A Real Family Story

If you are looking for a poignant, sad, but beautiful story that will remind you what is important in life, I strongly suggest reading "Against All Odds, a Beautiful Life" in the January 24th edition of the New York Times.

The article tells the story of Maurice Mannion-Vanover who died at age 20 on January 14th. So often when I read news stories of young men dying it is because of violence -- whether that violence is at home, in their neighborhoods, or in war.

Maurice's story, however, is a family story. When Maurice was a baby he was adopted by a gay couple. Eventually, they adopted another boy, also. Maurice was not expected to live more than 6 months after his birth, but he managed, despite many challenges, to live until he was 20.

What I love about this article is that it tells such a normal family story, filled with happiness and pain, struggle and joy, commitment and separation, sadness and love. The fact that the family at the center of this story is two gay men and their two African-American adopted sons doesn't really matter. They are a family that has endured illness, divorce, and death. Like any other American family they stood together at Maurice's funeral and grieved his untimely death. Because that's what families do.

In the midst of the sadness, can we celebrate how normal this non-traditional family is? Can we start to accept that a family is defined not by external appearances or sexuality but by love, commitment, faith, and a life shared together?

Oh yes! One other detail I love. They are members of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Montclair, NJ. They had a parish home that accepted and embraced them. If anyone tells you that religion isn't a good thing or that the church judges instead of loves, tell them Maurice's story. Tell them about the Episcopal Church.

And when you tell the story, don't forget to mention Rocky. He's the horse! I'll stop typing so you can read the article.

This story will definitely preach!

Building Bridges Wherever Possible

On Sunday, July 4, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was preached a sermon in the Diocese of Brisbane, in Australia. Her sermon was based on 2 Kings 5:1-14, the story of Naaman, the Gentile, who was cured of leprosy in the River Jordan by Elisha the prophet. Her words are so relevant for the church today, that I quote her here:

Our communities are still pretty well divided up between the haves and the have nots, the white and those of darker hue, the straight and those who aren't. Yet we're all meant to cross over those boundaries that keep some enslaved to others' definitions. We are all invited to bathe in the river of freedom, to be washed clean of the shame of thinking that some are different enough to be pushed out of the community, away from the feast God has set from the beginning of creation.

That's at least partly what Jesus is telling his followers when he sends them out. . . . Go and proclaim peace. Eat with anybody who offers to share a meal, offer healing to anyone who's hurting, and tell them that God is near. And if you aren't accepted, don't fuss, just move on and try the next person. Healing and reconciling need our active labor and participation. Disciples are supposed to build bridges wherever possible.

There is at least one sort of division that your context and mine share – between the inside and the outside of the church. There are growing numbers of people who think that Christians are bigots, hypocrites, and uninterested in those who differ from them. The only real way to cross over that boundary is to leave these communities of safety and go on out there to find those who think we're unclean. We're going to have to wade into the river, even if, like the Brisbane, it does have a few bull sharks in it. There are far more dangerous creatures walking around on both banks. It's past time to go swimming.

In so many ways, we in the church have become too institutionally and internally focused. We deal with our own issues to the exclusion of what is going on in the world around us. Confused and concerned about dropping attendance and participation in our churches, we fail to engage and listen to the people who seek God but won't walk through our doors.

"Disciples are supposed to build bridges wherever possible." Amen to that!

Now, how am I going to do that?

General Convention and Ubuntu

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church began this week in Anaheim, California. I will admit that following Convention in the past has not been high on my priority list. Often, from my perspective, the work of this triennial convention does not seem to have a huge direct impact on me outside of a few particular issues (for example, the consent of General Convention to the election of Bishop Robinson in 2003 clearly impacted my ministry and the life of my parish community).

This year, I'm going to try to pay a bit more attention to what is going on. To help keep me disciplined, I thought I'd make some blog entries giving my "home front" perspective on what is happening 3,000 miles away. We'll see how this goes and whether I can keep up some sort of daily (or almost daily) discipline -- not only to blog about convention but to read from the multiple resources available online to learn what is going on!

The theme of General Convention is ubuntu, an African concept of interdependence and community. It can be summed up in the phrase on the convention logo, "I in you and you in me." Presding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori spoke about ubuntu in her opening address to the convention on July 7. With strong language, she called into question “great Western heresy—that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.” It is this cultural focus on the individual that is at the root of so many of our struggles today both in the nation and in the world.

In contrast to this, ubuntu reminds us that we are stronger together. "I can only become a whole person in relationship with others,” Jefferts Schori said. “There is no I without you and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us." We were created not to be isolated creatures, but to live and work together in community. As it says in the first chapter of the book of Genesis: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Together we are the image of God.

The challenge that Jefferts Schori is offering the convention is less about legislative decisions and more about how we will live, work, and minister together. What kind of church will we be? What sort of people will we be? Will we be looking after our own needs and listening only to our own perspectives? Or will we listen to others, especially those who are different from us, in order to reflect the diversity of God's creation and promise?

Desmond Tutu, for whom unbuntu stands at the heart of his life and work, wrote:

In God’s family, there are no outsiders. All are insiders. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and Israeli, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Serb and Albanian, Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim and Christian, Buddhist and Hindu, Pakistani and Indian – all belong. . . . God’s dream wants us to be brothers and sisters, wants us to be family. . . . In our world we can survive only together. We can be truly free, ultimately, only together. We can be human only together, black and white, rich and poor, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jew. (Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time as quoted in Diana Butlter Bass's book, Christianity for the Rest of Us)

That is an expansive sense of community, to say the least!

Living by ubuntu will be quite a challenge during a 10-day legislative session in a time in which there are deep divisions in the church about our understanding of authority, human sexuality, and interpretation of scripture and church canons. We can only pray that the presiding bishop can lead the church into a new cultural understanding of and appreciation for our need to be an interdependent body of Christ.

The challenge for those of us at home is to make ubuntu a reality in our local communities and congregations. How might we do that? How might we live and work so that we manifest God's promises and hopes for creation and human community?