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The Third Sunday after Pentecost It was an unprecedented action. A woman elected to assume the primacy that only men had held before. It was controversial, it was radical, and it was widely resisted. Bishops considered it heretical. Political leaders deemed it an affront. And the common people didn’t know what to think, for all of the negative publicity. Yes, indeed, the birth of the Anglican Church with the elevation of Elizabeth I as Queen of England in 1558 was truly a revolutionary act, and I dare say, nothing in the church has ever been quite the same. I begin with this little historical factoid, because you all have been hearing a lot about the American Episcopal Church these days. The media has been abuzz with stories, stories about schism and conflict, post mortems full of gloom and doom. The Episcopal Church has been vilified, lampooned, and dismissed so rigorously and often by the Fourth Estate that you would think by now it would just give up the Ghost and fade away. But the media for the most part has no interest in history or precedent. What happened 4 centuries ago is not front page news. So as commentator Paul Harvey likes to say, and now, for the rest of the story. A version, mind you, you won’t be reading in the Globe or hear on Fox News or CNN. For I return to you from our General Convention in Columbus to tell you that news of the death of the Episcopal Church is wildly premature. In fact, the way I see it and have experienced it in the context of our triennial gathering, the Episcopal Church is very much alive and well. When I arrived in Columbus a week ago Friday, however, I was not so sure. The mood was edgy and anxious. Everyone I spoke to seemed subdued, circumspect, even pessimistic. Hanging over everyone’s head was the Windsor Report, and the threat that the rest of the Anglican Communion would expel the Episcopal Church if it did not fully and unambiguously accept its recommendations. This was my first convention. It has taken me 25 years in ordained ministry to get to one of these extravaganzas. When my longtime friend Jim Diamond, Dean of the Cathedral in Cincinnati suggested we go together this year, I jumped at the opportunity. Jim sponsored me for ordination back in 1981, he was the celebrant at our marriage, he preached at my ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood. Who better, I thought, to shepherd me through this gargantuan family reunion? The General Convention of the Episcopal Church is the largest of its kind, only superseded in this country in size by the Democratic National Convention. Eight thousand bishops, deputies, visitors, and observers from across the globe gathered together for nine days in conversation and debate, to legislate and elect. There were caucuses and special hearings, luncheons and liturgies, exhibitions and celebrations. There were Episcopalians of every stripe and color. Buttoned down preppies and Midwestern farmers and laid back California surfer types, bishops in berettas and bishops in shorts, raucous teenagers and venerable senior citizens, blacks, latinos, Asians, native Americans, Africans, Brazilians, Maoris, Chinese, Indians, and a host of others; they were gays and straights, men and women, liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, cheek by jowl, under one roof, actually talking to each other, even for the most part getting along. At one moment, I ran into an old classmate from seminary I haven’t seen in two decades. The next moment, we stopped to speak with Gene Robinson, jet-lagged but jubilant after his interview on Larry King the night before. At another, we listen to an Army chaplain just back from his third tour in Iraq. At another, it is the Bishop of Tanzania who regales us with news of his church back home. And so it goes, like a stream of consciousness, bringing me back through all the years, all the experiences that have formed me as an Episcopalian; reminding me of all the reasons I was drawn to this communion in the first place, and why I love it so, even now, especially now. A week ago, we are sitting in the gallery of the house of deputies. The air seems heavy in the cavernous room as we wait news of the bishop’s selection of a new presiding bishop. The bishops are meeting in closed session a couple miles away at Trinity Church where, earlier that morning, we had been at Eucharist. They are now in the third ballot. All signs point to one or two of the bishops from Southern dioceses being selected. Hours pass. Masses of people drift in and out of the hall, almost nonchalant. Not one of us expecting what it to come. And then the President of the House of Deputies announces an election. Even as the name comes over the p.a. system, it seems a foregone conclusion. Until the words register. The Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori. At once, 8000 people collectively gasp. To me, it feels like one of David Ortiz’s walk off home-runs, but now there are tears, first in the women all around me, and then, I can see it welling up in the eyes of the men. I feel the tears in my own eyes. The emotion is palpable and electric. The dark mood lifts. Something new, unprecedented has happened. In a world of predictability, the unpredictable has once again taken us by complete surprise. The Windsor Report did not get eclipsed in that single moment, those who love Gene Robinson and those who hate him did not bury the hatchet, ancient enmities still stubbornly persist in this wild, crazy communion we call the Episcopal Church. The challenges are still with us, the risks and perils of living faithfully as Christians have not diminished because a woman now leads us as a church. But for one brief moment all of us together sensed the animating Spirit of the Living God moving, and a small fissure opened in our thick calcified soul. For one shining moment we, the gathered church, in my mind, were exactly what we are meant to be. As I exited the convention hall a week ago, I looked up and there in front of me was Barbara Harris. What a blessing, I thought, as we high-fived each other, to have been there in 1989 when she became the first woman to be elected a bishop in the church. What a blessing it is 16 years later, to be present when Katharine Schori became our first female primate. My experience in Columbus seems punctuated by these words uttered first in a different time by the Apostle Paul: “It is the love of Christ that urges us on…for those of us in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away, everything has become new!” Being faithful, being the church, was tough in the time of the Paul. It was tough for the Christians in Corinth to be a small, fledgling community of faith in the midst of so many sweeping changes and challenges and conflicts and forces. There was so much then, as this is so much now, that conspires to make us give in to our worst fears, and cling to our old ways. But I dare say, God is not finished with us as the Episcopal Church. The Spirit still moves in and through us. The love of Christ is urging us on. And, a new creation in us is waiting to be born.
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