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July 23, 2006
The Venerable Archdeacon Tina Campbell
Proper 11 - Year B
I don't know how many of you read this interview in last week's Time magazine. It is an interview with our Presiding Bishop elect and the title is Ten Questions for Katharine Jefferts Schori. Here is the first question: What will be your focus as head of the U.S. church. Bishop Katharine's reply: Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development. That ought to be the primary focus.
Now I really liked her answer. I am a big Katharine Jefferts Schori fan. She was here at Trinity, so she is one of us. I got to know her personally and have a great respect for her skills, her intellect and her theology. And, finally, she is a woman! I am so happy that our bishops took the marvelously bold step of electing a woman to be the next Presiding Bishop.
So imagine my consternation when, just a few days later, there began to appear emails on the church's listserve that took issue with her remarks. One writer wrote that he found her "vision for the church theologically and spiritually impoverished in a profound way" .sigh. The correct answer for that first question should have been that the focus is worship and evangelism, and/or reconciliation among Christians.
Well, I took a deep breath and counted to ten and did those things I do when I want to gain some perspective. And when I did I began to see the writer's remarks, his invitation to debate in a different light. His comments were not completely out of left field; indeed they reflect a tension that has been present in the Church since it's earliest days. It is the tension between faith and works.
Paul vs. James. Paul, for whom relationship with Jesus Christ was central, James for whom such relationship was a statement of belief, but the real living of the Christian life was to be found in works. "You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I by my works will show you my faith." And later on: As the body apart from the Spirit is dead so faith apart from works is dead. Now the truth is that it is not an either/or proposition but rather with/and. Authentic Christian living reflects a balance of both.
Now, I tend to the works side. Those of you who know my history know that I was raised in a large Roman Catholic parish with nine Jesuits. If you know the Jesuits, they are all about works. I attended the parish school for eight years taught by the Immaculate Heart sisters. Then I went on to four more years with those sisters at Immaculate Heart High School. Now these two religious orders, the Jesuits and the Immaculate Heart Sisters, were all about works! These are the men and women who formed me intellectually, theologically ethically. They formed my social conscience. So down the road when I found an ordained ministry-the diaconate- whose main focus of ministry was social service, advocacy and justice, of course I signed up.
I am a deacon. I am not called to pastor a congregation, to be a vicar or a rector. I do not have a call to preside at the Altar, consecrating the Bread and Wine or celebrating the sacraments. It's not that the Eucharist is not important to me, but my passion is the servanthood ministry of the Church. "You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world." Bishop Thompson informed me when I stood in front of him on my ordination day.
Not surprisingly I find diaconal meaning in the Scripture readings today. In that first reading from Samuel, David, after some incorrect information from Nathan, learns that he will not be the one to build a temple for God, but rather God is going to build a kingdom from David's own body. This connects nicely with the passage from Ephesians where Paul describes his readers as "build together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. The earthly kingdom, the buildings-they are not the dwelling places for God, they are not the church. The people are the church. I remember a television interview the Sunday after Hurricane Katrina hit. There was the Bishop of Mississippi standing in front of a concrete slab where a church had stood. He assured the listeners that the Eucharist would still be celebrated there that day, because he reminded them, the "building is not the Church; the people are." The church consists of those people who have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and have also accepted his invitation to share in his work of healing and reconciliation.
I have a lot of passion and heightened energy now about the diaconal ministry of the Church. I returned a week ago Saturday from New Orleans. I was there for a training put on by the Pacific Institute of Community Organizing-PICO. It is the parent organization for Sacramento ACT of which this Cathedral is a charter member. Wow, what a trip. (Pictures in the Great Hall) As I got off the plane I was immediately struck by the quietness of the airport. Many gates were not in use. Many shops were closed and there were so few people. Now I have been to New Orleans every year for about the last ten years so I could tell the difference. I learned later that less that half of the city's population has returned.
We had a two-hour tour of the hurricane devastation. We began in St. Bernard Parish where the shuttle bus is not allowed to go off the main road because they are still finding bodies there. We drove around piles of trash and abandoned cars and appliances. FEMA trailers dot the landscape where there is recovery work going on. Houses are wrapped around tress and trees are embedded into houses. There were blocks of empty apartment buildings, which we were told had been middle class housing. No reconstruction work was going on. Insurance rates had increased 400%-600% so landlords were not rebuilding. All this almost a year after the storm. All this in the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. It was astounding, it was moving, and it was painful.
I don't know the politics in Louisiana, in New Orleans. I just know that I have trouble balancing the NFL's $20 million grant to help wit the repairs to the Superdome. They are really anxious to be ready for the September broadcast of the Saints home opener. I know there is a lot about business and the morale boost of sports that I don't understand but still it's hard to see the beehive of activity there while houses and smaller business standing abandoned. There were blocks of empty apartment buildings, which we were told had been nice middle class housing.
And I know there are those who think that people should not return to some locations. One of our deacons refuses to refer to Katrina as a natural disaster. She calls it an environmental disaster. The result, to a great extent, of draining swampland and relying on levees.
We weren't the only ones looking over the rubble and the rebuilding efforts. The ambassador from Saudi Arabia was visiting. The Saudis have given millions to the relief effort. Brad Pitt was there. He is sponsoring a contest among architects to build a "green, healthy, multi-family building with a community center and single-family housing".
But you know who else was there? The Body of Christ was there. The members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. I saw the living breathing Body of Christ working there. I refer to the Faith-based relief workers. Habitat for Humanity was there building six houses in one area. Christians were everywhere. Methodists in bright green t-shirts. Lutherans in brown. The Baptist church convention had fanned out around the city to work on projects. We had some time before our flight left and so the other Sacramento people (a married couple) who had a rental car drove us out to the museum where there was an amazing exhibit of Katrina photos. We met Presbyterians from Western Washington, on their day off. Except for the three of us, the shuttle from the car rental to the airport terminals was filled with youths and young adults wearing shirts emblazoned with the website: sonservants.org. The plane itself was a third full with youths and adults from a Baptist church in Denver. They were returning from 9 days in Biloxi, Mississippi where they had been housed in an Americorp Camp and sent out to assist homeowners with a variety of tasks from cleaning to painting to digging to planting. I thought to myself. That's the Church. That's the Church. That's the holy temple. Those were people coming together, growing together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. I, by my works will show you my faith.
Now I wasn't born yesterday. There was a moment in there when I got just a little cynical. Sure these people, these kids visit the hurricane area and then go home to their comfortable middle class homes. Then I realized that it could be me. But if I believe in the Holy Spirit then I have to believe, that they, like me were deeply touched by the devastation and suffering they saw. That they were changed by the work in which they were involved. As in today's Gospel, they saw people who were like sheep without a shepherd, people in need of healing, and that like Christ they had compassion for them. I believe that they have returned to their communities of faith and like me are about the diaconal task of interpreting to the Church the needs, concerns and hopes of the world.
I want to tell you about a couple of things coming up here at Trinity. One is an opportunity for you to help in the hurricane relief efforts. I mentioned in the staff meeting that I would like us to have a special collection for the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Dean Baker, bless him, wanted to take it further and perhaps send a group from Trinity to work. I said I would explore it. I contacted the Archdeacon in Mississippi who directs LESM, the Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi. She led me to Camp Coast Care a sort of clearinghouse for relief workers. When I brought that back to the Dean I learned that he had already heard of the Camp because a team from St. Thomas had gone earlier, but he thought the Camp had closed. I also shared the information with George Johnston who had worked with the Red Cross in New Orleans soon after the storm. He has been anxious to participate in the relief effort again and to have some Trinity parishioners accompany him. In the next edition of the Cross you will read his article about all this and have an opportunity to participate. You will also read an article by Ann Rothschild about the formation of an environmental group here at the Cathedral. For a long time I have been hoping that we could do more work around environmental ministry here and now (thanks be to God) several parishioners have stepped forward saying they are interested in helping the Cathedral be more environmental friendly and in helping us be more aware of environmental issues. A short meeting of this fledgling group will happen between services today.
This last Thursday the Church celebrated the feast of four remarkable women. They are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman. There are some who think that each of these women is worthy of her own day, given her accomplishments. Be that as it may. These women were passionately involved in the Abolition movement, the women's movement and the Temperance movement. As I read about them in Lesser Feasts and Fasts I was struck by a remark by Stanton. Shortly before her death she is said to have stated "My only regret is that I have not been braver and bolder and truer in the honest conviction of my soul". Wow. These four powerful women are saints in whose shadow we stand, in whose footsteps we follow.
Perhaps you know of Steve Charlston the former bishop of Alaska. He is now the President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School. He offered a reflection before General Convention, looking ahead and the issues he knew were coming.
As the Episcopal Church, the most important question before us is not about schism or sexuality. It is about witness. What witness will we make? Christian witness is the public affirmation of faith. It is how we let the world see that we practice what we preach. Today those of us in the Episcopal Church are being called on to make our witness. We have the opportunity to be what we say we are. The world is watching. What will we do?
Well, I invite you to reflect on what you do, on what you can do, on what you will do. How is it we will live out who we are as followers of Jesus Christ? Some of us may decide to travel two time zones to help in the relief effort. Others may travel two doors to volunteer at the Food Closet. Some will walk the two hundred feet to the Great Hall and sign up for Family Promise.
My prayer for all of us, you and me, is that we will all be what it was Elizabeth Cady Stanton longed to be: braver and bolder and truer in the honest convictions of our souls.
Amen.
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