holy Orders. When I officiate at a marriage, the couple themselves are the ministers of the sacrament… The congregation witnesses their vows. The priest blesses their relationship.

 

The Lambeth Conference can’t decide whom God calls to be married or ordained. We in the Church witness, bless, and celebrate the wonderful way that God sacramentally engages with life in the world to connect us to the kingdom of heaven. And when the institutions or the church try to restrict such sacramental action due to fear and bigotry, it is the church that is judged, and not the holiness of the lives of its loving, faithful, and long-suffering gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered members.

 

I cherish my collegial ministry with our many homosexual clergy in this Diocese. I have been honored to bless and celebrate gay and lesbian relationships.

 

Maybe the church should get out of the marriage business. Or maybe marriages should be only religious and have nothing to do with the law. I’m working on a local committee to oppose the passage of Proposition 8, which takes away the right of gay and lesbian people to marry, but as a priest I really don’t like being a functionary of the State of California. If the Roman Catholics or Muslims don’t want to marry gay couples, then they shouldn’t have to. If I want to, and my Bishop permits it, then I should be able to do just that. In 1975, the year I was ordained, it would have been illegal for me to officiate at the marriage of a racially mixed couple in the State of Mississippi. Proposition 8 does the same thing in California with respect to gays and lesbians, and it’s just not fair. It’s just not right.

 

So much of this is based on the Bible…on the understanding of the Bible …and even more on the misunderstanding of the Bible.

 

The Holy Bible “contains the Word of God, and all things necessary for salvation.” But it always needs to be interpreted within the context of the society and individual life in which it is read. It always is, in fact, interpreted whenever it’s read; even when people think they’re taking it literally. There’s a book entitled The Year of Living Biblically that shows the absurdity of trying to follow every command in the Bible. And I would maintain that it’s not only absurd, but impossible, since there are commands that are mutually contradictory. What happens, then, is that the Bible gets used to justify a person’s or a society’s pre-existing prejudice, or to support a favored life-style. And, whether conscious or not, that’s not a good use of the Bible.

 

The Bible, and the Church which it informs, is meant to help us be in relationship with God. It is from that relationship, not in response to some Pharisaic legal command, that we need to respond in our life; to and work within, sometimes work against, the culture in which we find ourselves. The various parts need to be interpreted by the whole, and the primary teachings need to be used to judge the rest.

 

What is primary is love,…love of God… love of each other…love of ourselves… and the acceptance that spiritually speaking we’re all pretty much dogs, but that through grace we feed abundantly on what falls from the masters table.

 

If that sense of love and humility means that some other Christians or other Anglicans feel that they can’t kneel down next to me at the communion rail, then so be it…They’ve already broken the covenants as far as I’m concerned, and there’s not point pretending for the sake of imperial unity.

 

 

We might ask, “What’s the big deal? What’s the big rush? There aren’t that many of them anyway. They’re not really all that bad off. But the German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemuller, said that when the Nazis came for the Jews he didn’t say anything because he wasn’t a Jew. And when they came for the Communists he didn’t say anything because he wasn’t a Communist. And when they came for the Catholics he didn’t say anything because he wasn’t a Catholic. And when they came for him there was no one to say anything at all.

 

“How pleasant it is when people dwell together in unity.”

 

Pray for the Church.

 

Thanks be to God.