Sunday of the Passion

Sunday of the Passion
commonly called Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;
Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

Introit: O Lord, keep not Thy help far from me; look to my defense; deliver me from the lion's mouth, and my lowne. ss from the horns of the unicorns. -- (Ps. 21. 2) O God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Homily:
There’s nothing more exciting than a spectacular parade. Television spectaculars, like the Oscars are something of a modern equivalent. We watch excitedly as new stars are born and see them surrounded by the press and adoring followers. We love heroes. We love following their lives and marvel when they buy big homes and jet around the world.

It is also true that we get something of a thrill when these modern idols are exposed. We revel in their destruction. Somehow it makes us feel better to know that the person who filled us with awe is just another fallible, flawed human being.

Palm Sunday in the drama of lessons and ritual takes us from adulation to betrayal and desertion. We know that the very crowds who shout “Hooray” will yell “Crucify him.” One of Jesus’ closest followers will betray him. Most of the disciples will desert when things get tough. The religious leaders, convinced that they are protecting Judaism from the upstart prophet will plot with cynical Roman politicians to kill Jesus.

When Jesus begins his journey into the Holy City, he is soon surrounded by excited crowds. They have heard that this prophet heals, feeds, raises from the dead. Perhaps he will solve all their problems. Perhaps he will throw the occupying Romans out and restore the Jewish Kingdom. Is this Man indeed the Chosen One?

Others have pronounced themselves to be the Messiah and have proven to be no such thing. Yet the hopes, aspirations, and demands of the people remain high. Maybe this time God will act. Jesus’ followers were caught up in this excitement. All their fears about Jesus entering Jerusalem, his words about being killed there, are forgotten in the excitement of the reception. They must have felt very important, those disciples, as the crowds cheered. One tortured soul, Judas, perhaps hangs back a bit. We don’t know his dark motives. Was he jealous? Had some truth Jesus said to him hurt him and driven him to revenge?

In a few short days the crowds will decide that there’s nothing in anything Jesus says or does that is good for them. The disciples, or almost all of them, will separate themselves from Jesus and run for cover. Judas will betray his Lord. The religious leaders and politicians will handle the matter with speed, and a man will die.

As the Eucharist ends today, we can almost feel the dark pall of evil. There’s no happy ending in the lessons. The roller coaster surge of the liturgy leaves us down and shaken.

We may well ask ourselves which role we play in this human drama. Do we test God, Jesus, the Spirit in terms of “What is in it for me?” The crowd did. Do we resent the way the Faith accuses us and wish we could silence Jesus, as Judas hoped? Do we run from Jesus and hide behind self-preservation? How ironic it is that the religious leaders and most of the disciples acted from self-interest. The Chief Priests convinced themselves that an unholy murder was justified to safeguard the institution. The disciples perhaps convinced themselves that if the work was to continue, they should protect themselves from arrest and punishment.

Over and over again in the long story of the church, Christian people have acted the roles we encounter today, not just on Palm Sunday, but in the daily life of parishes, dioceses, and the national church.

The question posed by that old African American song, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” points not to St. John and the Marys, but to the rest of us. How often have we deserted our church when we haven’t obtained the things we think we need? How often have we turned on priests or fellow Christians when they have spoken the truth to us? How often have we put the institution before Jesus? How often have we just run away when things got tough? These sins are alive and well and flourish today as they did then.

For a moment, just a moment, it is good that the lessons today end with death, with no hope, with Jesus alone and dying. For in this Holy Week, which begins today, we have much dying to do, and dying hurts, and dying risks the end of everything. Yet as a community of Christians here today and as individuals, it is, as St Paul tells us, “in dying that we live.”

Let us then offer our selfishness, corporate and individual, in Jesus to God as we walk to the Cross. Then in the silence of Good Friday we wait.

-- Fr. Tony Clavier is rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, La Porte, Indiana, in the Diocese of Northern Indiana. He is also dean of the Michigan City deanery.

The HOB report on same-gender relationships

The Same-Sex Relationship in the Church, the report presented at the spring meeting of the college of bishops of The Episcopal Church has been released.

The "report" is actually two reports - not exactly what was requested by the bishops. There is the "conservative" report and the "liberal" report. Both contain the same tired information.

The conservatives have tackled the issue using the usual clobber verses. But their report is not all exactly what one would expect it to be. They surprise me at times. Consider the following.

We realize that many leaders of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada see [same-gender relationships] as the kind of litmus test of moral sensitivity and courage. Slavery was such an issue in the early nineteenth century in the England of Wilberforce, and remained an issue much longer for leaders in the United States. And there have been social and reform movements, such as women’s rights, the rights of workers to safety and minimum wages, not to mention the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when many in the Episcopal Church were socially conservative, protective of the prerogatives of the establishment and of men in power, and thus hesitant to join a movement which seemed to have unwelcome social and political features, and where it seemed easier and more “prudent” to wait.

We believe that there are a number of Episcopal bishops in 2009 who may well have some conservative reservations about moving ahead with same-sex marriage, and are sensitive to the considerations listed above; and yet they lend their support to revisionism, perhaps because they are afraid of being like the two Episcopal bishops in Alabama in 1963 who joined with six other local churchmen in writing an open letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., criticizing him for disobeying established laws and for not having patience to wait for change in civil rights to develop gradually and naturally. We believe that many of our leaders would have done well to be more hesitant on moving forward on the issue of same-sex marriage, however. At the heart of our position is the conviction that the issue of same-sex marriage simply cannot be put in the same category as other social issues on which Anglicans and Christians in general have changed their mind. We do not believe that acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage fits neatly into some narrative of successive liberation movements that emancipated serfs, slaves, child laborers, blacks, and now homosexual couples.

When we consider some of the moral issues on which the Church (speaking broadly) has changed its thinking and practices over the centuries, what emerges is not so much a general pattern as the more difficult requirement to consider the rationale for change in an issue-by-issue fashion, and not on the basis of some template of “progress.” Such issues as slavery, capital punishment, usury, divorce, just war, the role of women in society, and (more particularly) the ordination of women to office in the church, as well as others, need to be analyzed and thought through on both biblical and philosophical lines. This takes some careful work, as each issue has its own rationale, pattern of biblical material and its interpretation, and its own distinctive relationship to science and philosophy. When this is done, the case for same-sex marriage does not have the same kind of biblical support and philosophical rationale as women’s ordination and a moderate divorce policy have, for example p.7 [All emphasis added]

I found that quote interesting for a number of reasons. They must acknowledge that the church does change its teaching and not only ignores tradition and scripture (and provide examples of such change). But by doing so, they prove that they ignore both tradition and scripture in doing so. And, frankly, there is far less "justification" for women's ordination in scripture than for prohibiting same-gender marriage. To "moderate divorce policy" requires blatantly and flagrantly disregarding not just scripture as a whole, but Jesus' own explicit statement on the subject.

Yes, the Anglican Communion is still protective of the prerogatives of the establishment and of men in power. The report goes on to blame liberals for diluting the gospel (which gospel, one must wonder):

Conservatives also share the scepticism voiced by non-western church leaders about the agenda of modern liberals, because so often the attitudes toward a revision of traditional views of sex and marriage are linked with liberal views of biblical authority, theological heterodoxy, and a general tendency to water down the basis and nature of Christian attitudes and way of life. This would generate a Christianity that, by not being counter-cultural enough, becomes unfaithful to the Gospel. p 8

It was liberals who gave those men in power the permission to divorce wives even while the wives were in hospital with catastrophic illnesses. But, that benefited the men in power, therefore, that liberal watering down of the gospel was praiseworthy.

The one argument against same-gender relationships that is the most ludicrous is this:

The testimony of a homosexual Anglican in England who is not at all convinced that homosexual relationships are pleasing to God, writes candidly, “I know many Anglicans (including leaders) with a homosexual orientation, but seeking celibacy, who have said privately they will feel betrayed if the Church of England changes its traditional viewpoint on homosexuality. Some say they already feel tempted to leave the Church of England. p 38

Using this logic, it was wrong to abolish slavery because some slaves accepted the "accepted biblical teaching" that slavery was their "cross to bear" - abolition betrayed them. It was wrong to allow divorce because some married people accepted the traditional teaching as their "cross to bear" - allowing divorce betray them.

On the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable, yea morally correct to betray the millions (yes, there are millions) of homosexual members of the Anglican Communion to avoid betraying the few who accept an unscientific view that homosexuality is a "disorder" or accept the medieval teaching that same-gender contact is the worst possible sin.

The report makes much of the genetics of same-gender attraction. I refer you to Gay Married Californians which began a series on the genetics of homosexuality by our blog friend, IT, who knows the subject far better than those who presented the conservative report to the HOB.

One interesting observation about the genetics is this: If homosexuality is a disorder, then it is not a choice, and, therefore, cannot be a sin any more than acne, arthritis, or asthma is a sin.

But the "liberals" do not win, either. Their report is sadly lacking in both theology and biblical exegesis. The "liberal" report takes as its basis the Marriage Rite from the Book of Common Prayer. They do use biblical passages to support their position, but their arguments are not as strong as the former group's arguments.

The real heart of the matter, as the report acknowledges is this:

In order to understand the church’s mission to same-sex couples, we must understand the church’s mission to those with whom Paul (or his rival) associated same-sex desire: the Gentiles.

This procedure enjoys several advantages. It reminds us that the passages in Hebrew Scripture that refer to same-sex sexual activity (Gen 19:5; Lev 18:22 and 20:13 of which the Genesis passage does not refer to desire but to rape) have the same shape as those that Romans treats: they characterize Gentiles. It helps to restore all these passages to the canon of Scripture, from which contemporary embarrassment had banished them. It does that by restoring these passages to their place in a larger and more important topic: the salvation of many nations worked by God. p 62 [Emphasis added]

I've been saying this for decades: as far as the biblical authors were concerned, same-gender contact was "a Gentile thing" to be avoided at all costs because those people did it and we are not those people. That's the same as a mother prohibiting her children from playing with or eating the ethnic food of a neighbour because "we are not like those people."

According to the Rt. Rev'd Henry Parsley, Jr., chair of the theology committee,

The purpose of this project is not to create a new consensus or make a recommendation to the church. It is rather to express as fully as possible two contrasting theological views, both rooted in the teaching of the church and in Holy Scripture, in order that we might listen to and learn from both sides of the debate.

We killed the evangelism budget and funded a report to tell us what we have known for at least ten years - that there are two opinions and never the twain shall meet. There isn't one word in this report that any of us could not have written. It's much ado about nothing and a waste of time, ink and money. OCICBW.

Episcopal Life has an article that's worth reading as does The Lead. The Christan Post has an interesting article, too.

The GRAPEVINE forced to close

Our sister blog, The Grapevine, has kept us up-to-date on the situation in the Diocese of San Joaquin in addition to the schismtac group lead by Mr. David Schofield a former cleric.

The Grapevine has ceased to exist as of today. Although I am not at liberty to disclose the details, the closure has to do with litigation involving the schismatic group.

My sincere thanks to those who ran The Grapevine for the excellent service they provided the Diocese of San Joaquin and the Episcopal Church by keeping us informed about the real and imaginary diocese in the Big Valley. And, I thank them for the support and help that gave me and T3LS during difficult times.

If you would like to thank those who operated The Grapevine, please use this thread to do so. I will forward your comments to them.

Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Hyperbole never ends

Fire! Fire! The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

That's the news from the "other side". Lies and scare tactics characterize the schismatic movement.

Here is a bit of an "article" posted on a certain site today:

TEC has moved inexorably and fatally away from the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; she can no longer claim to be a Christian denomination by any measureable [sic] standard. One former TEC Anglo-Catholic bishop described Jefferts Schori as a Wiccan in her beliefs. He may be right.

I can't remember any General Convention tossing out one bit of the Apostles' or Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds. TEC has not repudiated any article of the faith.

In fact, the General Convention of 2009 moved in a more catholic direction by affirming the Blessed Virgin May is Theotokos - the bearer of God. But, facts only get in the way of the truth where the schismatics are concerned.

The two creeds above are the standard for what the gospel is - nothing else is necessary to believe for salvation.

And, of course, there must always be an attack on the person of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. The accuser is unnamed, of course, and proof of the accusation is ever provided. Not only is it a lie, but the "accuser" has no idea what Wiccan's believe.

But, to inflame the alleged masses of their deluded followers, the schismatics must resort to lies. Fortunately, we all know who the bible says is the father of lies.

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8.44

And, of course, to back up their claims, the article quotes a certain Assembly of God "minister" who is highly respected by the schismatics and who offered a "prayer" at the Inauguration in January 2009. Yes, nothing like quoting a non Anglican/Episcopalian in defense of schismatics.