Lections for the Mission of the Church

The Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop-Elect

Evensong
13 August 2006
Good Samaritan, Corvallis, 4 pm

Lections for the Mission of the Church: Isa 49:5-13, Ps 96, Lk 10:1-9

I remember one of the first times I went to Corvallis Manor for a special communion service. I’d just come back here and been ordained a deacon, and as I recall, Bill McCarthy had gone off on leave, and left me to learn how to deal with the daily challenges of this parish. [That is a great and appropriate teaching method!] Barbara and Inez may remember that day as well. We read this same gospel about eating what is set before you, and I’d said something to the people gathered about finding the blessing in whatever is offered. [I have to believe that there is great grace in the ability to give thanks for what a nursing home kitchen turns out day after day.] And then we had communion together. Most of the people opened their mouths or put out their hands for the bread, and it was given and received. A couple of folks who didn’t respond got a blessing. Afterward, Barbara came up and whispered to me, “that woman over there, the one you just gave communion to, is Jewish!” The woman’s son came up to me later and said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see my mother take communion!” He seemed both a bit scandalized and rather grateful that she had been included. Somewhere in the depths of her being, underneath the surface confusion, she heard the words about eating what is set before you, and responded. And I am quite certain that, baruch atah adonai eloheinu, God was praised.

I tell you that story knowing full well that the rubrics were violated, and that some might find it appropriate to bring me up on charges. Yet I think we have to recognize that sometimes the gospel is not about following all the rules. We live in a society that seems consumed with legalisms, penalties, and punishment. Our church is caught up in a struggle over interpretations of scripture that debate whether and how we should be following rules set down long ago.

When Jesus tells the 70 to travel light, and to go and bring good news wherever they are welcome, he is sending them out without their usual supports. They don’t get to take along their normal excess baggage, their extra clothes and credit cards, and everything they just might need. They are supposed to depend on the hospitality they encounter, on the radical grace present in the world. And if they don’t find it, they’re supposed to keep on going until they do. And you know, after a long day’s walk, maybe without lunch or a coffee break, I think they were probably a lot more willing to look for hospitality in unexpected places. Even the places where the door is already shuttered and the light is off might be a possibility. For when you both need that hospitality, and know and expect that there is grace to be found, you are a lot likelier to keep on looking!

Beginning by saying “peace to this house” is even more likely to bring a positive response. Even a curmudgeon is likely to open up for somebody who comes hat in hand in the middle of a snow storm. The undefended person is not a threat, and grace and hospitality become a likelier response.

Rules can often become fences and defenses that keep some folks safe inside the corral and keep others out. The original genius behind the 613 rules of Torah was about self-definition. By keeping the fullness of that law, the Hebrew people became a nation. Those rules became an occasion of grace that defined their existence and their special relationship to God. Like any other good gift, however, those rules can become an idol, and an excuse for shutting out those human beings we would rather not have in our back yards – or our living rooms. The rules of Christianity or the canons of the Episcopal church or the laws of this nation are no different – they can be occasions of grace that shape our growth, or they can become dead or even demonic idols.

When Jesus tells the 70 that they have to travel light and receive whatever food is offered, he’s taking away all their little comforts and their ability to live by the rules, for the meal of the day just might not be kosher. When they are told to greet the household in peace, it means that whoever lives there is a fit candidate for peace, however that person lives. Peace-bringing and the charge to heal the sickness they find mean that any potential host is capable of wholeness and healing and salvation, and when the disciples can give that greeting with full integrity, then, oh yes, indeedy, the Kingdom of God is close at hand!

What would this world look like if Palestinians were sent off to find hospitality in Israel, and Israelis in Lebanon, and Shiites in Sunni territory? Or Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan? Can you or I go looking for hospitality in the home of an immigrant down the street, whether Mexican or Tongan or Ethiopian? Could we go, two by two, looking for welcome at the home of a paroled murderer or a sex offender?

When Isaiah says I will give you as a light to the nations, that’s the kind of radical hospitality he’s talking about. You and I are meant to be light-bearers and shalom-builders, so that God’s salvation and wholeness might reach to the ends of the earth. Going looking for hospitality has a lot to do with the hospitality of our own hearts. Can we suspend judgment about where or with whom we might find it?

Ensuring that people keep the rules hedges in the hospitality of our hearts. Yes, we can still be hospitable, but our light only stretches a little way, to the edge of the corral and those who are like us, and it will never reach the ends of the earth. Jesus asks a more radical vulnerability, the kind of vulnerability he himself showed us over and over again, eating with the unclean and the outcasts of his day. He asks of us a welcome that will admit any and every image of God walking this earth.

The harvest is plentiful, those who hunger to give and receive hospitality are abundant, but few are able to set down their loads and go freely in search of the Kingdom of God. There are many prisoners waiting to hear “come out” and many living in darkness, afraid to show themselves. There are countless throngs who hunger and thirst and suffer from wind and sun, who struggle up mountains and through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet God in his wisdom called us in the womb to be servants of peace, to share in the gift of what we find in whatever place we visit, to offer healing, and in that meeting to see and announce the present reign of God.

The harvest is rich and abundant, and we only have to go – tripping lightly, announcing peace. And once we get a taste of it, how can we keep from singing?

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody sing rules, or sing about rules. They are vital preparation and discipline, but they are not the goal. We have to be formed by those rules, like a singer who learns scales and breathing exercises, and practices them day after day and year after year, so that when opening night comes his voice can soar. That training sets the artist free to respond to the encounter of the moment, to the rich surprise of an especially responsive audience or an impromptu singing partner in the park.

The harvest, the transforming and liberating gift of the gospel, comes in the ability to see and move beyond our limited perceptions, to see the image of God in this unexpected person before us, however she does or does not keep the rules or fit our fond expectations.

I recall another encounter – a fellow who sat through an entire Christmas Eve service years ago, in that front pew, wearing his 10-gallon hat. The fact that he didn’t take his hat off was what we talked about for ages afterward, not the curious and blessed gift of his personality, which we never discovered.

Encountering the stranger as potential friend means that the kingdom of God has come near, and we will continually discover it when we are ready to eat what is offered, when we can find grace in the stew of sea cucumbers or the frijoles or the struggling sinner across the table.

We are meant to be bringers of peace and shalom, a light to the nations. And we are meant to sing a new song of grace and abundance, of healing and transformation.

May God bless our search for hospitality, within our own hearts and in all we meet. Shalom chaverim, shalom my friends, shalom.

'Old White Guy In The Sky' Image May Foster Atheism

By Katharine Jefferts Schori
The Washington Post
December 29, 2006

I would want to begin any such conversation by asking, “tell me about what kind of God you don’t believe in.” There are lots of varieties of divinity in which I don’t believe, either.

The current vogue in atheism, if real, has a lot to do with the diminished understandings of God promulgated by some believers. There is a wonderful scene in The Color Purplewhere Celie talks about beginning to wake up when she realized she didn’t believe in that old white guy in the sky.

The ability to question and doubt, is, in my experience, the real beginning of a mature journey of faith. That spiritual journey has to wrestle with the inadequate images of God so eagerly touted by some. For example, if we assume that God is primarily interested in judgment rather than in human flourishing, we’ve missed a good deal. And at its demonic edge, that interest in dividing the just from the unjust leads to things like the Holocaust and apartheid. The God of the Bible and Jesus is about abundant life, not the diminishment of God-given human potential.

Productive conversation between people of faith and atheists can certainly engage at the level of what constitutes the fulfilling of human potential, even if the two begin from different assumptions about the origin of that potential.

In that process of meeting and conversation, both have the opportunity to be enriched – and in a real sense, if the two engage at a level of vulnerability, the potential of both begins to be more fully realized. That “more” is a good part of what believers speak of as the divine or the work of the Holy Spirit. In my tradition, we speak of human beings as made in the image of God, and we embrace the insight that God became human (in Jesus) in order that human beings might become divine. Meeting another as equally image of God invites the believer into hopeful encounter – and in the process both partners can be transformed.

The opportunity for transformation is open to believers and non-believers, particularly as both partner to care for those in need. People of faith speak of loving one’s neighbor as part of the great commandment that flows from loving God, but the results do not depend on one’s state of mind or belief. There are innumerable opportunities for believers and those who deny any belief to work for the betterment of other human beings as well as the earth and its non-human inhabitants.

People of faith understand compassion to be rooted in God, but that understanding is not necessary to its expression in caring for one’s neighbor.

"Evangelistic listening"

By Katharine Jefferts Schori
Episcopal Life
January 1, 2007

One of the significant challenges in our life as a church has to do with reaching out to the unchurched. I come from a part of the country where few people are active in religious communities, and the culture is quite clearly non-Christian.

That makes evangelism a rather different proposition than it is in communities where most people know the basic shape of the Christian story. If we are going to be effective in reaching out to those beyond our walls, we are going to have to learn new language and ways of telling our story.

I taught a World Religions course in a secular university for several years. The course required students to attend several worship services in traditions outside their own (if they had one).

They had to find the house of worship, join in as much as was possible and reasonable, and later write a reflection paper on their experiences. The students often told about their surprise when they were welcomed as human beings and their chagrin when they felt they only were being received as potential converts and/or possible monetary additions.

I know I certainly have heard vestries and others say, “We have to grow, if we’re going to balance our budget.” But when these students were welcomed with curiosity and a genuine interest in knowing them as persons and individuals, they responded with warmth, even if they had no intention of joining the community.

Part of our evangelical task is making our worshiping communities welcoming in a deep, human, relational sense. The gospel is about radical hospitality, after all, and that is what we are meant to model.

The other side of this challenge is how we might speak good news in language and forms that people uneducated in Christianity can understand and welcome. If our language engenders fear, it is likely to drive people away. If it welcomes and invites, the possibility can be quite different.

This may not be seen in many places in the Episcopal Church, but consider your own reaction to “If you don’t believe the way we do, you’re going to hell.” Not only does hell not have much reality for the unchurched, there is an arrogance in that approach that many find repellent.

There are more subtle forms of that message, however, that are rampant in this church. We use language that is understandable only by insiders – and not just the arcane terms of our liturgy and polity (and those words themselves won’t be understood by many!).

There is an underlying message in many faith communities that says, “The way we worship (or hold Sunday school or run our vestry meetings or …) is the only right way.” And the implication that is heard is, “There is no welcome here for you if you can’t do it our way.” There is an aspect of that message that is quite un-Anglican, if we really want to live up to our value of comprehensiveness.

But even more deeply, we have to figure out how to tell our story in language that a person who doesn’t know anything about Christianity can begin to understand. I’m going to suggest that our telling of that great story has to begin in listening. Not only does it say to the other person, “Your story is of great importance, and I recognize your equal dignity by listening,” but it also gives us an opportunity to discern where to help connect that story with the larger story of God’s love known in Jesus Christ.

Frederick Buechner famously said that ministry happens when a person’s great joys meet the deep hungers of the world. We cannot engage in ministry until we recognize where the hunger is.

I have had the remarkable gift and opportunity in recent months to speak to people who don’t know much at all about the Episcopal Church or Christianity. Those opportunities have come through the secular media. Those interviews intentionally have avoided the language of Christian insiders for the reasons above.

The unfortunate result in some places has been anger when Episcopalians don’t recognize their own familiar language. Let me suggest a challenging exercise: How would you tell the great truths of our faith without using overtly theological language? How would you tell a new neighbor that God loves him or her without measure, and invite him or her to learn more? If we are going to hear that person’s story with grace, we have to leave the door open for a while.