A letter from Armstrong's Vestry

My thanks to a friend in st. George's Anglican Church for this letter sent out in on 18 November.

We have a significant challenge before us which is every bit a portion of our collective witness to Christ Jesus, a continuation of our standing for the truth in the public square, and finishing our current fight with the principalities and powers of both the State and the Episcopal Church of Colorado.

As the result of obsessive efforts by the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado and his attorneys, the false allegations against our Rector have escalated into full criminal proceedings. A trial is set for February 22, 2010.

We have always paid Father Armstrong's compensation according to the long standing procedures and practices of our church, and have verified by a forensic auditor that the criminal charges against him are false. We now need to prove these allegations false in a court of law.

It is important to understand these charges are simply part of the attack against our Rector and the parish purposes he has served in Communion-wide theological debates. For twenty years, the minutes of the Vestry praise our Rector for doing our theological and political bidding in the councils and processes of the church. In the same way he was successful in building our parish to a significant stature within the Episcopal Church, he was also successful in bringing together people to clearly articulate an orthodox Anglican theological understanding of the faith.

In the eyes of those who longed to change the gospel of sin and redemption, our parish and our Rector needed to be eliminated to undercut his successful campaign and our funding of this work. An attack was mounted from both a small minority within our previous congregation and the Diocese of Colorado from without. The call for us to fightback continues. It is critical we remain engaged as long as the battle against us rages on.

Our Rector has taken many personal and public attacks on our collective behalf, becoming the focal point in this fight. It is imperative that we participate in this suffering for the Gospel's sake and fully fund his legal defense. We have walked him to the end of the plank, and unless we fund his defense, we will have essentially pushed him off. We cannot allow this to happen.

An immediate $100,000 is needed to hire investigators, expert witnesses, researchers, and mount a case equal to the one funded by the Diocese of Colorado, the DA's office, and Colorado springs Police Department. In difficult economic times, we are asking you to dig deep and help us assure that the Bishop of Colorado and those he has effectively lobbied will not be victorious in their attempt to silence our conservative voices and jail our Rector.

The $100,000 is part of the legal defense included in our debt we are working to retire and is not an additional amount. So the Vestry is again asking those who haven't contributed $1,500 per household to retire our dept, to join us in taking care of our first debt priority -- paying the money to the Legal Defense Fund. When the battle is over and our Rector has been vindicated, our parish will flourish, and we will be in a position to do those things we would all much rather .

but we first need to eliminate this cloud over us and the burden that has befallen us. Your Vestry asks you to answer this call and stand firm in our faith.

Yours in Christ,

John Wroblewski, Senior Warden
Chad Friese, Junior Warden
John Newsome, Chancellor
Gib Weiskops, Chancellor
Marilynn Daring
Curt Emery
Jack Gloriod
Rip Hollister
Jason Huntley
Emily Kline
Phil LaTulippe
Carl Willenbrock

This letter is troublesome for many reasons, and, in my opinion raises some civil issues that the court and the IRS might find interesting.

At any rate, this letter proves the Stockholm Syndrome is hard at work in Colorado.

For background on this issue, see this post.

Cast away the works of darkness

The year now drawing to a close has been one of great change in my life. Most of the change is too personal to put into a blog post. Change, for me, is never easy. To reflect upon the year 2009, I decided to take a silent retreat during Advent from the blog.

However, today, I am forced by the spirit to make a small post in the form of a photo I created after reading a statement by the worst English Archbishop since Cardinal Wolsey. Who would have believed it would be an archbishop of Canterbury who destroyed the Anglican Communion.

Rowan is as silent as the tomb regarding the plight of homosexuals in Uganda, but he instantly screamed bloody murder when a lesbian was elected bishop suffragan in Los Angeles. I think I know what Christ will say to Rowan on the day of judgement -- "Depart from me ye worker of iniquity."

Make sure to read this by Andrew Brown who calls Rowan the coward he is.

Where were you?

"Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.

Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."

JFK

Mrs. Cooper's class; we were just beginning a spelling test.

Christ the King - The Sunday Next Before Advent

Christ the King - The Sunday Next Before Advent
Dignus Agnus

(RCL) 2 Samuel 23:1-7 and Psalm 132:1-13, (14-19); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

Introit: The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and divinity and wisdom and strength and honor; to Him be glory and empire for ever and ever. -- (Ps. 71. 1). Give to the King, O God, Thy justice, and to the King's Son Thy judgment.

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Gospel: Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, "Are You the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?" Pilate answered, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not [a]of this realm." Therefore Pilate said to Him, "So You are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say correctly that I am a king For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."

“Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” the magi asked.

That question alerted Herod to the presence of a rival in his midst. To eliminate the rival he had his soldiers kill all children in an entire region of his realm.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus mockingly.

The very idea of the Jews having a king in any meaningful sense must have seemed ridiculous to Pilate. Furthermore, Jesus must have looked far from regal as he stood before Pilate. He had been arrested in Gethsemane; all his disciples had abandoned him; he had defended himself before a Jewish court; and he had probably been roughed up by Roman soldiers. But there was also a serious side to the question. A king of the Jews would have represented a challenge to Pilate’s authority and (more importantly) to his masters in Rome. The Roman Empire responded to such challenges just as ruthlessly as Herod had.

In reply to Pilate’s question, Jesus denied that he was a king in any way that would make sense to the Roman governor. “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.”

The confrontation with Pilate was rich with irony and ambiguity. Pilate appeared to be powerful but was really powerless; Jesus appeared to be powerless but was really powerful. John had already told his readers that part of Jesus’ mission was to “cast out” the ruler of this world who has no power over Jesus. Paradoxically, Jesus brought down the “ruler of this world” by submitting to his power; his death brought about the destruction of the powers that nailed him to the cross.

Pilate and Herod were not the only ones who misunderstood the nature of Jesus’ kingship. Even the disciples failed to understand it. James and John wanted to sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. To “sit” was to occupy a position of power, and to sit beside the king was to share in his power. But Jesus told them that they completely misunderstood the nature of his kingship and kingdom: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”

A friend who is a rabbi once said to me, “Christian triumphalism makes me uneasy.” It makes me uneasy, too, and the feast of Christ the King is awash in triumphalism.

“Crown him with many crowns,” we sing, and “All hail the power of Jesus’ name.” I am uneasy because it is all too easy to give Jesus the crown but to take the power for ourselves. The followers of the Crucified One overcame Rome by martyrdom, but after Constantine’s conversion, the victorious Christians started making martyrs of their former adversaries. The history of the church is spattered with blood because power requires violence to maintain itself. To put it another way, we use the rhetoric of Jesus but behave like Herod and Pilate.

The kingdom over which Jesus reigns still defies our understanding. He rules over a kingdom with no borders to defend, no soldiers to defend it, and no weapons for the soldiers to use. It is a kingdom that inverts our values. The one who serves is the one who rules.

We still ask the questions that the magi and Pilate asked: “Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” and “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Knowingly or not, Pilate answered his own question; the Gospel of John tells us that “Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. It read: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.’”

The cross is Jesus’ royal throne and also the antidote to Christian triumphalism. Jesus reigns from the cross, and to share his kingship, we must also share his suffering. There is plenty of room at the right and left hands of Jesus, but those who would share his power must also share his cross.

Like the magi, we are also on a pilgrimage seeking the king. Unlike them, we cannot bring our gifts to a manger in Bethlehem. But we can still find him in those he came to serve.

As it says in Matthew 25:“Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food.’”


The Rev. J. Barry Vaughn, Ph.D., has led congregations in Alabama, California, and Pennsylvania. He has preached at Harvard, Oxford, and the Chautauqua Institution, and more than fifty of his sermons have been published. He is rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Birmingham, AL.