|
I was on call last night...nothing. Not a peep from the pager. Whew! Not that I slept any better for it. I still lay up till 1am, processing the day. It had been an eventful one, so there was much processing to be done. Some of the grist in the mill was the recent actions and reactions from the Anglican Communion. Since +Katherine was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, I've read a number of blogger's takes...everything from "way to go ECUSA" to "next they'll elect a dog." Yeah. You read it right. Women are just a step away from dogs. Sigh. I'm beginning to realize that people who think that way, and similarly about homosexuals, don't worship the same God as me. I don't mean that they have a different read on scripture or a different perspective on faith...it's a totally different God. It sure as heck isn't an incarnate God, which makes me wonder where Jesus went in all of this. Jesus didn't live and die as a straight man; he lived and died as a human being. Period. No qualifiers, no exclusions. Otherwise he only saved straight men, and even the harshest critic of women's ordination won't say that...at least not out loud. If unlabeled humanity was good enough for Our Lord, why are we so hung up on genitals and what someone does with them? And this fool nonsense out of the (previously respectable) ABC? All I could think, as I read his proposal to demote the American church to second-class status, was... "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." When should the Episcopal Church and (if it gathers the courage) the Anglican Church of Canada take a stand and refuse to pay homage to a blatantly wrong-headed and even heterodox theology and ecclesiology? When do we say to fellow Christians, "You are twisting the message, you are denying Christ and we will no longer countenance your crime?" When do we insist on breaking ecclesial boundaries for the sake of open-minded Christians living in ignorant dioceses and national churches? Where is our prophetic voice? One answer is that our prophetic voice is in our actions - electing and confirming an openly gay bishop, electing a woman as presiding bishop. Enough hand-wringing, enough cowering behind weak half-apologies. If we believe that women and homosexuals are equally saved, equally loved and just plain equal, why do we make excuses for that belief? I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more! |
