Steve’s July 2009 Congregational Letter

I can think of little else that equals the pain of spousal betrayal.

One of the greatest pastoral sadnesses, and, in an odd way, privileges, I experience is sitting with spouses whose marriage vows have been abandoned by their partner in favor of another, more interesting, lover.  Our very identities and adequacies are challenged as we struggle with the searing sense of violation, humiliation and public embarrassment.

Such is the illustration our Lord draws as He speaks of our nature – my nature – to wander after other lusts and lovers and away from the Lover of our souls.  Yet, God, being faithful to His covenant, calls again and again, for us to return home and resume relationship.

What must it have been like to be charged by the Lord to call home a wayward love?  How the messengers of God sought to avoid this task.  Jonah ran; content to have Nineveh perish in her sins.  Isaiah and Jeremiah, sent to the very people called and chosen by God, Israel, begged off.  “Who am I, Lord?” they wondered.  Not so much unwilling or disobedient, rather, aware that they, themselves, were part and parcel of the very nation to whom they were sent.  And so, Isaiah ushered into the presence of God, understands his condition and says, “Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6.5).  Jeremiah recognizing his disqualifying nature, demurs: “Ah, Lord God!  Behold, I do not know how to speak” (Jeremiah 1.6).   Yet, the Lord persists: “Go.”  And, faithful to their God, the prophets go; misunderstood, accused, abused.  Their voices rise up, still echoing across the canyons of history, “remember and return.”

Their language, deliberately sharp and graphic, sought to pierce the hard hearts and convinced minds of a wayward people.  Jeremiah declares to Israel (do you think he trembled?): “You have played the whore with many lovers . . . you have polluted the land with your vile whoredom” (Jeremiah 3).

Why this recounting of the prophetic witness?  Because, truthfully, The Episcopal Church has played, and is playing, the whore, and we bear in our body the consequence of our infidelity.  We have abandoned our true love, Jesus Christ, as we have “lifted our skirts” to other lovers.  We have overthrown the guiding light and authority of Scripture ignoring God’s self-disclosure to the gathered faithful.  We have exchanged the natural for the unnatural.  We are reaping the whirlwind as we watch a denomination die (all of this has been well documented by The American Anglican Council, www.americananglican.org).

In the next few weeks (July 6-17) The Episcopal Church will meet in Anaheim for the Triennial General Convention.  I have been elected a deputy from the Diocese of South Carolina – an un-enthused and resistant deputy.   Why un-enthused and resistant?  Because of the deep and oppressive sense of sadness I feel as I prepare to watch our church persist in her choice of another lover, formally, through resolutions, liturgy and legislative action.

Let me say, quickly, I am deeply aware of the pervasive nature of my own sin.  Simultaneously, though, I am overcome with gratitude as I consider the depth to which Christ reached to save me, a sinner.  It is a privilege to bear the name, “Christian.”  It is an honor that I should, by the grace of God, give witness to the unrelenting call of Christ to come unto Him.  It is unpleasant to anticipate standing in front of an organization (The Episcopal Church) that has successfully moved against priests and bishops deposing them for “abandonment of the faith” (how ironic) as they gave witness to the uniqueness of Christ to address, solely and with complete satisfaction, the pervasiveness of human sin.

Horrifically, as humanity persists in the exchange of the truth of God for a lie, God truly hands us over to debased minds and dishonorable passions (Romans 1).  Sadly, The Episcopal Church has demonstrated itself to be a stiff-necked and rebellious people.  Rather than heeding the voice of the international church and the “prophets” sent to call her home, she continually seeks to bless her infidelity as normative and God-given.  I go to General Convention with no illusion.  It will not be a matter of institutional reform, that battle is long lost.  Rather, it is, quite literally, a matter of salvation. By the grace and call of God affirmed through Diocesan election, I, and the deputation from South Carolina, are sent to give witness to the excellency and sufficiency of Christ and to call home those would hear – home to the One who loves them and would yet restore them.

Coram Deo,

Steve