SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
IN TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, COLUMBUS, OHIO
ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
18 JUNE 2006
"Mortals look on the outward appearance, but the
Lord looks on the heart." (I Samuel 16:7)
It has often been said that the Lord has a sense of humor.
There is now evidence that the lectionary does, too. Here we
are, at the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church.
Later this morning, that church's mitered leaders will meet in
this very parish to elect the 26th Presiding Bishop. And by the
luck of the draw, as it were, we see that this morning's lesson
from the Hebrew Scriptures is the account in First Samuel of
another election of sorts, the process which led to the anointing
of David as king of Israel. The reign of Saul, which was fraught
with problems, has effectively come to an end. The Lord, to say
the least, is displeased with Saul's performance, so the Lord
instructs Samuel to appoint a successor to Saul. But instead
of a slate proposed by a nominating committee that had spent
two hundred thousand shekels, Samuel learns that the electoral
pool is limited to the sons of Jesse. So Samuel sets out to Bethlehem,
horn of oil in hand, to do the Lord's bidding.
My first reaction was to avoid that lesson like the proverbial
plague, but I must admit that great was the temptation to focus
on the verse in which Samuel asks Jesse, "Do you have only
seven candidates for the job? Is there not another?" Then
I thought I'd stick to something safe and agrarian, like the
Gospel story about the mustard seed. I thought of saying something
about the great potential of the tiny Episcopal Church, which,
when properly nourished, could flourish and provide a home for
all sorts and conditions of birds in its branches. But the more
I read and prayed over the lessons, the more the Spirit drove
me back to the story of the anointing of David, and especially
to the words which the Lord spoke to Samuel. Mindful that Saul
had been chosen for his good looks, and the fact that he stood
head and shoulders over the other candidates, the Lord warned
Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height
of his stature. . . For the Lord does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart."
My sisters and brothers in Christ, I needn't tell you how
image-conscious our society has become. Left to their own devices,
Hollywood and Madison Avenue would conspire to convince us that
if we only apply or imbibe the right combination of lotions and
potions, we can be forever young, beautiful and wrinkle-free,
complete with the washboard abs or the hourglass figure we had
in college. The church is no less image-conscious. It is not
for naught that the walkabouts preceding episcopal elections
are often called beauty contests. I remember some years ago,
Hays Rockwell and I, together with three or four of our brother
and sister clergy, were candidates in the diocese of Michigan.
With our spouses, we were paraded through various cities and
hamlets, and made no fewer than 36 appearances in six days. About
day four, Claudette Lewis and Linda Rockwell, just for fun, decided
to exchange nametags. How well I remember the astonished and
fallen countenance of the president of the ECW, when she greeted
my wife, and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Rockwell?!"
(You will remember that neither Dr. Rockwell nor I was elected!)
I would like to suggest to you this morning that as the bishops
elect a primate, and as vestries elect rectors, and as other
bodies seek either lay or ordained leadership in this church,
that we eschew our time-honored fixation on image. Insanity,
after all, has been defined as doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results. Instead, we must
learn to heed the Lord's admonition to Samuel, and to look to
the heart. After the standard anatomical definition, my dictionary
goes on to describe "heart" in the following ways:
1) the center of emotion, esp. as contrasted to the head as the
center of the intellect; 2) feeling; affection; capacity for
sympathy; 3) spirit, courage, or enthusiasm. With these definitions
in mind, I ask your leave as I make some suggestions about the
kind of leadership necessary for our beloved church.
First, we need leaders who have the heart to face failure.
Perhaps you have read the article in the latest issue of Anglican
and Episcopal History entitled "Bonfire of the
Sacristies: To the 2006 General Convention." It points out
that there are two official publications of the Episcopal Church.
The first, Episcopal Life, is well known to us. It tells
stories about mission trips to Honduras, acolyte festivals in
the National Cathedral, and various outreach programs for the
least, the lost and the last sponsored by parishes. It is an
upbeat publication, and as a house organ always puts forward
the most salubrious picture possible. (See above under "fixation
with image.") The lesser-known publication is The Episcopal
Church Annual, a.k.a. "The Red Book," which is
merely a compendium of raw data about the Episcopal Church. I
leafed through the 2006 edition recently, and came across a table
of statistics. It reported that for the previous year, there
were decreases in the number of baptisms, confirmations, and
marriages; decreases in the number of baptized members and communicants
and the number of parishes and missions. What is the only category
that reported an increase? The number of clergy!
What is wrong with this picture? Why are we ordaining more
clergy to minister to fewer people in fewer congregations? Perhaps
it is because clergy are entering ministries that do more for
their own feeling of importance than for the good of the church.
Perhaps our Hebrew is rusty, and we translate Isaiah's "Here
I am, send me" as "Here I am, and this is where I'm
willing to go." But one thing is certain. Those of us who
have been around the block a few times in this Episcopal Church
remember when the assumption was that we were being prepared
to go out to minister to large flourishing parishes full of people.
We labored under the assumption that everybody with good sense,
and certainly everybody with good taste, would beat a path to
the doors of the Episcopal Church. Now people seem to be beating
a path to the exit doors. This means that ordained leadership
needs a new job description. We must learn anew, like Jeremiah,
to "build up and to plant," and sometimes, like the
slaves of Egypt, to make bricks without straw.
Second, we need leaders who have a heart to deal with
contention. Some of us remember when the greatest divisions
in the Episcopal Church were among the low and lazy, the broad
and hazy and the high and crazy. The evangelical wing might have
looked upon their Anglo-Catholic brethren as eccentric, and the
Tractarians definitely believed their low-church counterparts
to be sacramentally challenged, but there existed nevertheless
a mutual respect. Now the big tent of Anglicanism is history,
as more and more groups within the church claim that they have
a sole right to its protection, leaving others to fend for themselves,
subject to the elements outside its shelter. Once a church that
prided itself on tolerance, we now to our astonishment hear fellow
Christians hurl at each other epithets like "apostate"
and "heathen" and even "pagan," doing so
with what we used to call gay abandon.
We need, too, leaders who have a heart fully capable of
loving their neighbors. Have we lost sight of this, as primates,
in an interesting 21st century version of the 4th century heresy
of Donatism, refuse to receive communion in the presence of those
with whom they disagree, when some bishops and deputies at this
Convention absent themselves from the holy eucharist and from
Bible study, contending that they cannot sully their hands, their
lips or their minds by subjecting themselves to the fellowship
of those they deem to be unorthodox? Can we not heed the words
of the prophet Isaiah, "Come, let us reason together, though
our sins be like scarlet."?
Next, we need leaders who have a heart for flexibility,
who believe in that non-Biblical beatitude, "Blessed are
the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."
We need leaders, therefore, who are willing to embrace the Anglican
ethos, summed up in the preface to the first American Prayer
Book:
That in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to
belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefore,
by common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged,
amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient
for the edification of the people, according to the various exigency
of times and occasions. (1979 BCP, p. 9.)
That ethos is also captured in the ditty, set to the tune
of "God Bless America"
I am an Anglican, good ol, C of E,
Not high church, or low-church, but catholic, episcopal
and free!
We do not and will not have a centralized magisterium like
our brothers and sisters in Rome, whose polity is summed up by
the dictum, Roma locuta est, causa finita est ("Rome
has spoken, the case is ended.") And those who believe that
that should be our model should just get over it!
Finally, we need leaders who have a heart for evangelism
and a zeal for the Gospel. We need men and women who look
to their hearts and not their navels, for it is navel-gazing
over matters of liturgy, gender and sexuality that has sapped
the energy which would otherwise have been used for evangelistic
efforts. Have we forgotten Archbishop William Temple's pronouncement
that the church is the only institution that exists primarily
for the benefit of those not its members? Many Christmases ago,
I was struggling with what to preach about at midnight mass.
My mother-in-law, of blessed memory, was staying with us and
I asked her what I should say in my sermon. Her advice was simple:
Quoting from an old Methodist hymn, she said, "Harold, tell
them the old, old story of Jesus and his love." My friends,
the people of God, who come in their brokenness to our altars
week by week, need to know that Jesus loves them, need to know
that "earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal."
They are literally dying to know that there is indeed a balm
in Gilead!
Very few bishops who will cast their ballots later today
heard at their consecrations the words of the ancient ordinal:
"Remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is given
thee by the imposition of our hands, for God has not given us
the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness."
In a day when we have lived to see a church, as Mr. Stone's hymn
predicted, "by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed,"
we need leaders --- laypersons, bishops, priests and deacons,
chosen not on account of the cut of their jaw, their sartorial
elegance, their political correctness, or their academic credentials.
We need leaders who are fearless and courageous, and who above
all know who they are and Whose they are --- leaders like King
David --- men and women after the Lord's own heart.
Let us pray:
Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore;
Let the gift of thy salvation be thy glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving thee whom we
adore.
(John Emerson Fodsick, The Hymnal 1982, 594)