Bishop’s Address at 194th Convention of the Diocese of Georgia November 2015

On November 13, 2015, in Body of Christ, Community, Convention, Diocese of Georgia, discipleship, Evangelistic Witness, faith, gospel, grace, Laity, leadership, mission, by bishopbenhase

The field of moral psychology endeavors to understand why people make moral choices and the rationale they use to justify their choices. One of moral psychology’s recurring findings is that we have a higher opinion of ourselves than we ought to have. Of course, St. Paul arrived at the same conclusion about human nature nearly 2000 years ago when he wrote that very same message to the Church in Rome (Romans 12:3).

Experiments and surveys have repeatedly shown that we believe we possess attributes that are better or more desirable than the average person. For example, we believe by a wide majority that we’re above average drivers. The same is true when we’re asked about a virtue such as honesty. A high percentage of us report that we’re more honest than the average person. Even folk in jail for theft report such superior honesty. High school students consistently judge themselves to be more popular than average. And nearly every state claims that their average student test scores are above the national average. Of course, since we know something about statistics, we know that such judgments about ourselves cannot be true.

Moral psychologists have termed this phenomenon The Lake Wobegon Effect. It’s named for the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio program A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to host Garrison Keillor: “All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”

What these moral psychologists are documenting is as old as humanity. Our tradition names it as sin born from the cardinal sin of pride. Our creation story reminds us that Adam & Eve were quite clear that their judgment about a particular fruit in the Garden of Eden was superior to God’s judgment.

This truth about ourselves needs to be front and center when we spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. Yes, when sharing our faith with those who aren’t Christians we do need to have a “I-know-something-you-don’t-know” quality to it, because we do “know something they don’t know” when it comes to God’s grace in Jesus. But it’s how we share our faith with others that matters. It should be humble. We’re not morally superior to those outside the Christian faith. We may not even be morally above average.

So, from this humble stance, what is it we are to share?

I want to propose three Bible verses that will help remind us of how we should spread the Good News of Jesus.

The first verse is Isaiah 55:1: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and drink!

Notice how the Prophet Isaiah pronounces God’s word here. Everyone who thirsts is invited. All should come and drink and eat without money or price. God’s invitation to humanity is complete and without condition. Isaiah’s prophecy is a bold declaration of God’s intention, made perfect in Jesus’ words in John’s Gospel, that Jesus when he is lifted up on the cross will draw all people to himself.

That means Jesus is doing the drawing. Our congregations then must be places where we’re trained for our role, not Jesus’ role. It may be a conversation you have in the living room at Columba House. It may be you comforting an exhausted Scout Leader after his troop meets one night at your church. It may be you listening to a co-worker over coffee about her current troubles. Whenever and wherever, we need to say to everyone in our communities: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come!”

The second verse is Isaiah 25:9: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.”

Spreading the Good News involves us waiting for God to act. Our salvation, indeed the world’s salvation, isn’t our own doing. But our waiting should never be passive. It must be an active waiting, all the while recognizing that salvation is God’s action and God’s property, not ours.

If we remember that, then we’ll maintain a humble stance with those outside of our faith. Even though the Gospel is God’s bold declaration to the world, we should be compassionate and tender in how we share it, because we know many people have only received a false, toxic version of the Gospel.

Waiting for God to save is actually liberating. We’re free from playing the age-old game of who’s in and who’s out. We can collaborate with anyone, regardless of their faith, if they’re willing to do Gospel work with us in our communities.

If someone wants to partner with the Food for a Thousand Ministry at St Patrick’s, Albany or the community garden at the Oak Street Mission in Thomasville, we won’t worry if they don’t share our faith. We’ll feed hungry people with anyone. The Community Cares Café in Darien serves children whether or not they or their parents believe as we do. After all, we’re not on God’s “Program Committee.” We’re on God’s “Welcoming Committee.”

“Lo, it is God who saves us.” And we’ll share that Good News with anyone.

And the third and final verse is Matthew 28:19: “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

It’s not a liturgical accident that each Sunday our deacons send us out with this short, powerful verb: “Go!” “Go” doesn’t mean, “stay.” “Go” doesn’t mean hang out inside the church walls until somebody shows up. And “Go” doesn’t mean being so hamstrung by political correctness that we refrain from sharing with others God’s forgiveness in Jesus. “Go” means, “Go!”  

Go into the communities of this diocese with a “humble boldness.” Go share good news with the poor. Go tell the spiritually blind that God wants to give them sight. Go speak to the spiritually thirsty and let them know how you’ve learned that Jesus is the Water of Life.

Go to everyone. Go to the NSA, the NRA, the NAACP, the Rotarians, the Elks Club, the Booster Club, the Garden Club, the Optimist’s Club, the Pessimist’s Club, just Go! Wherever God has placed you, Go!

When we actually do go, God does some amazing things.

  • The community youth group in McIntosh County decided to go and this last year we baptized five young people.
  • The Cornerstone Ministry in Augusta chose to go and now regularly has 35 or more youth participate. And some of those aren’t members of our churches. They’re being evangelized by our youth.
  • In the summer when we go to Lake Blackshear with the Good News, people respond. Because the people of Christ Church Cordele decided to go, their worship attendance has doubled in the last few years.

What might God do in our communities if we all decided to “go?” Because when we “go,” we discover God’s already there. When we go to the ends of the earth or just to the end of our block, we find Jesus already pitching his tent there.

My friends, I firmly believe that the future vitality of this Diocese is directly related to our collective willingness to “go.” Our vitality will only grow in direct proportion to the number of us who are willing to “go.” And, this going can’t be a clergy-centered movement. A few laity still think that since we pay many of our clergy to go, they themselves don’t have to go. But that’s not true. The clergy’s primary task is to equip the laity to be the ministers of the Gospel. As the great lay teacher & preacher Verna Dozier wrote: The layperson’s primary function is out there in the world.  And the wise Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, wrote: Nine-tenths of the Church’s work in the world is done by Christian people fulfilling responsibilities and performing tasks which in themselves are not part of the official system of the Church at all.

That means when we “go,” we don’t go to church, we “go” to the people and places of our lives taking the Good News of Jesus with us. And if the Good News of Jesus saves us, it will save anybody and everybody.

I know I’ve gone a bit long here, but please stay with me for a few more minutes. I want to end on a personal note. Some of you know that I was diagnosed with cancer two months ago. I’m happy to report to you that I’m cancer free today. And I’m most thankful for all of your prayers. I felt each one of them.

The Diocesan Staff has been amazing, as usual, dealing with their already full responsibilities while also picking up after me, which is nearly an impossible task.

I also couldn’t do even one small thing as the Bishop of Georgia if it weren’t for Kelly, who puts up with me even as I am and loves me anyway, far beyond what I deserve.

There were upsides to my getting cancer. It’s been a great excuse for getting out of stuff. When someone asked me to do something I didn’t want to do, all I had to do was say: “You know, I’d love to, but I have cancer.” That worked every time.

The other upside is that it’s sharpened my mind and soul. It’s helped me see how often I’ve taken for granted the truly wonderful people and blessings that surround me.

And cancer has helped me get clear about what I want my life to stand for and how I want to spend the rest of my days on this earth, however long that is.

So, to quote that wonderful hymn by the Reverend James Cleveland:

Right now, I don’t feel no ways tired!

I’m ready to “go!” And I hope you’re ready to “go,” too.

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters”

“Lo, this is our God who has saved us.”

“Go, make disciples”

Deacons, please stand now wherever you are.  Please help me dismiss all of us from this overly long address with one powerful verb. It begins with a G and it ends with an O. On the count of three: One, two, three – Go!

 
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We Can Observe a Lot by Just Watching (eCrozier #273)

On September 25, 2015, in culture, fear, gospel, hope, Purity of Heart, by bishopbenhase

You can observe a lot by just watching – Yogi Berra

As I read the words of Jesus in the Bible, whether they be in his Sermon on the Mount or in his parables, he seems to be less concerned with the purity of his disciples’ arguments or the rigidity of their doctrine and more concerned with the purity of their hearts and their steadfast commitment to live out the Good News he was ushering into the world.

Yet, like with Mr. Berra, we can observe a lot by just watching how many of us maintain a death grip on the purity of our arguments and the rigidity of our doctrines, whether in religion or in politics. My hunch is that the death grip we’ve deployed is caused by our fear that we’re somehow losing what we once hoped we could control. But that was always a fantasy. Our culture is changing and people different from people like me are now a part of the conversation about what we will become. Religious and Political leaders sense this fear and exploit it for their own ends. But such fear mongering about people who are different than me will lead only to our collective downfall.

One of my favorite episodes of the old TV series, The Twilight Zone, is about a meteor that lands near Maple Street somewhere in Middle America. Soon rumors begin on the street that aliens disguised as humans have invaded. Everyone’s electricity goes out on the block so people gather in the street. One neighbor begs for everyone to remain calm. But then the lights in his house go on, while every other house remains dark. One of his neighbors shouts that he must be an alien. As suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are produced. In the faint distance, an “alien” is spotted and promptly shot, but when they run up to confront the alien, they discover he was no alien. He was simply a neighbor who had gone for help. The next scene is on a nearby hill where two real aliens are seen with a device that manipulates electricity. One tells the other “there’s no need to attack the humans. All you have to do is turn a few of their machines on and off and then they pick the most dangerous enemy imaginable: themselves.” Rod Serling then appears on camera concluding the episode with these words: “The tools of conquest don’t necessarily come with bombs and explosions. There are more powerful weapons; the ones found in the thoughts, attitudes, and prejudices of men.”

We seem to take great delight as a culture in arguing about who’s acceptable and who isn’t; who has the correct position on a particular issue and who doesn’t. And then we listen to the voices of those who tell us to fear those who are different than us; those on the outside of whatever side we’re on.

I’d rather spend my energy trying to follow Jesus. When we stand before the great judgment seat of Christ, I don’t think Jesus will ask you and me about the correctness of our beliefs or how rigidly we stood on principle. I believe he’ll ask if we tried in our lives to bring good news to the poor, hope to the hopeless, comfort to those who suffer, and mercy to the sinner. I may well be wrong about Judgment Day. I’ve been wrong before. But I’m willing to stake my eternal life on it.

+Scott

 
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“You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.” (eCrozier #263)

On May 15, 2015, in Ascensiontide, discipleship, gospel, by bishopbenhase

Since we’re now in Ascensiontide (you can look it up), I’m reminded of one of my favorite icons of the Ascension: The disciples are gathered in a circle with their eyes gazing into heaven. And just at the top of the icon one can see just the feet and ankles of Jesus as he ascends. That icon serves as a cautionary tale for the Church. We can spend much of our time figuratively looking into the heavens. We can focus so much of our energies on the fine details of liturgy or the intensity of committee work that we fail to look out at a world that’s dying for the Gospel of Jesus. There’s an old Johnny Cash song that sums this up well. It’s called “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with looking into the heavens. We all need time for rest and retreat so we might gain wisdom and perspective on our lives. The temptation, however, is to stay there. As long as we look up, we don’t have to look out for one another. We don’t have to deal with the hard work of human community. With our eyes to the heavens, we can honestly report that we can’t see the pain and struggle of others.

That’s why, I believe, those two men approached the disciples as Jesus disappeared from their sight. They pointedly asked the disciples: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Nineteen Centuries later, Bishop Frank Weston asked a similar question as he addressed the Church of England at the height of the Industrial Revolution. He asked: Can we claim to worship Jesus in the Church if we do not show Jesus compassion in the street? Can we worship Jesus in the Sacrament of his Body & Blood while we are ignoring Jesus in the suffering of his sisters and brothers?

A poem written by the Orthodox nun, Maria Skobtsova, illustrates this charge. She practiced and lived radical hospitality in her ministry in Paris during World War II.

I searched for thinkers and prophets who wait by the ladder to heaven,
see signs of the mysterious end, sing songs beyond our comprehension.

And I found people restless, orphaned, poor, drunk, despairing, useless,
lost whichever way they went, homeless, naked, lacking bread.

There are no prophecies. But life performs in a prophetic manner;
The end approaches, the days grow shorter; You took a servant’s form — Hosanna

When the Nazis invaded, Jews began coming to her convent in Paris to get baptismal certificates, which she gladly provided them to fool the Nazis. Later, many came to live in her convent and she helped most escape. Eventually the Nazis closed the convent and took her to a prison camp in Germany. On Holy Saturday, 1945, just days before the war’s end, she was executed. As Maria suggests in her poem, we can wait by the ladder to heaven for all sorts of “signs, thinkers, and prophets.” But if we do, we’ll miss the restless, the lost, and the despairing ones. Our Lord’s Ascension proclaims to us that you and I have the privilege of leaving the safety of our church buildings to follow Jesus into this beautiful, yet broken and hurting, world he so loves. 

+Scott

 

 
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A Faithful Response to the Changing Culture (eCrozier #261)

On May 1, 2015, in Anxiety, Change, culture, faith, fear, gospel, grace, by bishopbenhase

As we live through the rapid change of our contemporary culture, some are fearful that Christianity is losing its traditional, privileged place. Demographers tell us that the fastest growing cohort is the so-called “nones,” those with no religious affiliation or particular religious practice. Those who are fearful about this development warn that the lost, privileged place of the Church’s faith will inevitably lead to a growing hostility toward Christianity. Every fear has at least a kernel of truth to it, so there’s reason for us to pay attention. But I don’t think fear about the changing nature of the culture is a faithful response, even as we pay attention to it. Fear is never faithful. All culture is highly elastic and, at least partly, cyclical. Historians look back and find times when particular social, religious, political, and economic conditions in one era were similar to those in another. That’s true of Church history as it overlaps with the larger cultural history. In every age then, the Church faces new as well as familiar challenges for how she will be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus.

I believe we’re in a similar time as to what the Church experienced in the 4th Century. Christianity then had a foothold in the culture, but it was by no means the dominant religion. The Roman Empire had grown vast, outgrowing its own power to govern and control that vastness. In the other words, the Pax Romana wasn’t what it had been. This resulted in great social anxiety as groups sought to blame other groups for why Rome wasn’t what it used to be. Some blamed the Christians. Others blamed the laxness of the traditional Pagan practices. What was evident was this: No one group was dominant or privileged in its ability to guide the culture. This was also the time of the great Church Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. At these Councils, the Church struggled to define her own faith, identity, and practice. But even amidst the great debate within the Church, we continued to witness to the grace, compassion, and mercy of God. In the middle of the 4th century the Roman emperor Julian (later he had the moniker “the Apostate” attached to his name, which, let’s just say, wasn’t a term he chose) wrote a sarcastic complaint about the Christians he observed: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also. While our pagan priests neglect the poor, these hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity.” 

The Church today is struggling, as we always have, to live out our faith, identity, and practice. As was true 17 centuries ago, today we’re not all of one mind on various issues. But that has never stopped the Church from its essential witness to the world’s redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll need to continue to find ever more creative and effective ways of sharing and dispensing God’s grace to this beautiful, yet broken world, especially as it becomes more disinterested in or indifferent to the Gospel. So, I believe the truth claims we make about Jesus will never win the day if they’re limited to a “we’re right and your wrong” contest. I think the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) unwittingly showed us the most effective way: A steadfast commitment to sharing God’s unmerited grace with others, particularly to those who are lonely, lost, or left out in our culture, through specific acts that make tangible God’s grace in their lives. The old camp song has it so right: “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

+Scott

 
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The Inextricable Bond of Spirituality & Justice (eCrozier #253)

On March 6, 2015, in Community, culture, Death Penalty, discipleship, gospel, Justice, mission, Piety, Spiritual Disciplines, by bishopbenhase

Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple. – John 2:15

We’re more accustomed to a different Jesus, aren’t we? The Sunday School image of Jesus as the gentle good shepherd carrying a baby lamb on his shoulders still resonates with us. So when Jesus takes a whip and clears the temple, we’re taken aback. His action doesn’t fit our Sunday School image. But maybe such an image is mistaken? Some believe Christians should never get angry because Jesus never did. Well, he did. There’s nothing wrong with anger when it’s directed toward pursuing justice for God’s children.

We shouldn’t sit idly by while people suffer injustice. In fact, I’d say that if we’re not angered by injustice, then we’re not being faithful to the Gospel. It’s anger with injustice that leads us to confront the sin of racism. It’s anger with state-sponsored vengeance murder that compels us to end capital punishment. It’s anger with our society’s indifference to homeless people that leads us to work for safe housing for everyone. We should be angry when we see God’s creation polluted or God’s people brutalized.

Some of us, however, have adopted an insular spirituality. Pursuing spirituality is very popular these days. People want to become more spiritual. But much of what is called being “spiritual” has no basis in the Bible. Biblically speaking, there’s no separation between our spiritual connection to God and our pursuit of justice for God’s people. The Great Commandment sums this up: Jesus says that loving God and loving our neighbor go hand in hand. We can’t love one without also loving the other. And we can’t love our neighbors without seeking justice for them. It’s just not biblically possible.

But that’s what some people do. They’re just interested in their spiritual growth as if such growth can be separated from justice. The Bible claims a wholeness of spirituality and justice, of prayer and action, of contemplation and its inextricable connection to God’s justice. If we wish to be spiritual, we should help a child learn to read. If we wish to be spiritual, we should help a hungry person find the food they need. If we wish to be spiritual, we should rebuke that colleague when he makes a racist or homophobic joke.

Yet, working for justice will be rudderless and random if it’s not grounded in the faith of the Church, for that’s where we learn how to order our lives so we’ll avoid a superficial spirituality or a definition of justice that simply mirrors a political party at prayer.

The pursuit of God’s justice needs to begin with our own self-examination and fearless personal inventory. Before we can point our finger at anybody else, we need to point the finger at ourselves and allow our anger to motivate us to change how we live. We must admit that in some ways we’re no different than the buyers and the sellers Jesus confronted in the temple. When our lives in the Church are turned over by Jesus the same way he turned over the temple tables, then we’ll begin to learn to be the Church. Then we will live holistic lives where our spirituality isn’t disconnected from seeking justice for God’s children.

+Scott

 
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Bishop’s Address at 193rd Convention of the Diocese of Georgia November 2014

On November 7, 2014, in Body of Christ, capital campaign, congregational development, Convention, culture, Diocese of Georgia, Episcopal Church, Evangelistic Witness, gospel, grace, Laity, leadership, mission, by bishopbenhase

Some of you know I’m a huge fan of the singer-songwriter John Prine. And it’s a testament to my love and devotion to the Church and to this Diocese that I’ll be present at this evening’s Convention Eucharist because John Prine is performing tonight at the Savannah Civic Center. Prine’s lyrics are magical and almost always funny while also plumbing the depths of the human condition. A song he sings as a duet with Iris Dement evokes an affect that I want to share in my Bishop’s Address this year. The song is entitled “We’re not the Jet Set,” and part of it goes like this:

No, We’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set
Our steak and martinis, Is draft beer with weenies
Our Bach and Tchaikovsky, Is Haggard and Husky
No, we’re not the jet set, We’re the old Chevro-let set. But ain’t we got love

In this Diocese, we’re not the jet set. Most of us are more comfortable with draft beer and weenies than we are with steak and martinis. Haggard and Husky are more likely to be on our play list than Bach and Tchaikovsky. Here in the Diocese we don’t have what a lot of dioceses have in terms of financial resources. We don’t have many large metropolitan areas that provide amenities that would draw people to move to them. With a few exceptions, the counties in our state that are projected to have significant growth are all in that certain diocese to the north, just above the gnat line.

So the demographics aren’t very favorable to us. Demographics, however, aren’t destiny and dwelling on them isn’t faithful. We trust in a providential destiny only God provides. Plus, as John Prine sings, “ain’t we got love.” We have God’s love for us incarnated in Jesus and we have our love for one another. And we have hope, hope that God is moving in our midst working out through us God’s plan of salvation.

Our call, then, isn’t to bemoan what we don’t have or what’s not favorable to us. It’s to celebrate and be thankful for what we do have and the favor God has shown us, and then to put all that we have and all that we are into the coming of God’s Kingdom on this earth, as it already is in heaven.

No, we’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set. But this Chevy has many great miles to go and we’re fueled by the hope of what God will do through us to bring about the Kingdom.  And I want us to dwell on that sure and certain hope for these next few minutes. For as the Scriptures say: such hope will not disappoint us.

Now, we’re schooled by cable news and through social media to be afraid of just about everything from Ebola to the dirty ring around our bathtubs. If that were all the news we had, then it would be prudent to be afraid and to feel hopeless. Yet, if we have eyes to see, there are hopeful signs all around us.

1. While as a whole our diocesan Sunday attendance is basically flat, we now have more congregations that are significantly growing than are declining.

2. The core leadership training we’ve offered for clergy and laity through the Church Development Institute (CDI), Emotional Intelligence training, and peer coaching has now begun to bear fruit in many places. Clergy and lay leaders in many congregations are now better equipped to lead growing, vital congregations in the 21st century.

3. Our support for and focus on community ministries has led many congregations to reach out in real, concrete ways into their neighborhoods developing signature ministries that serve to transform people’s lives. We must remember that Jesus did not leave people stuck in their hunger or their sickness or their sin. He fed, He healed, and He liberated them. That’s what our community, signature ministries are all about. From Thomasville to Augusta, from Cordele to Darien, our congregations are embracing a vision of vitality through engagement with their communities.

4. Honey Creek, as you will see this afternoon, is being reborn into a more strategic missionary asset of the Diocese. In the last year, 70% of its ministry directly supported the mission of the Diocese. And 93% of its ministry was church-related. That didn’t happen by accident. We consciously renewed Honey Creek’s mission to be all about supporting God’s mission in and through this Diocese. And, I should add, we’re doing all this operating in the black for the 3rd straight year. When you see Honey Creek’s Director, Dade Brantley, this afternoon, please give him a big hug and a thank you.

So, there are many things we’re doing to help our congregations thrive. And thriving congregations must be our goal if we’re to accomplish God’s mission.

In this last year, while I was on retreat with the Sisters of St John the Baptist, I spent long periods of time praying for you. I did. I spent hours of time praying just for you and for each of our congregations.

There on retreat, thanks to Canon Logue, I brought with me the Field Guide to the Diocese. With that objective data and with my own direct experience with each of our congregations over the last four years, I placed each congregation in three, separate categories: Those that were thriving, those that were treading water, and those that were in decline.

I had some assumptions ahead of time about what congregations in each of those categories had in common that would tell me why they were in the category they were in. I discovered that my assumptions were mostly wrong (it’s good to have our assumptions challenged on a regular basis). It wasn’t the congregation’s location, or its size, or the amount of financial resources it had that defined whether it was thriving. The thriving congregations were of all sizes, in vastly different locations, and had widely differing resources.

There’s only one variable that all the thriving congregations have in common and it’s this: they’re all focused beyond their own doors and their own property lines. They’re concerned with that co-worker who had given up on God saying that if Jesus were real, then he must not love him. They’re focused on that hungry child down the street who won’t have enough to eat tomorrow. They’re alarmed to learn about that senior citizen who was all alone in the nursing home across town. Those are the topics dominating coffee hour conversations and discernment at vestry meetings. How might we reach them with the Good News of Jesus? How might we love them? How might we humbly serve them? Those are the questions being asked and discerned in our thriving congregations.

In contrast, what about the congregations in the two other categories? They’re anxious about their inward issues and talk mainly about surviving and protecting what they now have. Rather than be open to their community, they may feel that they have to struggle against it. While not always the case, this may lead to an unhealthy focus on things like the color of the new carpet in the narthex, or the rector’s recent haircut, or the choir’s lack of musical range. Or more dangerously, they may become focused on finding someone to blame for why their church isn’t thriving. And that blaming, often of the clergy, becomes what fuels the congregation’s life.

So my epiphany while I was on retreat is really quite simple: if we want thriving congregations and thus the transformation of our Diocese, then that’ll only happen when, as Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote, local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as a sign, an instrument, and a foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society)

Now, it would be wonderful if the Diocese had the financial resources to help congregations engage the Gospel in their communities. We’re trying to raise those financial resources. We’re working to get every ounce of mission out of the limited resources we have in the Diocese. We have one of the smallest diocesan staffs in the Episcopal Church for a diocese our size. Frank, Mary, Elizabeth, Rudy, Vicki, Gayle, and Libby, not only put up with me on a daily basis, they’re committed to help all our congregations thrive. I’m blessed to serve with these amazing people.

Yes, it would be wonderful if we had more money and as I said, through the Capital Campaign, we’re working on finding those financial resources.

But, you know, we don’t need money to love our neighbor. We don’t need deep pockets to care about what happens to kids in the school next door or the overwhelmed single mother across the street or the lonely man in the nursing home around the corner. Each of our congregations can make a Gospel difference in their communities without having a dime to do it. All we need is the will to set aside our inward focus and embrace our neighbors with the Good News of God’s redeeming grace in Jesus.

I see hopeful signs of this in so many of you and in our congregations. We must not lose heart or believe we’re incapable of changing our local mission strategy. As a church, we’re facing nothing short of an avalanche of social and cultural change. I don’t need to list all those changes for you. You’ve read about them and you see them every day in your community.

When I was first ordained in 1983 to serve Lake Wobegone Episcopal Church, all we needed for what we understood to be “success” back then was a nice church building in a semi-decent location with passable worship and acceptable music. It didn’t hurt if the priest’s sermons were mildly entertaining, but not too challenging. If we added a clean, safe Church school, then we had a congregation sizable enough to pay all the bills.

But those days are gone and they’re not coming back. Please hear me when I say this: Those days are gone and they’re not coming back. Nostalgia for the past is hindering us from embracing our present mission.

The old road maps for “success” in our congregations are no longer applicable. We can’t just show up anymore, say we’re the church, and people will pay attention. We must take the Gospel into the public life of our communities with a passion and a commitment we’ve not had before. The people of our society are suffering from a lack of grace and compassion in their lives. They’re living in the “mean time” in both senses of that term. Mercy and empathy for one another is in short supply. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to renew and redeem us and our neighbors.

As Bishop Newbigin wrote: If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society…it will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society)

Many of you are realizing that. That’s why I see so many hopeful signs of God’s redeeming grace in our congregations. You and I need to see more of these hopeful signs from one another, so we can encourage each another to live into the changes we must make locally in order to grasp the new mission God is placing before us.

The congregations that recognize what time it is will be the congregations that will thrive in the future. Those congregations who don’t, who insist on making the church’s mission only about those who show up, or only about what’s good for me and mine, those congregations will die a slow and banal death. That’s simply the truth.

So, can we let go of our inward focus and embrace our neighbors with Jesus and his Gospel in new and creative ways? Can we take the Gospel out of our churches and into the public square, not to nag or cajole, not to finger point or to blame, but to love and to serve and to bring hope to those who, as St Paul so aptly described, are literally perishing without the Gospel?

Can we do this? I know we can.

It’s true. “We’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set. But ain’t we got love.” We sure do have love. We have the love of Jesus for us and for this wonderful and beautiful, yet sinful and broken world in which we live. And the love of Jesus is all we truly need.

 
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“The Hanging Sermon” & The Social Gospel (eCrozier #235)

On October 10, 2014, in culture, gospel, grace, Justice, preaching, sin, by bishopbenhase

This week I attended two lectures by Dr. Charles Marsh at the Virginia Theological Seminary’s Alumni Convocation. Dr. Marsh is a professor of religion at the University of Virginia. His topic for the lectures was reclaiming “The Social Gospel for the 21st Century.” His lectures were magnificent. The Social Gospel historically came out of the Progressive Era in our country, a time when theologians were seeking a biblical response to the consequences of rapid industrialization. The Social Gospel provided the theological grounding for ending child labor, limiting the workweek, establishing health & safety laws for workplaces, etc. It was largely successful. It presented a positive, hopeful approach claiming, and this is a broad generalization, that if the church appealed to the populace’s sense of justice and fairness based on Jesus’ teaching, then our human community could get pretty darn close to utopia. As we know from history, what we now call World War I ended such positive expectations for human community.

So the so-called Social Gospel became discredited as being unrealistic. And there was good reason to question its claims. It did not, as Reinhold Niebuhr critiqued it, take into sufficient account the power of our sinfulness and our human propensity to mess even good things up. But the criticisms of the Social Gospel never denied the prophetic claims Jesus’ teachings had on society’s injustices. Nor did they deny that the results of ending things like child labor weren’t a good outcome. Skip ahead 100 years, as Dr. Marsh did in his lectures, and we find ourselves going through a similar economic shift when the Church’s social witness to social injustice is still much needed. What Marsh contends is that this time a Social Gospel must be based on a deep acknowledgement of human sin. In doing so, we all could have a stronger empathy for those who suffer on the margins.

Marsh’s insight is important. If we come to acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own propensity to mess even good things up, then we’ll be more understanding of those who have made bad choices in their lives (or had bad choices made for them) and are now unemployed, stuck in low wage jobs, or don’t have the education to climb the economic ladder. We’ll be less inclined to blame them exclusively because we know our own sin only too well. Marsh referred to what was known as “the hanging sermon.” In previous generations, the night before a criminal was hanged, the entire town turned out for a religious service with the condemned person in the front row. This wasn’t an occasion to focus on the one condemned, per se, but an opportunity for everyone to become more aware of their own real sin before God, realizing as they looked at the condemned man that “there but for the grace of God go I.”

That’s just the tonic our culture needs as we face present social ills like growing income inequality. These days we have the tendency to group people into “good guys” and “bad guys” (with “our tribe” always part of the good guys). This gives us de facto permission to ascribe our status to our goodness while concluding that those on the margins deserve their fate because they lack such goodness. That’s bad theology. A healthy awareness of all human sinfulness, ours especially, can correct such theology. I propose we bring back “the hanging sermon” (the lethal injection sermon?). But would anyone attend?

+Scott

 
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Seeing Others as Neighbors Instead of Competitors (eCrozier #234)

On October 3, 2014, in culture, gospel, grace, love, by bishopbenhase

Whether we enjoy it or not, technological and economic abundance surrounds those of us living in the U.S.  Our culture has many ways to stimulate our appetites for the many things we didn’t even know we needed. And it’s not just that we have an appetite for all this abundance, many people feel it’s their right to have it. Those who want lower taxes still demand their communities have high quality education, services, and cultural amenities. They just don’t want it to pay for it. In such a world, it’s a small step from claims to certain rights to the violent rhetoric of some groups, who claim, with a certain twisted logic, that in our materialistic society only the language of violence speaks loud enough to get the attention of those bent on the gratification of their desires as a “right.”

The vineyard tenants in Jesus’ parable this Sunday aren’t all that remote from us. Their acts of violence first against the owner’s servants and then the owner’s son are simply extreme examples of a demand that weaves its way through our society: “What’s mine?” The judgment proclaimed in the parable is easy for us to serve on others. We can say that their claims are too extreme, illogical, or greedy, while our claims are legitimate, reasonable, and just. We ask only our due, while they demand too much! It’s easy to see where such colliding claims lead. They lead to some form of mutual degradation. A current example of this is our broken national political culture.

So, the temptation is to choose the tenant’s solution, which is the choice for violence in some form, even if it’s not actual physical violence. The logic of oppression, which the rich and powerful use to denigrate the claims of the poor and powerless, and the logic of violence, which uses fear to gets its way, are really two sides of the same coin. Each believes that the only way to protect its claim is by denying the claim of the other.

The Gospel of Jesus is a clear alternative to this cycle of claim and counterclaim. At the heart of our lives, God has given us all we truly need. This doesn’t mean we all begin life equally or that there’s no need to mitigate the extremes of wealth and poverty, but it does mean that we’re freed from the blind claim of demanding rights or what we see as our due. We’re freed from this desire because God has given us all we truly need by his grace. If we see God as the source of all that we have and all that we are, then we can begin to see others as neighbors to love instead of opponents to overcome. We’ll begin to see them as people, like us, for whom Jesus died on the cross instead of only seeing them as competitors blocking us from getting more of what we desire.

The Gospel of Jesus confronts our sinful desires that get in the way of our ability to attend to each other in love. The Gospel is the necessary antidote for us so we’ll have the ability to see the world with the eyes of a love that doesn’t demand our rights and desires at the expense of others. The real abundance surrounding us isn’t the abundance of things that we blindly believe will fill the gaping void in our hearts. What actually surrounds us is God’s abundant grace, incarnate in Jesus, which heals our hearts and makes us whole. The Gospel of Jesus enables us to see first ourselves and then the world around us with a clearer vision and less grasping hands.

+Scott

 
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The Widow Atwater, Karma, and the Gospel of Jesus (eCrozier #227)

On June 27, 2014, in culture, gospel, politics, by bishopbenhase

Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.’ – Matthew 26:52

The above quote from Jesus might seem to confirm what adherents to a different religious tradition call karma. As I understand it, karma implies that if you engage in a certain behavior, then that same behavior will come back upon you, or maybe stated more simply: “what goes around, comes around.” Jesus puts it in a more complete way in Luke 6:37-38: ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you…for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’

Such a “measure,” some say, was recently given back. According to a report this week in the Charleston, SC City Paper: “The day before the June 24 Republican primary runoff, S.C. superintendent of education candidate Sally Atwater is facing a lawsuit that claims she assaulted a special needs student in her elementary school classroom. The lawsuit was filed in a Colleton County court on June 19, nine days after Atwater took a close second in the Republican primary and five days before she faces Molly Spearman in a runoff. In a written statement, Atwater campaign spokesman Luke Byars called the lawsuit ‘baseless and frivolous’ and ‘one of the lowest political hit jobs I have witnessed in 25 years of South Carolina politics’.”

You may know that Ms. Atwater is the widow of the late Lee Atwater, who as a political operative engaged in even meaner “political hit jobs.” To his eternal credit, as he was dying of cancer, he lamented his vicious behavior and sought forgiveness. Now, his widow seems to have been on the receiving end of an “Atwater-type” political attack. If so, it appears to have worked as Ms. Atwater did lose the election. So now some people are exercising their usual, gleeful schadenfreude claiming Ms. Atwater got “karmic payback” for her late husband’s onerous behavior. Other people are saying: “when you live by the sword of political hit jobs, then you’ll die by them as well.” You see, they’re even quoting Jesus to back up their version of wisdom to live by.

But that “wisdom” assumes Jesus was endorsing such outcomes as good things. He wasn’t. He was merely observing how the world works when we don’t live by the Godly virtues of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus says that when we judge and condemn others, when we don’t forgive, we set lose a pattern of behavior that’ll always come back upon us. But, Jesus says, when we put away our sword of condemnation, when we don’t place ourselves on His judgment seat, when we incarnate forgiveness in our lives, then we set loose a different spiritual pattern in the world, a pattern that abounds in grace and infects with mercy, which we’ll receive back in full measure beginning now and forever. That’s the Gospel truth and not mere karma.

+Scott

The eCrozier will be on holiday for six weeks or so in the hot, humid jungles of Mozambique. The eCrozier will resume sometime in August.

 
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The Branch Davidians, Coercion, and our Evangelistic Witness (eCrozier #214)

On March 28, 2014, in culture, Evangelistic Witness, gospel, grace, Uncategorized, by bishopbenhase

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a significant piece in a recent New Yorker called Sacred and Profane: How Not To Negotiate with Believers. In it he describes how U.S. government negotiators totally botched ending the armed standoff with the Branch Davidian group nearly 21 years ago in Waco, Texas. You may remember that the Branch Davidians are an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, one that’s even more apocalyptic and millennialist in their theology than the parent church. The standoff ended in tragedy with over 70 people, including 25 children, consumed in a fire caused when 400 canisters of CS gas shot into the compound came into contact with oil lanterns.

I don’t wish debate the U.S. government’s actions or whether they were right to have laid siege to the Mt Carmel compound. That’s for another time. What I find most interesting here is how one group, in this case the FBI, can so completely misunderstand another group like the Branch Davidians. The FBI assumed they were dealing with a typical hostage negotiation, such as when a robber holds hostages in a failed bank heist. So, “we’ll send in some food if you let four of the hostages go,” was the script for how the FBI approached this case. But they were dealing with people who had strong religious beliefs. The Branch Davidians held convictions that made complete sense to them, but they could only be understood as rational within the context of their theology. The FBI had a different rationality and they profoundly and tragically misinterpreted the deep beliefs the Branch Davidians held.

The U.S. government has made similar repeated failures throughout recent history, especially in its dealings with Muslim religion and culture. U.S. government rationality assumes that all grievances, threats, or concerns are based solely on social, political, or economic desires and therefore can be negotiated. But people who hold deep religious beliefs won’t negotiate them away no matter what “deal” they’re offered.

As we enter even further into a post-Christian, polyreligious culture, we followers of Jesus would do well to learn this. This doesn’t mean that all religious beliefs are equally true. Everyone can have her/his own religious beliefs, but not everyone can have her/his own truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We should never shrink back from that faith conviction. And yet, how we stand with that conviction in the midst of wildly different religious beliefs matters. It matters, and this may come as a surprise to some people, for how effective we will be in our evangelistic witness to other people.

We’ll never convince those who have different religious beliefs about the truth of our witness through the barrel of a gun, the coercion of political power, or by majority legislation mandating or forbidding certain behavior. Those won’t lead people to change their religious convictions. The Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Puritan’s coercive laws in early America, and the more recent efforts in some jurisdictions to ban Sharia Law all failed to change the target population’s beliefs. The truth we bear and are also called to share can only be conveyed through sacrificial love, grace, and mercy. After all, that’s how Jesus embodied eternal truth, so it ought to be how we do it as well.

+Scott

 
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