WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

SERMON FOR THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR
CHRISTIAN UNITY

St. James Episcopal Church
Baton Rouge, LA
January 20, 2008


It is an honor to stand before you this afternoon as we celebrate the Centennial of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Our Lord’s High Priestly prayer recorded in St. John’s Gospel, that they may be one, animates our presence here and gives a sense of urgency to our witness and our work. The ministry of ecumenism is often relegated to the experts. If you do not already know, I am not an ecumenical expert - in a few minutes that will be clearly revealed to you. Ten years ago, soon after being ordained bishop, I traveled to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops gathering in England. I was assigned to the Ecumenical Section and joined a committee where I thought I could quietly hide. Little did I know that committee contained many of the ecumenical observers to the Lambeth Conference. I was asked on the first day to contrast the Poorvo agreement between the Church of England and the Scandinavian Lutherans with the then pending Episcopal – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Covenant. I was in trouble. I hope the revelation of my ecumenical lack of expertise will not be painful for you.

Last Sunday afternoon we gathered in St. Joseph’s Cathedral (Baton Rouge) to pray over and for our new governor. I think we must all believe in sacramental intentionality for I wondered at one point if the Governor was being ordained a Pentecostal minister, a Baptist preacher, a Catholic deacon or even a rabbi. It was quite a service! I hope the Governor and other officials gathered gained a sense of the ecumenical reality that is ours on the ground here in Louisiana. At the local level in our poor state, we enjoy a sense of respect, forbearance, mutual support, and cooperation that is a wonderful witness to all with eyes to see. A cynic might note there are no atheists in foxholes and thus wrongly dismiss this wonder.

The words of Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church shared during his visit to Baton Rouge just after Hurricane Katrina remain a source of comfort to me. His Eminence reminded those of us who gathered that Friday afternoon at the Catholic Life Center that this ground was made holy by the suffering and loss of so many. We have found a commonality in our poverty, in our suffering, in our living and in our dying. That common experience is not unique to areas ravaged by Rita and Katrina, we who were baptized in that dirty water share with others in our state the effects of our systemic dysfunction. We have a common ground in the holiness of suffering together. We share a common hope in the future with the promise of a new day.

One of the systemic effects of a disaster is that new alliances and cooperatives are inevitably formed. We had a solid base upon which to build these new and fruitful collaborative. For years, we have assumed the best of one another and shared a deep respect for one another. Our differences in theology and ecclesiology have not dampened our willingness to sacrifice for the other. My experience with the Louisiana Interchurch Conference enters its thirty-second year. I have witnessed time and time again a spiritual maturity that enables us to respect the other even in the face of disagreement. I have watched as we have repeatedly expressed ourselves in disagreement and then come forward in agreement. This is has not been a function of seeking the lowest common denominator; I think rather, this is a function of maturity. We have been able to put aside our agendas for the good of the whole, for the greater good. In so doing we have not compromised our belief, our integrity, nor our sense of vocation. When a mature Christian willingly and knowingly sacrifices for the good of the whole, he or she lives into the example of Jesus. Now I choose to skate on thin ice. The implications our willingness to sacrifice for one another, especially in the face of disagreement, bear great significance that goes far beyond the religious community. My partner on this thin ice is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain, whose thinking I try to apply to our local situation. It is important that we all give, not that we give equally. The nature of the contribution is less important than the act of generosity. The New Jerusalem that by grace and generosity we build contains the contributions of many. The implications for society are found in the demonstrated fact that we build together. To quote Rabbi Sacks, “a nation is made by contributions, not claims; active citizenship, not rights; what we give, not what we demand.” (The Home we Build Together, page 140) That which is true for a nation is true for a state and it is true for the religious community in Louisiana. The maturity modeled by the religious community in this state shows that we can together build more than any of us could do alone.

In this maturity, I am integrated into something larger than, in my case, the Episcopal Church. Even so, I am not assimilated to the degree that I cease being an Episcopalian. Integrated but not assimilated. This is an important reality of our ecumenical and inter-faith endeavor. One can continue as a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Catholic, a good Protestant, perhaps a not so good Episcopalian and still be part of the building! To paraphrase Rabbi Sacks, our identity is grounded in doing. Surely, our belief informs what we do, but here is the good news; people of varying and even disagreeing beliefs model the maturity to do the work together of building, not rebuilding in the case of my home city of New Orleans, but building anew. That work shall never be completed.

As I tried to tell our new Governor last Sunday afternoon during the service at the Cathedral, we have stood together in the breach where others cannot or will not stand. We have stood together for the poor, not in the sense of Christian mission as our best wish for ourselves, but as a humble commitment to Christ. Such standing in the breach is not a new phenomenon for us in Louisiana, we have done this individually and collaboratively for years. My first attendance at an LIC meeting three decades ago in Alexandria is remembered for a moving plea from Fr. Guste on behalf of the incarcerated in Louisiana. I hope that all gathered last Sunday in the Cathedral heard that we have stood for the poor, we stand for the poor, and we shall stand with the poor, the forgotten, the dispossessed, and we who live in the diaspora. All have heard of Bishop J. D. Wiley asking me after one of the President’s speeches if I had ever been called one of “those people” before. Brothers and sisters, in Louisiana, we are those people. If we do not continue to stand together for the poor, no one else shall do so. I am wary of those who speak only of what they are going to do. I think one must be able to elucidate what has been done and what they are now doing. The nation may well look at us as an indecipherable third world mess. With eyes of faith in Christ Jesus, we see ourselves as loved of God and together we work to build a new and precious community where justice rolls down like water. We seek not simply what once was in Louisiana but a new community that respects the dignity of all, a community where character matters and where achievement can be had by work and is not simply a birthright. The dignity of each is not simply an issue for us in New Orleans. I see human dignity as an issue in Jena, in our cities, in our rural areas and in our affluent suburbs.

I would disappoint myself if I did not mention the witness of Dr. Martin Luther King this night. I think his legacy directs us to continue the ministry of the undoing of racism. We in Louisiana cannot be satisfied only with the technical fixes of law and human justice. Indeed, we as the religious community look deeper for the change of heart and mind which Dr. King sought. How could he do otherwise as a Christian leader? Perhaps it is a function of our poverty that we are willing to settle for less than the very heart of undoing racism. Let the powers that be know that we are not “settlin”. No longer can we settle for parallel societies of rich and poor; black, white, and brown; Spanish speaking or English speaking; New Orleans versus Louisiana; rural and urban; north and south; or whatever divides us. The religious community in Louisiana invites the participation of all; not the assimilation of any. The isolation of individualism and segregated communities can longer be allowed to cripple us. This invitation is problematical in the current climate. If you have drifted away, I invite you to come back to me as I move to a quote too long to be placed near the end of a rambling sermon. Even so, Rabbi Sacks paints the challenge better than I: while many are drifting into a libertarian culture in which they find it hard to articulate any non-relativistic values; others are turning to highly non-liberal religious identities. They want to be chosen, not to choose. They seek meaning, not just explanation. They prefer community to autonomy, commitment to shifting allegiances. They want to live for something higher than consumerism, more inspiring than lowest-common-denominator politics, more demanding than relativism, and more altruistic than individualism. They seek something worth dedicating a life to. They believe in a life in which we are more than dust on the surface of infinity. In a world of constant, accelerating, bewildering change, they seek to discern that which does not change. (The Home we Build Together, p. 143)

You may wonder “Where is the challenge in that?” I too want all that and in fact find just these things in my faith. The challenge is found in the changing face of the realities in which we live and minister. Our challenge is to include those who choose exclusion as a means of identity.

The Ecumenical and Inter-Faith Community in Louisiana honors a number of covenants, some few written but mostly unwritten. Some of our covenants are formal but mostly they are informal. These covenants create a “we” out of a bunch of “I”s. As an example, I cite a recent article about my failure to have an usher direct Bishop Muench to the vesting area when the Archbishop of Canterbury was in New Orleans. An AP reporter tried to make something out of this. There was nothing to be made. Our covenant of trust, respect, and mutual support was stronger than this reporter realized. As Bishop Muench (of Baton Rouge) said, “she doesn’t understand us in Louisiana.” The Bishop of Baton Rouge is right. Many do not understand us, we may not understand ourselves. But here we are, together, in this home we build together. We are not going away, this joyous struggle is for us a lifetime vocation. This is our home and here we seek to do God’s work. May God give us the grace to continue the humble ministry to which we are called.