Pentecost 7 Year A
July 3, 2005
The Reverend Melissa Skelton
From our Collect for today:
O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection.
It’s the middle of the night. I’m five years old, and with my father, my mother, my brother and two sisters, I’m asleep below deck on a large boat transporting families back to the United States after tours of military duty in Europe.
I’m asleep when I feel my parents gently shake me awake: “Kids, put on your robes—we’re going up on deck.” We get up, confused and sleepy, and they help us find our way onto the deck and into the night air. It feels cool and smells salty.
And—marvelous to tell— instead of ocean as far as the eye can see, there, towering beside and above us is a tall green statue: a female figure holding a lamp high above her head, behind her, New York City harbor and a city full of light.
It was a dazzling image, something I will always remember, but it’s not what I remember most about that night. No, what I remember most was the look on my father’s face and the tears in his eyes.
I never asked him what those tears were about, but I can imagine. They were probably about being from a poor and violent family and the contrast between this and standing on deck with his wife and children around him, having had the freedom and opportunity to create a life through his career in the Army. His tears were probably about the memory of other times he had returned to the US lucky to be alive: from a hospital in England after being wounded in Germany, from a tour of duty in Korea. And, of course the tears were probably about the simple, universal and poignant experience of coming home.
Sometimes to my astonishment, I find that I’m given to carrying on this family tradition of tears while glimpsing powerful symbols of our national life. But unlike my father’s tears of gratitude, my tears are, well, more mixed. Sometimes they are about gratitude, at other times they are about longing, or perplexity, or disappointment, or frustration or helplessness.
Today is the 3rd of July, a time to take a deep breath before all the festivities and speeches and symbols that surround the annual celebration of our nation’s birth. And because today is a Sunday, we get to stand at the threshold of our Independence Day celebrations with Biblical language in our minds and with our distinctively Anglo-Catholic heritage whispering in our ears.
And, of course, we get to stand at the threshold with all the questions and issues we bring to any reflection on our national life today, especially as it intersects with our faith: questions about what to do in the face of the political liberal-conservative polarization many of us are experiencing, especially in light of the role specific Christian movements have played in this polarization; the question of what role our faith should have in both our participation in civic life and the ways we become involved in trying to shape its agenda.
And then there are the fundamental questions that affect where we stand on the many social issues of our day—abortion, end of life issues, marriage and family, access to health benefits. Questions like: When does life begin? When does life end? Who deserves rights and protection under the law? Who should have access to services? How should we pay for these services?
We stand on the threshold here together on a Sunday at a Eucharist at St. Paul’s, a place known for having a strong voice on social issues and a strong tradition of Anglo-Catholic worship tradition. We stand here looking, I hope, not for one preacher’s opinion about a particular social issue, but hungry for some kind of framework through which to understand how to come at social and national life as Christians in an Anglo-Catholic tradition.
So what is that framework?
In 1991, Kenneth Leech wrote an essay describing the kind of social vision he believed an Anglo-Catholic tradition proposes. These are three of the ways he described it.
First, it is a corporate vision. In other words, it is a social vision, “a vision of a
cooperative society, a community bonded together by a fundamental and unbreakable solidarity, a community of equals” who are dependent on each other for their common life.
Secondly, it is a materialist vision. It is a vision which is “deeply and unashamedly materialistic, which values the creation, which rejoices in the physical, in the flesh, in human sexuality, and which is rooted in the principle that matter is the vehicle of spirit, not its enemy.”
Thirdly, it is a vision of transformation, of “a transformed society, not simply an improved one. At the heart of Anglo-Catholic spirituality is the eucharistic offering with its two-fold emphasis on offering and consecration. Bread and wine, fruits of the earth and work of human hands, products not only of nature but of the industrial process, are, at the eucharistic offertory, brought within the redemptive process.”
Cooperative, Materialist, Transformational. This is part of the description of how those of us who worship in an Anglo-Catholic tradition tend to experience and see our life together in society.
And this is what I see in the Jesus’ words from Matthew in our gospel for today—words about approaching our lives with each other out of a wisdom that often runs counter to the world we live in, a wisdom that asks us to take a different kind of yoke upon us. That yoke is the yoke of Christ, a yoke through which we move beyond the categories and polarizations of conventional wisdom and politics and find that we are tethered to one another, tethered as a society, tethered bodily and materially, and tethered comprehensively.
And, as Jesus points out, the only kind of spirit that can bear such a tethering is one that is “gentle and humble in heart.”
Episcopal Priest and former senator John Danforth, though not an Anglo-Catholic, described this more humble spirit in his Op-Ed piece in the New York Times of two weeks ago entitled “Onward Moderate Christian Soldiers.” In the piece Danforth sets out a way of coming at being a person of authentic Christian values in our social and national life that is an alternative to conservative Christians. But most important for me was how Danforth describes a kind of spirit within which specific social issues might be approached:
“For us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.
When…we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.
We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.
Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.
We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.
For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people.
Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord's table all who would come. Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love.”
Today as you and I prepare again to celebrate the 4th of July; as we remember those who have come before us, whose dreams and strife and labor have given us our national life, however dazzling or imperfect; as we prepare to sit at table with family and friends participating in traditions that are meaningful for us; and as we get in touch with our feelings, whatever they may be, about our country, let us also remember the other tradition in which we stand. It is a tradition that has at its center a bodily savior with a social and humble spirit, a lord of transforming love and redeeming grace.
1) Kenneth Leech,The Renewal of Social Vision: A Dissident Anglo-Catholic Perspective, in The Anglo-Catholic Social Conscience: Two Critical Essays (Croyden: Jubilee Group, [1991]), 1-11.
2) "Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers" by John Danforth appeared in the June 17, 2005 edition of The New York Times.
