Daily Episcopalian will return on July 6.

by Thomas Luck

From June 14-18 I attended a class at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, which is on the campus of Northwestern University. I took this class as I continue the flex-sabbatical I began in 2008, when I took courses at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, in a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in congregational development program run jointly by Seabury and Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. My next class will be for a week next January in Berkeley.

The course I took was "Congregations in the Twenty-First Century." The teacher for the class is the Reverend Dr. Susan Harlow. Susan, as she prefers to be called, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and has taught for 17 years in theological education. A graduate of Hollins University, she earned her Master of Divinity at Andover Newton Theological School and a Master of Theology at Harvard Divinity School. Her doctorate is from Columbia University in its joint program with Union Theological Seminary in Religion and Education. As Susan says, "I'm ordained in the UCC, but in theology and practice I have become an Episcopalian." Susan's life partner, the Reverend Dr. Bonnie A. Perry, is rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chicago. The Rev. Dr. Perry is one of the "up and coming" younger clergy of the Episcopal Church, who I have heard present before, and she was one of the presenters for our class. A couple of years ago she was nominated for bishop in the Diocese of California. Although she was not elected many think she will become a bishop in the not too distant future. Time and the Holy Spirit will tell.

A bit more about my class; there were eighteen students in the class, ten women and eight men. Among the eight men there were only two other white straight males besides me. There were Hispanic men, people from Canada, an Australian serving in Canada, a white South African working on a Ph.D. in San Diego, and white suburban women; there were six people in the DMin program, and others who are preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church.

While our class was meeting there was some drama unfolding regarding the relationship of the Episcopal Church with the Anglican Communion. Letters had been exchanged by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In his letter the Archbishop of Canterbury announces some sanctions removing members of the Episcopal Church from some international bodies since we no longer represent the "faith and order" of the Anglican Communion. This is because the Episcopal Church ordained the Right Reverend Mary Glasspool as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and Bishop Glasspool is a lesbian in a long-term committed relationship. Shortly after both of these letters, the Presiding Bishop was in England for a long-standing engagement to preach at Southwark Cathedral in London, at the invitation of the Dean. Just before the service the Presiding Bishop was informed by the Archbishop of Canterbury that she would not be allowed to wear her mitre, or any other symbol of the office of Bishop. Cleverly, she carried her mitre in her hands throughout the entire service. This was explained as being necessary because the Church of England is about to vote on whether women can be ordained as bishops, and that if she were allowed to look like a bishop it would be inflammatory. Since that event, it has come out that other women who are bishops have preached in England and been allowed to actually look like bishops. Never mind that the Presiding Bishop is in fact already a bishop and the Primate of the Episcopal Church!

Now in Syracuse. Last week I performed a graveside service for the friend of a parishioner. The parishioner, a woman, has received the Congressional Gold Medal for logging 1,000 hours flying military aircraft in World War II. The people who gathered with her were an amazing group of people! Among them was an elderly couple that particularly caught my attention. One of the women in the couple had a small tattoo on her cheek and bright lime green fingernail polish. The other woman in the couple was wearing ladies sandals, pink socks, a red dress and had long, flowing, fire engine red hair. But as I came closer to the burial plot I realized that the person in the red dress with the long red hair had the face and voice of an elderly man. From my limited knowledge I think that this person is transgendered, someone who is a woman in a man's body. Yet, here they were, a loving couple, and obviously friends of our highly decorated parishioner.

Later we went to the apartment of the parishioner for some refreshment and conversation. Sipping wine and eating cake I heard a number of amazing stories. And then someone asked the person wearing the red dress to tell her tale of the time she almost died in combat in her previous life. Then, with utter seriousness, she talked about fighting the Chinese in face to face combat in a frozen river in Korea. This person was critically wounded and lying helplessly in the river, partially under the ice. She realized that the Chinese were going around and bayoneting to death everyone who was wounded. So she kept her eyes wide open, staring off into space pretending to be dead. It worked, and she was the only person in her platoon to survive. When she was found by medics she could only blink her eyes.

As I was listening to this story I wished that I had a video camera, for the impact of seeing this lady in her dress and long red hair telling this tale of courage and patriotism was extremely profound. I was left speechless. The living room in this apartment was full of patriotism from people whose own lives have often been full of disregard or ridicule. Later on the same day St. Paul's Cathedral hosted the Interfaith Gay Pride service, and people, non-Episcopalians, prayed loud prayers of thanksgiving for the witness of the Episcopal Church, and for their being welcomed in our Cathedral.

On July 4th we will once again celebrate the independence of the United States of America, an independence that was hard fought in the Revolutionary War, and which has continued to be hard fought to our own day. Many of those who have helped preserve our independence over the years have themselves not always been granted the full rights that their citizenship entitles them to receive; from the African Americans who fought for the North, to the Navajo who helped provide the secret code that helped win WWII, to the women who flew military aircraft in that war but did not receive veteran benefits until the 1970's, to people such as this lady, to those who live under "don't ask don't tell" today. America is not only for these people too, it is especially for these people. The United States is the last best hope on earth for the dispossessed, the different, and those who are loathed simply for being who they are. It is why your ancestors and mine came here. And as an Episcopalian who loves the Anglican Communion, I am proud that the Episcopal Church may be the last best hope in Catholic Christianity for the dispossessed, the different and those who are loathed simply for being who they are. There are lesbian, gay, transgender and bi-sexual parishioners at St. Paul's Cathedral, so many we simply could not function without them. They serve on numerous groups. They may not be obvious to all, but we are richer for their presence. This July 4th I bless God for the United States, for the Episcopal Church and for St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral.

The Very Reverend G. Thomas Luck, M.Div., A.L.M., is the Dean and Rector, St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, in Syracuse, New York.

By Greg Jones

When Jesus proclaims the beginning of his ministry in his hometown synagogue, he offers us a nutshell of the whole Gospel itself. Obviously, there's more than merely what he quotes from Isaiah -- in terms of detail and how it comes to be fulfilled -- but a succinct microcosm of what the Good News of God in Jesus Christ is to be sure to be found there.

In Luke 4.16-21, Jesus says the ancient prophesy of God making the world right again is no longer a future thing, but a thing in the process of fulfillment in Him. He says that in Him the Spirit of God has anointed a savior to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and redeeming the fallen world.

Clearly, this is a work not yet finished, even in our own day. It is tempting, in our cynical moments, to say that this restoration project proclaimed by Christ in Luke 4 doesn't appear to have gotten very far. Again, we can look at Haiti, as just the most recent case in point for the cynical argument against Christ's message.

In Haiti, we are hearing that some 150,000 have died so far from the earthquake. It is an unfathomably high number, and is perhaps only the beginning. That's something like 1.5% of the population. Staggering. An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 on the Richter Scale killed some 150,000 people - so far. Yet, twenty-one years ago an earthquake of almost that size (a 6.9) struck San Francisco. Almost the same size, but in that instance only 63 people died.

What's the difference? Well, it's a question we must put to ourselves in terms of what Jesus is talking about in Luke. It's a question of the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed in our midst. It's a question of the fallenness of the world -- and I don't mean the planet itself.

No, it's a question not of plate tectonics or earth science, but of justice.

The reason 150,000 died in Haiti and 63 died in the U.S. is a question of societal injustice. Isn't it?

I believe that Christ has begun the redemption of a fallen world, and until He comes again in judgment, we who call Him Lord are supposed to join with Him in the saving work. This means not only feeding and clothing, but also working towards just societies.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones ('Greg') is rector of St. Michael's in Raleigh, N.C., a trustee of General Seminary and the bass player in indie-rock band The Balsa Gliders — whose fourth studio release is available on iTunes. He blogs at Anglican Centrist.

By Bill Carroll

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?
Are you able to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?

Jesus addresses these shocking questions to the sons of Zebedee. He also addresses them to us. Jesus thereby takes familiar and comforting sacraments—the shared cup and ritual washing—and makes them unsettling and strange. His cup is that of a murdered prophet. His baptism is that of a martyr, washed in his own blood.

Are we able to drink his cup? Are we able to be baptized with his baptism?

These questions—central ones in the life of faith and discipleship—are not meant to be morbid. By them, Jesus intends to give us life. Ours is not a joyless or life-denying faith. But it is a realistic one. Without grappling with the forces that put Jesus to death, without drinking the cup of his suffering and drowning with him in the waters of baptism, we cannot receive the gift of Easter joy. As Christians, we make sense of our lives by following in the steps of the crucified. It is here—in the place where Jesus walks—that we find resurrection hope and new life.

Our own sufferings are likely to be small by comparison with those of Jesus. And yet, there is no particular suffering he has not known, and no one is beyond the reach of his compassion. Moreover, we have been given his Spirit. In baptism, we have pledged ourselves to follow him. We cannot know in advance how this will put us in conflict with the rulers of this present age. Nor can we know ahead of time what other sufferings life will bring.

Lately, I’ve been reading a book by a Jesuit named Jon Sobrino entitled Witnesses to the Kingdom: The Martyrs of El Salvador and the Crucified Peoples. In it, Sobrino reflects on the meaning of martyrdom, in light of the Church’s experience in El Salvador. Sobrino narrowly escaped martyrdom himself. He was out of the country, when assassins entered the university where he taught, looking for Jesuits like him, who had confronted the brutal regime and its abuse of the people. Six of his brothers were killed that day.

But, rather than dwell on these six priests or on Archbishop Romero, who was murdered at the altar and whom Sobrino knew firsthand, I’d like to share with you from his account of the funeral of four women from the United States, three nuns and a social worker from the Diocese of Cleveland. Until God sent these women to El Salvador, they led lives not unlike our own. Here’s what Sobrino had to say about them:

I have stood by the bodies of Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan…There has been martyrdom upon martyrdom—an endless procession of priests, seminarians, students, campesinos, teachers, workers, professionals, and intellectuals murdered for the faith in El Salvador. Death has come to be the inseparable, dismal companion of our people. And yet, each time we gather to bid our martyrs farewell, the same feelings well up inside…

There were three hundred of us priests and sisters gathered in the chancery to hear Archbishop Rivera. His voice had a new and different ring as he denounced the Security Forces of the Christian Democratic Junta. He tore the masks from their faces. He pointed the finger of shame and guilt. Once again the truth was crystal clear. And with the truth came courage—and the Christian resolve to keep on, shoulder to shoulder with the massacred people, even if it meant the church must march once more to the cross.

It was like the first Christian Easter all over again. The horror, the abandonment, the solitude of Jesus’ cross had driven the disciples to their refuge in the upper room. But Jesus’ spirit was mightier than death, and it flung the doors wide apart. The disciples emerged stronger than before, determined to preach resurrection and life, determined to proclaim the good news of the reign of the poor. The archbishop’s residence had been transformed into a latter-day upper room. The God of life was there.

What are they looking for? Power and authority? Perhaps. But they are also looking for a place close to Jesus, in whom they have found forgiveness, mercy, and life. Jesus does not dispute the claim that they are able to drink his cup and share his baptism. Indeed, he knows that both of them will do so. Which of us could be so certain that we are willing to follow Jesus, regardless of the cost? For all the flaws implicit in their question, James and John are willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads.

But the place of honor, at his right and left hand, is not his to give. That place belongs to those for whom it is prepared. Despite their profession of willingness to follow Jesus, James and John do not yet see the scandal of his cross. Jesus is to be crucified between two common criminals. He is to die in the place of shame, so that he may be the servant of ALL and his life be given as a ransom for many.

It’s not that Jesus did not know the human cost of suffering. As the letter to the Hebrews assures us, “in the days of his flesh,” Jesus offered “loud cries and tears” and was heard for his “reverent submission.” Although Jesus is born the Son of God, his mission in the world is brought to completion through his suffering and death—and through the willing obedience by which he embraced his passion. In a fallen world, suffering is the price of obedience. Enduring the world’s hatred, mockery, and violence is the price of setting others free. By his suffering and death, Jesus becomes first of all and the servant of all. He transforms the cross of shame into the tree of life.

Even in the darkest and most abandoned places of our lives, we discover the God of life who accompanies us on our journey. We discover Jesus, who lived and died among poor and simple people—
who broke bread with them and shared their struggles. We discover Jesus, who sets us free.

Are we able to drink his cup?

The Rev. Dr. R. William Carroll is rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His sermons appear on his parish blog. He also blogs at Living the Gospel. He is a member of the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

By R. William Carroll

Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the LORD pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Four years ago last month was the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed much of the city of New Orleans on August 29, 2005. My memories of Katrina revolve around students of mine from that city, as well as some of the people who fled to the hills of Sewanee, Tennessee, where we were living at the time. In fact, I’ll never forget one woman’s sobbing plea in our parish church during the Prayers of the People. Here was a woman who lost people she loved—and everything she had.

No doubt, some of you remember how some Christians at the time suggested that this horribly destructive storm and the suffering it brought were signs of divine judgment on a Godless America. In one interview, Pat Robertson blamed Katrina on abortion, claiming that God was causing “the land to vomit us out,” because our society permits the “slaughter of the unborn.” In another, John Hagee argued that God struck New Orleans because it was “planning a sinful…homosexual rally.”

Now, even if I agreed with these two men about Christian ethics—which I DON’T—I would still have trouble believing in their kind of God. I speak as someone who believes in the wrath of God. Wrath is what God’s love looks like to us when we are drowning in sin. We feel our separation from God, and it is terrifying. But do we really believe in a God who would punish a whole city, including the innocent, for the sake of the imagined sins of a few? And do we really believe in a God who manipulates the weather and keeps lists of enemies? That’s not the God I know and love.

And yet there’s truly a sense in which we reap what we sow. We can’t be sure in this case (or in any particular case), but I don’t think it’s farfetched to blame Katrina on the changes we are causing to our climate. Surely, this kind of extreme event is becoming both more common and more severe. Moreover, we can be certain that the disproportionate effects of the storm on the poor and on people of color are a direct result of choices we’ve made. We failed to heed the warnings. And the people of the Ninth Ward in particular suffered from poor housing to begin with and a pathetic government response once the storm hit land.

In a recent interview, Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana called New Orleans “the place where the façade of American progress has been washed away.” He went on to observe that “Many would be happy if we could again apply the ‘make-up’ to the wound that affects us all, but such will not be the case. This wound is evident around our nation, but in New Orleans it has been exposed as the flood washed away the veneer.” In the same interview, Bishop Jenkins cited remarks Martin Luther King made about the Parable of the Good Samaritan in a famous sermon at Riverside Church in 1967:

On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

In that very sermon, preached exactly one year before his martyrdom, King also called for a “revolution of values” in light of the Gospel and the common good. To date, different values have guided our response to Katrina. Over a million people were displaced; some will never return. We dare not forget that the storm affected the entire Gulf Coast region, but it is New Orleans (and in particular the Ninth Ward) that has become its enduring symbol. New Orleans is indeed the place where “the veneer of American progress has been washed away.” It is a visible and outward sign of the rot and decay beneath the shimmering façade of our society.

Now, with the present economic crisis, we see it more clearly. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, and lost jobs. Failed businesses and a banking system that nearly collapsed have made it clear that much of our economy was a house of cards. Yet will we see any real restructuring? Will we move beyond well-intentioned efforts to relieve the symptoms to the real medicine it will take to cure the disease? Will we transform the Jericho Road, so that men, women, and children will not be beaten and robbed there and thrown into ditches?

Only time will tell. In the meanwhile, in the book of Proverbs, we are warned:

Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the LORD pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.

In ancient Israel, the city gate was where people went for justice. In a democracy, the responsibility to create justice rests with each and all of us. As a society, we can’t afford to build prisons instead of schools. We can’t afford to pay people less than it takes to provide for their families—and to force immigrant workers into the shadows. We can’t afford to keep buying cheap, disposable junk on easy credit. And, no, we can’t afford to deny healthcare to millions—and watch others get squeezed for every last penny. Nor can we keep relying on fossil fuels as the fragile lynchpin of our entire way of life.

As a nation, we used to want more. The reality often fell short, but we used to aspire, at least, to be a beacon of liberty—a bustling, creative democracy with broadly shared prosperity and a wide-open welcome to strangers:

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

But now, it seems, that door is shut. Our gated suburban communities, with their private security firms, reflect the image of Fortress America and the mercenaries who help fight our wars. How is it possible for a nation that lives like this to seek justice and the common good?

To be honest, our churches are complicit in the problems. Too often, we preach what Dietrich Bonhoeffer named “cheap grace”—grace that soothes our consciences without calling us to repent and follow Christ. We may not all have bought into the false Gospel of the prosperity preachers and peddlers of hate. But which of us can say our faith is as alive and vibrant as it ought to be?

Beloved, we are at the beginning of a new year. With the arrival of fall, we are about to embark on a new season of mission in our dioceses and congregations. As we do so, my prayer for us is that we’ll keep our eyes on the prize and our hands on the plow. For God calls us not just to believe in Jesus but to follow him—to reach out with his hands of love, so that ALL might know his saving embrace. God indeed commands us to build an earthly city where beggars are unknown. And God has chosen us—even us, brothers and sisters—to show the world the Way.

The Rev. Dr. R. William Carroll is rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His sermons appear on his parish blog. He also blogs at Living the Gospel. He is a member of the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

By Paul Fromberg

My husband and I drove home from our regular Monday night dinner talking about the upcoming Supreme Court ruling we expected to uphold Proposition 8. “I guess I’m a bad homosexual,” he said. “But gay marriage hasn’t been the most important thing on my mind this month.” I agreed.

It had been a beautiful Memorial Day. We drove out of San Francisco into the Republican suburbs to explore Mount Diablo. As we stood in line at a deli, Grant turned to me with a question about potato chips and addressed me as he always does. “Honey?” he said. We both looked at each other. Could my husband call me honey in the middle of a suburban lunch line? Would we be turned away from ordering our sandwiches? Would we be ridiculed? Did we care? Well, yes, a little. Nobody likes to get the hateful stare. But nobody was dialing 911 making a complaint of eating while gay. We weren’t going to be interrogated. There were no officers stuffing us into unmarked vans. We were just going to be two middle-aged married men waiting to order our sandwiches outside the safe zone of San Francisco.

In the ongoing work of converting a culture ––bending it toward justice, toward the restoration of human dignity and ordinary goodness––you have to recognize what the big struggles are, and which ones are small.

It’s hard for me to see gay marriage as the biggest struggle we’ve got to deal with in California.

I can still walk publicly with my husband, legal or not, without fear of the arrest or deportation our undocumented neighbors face every day. Being a gay couple doesn’t put us at risk in one of our state’s hellishly overcrowded prisons, where so many of the young Black men in our neighborhood wind up. Our marriage gives us rights about health care decision-making, but it doesn’t change the way our elderly friends lie for days in gurneys in the dingy hallways of the country hospital, waiting for over-stretched nurses to bring them something for the pain. Our legal right to marry or adopt children doesn’t fix the dysfunctional school system where twelve-year olds have given up on learning to read.

While it’s true that the No on 8 campaign message was mealy-mouthed and its strategy poor, the lessons to be learned from that battle are not all technical. Organizing is not, at the end, a technical task. It means actually finding common interest among people, and building on that. In terms of political organizing, the fight for gay marriage can’t be separated from California’s budget crisis: from our struggles for immigrant rights, education reform, and tax reform that will allow us to provide humane health care and educate all our children. The fight for gay marriage can’t simply involve gays throwing a bit of money at a campaign so we can all have fabulous weddings. It means, as we say in my business, doing the hard work of becoming a community.

My business, which is being a priest in a church, is after all not very different from the business of most of the people in our state. We love each other, we bless each other, we feed and heal and teach and care for each other—not always because we like one another, but because we recognize that we’re bound together in a common life.

When we got married last July, standing in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office in City Hall, Grant and I promised that we would stand by each other. Even then, not knowing if our marriage would be legal in the future, what we most yearned for was to love, support and keep faith--- not just with each other, but with the whole community in which we live. Nothing could change that promise for us; not Prop 8, not anything.

It’s ironic that my marriage to my husband--- which now is one of the 18,000 declared legal by California—has not brought me any closer to common life with the people of my state. I find myself set apart from my unmarried sisters and brothers. I now have one more privilege that others don’t. It’s a situation that makes me feel, for lack of a better word, queer.

Paul Fromberg is the rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

By Phyllis Strupp

Some time ago, a wealthy businessman made one of his rare appearances at church on a November Sunday and was treated to an especially heavy-handed stewardship sermon. It sounded something like this: You need to have LESS MONEY so we can have MORE MONEY. The negative energy rising up from the pews was palpable.

At coffee hour, he made a beeline for me. “Phyllis, I want to ask you something. Over the years I have heard repeatedly at church how bad money is. If money is so bad, why is it that every time I come to church they are trying to get some of mine?”

Well, the businessman asks a good question that many church leaders have not answered with clarity if at all.

The current global economic crisis offers a rich opportunity for clergy and lay leaders to offer up some inspired money talk in the church. Too often, Jesus’ teachings on wealth are ignored and it’s easy to see why. They are contrary to human nature.

When it comes to money, evolution has produced in our species a very strong gas pedal called “emotions” and a very weak brake pedal called “rationality.” Scientific findings indicate that the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain, has been evolving in mammals for 225 million years.

Through the ebbs and flows of the neurotransmitter dopamine, our emotions motivate us to seek tangible rewards for ourselves and our families. Dopamine should guide us, but it often ends up controlling us. Logic and rationality hardly stand a chance in overcoming emotionally driven money habits mediated by dopamine.

Besides, the gospel according to dopamine’s teachings are so much easier to understand and live by than Jesus’ teachings.

For example, the golden rule of the dopamine gospel is “He who has the gold makes the rules,” whereas the golden rule according to Jesus is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

You see what I mean, right? Speaking of right, dopamine says “Might makes right” and Jesus says “The truth shall set you free.”

The gospel according to dopamine encourages us to use money to enhance our status and control over people and decisions. That’s the allure of wealth: power. Any chimpanzee in the jungle could teach you that.

When we live by dopamine’s teachings, the richest people call the shots. Profits receive more attention than prophets. Sunday bible readings about the hazards of wealth are quietly ignored in practice, especially by the clergy. Stewardship season is a nagging, whining ritual, awkward and uncomfortable. Tithing is pitched as a solemn duty to God to wrench the cash out of tightly clasped hands.

Today, people are looking for a new set of values around money. The gospel of dopamine has led them astray to disappointment and despair. The time has come to take another look at the Gospel and find a way to make Jesus’ teachings manifest in us.

First, for those who are hoping to have both spiritual wealth and a large net worth, this is the most important line in the Gospel:

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
—Luke 12:21

In this passage, Jesus points out that it’s OK to have money—if it helps you grow rich toward God.

So how do you grow rich toward God?

It’s easy—just remember the color green.

Green is the color of money and the color of life. God is the author of life. Money isn’t for picking fights and wielding power over others—money is for affirming the life that God has created in you, other people and all the living species that share the Earth.

Secondly, the gospel of dopamine says you can’t take wealth with you. However, Jesus teaches us that there is such a thing as permanent wealth:

“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself, so when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
—Luke 16:9

You have the power to help or harm people through your use of money. Turn worldly wealth into the permanent wealth of kindness and friendship—and then you can take it with you!

So next time I see the wealthy businessman, I’ll tell him that money isn’t bad when it is used to affirm life, show kindness, and make friends.

Kindness is associated with a different neurotransmitter called serotonin. If serotonin outweighed dopamine in parish life, maybe our spiritually hungry friends and neighbors would be more interested in worshipping with us.

Why spend your money on what is not bread,
And your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
And your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
—Isaiah 55:2

Phyllis Strupp is a brain fitness coach, author, recovering MBA, and Chair of the Nature and Spirituality Program for the Diocese of Arizona.

By Donald Schell

From the bowl filled with large colored I took one that said, ‘Walk Humbly.’ They were like political buttons of various colors. Other buttons in the bowl quoted other bits of the prophet Micah’s saying, ‘Love Mercy,’ and ‘Do Justice.’ The buttons were hospitality gifts from the Crossroads Chaplaincy at the University of Washington, which I was visiting last month as a council member with Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission.

Today I’m walking the Camino de Santiago with eleven other pilgrims. It was knowing I’d be back walking the Camino again that made ‘Walk humbly’ speak so compellingly to me. ‘Walk humbly’ was what the Camino taught me the first time I walked it. I took the button expecting Micah’s words were guiding my return and the re-learning that it’s bringing.

On first walking the Camino my mind was filled with expectations, devout imaginings and a huge effort to “ do it right.” Ten years ago my daughter Maria had just graduated from college. When she said she was going to make this month-long pilgrim’s walk after graduation, I asked if I could come. Later she told me that she’d wanted to ask me to walk with her but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say ‘yes.’

When we walked through the medieval gate of St. Jean Pied de Port in France, and began our first day’s hike over the Pyrenees, I was determined to be an authentic pilgrim. Maria was simply hoping she could go the whole distance. On our first day we got lost, wandered through stinging nettles, and were besieged by swarming insects. I made myself imagine what a medieval pilgrim might have thought of such trials. That day’s walk is the biggest vertical climb and descent of any day on Camino. Maria’s simple focus was finding the path again so we could reach Roncesvalles on the other side of the ridge in time to get beds in the pilgrims’ hostel. It took me some days of walking to catch up with Maria’s simplicity and leave imagining ‘how we should walk’ behind us. As our days unfolded whenever we got discouraged we’d say to each other, ‘Well, we climbed the mountain and made it to Roncesvalles.’ Walk humbly.

A friend on the Associated Parishes Council told me that Louie Crew discovered the 1979 Book of Common Prayer misquoted the Micah passage. Writer or printer error, we don’t know but instead of ‘Love mercy,’ and ‘do justice,’ the Prayer Book Catechism on p. 847 reads, ‘Love justice’ and ‘do mercy.’ Those reversed verses are a serious problem. Louis gives his simple, clear argument for correcting the book on his website ‘Do Justice.’ My own understanding of why we should love mercy and do justice comes from walking the Camino.

Advocacy work tempts us to love justice. My own attachment to ‘doing it right’ and fierce desire to be right make it appealing to love justice. But without mercy toward other people and our own reluctant humility, loving abstract justice turns itself into idolatry. Humble walking and a deep love of mercy slows my eagerness to condemn and marginalize other people for the injustices they do. Humble walking and a deep love of mercy can draw me and the neighbors I’ve judged through and beyond conflict into a partnership to make the world we love more just. Walk humbly.

Checking with Louie Crew to credit him properly for discovering the misquotation he insisted that acknowledgment belonged to fellow Diocese of Newark Convention Deputies Geoff Curtiss and Marge Christie and that Verna Dozier, the lay theologian from the Diocese of Washington, had pointed it out to them. But it was Louie who submitted a resolution to General Convention to fix the Prayer Book’s misquotation. Louie’s simple resolution D007 never made it out of committee to the Convention floor. The error still awaits correction. D007 reminds us that our church has got work to do. Walk Humbly.

I’d like to tell you some fancy things about the spirituality of walking. I enjoy thinking I’ve become an expert in humble walking. I cut several paragraphs where I tried to deliver the thousandth (and best) lecture on the cultural and religious importance of the Camino, the path that made Christians a pilgrim people and taught us to image our faith as a journey. You don’t need the lecture. Walking is simpler and humbler than any fancy spirituality. We do need to walk, daily and literally. For our good and our neighbors good and for the life of the world, we need to get out of our cars and put one foot in front of the other as we move on God’s earth – humbly.

Micah is a powerful book but brief enough to read at one sitting. The prophet’s vision begins with God seated on a heavenly throne looking down on the earth and seeing that things aren’t going well. God angrily leaves the throne and heavenly pomp to set things right, but walking up and down on the earth (startlingly like Satan who walks to and free on the earth in Job), God who came to earth to set things straight changes. It began looking like it might go badly for us humans, but walking turns God’s exasperation to compassion. And it’s God’s compassion and patience that change things. The book that began with a threat divine wrath and retribution takes a different path as God’s own mercy makes turns our judge into our divine companion. The prophetic vision that began in heavenly pomp follows God’s own walking path a journey’s end in the familiar invitation to walk with God and in God’s steps, loving mercy, doing justice, and walking humbly.

Walking simplifies us. It strips all kinds of things from us. The more days we walk, and the further we walk, the clearer that stripping away becomes. On the Camino our own eager passion for ‘doing it right’ only makes for anxious, competitive walking. But ordinary, humble walking, step by step wears down judgment. Walking quickly reveals that there’s too much in our backpacks. After a week’s walking, Maria and I mailed extra clothes and my two books home. Walking also leads us to mercy for the other person’s blisters, the other person’s hope for a dry bunk at the end of the day, and eventually finds its way to pleasure in other person’s delight in the Spanish countryside, the other person’s tears at a pilgrim mass, the other person’s generous offer of bread or bit of Serrano ham. Each day’s walking leaves less room for judgment of other pilgrims and helps us let go of even the comparative judgments we make of ourselves, perfectionist assessment of how we ‘should be.’

Each step walking takes us further from the hope of walking the pilgrimage ‘right’ or having the ‘right’ pilgrim experience. Each day’s steps are simply themselves, one foot in front of the other – whether it’s painful or exhilarating, full of energy or exhausted or somewhere in the infinite range between. Walking lets the body teach the spirit that joy is joy and discouragement is discouragement and either or both may appear at any time. Elation and blisters come as they will; their order or timing is unpredictable. Walking is inevitably humbling.

Loving justice can be an ego game. But walking strips justice of pretence and vanity saturating it with luscious, delightful mercy. The ordinary humanity of walking quietly teaches us to extend the same forgiving mercy to a fellow pilgrim that we know sustains and blesses us. The mercy of walking gives us enough simplicity to do justice.

So, here I am again, letting walking strip me of credentials, cherished stories of accomplishments, my sense of rank and my own place in some pecking order, even hope of something outstanding I might accomplish. I’m glad to let them go. Day by day the community of pilgrims, companions on the Way matters more. Day by day the community of villagers and townspeople who support the Camino, tend it, and feed and house pilgrims matters more. Day by day, humble walking reveals itself as a holy mercy, simple, and in Micah’s vision, God-like. Only a companion can do justice, and a walking companion will do restorative justice, the justice that makes people whole. Walk humbly.

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company, working for community development in congregational life focusing on sharing leadership, welcoming creativity, building community through music, and making liturgical architecture a win/win for building and congregation. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.

By Luiz Coelho

It took several hours and the hardwork of many skilled professionals to install the huge Vermont-granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery. The sculpture, which was donated by benefactors, weighed more than five thousand pounds, and the process of installing the monument was so arduous and impressive that it was filmed by professional cameramen. However, despite the difficulties, Chief Justice Roy Stewart Moore was proud to announce to the media on the morning of August 1, 2001, the successful installation of the monument.

This story might sound like an ordinary episode in the history of public administration in the United States. It was not, though. The monument also portrayed, alongside the Judeo-Christian foundations of moral living, quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the United States’ National Anthem, and various sayings of the Founding Fathers. Many were in favor of the creation of the monument; however, many were also opposed to its installation in the Supreme Court rotunda, because they felt it overstepped the bounds of separation of Church and State. Several organizations filed suit in the United States District Court, asking for the removal of such a monument. Moore, who was already known for trying to implement prayer before trials and for taking his own portable Ten Commandments tablets to court, used the powers of his Office to resist the removal of the sculpture as long as he could. However, eight members of the Alabama Supreme Court intervened, unanimously overruled Moore, and ordered the removal of the monument. In the end, both the monument and Judge Moore were removed from the building.

Moore's story is not an isolated case. In several other instances of American public life, the Courts have removed religious symbols, such as crosses, crèches, and ten commandment tablets, from the public square in the last fifty years at least. Prayers in such environments are also heard less frequently. It can be said that in the United States, religion has been playing a less and less important role in public affairs altogether, even though conservative Christians are still seen in prominent circles both in society and the government.

Some see this trend as a direct attack against “traditional American values”, and – at least their perception of – the society that the forefathers of the United States worked to create. They often cite how peaceful and prosperous life was in the past, when “the Christian God” had a place of public honor among Americans. Many would argue, also, that freedom of religion has always been guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution, and that religious minorities have always had the right to build houses of worship. Are these views and arguments valid? Was religious freedom so evident in the past? Or, was it plainly masqueraded by a certain majority who belonged to one kind of faith only, and who created a set of structures to secure it? How worse, or better, are we now?

Like many people of faith, I dearly welcome the advent of real religious freedom, especially because it frees us to deal with symbols related to the religious life. It might be interesting, then, to see some examples of how public expressions of religion actually have changed in the last fifty years, and if they really helped us achieve more tolerance and full separation between church and state.

It would be inconceivable nowadays to demand anyone to hold to a particular religious viewpoint or to express a belief in God in order to hold a public office. Yet, fifty years ago, it was possible for public organizations to have prerequisites that would limit access to such jobs to people of faith only. For example, in the early sixties, Roy Torcaso was denied his appointment as a Notary Public in Maryland because he refused to declare a belief in God. Article 37 of Maryland's Declaration of Rights stated that a declaration of belief in the existence of God was necessary for any office, profit or trust in that state. The case went to the Supreme Court in 1961, and the Justices unanimously found Maryland's requirement a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. That decision established a legal precedent which created a paradigm shift in the role of faith in the public square. From then on, an acknowledgement of a given religious belief ceased to be a prerequisite for public jobs in every part of the country.

Another example of changing attitudes toward the place of religion in the public square during the last fifty years can be seen in the public schools. The elderly can still recall that it was not uncommon to say prayers, sing religious hymns or even have obligatory religious services in public schools. A series of court rulings, however, has changed the possibility of such practices today. These rulings were the results of complaints by citizens, such as a group of parents of students in New Hyde Park, New York, who complained in 1966 that a public prayer to “Almighty God” was against their beliefs. The case, which became known as Engel v. Vitale, went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that government-directed prayers in public schools are a violation of the Establishment cause. Since that ruling, it has become more and more difficult to hear prayers said in public schools, and subsequent attempts to allow them have been defeated in court. Prayers in educational institutions are confined nowadays, to chaplaincies, religious clubs or associations of common-minded people. But, in no case may a person be obliged to participate in public prayers in school.

Such lawsuits and governmental measures have not appeared out of nowhere. They reflect, in fact, a very noticeable paradigm shift on the American religious scene. When the British allowed European settlers to establish colonies in these lands, most of them belonged to Christian religious groups, often Protestant denominations, although some Jewish settlers found a home here as well. With an increasing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this profile changed to include more Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. Judeo-Christian religious ideology was still the norm, however, and it is reasonable to say that fifty years ago the overwhelming majority of Americans were Christians, or believers in God. This pattern started to change when immigration from non-Christian countries began to increase.

In their American Religious Identification Survey, researchers at the City University of New York discovered that from 1990 to 2001, the number of people in the United States ,who have a religion other than Christianity increased from 5.8 million to 8.7 million. Such a number, albeit still small, reflects a sizeable minority, which practically did not exist years ago.

Much more significant than the increase in non-Christians is the increase of people who identify as atheist and agnostic. Non-religious people were usually a very small and intellectual minority in the first half of the twentieth century. Today, they compose about fourteen percent of the American population, as pointed out in the aforementioned study, after having more than doubled in size from fourteen million people to practically thirty million people between 1990 and 2001. Together with non-Christians, they compose practically twenty percent of the American population – a percentage that is growing, according to the study.

The gradual secularization of the public square is merely a response to a more religiously diverse society. It is now impossible to ignore non-Christians and those who profess no faith at all. The removal of religious symbols, sometimes under serious protest, is the most neutral answer to a truly pluralistic society, rooted in the freedom of religion articulated in the United States Constitution and several other historical documents of this country.

It has to be said, though, that not only has the percentage of those who identify with a specific religion changed, but the profile of the typical religious American has also changed. In The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict, Robert Ellwood argues that religious traditions in the 1950s were largely intensified by socio-political conditions. He believes that religious organizations used to provide a very important framework upon which families built their lives in the postwar period. Routine religion was part of what was perceived as normalcy, and after all the chaos of previous decades, people needed normalcy. Religion was also seen as the amalgama of American families – especially at a time many families were marked by the loss of beloved relatives. Finally, being religious was a sign of anti-communism; and, the cold war, with all of its implications, was often portrayed as a kind of Armageddon in many households. Back then, religion was completely intertwined with the way society was organized.

However, throughout the last fifty years, a series of movements in American society, such as the sexual revolution, women empowerment, the end of the cold war and fast communications, have drastically changed what Americans might call “family”. What is perceived as a familial arrangement in today’s society does not always correspond to the vision our grandparents shared. There are manifold types of families in our times and a direct genetic link between relatives does not exist in all of them. Families now include both heterosexual and homosexual partners, stepchildren, adopted children, remarried spouses, half-siblings, close friends and a myriad of other groups of people which would take pages to define. Religion, under this new context, is not necessaily the glue that holds families together. Common Sunday after-church luncheons have given way to cell phone calls or even e-mails. And with the rise of the so-called “religious right” in the government, the merger between religion and politics à la the cold war is not viewed favorably in more liberal circles.

Such conclusions are often misinterpreted as the final defeat of religion in the United States. Yet, it can be said that religious freedom was probably never more celebrated and protected in U. S. History as it is in our contemporary, pluralistic society today. The largely-Christian/largely-familial religious environment of the fifties posed a much greater threat to freedom of faith. People were often forced, by social conventions, to follow the same religion (and in many cases, the same denomination) as their parents and grandparents. Marriages often took place within such religious circles, regardles of the true beliefs of the participants. The scenario, nowadays, is markedly different. The latest survey by the Pew Forum of Religious and Public Life reveals an astonishing piece of information: nearly half of American adults leave the faith tradition of their upbringing, either to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether. Roman Catholic and Protestant mainline churches have lost members to newer Christian groups. Those who lack faith, are increasingly comfortable in leaving religious organizations they once belonged to for primarily social reasons. Yet once people find a religion that fulfills their needs, they are moe likely to adhere to it faithfully, and to try to engage in all the possibilities that it provides. Religion is to our generation, therefore, is much more a matter of personal choice than it was fifty years ago.

When the religious spectrum was monolithic, public manifestations of the majority faith were not bothersome to most people. Now, in a much more varied religious climate, it seems logical not to encourage any particular brand of faith in a public space. Thus, the much-criticized secularization of public places is actually an important step toward protecting religious freedom, and creating a more diverse and equaitalbe society. It helps reinforce the values enshrined in the U. S. Constitution and respects people's rights to choose whether to have a faith or be part of a religious institution. It also protects newer churches and religious groups from state-sponsored propaganda of older ones. And, as long as religions have the right to worship in their houses of prayer and act according to their beliefs, their rights are protected. The ongoing changes are definitely for the common good.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

Bishop John Bryson Chane writes to his diocese:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

As you may remember, our diocese is proposing that the Episcopal Church include civil rights leader and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on its liturgical calendar. By resolution of the 2006 Diocesan Convention, we recommended that May 17, the anniversary of Marshall’s victory in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case be observed as his feast day.

The 2006 General Convention referred the resolution to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, which, we hope, will bring it forward at the 2009 General Convention, next summer in Anaheim.

One important criterion that the Commission considers is whether there is widespread local observance of a candidate’s proposed feast day. So to strengthen our presentation at the 2009 General Convention and, more importantly, to hold up before our people the Christian witness of Justice Marshall, please plan to observe Saturday May 17 or Sunday May 18 as Thurgood Marshall Day in your parish.

You can learn more about Justice Marshall at edow.org.

In Christ’s Peace Power and Love,
Bishop John Bryson Chane

The Washington Window has written numerous stories on the effort to include Marshall's name in the book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. (1, 2, 3, 4.) The mainstream media has also paid some note.

Liturgical resources for the feast of Thurgood Marshall, May 17

Propers suggested by the Diocese of Washington. Music suggested by students at Seabury-Western Seminary and St. Augustine’s Church, Washington, D. C.

Collect
Eternal and Ever-Gracious God, you blessed your servant Thurgood with special gifts of grace and courage to understand and speak the truth as it has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ. Grant that by his example we may also know you and seek to realize that we are all your children, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, whom you sent to teach us to love one another; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Suggested scripture readings
Amos 5:10-15, 21-24
Psalm 34:15-22
I Corinthians 13:1-13
Matthew 23:1-11

Suggested Music
Song of Praise
Christ Has Arisen from Lift Every Voice and Sing (LEVAS) 41

Sequence
Zimbabwe Alleluia

Offertory Hymn
How Great Thou Art LEVAS 60

Memorial Acclamation Sung to the tune of We Shall Overcome:

Jesus Christ has died.
Jesus Christ is risen.
Jesus Christ will come again.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
Jesus Christ will come again.

Communion Hymn
Just As I Am LEVAS 137

Processional Hymn (and Marshall’s personal favorite)
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory LEVAS 226

By Luiz Coelho

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner...” This Bible passage has always been one of the most striking to me in my whole life. I recall not receiving communion several times, when I felt not able (or willing) to allow God to free myself from a certain sin, whether it was a personal one or even a collective one. And I know this might be a very countercultural behavior, especially at a time sin has been apparently forgotten by many, and confession has become a rare event in peoples' lives.

However, it is my firm belief that there is no other way of behaving with respect to the magnificent care expressed by Jesus on that night right before he was betrayed, than with utmost respect and awe for his unconditional love towards us.

Acts of love are usually enhanced by unpredictable circumstances under which they happen, and the events that happened on that Thursday night were no different from that. The first of them was the washing of the feet. I imagine how shocked the disciples were to see their master, the Messiah, humbly washing their feet. Yes, the one who had taught them so much, was acting as if he were a simple servant. What they did not know, however, was that Jesus, on that night, was teaching them the most important lesson of all... a new commandment that resumed and consolidated his message so far.

“Love one another as I love you.” The strength of such a commandment goes far beyond our typical understanding of love. Jesus' love is so deep that it reaches even the one who would betray him hours later. His humility is so impressive that he does not care to wash tired and dirty feet, probably full of wounds and scars. Are we really following Jesus' new commandment and this new vision of love? It is easy for us to say that we love our neighbor, and in fact, many of us repeat those verses every Sunday. It is easy to strike our chests and claim we have given a certain amount of our money to the local shelter, a hospice in Guatemala or even for the Millenium Development Goals, but would we be willing to leave the ease of modern life and share all we have with the miserable? Would we live a simple life and truly be brothers and sisters of those who have no more than rice and beans to eat? Would we go to the slums and proclaim the Gospel to those for whom life has become a source of constant pain? Would we reach those who we should hate (and who hate us), whomever they are, and yet tell them we love them as Jesus loves all of us?

No, we would not. During Lent, we were theoretically called to fast, and give up on simple things that are important to us. However, how many times have we caught ourselves complaining about how hard it is to do that. How many times have we almost failed? It is difficult, it is very difficult to leave our comfort zone and realize that, for many people around the globe, our lenten fast is much fancier than what they will have in their whole lives. Do we really care? Do we really manifest this love Jesus has commanded us to show?

The apex of this love is expressed in the simple meal Jesus shared with his disciples shortly after he washed their feet. More than a memorial supper of bread and wine, more than a simple act of thanksgiving, the institution of the Holy Eucharist became a way through which Jesus' disciples could recapitulate his final act of self giving love for humankind. By giving his body and blood, he offered himself in sacrifice for us, and made us part of his own body. He shared our pain, and even in spite of all the suffering that was about to come, he was still able to love unconditionally.

The Eucharist should mean more to us than a weekly ceremony. It is the spiritual food that nourishes us and prepares us truly to be Jesus' disciples. When we take part of Jesus' body and blood, we commit ourselves to follow him with all our heart, live according to his commandment and flood this world with Christ's love. The same meal he instituted that night is a continuous reminder that, even not being perfect, we ought to struggle to be worthy of such unconditional love.

Maundy Thursday, more than a simple ceremony or a light meal, is a calling. As we remember Jesus' last moments with his disciples before his arrest, we are called to be worthy of such a wondrous love. We are called to truly love all humankind, sacrificing our own selfish desires for the common good. We are called to go to the slums and proclaim Jesus' message to the outcasts of society. We are called to embrace our enemies and to love them with all our heart. We are called to love the sick, the hungry and the needy. We are called to make a difference, and show to the world what Christ's love is about.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By Roger Ferlo

I once produced a student performance of an old play of the crucifixion. It was part of the great York Mystery Cycle, a play that used to be performed every year on the feast of Corpus Christi in the streets surrounding York Minster in the late middle ages. Each play in the mystery cycle, ranging from Creation to Revelation, was assigned by tradition to a particular trade guild. The Crucifixion play was assigned, as I recall, appropriately enough, to the Pinners, stout Yorkshiremen whose trade was nail-making. It is a brilliant script, with the four pinners, dressed as Roman soldiers, carrying on a spirited, even comical dialogue in thick and racy Yorkshire dialect all the while they are nailing Jesus to the cross. The actor playing Jesus remains silent through almost the whole proceeding. The script sounds scandalous, characters cracking jokes as they go about their sordid business. (There is an odd, uncomfortable resonance with the way some of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib used their silent and abused prisoners as the butt of their obscene jokes.) The contrast between the profanity of the torturers and the solemn silence of Jesus was not as disgusting as the scene at Abu Ghraib, but nonetheless disturbing enough.

My students performed the play with no sets, under a naked light-bulb in a college basement. The walls were painted black, the only prop a broomstick that the student playing Jesus carried across his shoulders, his arms stretched out to each end. There were no seats for the audience; we gathered around the action in an uneasy circle, our silence matching the silence of the central figure. No one wanted to appear complicit in the action, but standing there watching it and not intervening seemed to imply we were somehow involved. We knew it was just a play after all, but it left us profoundly troubled. When the action ended, the Jesus figure was left standing there, his arms outstretched on the broomstick, bare feet on the floor, still maintaining silence. You have to understand that there was no attempt at realism here, no stage blood, no simulated groaning. Just the dignity of silence underscoring the enormity of the act. When the student actor finally broke his pose and walked out of the circle we had formed, we all saw the imprint of his sweaty feet on the floor, and for the longest time, not one of us moved or spoke a word. And when we finally did move, no one dared to enter the circle, or to step on the place where the sweat stains had by then disappeared.

I have another story about Jesus’ silence to share with you, this one far removed from a student workshop production performed in the safety of an Ivy League college.

Over ten years ago now a news article appeared in The New York Times that became for me a Good Friday Parable of the Unspeakable. It’s also a parable that forces us to explore—as this gospel does—what you might call the geography of evil. For years now the story has occupied a silent place in my skull, like a dispatch from Golgotha.

In spring of 1996 a reporter named Mike O’Connor gained access to a field outside the Bosnian town of Srbrenica. A lot has happened since 1996, but memory runs long in that part of the world. You still might remember the disastrous story of that sad town. During the ugly, bloody wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the UN had tried to protect Srbrenica as a “safe town,” a place where people could escape from the so-called ethnic cleansing by which Christian Serbs were trying to wipe out Muslim Bosnians from the area. The UN policy was a disaster. UN forces did almost nothing to stop the slaughter—they more or less looked on in horror, like bystanders at Golgotha. An international war crimes tribunal had determined that anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 Muslim men had been driven from their homes and executed in this field by Christian Serb militia. The Times ran a photograph of the site. It looked terribly ordinary, nothing like a Golgotha. The land was flat, plain, with a small copse of trees visible in the background. But reports that had trickled in from survivors said that the landscape had recently been altered. You could see in the photograph that the ground was broken and rutted in spots, as if it had been dug up, moved and replaced by heavy equipment. O’Connor describes the scene with an eye for detail that is almost as vivid as Dante’s, who knew something about killing grounds:

Clinging to chunks of dirt, some piled in mounds three feet high, are pieces of sod and delicate yellow flowers growing at unnatural angles, suggesting that the dirt was broken and piled up after it was covered by new spring plants….Near the larger field was a pile of what first appeared to be rubbish, but tangled among the bits of garbage were strips of multicolored cloth, about three feet long. These matched the published descriptions of blindfolds that survivors say were put on the victims by the killing squads. Also in the pile were berets like those frequently used by older Muslim men. On one beret was a set of Muslim prayer beads, and near them was a cane nicely carved from a tree branch.

Clearly, there had been bodies buried there, and someone had ordered them moved—covering the evidence of this deepest crime by digging it up. The whole story has a Dantesque ring to it. Even the names of the commanders involved have an allegorical resonance. Here in the killing field, where hate-filled Christians betrayed and murdered terrorized Muslims, the spokesman for the war crimes investigation bore the name of Christian Chartier, a name that translates into English as Christian the Mapmaker, as if he had been assigned to map the geography of evil. And the colonel in command of the American forces who were patrolling the area was named, of all things, John Baptiste. As they say, you can’t make this kind of thing up. It would all be high comedy if it weren’t so horrific. The headline to the Times' story said it all: Disturbed Dirt in Bosnia Refuels Talk of Graves.

Why resurrect a story like this? Why refuel talk of graves, this close to Easter?

Recall the words of Jesus’ companion on the cross. Remember me. In a world with a minimum attention span, where one atrocity replaces the next in public memory with alarming regularity, it’s important to remember the anonymous and silent dead of Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Darfur. It seems to me that if we are going to make sense out of Jesus’ silence, if we claim any right to play at the empty tomb on Easter morning, we need to remember his companions in suffering. We cannot in good faith re-encounter the silence of Jesus in these latter days without encountering the silence of the victims who came after him. You can hear in Jesus’ silence the silence of victims everywhere, victims of war and oppression and ethnic cleansing who are mostly nameless to us, silent skulls lined up in rows in a warehouse in Cambodia, silent bones in a mass grave in Bosnia or Rwanda or Darfur. Only their bones are at liberty to speak, and not just through DNA and other forensic tests. They bear mute testimony to the unspeakable. Their silence is Jesus’ silence, His silence theirs. Confronted with such pain, for us to keep silence would condemn us. Remember me. Remember me.

By Christine Gutleben and Lois Wye

Climate change is receiving increasing attention among faith communities, especially The Episcopal Church. As people of faith, we are becoming more aware of our roles as stewards of creation, while developing sensitivities to our consumption habits and our carbon footprints. The Episcopal Church has also put the U.N.’s Millennium Develop Goals on the front burner, recognizing the religious communities’ critical role in reducing world hunger and improving the lives of our brothers and sisters around the globe.

Our Presiding Bishop, Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, has recognized that climate change and world hunger are inexorably intertwined. Testifying before Congress in June of this year, she said, “We cannot triumph over global poverty . . . unless we also address climate change, as the two phenomena are intimately related. Climate change exacerbates global poverty, and global poverty propels climate change.” Bishop Jefferts Schori’s testimony is significant; however, a third critical element is missing from the discussion. Unless we take an honest look at industrial animal agriculture and the food choices that support this system, our progress in mitigating world hunger and climate change will be significantly hampered.

Nearly one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock agriculture – more than the contribution of all transportation systems combined, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report, Livestock’s Long Shadow. Moreover, the report states that thousands of acres rainforest are cleared to make way for farming—to raise grain not for people or pastured animals, but for feedlots. In many parts of the world, small farmers are forced out of business and into poverty when they are unable to compete with large industrial farming practices. In short, if we want to have the strongest impact on combating both climate change and world hunger, we must do more than turn off the light switch or trade in our SUVs for hybrids; we must change the way we shop and the way we eat.

The problem is one of increasing urgency. The contribution of factory farming to environmental problems, world hunger, and untold animal suffering is rising rapidly. In 1961, the average American consumed 195 pounds of meat per year, by 2001 this figure rose to 272 pounds per year—a 77 pound increase in the last 40 years, according to the FAO. This illustrates that the continual growth of industrial animal agriculture in the United States is not simply a result of having to feed more people, it is also a result of Americans eating more meat. And the problem doesn’t stop there. As our western, meat-based diet is exported around the globe, per person meat consumption is exploding in countries like China and Brazil. The average person in China is consuming an increase of 110 pounds of meat per year, up from 40 years ago; similarly, in Brazil, the average person is now consuming an increase of 113 pounds of meat per year. At this rate, in just 20 years, we will need to produce 5 times more meat than we are currently producing globally, according to the FAO.

Factory Farming and Climate Change

The industrial livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. This accounts for animal agriculture’s direct impact as well as the impact of the resources required for feedcrop agriculture. Methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions, all of which have a more significant global warming potential than carbon dioxide, are also produced in high quantities on factory farms. The U.S. produces the largest portion of methane emissions from farm animal manure in the world, totaling nearly 1.9 million tons annually.

A 2005 report from the University of Chicago entitled Diet, Energy and Global Warming concluded that the average American diet, which includes meat, dairy and eggs produces 1.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide more per person per year than a plant-based diet yielding the same calories. The study notes that producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels and ten times as much carbon dioxide than a calorie of plant protein. The emissions difference between an omnivorous diet and a plant-based diet is roughly the difference between driving an SUV and a compact car. Indeed, however much energy we save through switching light bulbs or driving hybrid cars, we will sooner or later have to address our diet and reduce our consumption of factory farmed animal products if we are serious about mitigating the effects of climate change.

Factory Farms and World Hunger

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a non-governmental organization headquartered in the United Kingdom, has produced an excellent, 17 minute video entitled, “Eat Less Meat.” This video illustrates the impact of a meat-based diet and factory farming on human health, the environment, world hunger, and animal welfare. According to CIWF, the growing global popularity of meat as a dietary staple and the increasing middle class in many countries has encouraged intensive industrial farming methods in developing countries. This is usually undertaken as a joint venture with western companies, and meat is produced both for export and the local middle class. Local small scale farmers cannot compete and lose their farms. They tend to drift into cities and move from being self-sufficient farmers to landless urban poor.

Moreover, the rise of factory farms worldwide encourages the development of monocultures, wherein farmers are encouraged to grow a single crop solely to be exported for animal feed. Thus, local economies become less diversified and more fragile, affordable food is removed from local economies, and land which could be used to raise food for people is instead used to raise food for animals.

According to the World Health Organization, a hectare of land used to raise crops for livestock can feed only two people, while a hectare of land used to grow rice or potatoes for people can feed approximately 20 people. If everyone in the world were to eat as much meat as the average American, by mid-century it would require four planets the size of earth to grow the grain to feed the animals. Conversely, according to the International Food Policy Institute, if people in the west halved their consumption of meat, and the land used to feed those animals was used to grow crops for people, 3.6 million children in developing countries could be saved from malnutrition by the year 2020.

Factory Farms and Animal Welfare

After World War II, the process of raising animals became largely transformed into one of producing high quantities of meat as cheaply as possible, at the inevitable expense of animal welfare. Animals have been moved from pastures to feedlots and warehouses. Some of the worst abuses of factory farms include battery cages for egg-laying hens, where hens are crammed row upon row into cages so small they cannot spread their wings, and gestation crates, where 400 pound hogs are kept in cages so small they cannot turn around. Most factory farmed animals spend their entire lives without feeling the earth beneath their feet or the sun on their backs.

In the United States alone, ten billion animals will be killed this year for our consumption. Most of these animals will spend their lives inside factory farms. These are God’s creatures, entrusted to our care. They live their lives and go to their deaths without one gentle touch, one act of mercy, from human hands.

We live in a culture where few of us have any idea how food gets to our table. There are rumblings of change within the faith community. In May of this year, Barbara Kingsolver spoke at the National Cathedral about her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, regarding the importance of eating mindfully. In August, The New York Times published, “Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul,” which addresses the need recognized by some in the faith community to treat farm animals more humanely and to practice more sustainable methods of agriculture. These rumblings need to become a roar.

Where do we go from here

Farmer, author and teacher, Wendell Berry, offers this critique of the way we purchase food products without concern for origin. Berry explains that our food choices are critical not only for our own spiritual integrity, but for the health and well being of the earth and all its inhabitants:

We can [not] live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration…in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.

Deliberate, selective, intentional and compassionate food choices that align with our spiritual principles are, in part, what makes food a sacrament – a material reality that conveys the divine. We have the choice to experience the sacramentality of creation or its destruction when we purchase, prepare and eat our food. Berry also reminds us that we are not the center of God’s universe. We exist as dependent creatures within diverse and intricate ecosystems and should consider food choices with this in mind.

It is time our food choices enter into the “carbon footprint” equation. These choices have a far greater impact than has been accounted for thus far and it is time our religious communities consider the ethics of eating as part of any serious work on climate change and the fight against world hunger. As The New York Times noted in its recent article, “If this nascent cause [were to be] taken up by large numbers of churches and synagogues, the economic effect alone could be profound.”

In 2003, the Episcopal Church took the first steps in recognizing this need with GC Resolution D016. “Support Ethical Care of Animals,” condemns the suffering caused by factory farms and calls upon the church to encourage its members to adhere to ethical standards in the treatment of animals and to advocate for legislation protecting them. Farms with stricter animal welfare standards benefit animals, humans, and the environment.

The Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) Animals and Religion program is reaching out to congregations and religiously affiliated organizations to join with it to work in partnership for a more just, sustainable and humane food system. The collaboration between HSUS and the religious community could form a powerful coalition to return industrial agriculture to a more appropriate scale and address the problems inherent in the factory farming system. The HSUS commends The Episcopal Church’s resolution on animals and suggests reducing the consumption of animal products, refining the selection of these products to more humane alternatives and replacing them with sustainably produced fruits, vegetables, grains and legume as important steps in enacting the resolution, reducing one’s carbon footprint, combating world hunger and being better stewards of both the earth and all its inhabitants.

Christine Gutleben is Director of the Animals and Religion Program at the Humane Society of the United States. Lois Godfrey Wye is an environmental attorney at the law firm of Holland & Knight, a student at Wesley Theological Seminary, and a parishioner at the Washington National Cathedral.

Links referred to in this article:
Livestock's Long Shadow Executive Summary (FAO)
Diet Energy and Global Warming (University of Chicago)
Eat Less Meat Video (CIWF)
Factory Farms
Battery Cages for egg laying hens
Gestation Crates
Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul (NYT)
Support Ethical Care of Animals (TEC)
The 3 R's

By George Clifford

Approximately one-third to one-half of the people in prison in the United States are addicts or mentally ill, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. At a meeting that I recently attended, several healthcare advocates remarked that socially conservative Democratic and Republican legislators object to the state providing treatment for criminal wrongdoers who are addicts or mentally ill. These advocates made that observation after presenting the legislators with well-documented evidence showing that treating convicted criminals for addiction and mental illness saves taxpayers substantial sums. Treatment, in other words, costs less than incarceration. Treatment also diminishes recidivism and prevents future crimes associated with addiction, not to mention offering health to the one who receives treatment. Nevertheless, socially conservative legislators have consistently blocked efforts in North Carolina and many other states to provide appropriate treatment to wrongdoers.

As a Christian who has spent most of his working life as a military chaplain, I found the attitude of those legislators surprising and confusing. Some military leaders do not agree with providing help to wrongdoers. However, the military system – a bastion of social conservatives – emphasizes both accountability and help.

Accountability holds people responsible for their actions, a key component of justice. Accountability is also an important element in shattering the wall of denial with which many addicts and mentally ill people seek to insulate themselves from facing the reality of their disease.

Help is providing treatment, whether while the person remains in the military or through the Veterans Administration after the service discharges the person (a possible consequence of accountability).

The military system is far from perfect. Some leaders are too quick to hold people accountable and too slow to offer help. Some personnel refuse the help offered or are treatment failures. Yet the military system retains and values both emphases.

As a chaplain, I spoke with considerable moral and systemic authority when an emphasis on accountability overwhelmed the emphasis on getting a sick person help. Uniformed healthcare providers similarly challenged the system, speaking up to emphasize an individual’s right to treatment and the benefits to the military of providing that treatment. The military’s centrally funded healthcare system ensured that financial costs never entered into a local decision about a particular individual. The military decades ago had recognized that the cost of helping people was less than the cost of recruiting and training replacement personnel.

The military system, at least with respect to this issue, is profoundly Christian. Addiction is not a moral issue. Addiction is a health issue, a reality the medical professions have recognized and taught for more than half a century. Modern medicine defines alcoholism, for example, as a chronic, progressive disease that unless treated is fatal. Continuing to treat addicts as sinners and moral reprobates reinforces the illness rather than helping the addict move towards sobriety and health. Likewise, mental illness is every bit as real as physical illness. Indeed, any dichotomy between the two is probably artificial as brain research increasingly uncovers the physiological basis of mental illness.

Liberal and conservative Christians split over their interpretation of many aspects of Jesus’ message and life. Debates rage over how Jesus healed, what illnesses Jesus healed, who Jesus healed, etc. However, one point on which near unanimity exists among these disparate voices is their agreeing that Jesus did in fact heal the sick.

The Christian tradition also highlights God's justice. Justice without mercy is not Christian because it contradicts God's love manifested in Jesus. Conversely, mercy without justice is not Christian. Mercy without justice would leave the Church with nothing to say to the oppressed, the exploited, and the downtrodden. Jesus rebuked Pharisees who twisted the Torah to their own advantage, warned of a day of judgment, and drove out of the temple those who profited exorbitantly from the devotion of God's people. Addiction and mental illness do not exempt people from constructive accountability for their actions.

The Christian Scriptures make it clear that all are my neighbors. Some early Christians attempted to apply a filter, screening people to determine to whom they should (e.g., Jews) and should not (e.g., non-Jews) communicate the gospel. The New Testament insists that the gospel is for all. Paul identified himself as THE apostle to the Gentiles. Peter has a wonderful vision in which he sees, not once but three times, a cloth lowered from heaven that contains all kinds of animals, clean and unclean. God tells Peter, Do not call unclean anything that I made. When a non-Jew sends for Peter, Peter realizes that God is referring to people, not to food.

What confuses me about the opposition of socially conservative legislators to providing proper healthcare treatment for wrongdoers who are addicts or mentally ill is that this policy is not only Christian but has also proven financially prudent. In a state like North Carolina, where a large majority of the voters claim to be Christian, what surprises me is that socially conservative legislators are sufficiently numerous to block the establishment of policies and funding for treatment for wrongdoers who are addicts or mentally ill.

This is one of those rare times when doing good saves money. Addicts and the mentally ill frequently make lousy neighbors. That is irrelevant. God made them. They are God's children. That means that addicts and the mentally ill, no matter how unlovable, deserve justice and our best healing efforts. This is not an either or proposition. They deserve both. With the right measures of justice and healing, many addicts and mentally ill will become great neighbors and productive, taxpaying citizens.

The Rev. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years, with tours at sea, with the Marine Corps, on the staff of the Chief of Chaplains, on exchange with the Royal Navy in London, as the senior Protestant chaplain at the Naval Academy, and as the senior chaplain at the Naval Postgraduate School.

by The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

Here are three names to remember: Genarlow Wilson, Stepha Henry, and Edith Isabel Rodriguez.

Each of these names has been in the news recently. Each tells a different story but with a very familiar theme. I invite us to remember them now because each name will probably disappear soon as other stories emerge with other names. And yet, if we forget these three persons we may be failing to hear a wake up call that rings clearly in all of their experiences.

Genarlow Wilson was the young Black man who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for committing a consensual sex act with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. Stepha Henry was the young Black woman whose disappearance was largely eclipsed in the media by the frenzy over Paris Hilton’s court appearances. Edith Isabel Rodriguez was the Hispanic lady who died on the floor of the hospital emergency room while her family made desperate calls to 911.

In each case, the implications of racism are unmistakable.

Would Mr. Wilson have been so harshly sentenced if he were not Black? Is our justice system fair or is it compromised?

Are white abductions and disappearances treated more thoroughly in the press than those of other racial groups? Do we have a free and equal press, or only a corporate media outlet?

Is access to quality medical care really available to every citizen in our country? Are substandard medical facilities for the urban poor a double standard for health care where those who can afford it live and those who can’t die?

These are the questions behind the names. They are the questions behind the experiences of people of color in the United States. And they point to some of the core values of our society in some of the most critical areas of that society: the public media, the justice system, the health care system. These are not trivial concerns, but deeply embedded outcomes that are the direct result of systemic American racism. They challenge us not to look the other way.

In the days to come, as our attention is refocused onto other names and stories, we should remember these three names. We should remember the stories of three of our neighbors who never knew one another, but whose lives strangely illuminated our shared reality, even if only for a moment. In a graphic way, they spotlighted the shadowy role that race continues to play in preventing our nation from ever becoming what it proclaims to be, a community where every citizen is treated fairly and given equal access to the basic rights of any human being. They embodied in a physical way what most of us already know. Young men of color going to court are constant reminders of our flawed culture and its broken system of administering the law. The extent of media coverage in America is in direct proportion to your skin color and your mailing address. Health care in the United States is a scandal, especially for those who have long ago fallen between its huge cracks of indifference. These are the foundational crises we confront and they all have the fault lines of racism running through them for any who would want to see. Genarlow, Stepha and Edith showed us those cracks. Their witness calls us to name what we see and to face the reality we have created.

We may forget the individual names, but we must never forget the story they tell.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Bishop Charleston is widely recognized as a leading proponent for justice issues and for spiritual renewal in the church. He has been called "one of the best preachers in the Episcopal Church" and has written many articles on both Native American concerns and spirituality.