General Convention July 12 Sermon:
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
I have some bad news. PB&F [1 ] asked Gregory
Straub [2] to find the latest audit, and when he went looking in the
Archives, he discovered that we have been using the wrong edition of the
Constitution and Canons all through our deliberations. The general
conclusion is that everything we’ve done here is therefore invalid. Are
you ready to start over?
That’s basically what happened with King Josiah.
Hilkiah went to investigate the Temple
finances and discovered that they’d been reading the wrong rule book for years
and years.
We’ve had some struggles here that sound a little bit like
that – like whether this body is hierarchical or not, or what kind of
governance or structure fits what those guys who held the first Episcopal
Church convention had in mind back in 1785.
It will take many more Conventions before we all agree about
anything, but, you know what? IT DOESN’T MATTER! We won’t all agree
before the Second Coming, but there is only one essential rule – “love one
another,” says Jesus, “as I have loved you.” That is the one and only
rule of life together in Christ. It is the same one that Augustine of
Hippo cited: “love God and do as you please.” Martin Luther’s
version was, “sin boldly… and more boldly still rejoice in Christ.”
Our task is not to timidly take comfort in the details of
our nice behavior – not even in impeccable parliamentary procedure! Life
in Christ is risky, it’s about leaping into the uncertain choices before us,
like Indiana Jones on that light bridge [3 ] – stepping out over the
chasm without knowing if the bridge will be there until we do. Way down
in the depths, deep down, the body of Christ has an abiding memory of the
trustworthiness of that bridge, even if some of the individual members don’t
remember quite so well.
That’s what Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom offered the
world. The body of Christ, indeed the whole body of all faithful people,
has much to teach its members about trust and confidence – and it is all about
love.
Söderblom – who went by Nathan – was a Swedish Lutheran
pastor, theologian, and Archbishop of Uppsala,
born in 1866 and died in 1931. He came from a tradition of border
crossers, and it was evident even in his early life. His university
degree was in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin, and he started the formal academic
study of comparative religions.[4] In 1890 he came to the United States
for a meeting of the Student Missionary Association – something like a General
Convention for young adults. He went back to Sweden, was ordained and was
appointed chaplain to a mental hospital. Then he started looking for a job that
would pay enough to let him get married. Anna Forsell was one of 20 women
students among the 1700 men in the University, and she was his writing partner
as well as his wife. Söderblom did find a job; he was appointed to the
Swedish church in Paris,
and stayed there until 1901. That Parisian congregation was filled with
Scandinavian artists, diplomats, and merchants, among them Alfred Nobel and
August Strindberg, and the several older of the Söderblom’s 13 children.
The Church of Sweden started planting churches abroad in 1626, and
that church in Paris
was the first one. Several of the ones in the American colonies were
later transferred to The Episcopal Church.[5] The Church of Sweden has an
ancient tradition of ecumenism, loving and learning and working with others.
Söderblom went back to Sweden
to take an academic post in theology at Uppsala University,
and he began a theological revival in the Swedish church that spread about the
world. He worked on the easy stuff like world peace and liturgical
renewal.
Söderblom is remembered most distinctly for starting the
modern ecumenical movement, with the Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm in 1925.
He insisted that personal spirituality made no sense if it was divorced from
work for justice in the larger society, and he repeatedly called on Christian
leaders to make common cause for world peace. He received the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1930.
Peace begins with loving one another. Start with the
people in this room. This body has done a pretty good job over the last
few days. We’ve seen quite a few leaps beyond old spheres of safety for
the sake of the other. Each person who has stepped out has done so in
order to meet another. And we have discovered a new place, a third way
beyond what either one knew before.
Take what you have learned here about deep hospitality [6] and
keep moving toward the other. Maybe we can even figure out how to love
everybody in this church. This reconciling work isn’t like BASE jumping [7] –
finding a thrill by stretching some rubber band that ties you to the
earth. God’s mission is real faith work, the kind of trusting
vulnerability that knows there’s only one rule to keep us safe, the spirit’s
tether that will draw us into the arms of a Friend on the other side of that
chasm. [8]
So step on out there past this narrow ledge of safety and love
one another. Step out there and expect to find your Friend on the other
side. Cross the chasm and you will find the other – and every single one
of them will bear the image of God. Trust the wings of the morning, and
take a flying leap! Take a flying leap into the future, and toward the
other. The bridge is there – we call it the Light of the World.
