Friday, August 1, 2008
Learning a bit about that word 'context'
We came. We saw. We bought the photographs. Now, let complete a good statement and all go home, shall we?
I'm joking, of course. We enter the final three days of the Conference today. Our Bible studies and Indaba groups, self-select classes and other gatherings are going forward, all surrounded and upheld with corporate worship and in the strength of your prayers.
Today we will receive and review a fourth draft of the statement (it's not yet clear what it will be called) that will be sent out from the bishops at the conclusion of the Conference. The group that is doing the drafting of the statement is offering truly heroic service to the Conference. It is too soon to say how it will all come out, but I have respect for the process by means of which it is being prepared.
In our Indaba groups we continued our conversation of how each of us understands the issues of human sexuality in our own context. These very different and, at times, conflicting approaches have been shared in a profoundly respectful manner. We have suffered none of the fundamentalism of the right or of the left in our exchanges. We have shared a lot of pain, but we have been on holy ground.
I have been learning a bit about that word 'context.' I think I know a little about our context in the Diocese of New Jersey and in The Episcopal Church. But I have lived for almost three weeks in the worldwide context of the Anglican Communion, represented by these 650 bishops. This is the world of our Church and of its mission.
As an American, I need somehow to keep this larger context in my heart and in my thinking and acting for the sake of the mission of God, working through this Church.
I had a jolt of recognition of my own cultural captivity the other day. We have been provided with headsets for the purposes of listening to translations of the eight languages of the Conference. I have routinely left my headset in my room. I simply assume that most of what will be said on any given day will be in English. But, in one of our plenary sessions, I missed several speeches by bishops who spoke in their first language, not English.
I am struck by how that habit of thought may be seen as part of the problem: that we Americans think that the rest of the world is here to serve us; to speak our language; to do things our way; to conform to our norms and assumptions. I am afraid that this is the message that many in the Anglican Communion have also received from our Church.
I am told that we bishops of The Episcopal Church represent 22% of the bishops present at this Conference. I am glad and grateful that we are here and I hope and pray that our contributions have made a positive difference to this gathering. But our beloved Church is only two million out of the 70+ million member Communion. Can we speak softly and listen more carefully and act more respectfully than we are perceived to have acted in the past? Will we come away from Lambeth more deeply committed to that sturdy formula of "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ"? I certainly hope so.
I am struggling with all of this, but I am also experiencing the tremendous depth of these bonds of affection that hold us together. This Conference makes me more respectful than ever of the tremendous gift of the Anglican Communion. It is the gift of our Lord. We need this gift as we need one another.
One of the voices of the Conference is the Most Rev. Winston Halapua, our Chaplain. He is from the Pacific. He thinks and prays and talks a lot about the oceans where he and his ancestors in Tonga have made their home for thousands of years. Over and over again, he points out that the oceans cannot be separated. The flow into and out of each other. They cannot separate from one another. They belong to one another on this one planet.
So do we.
Amen.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
+George
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