Sermon preached by
The Reverend William J. Eakins
at Grace Church in the Southern Berkshires, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
on June 29, 2014, Proper 8, Year A
The Collect we prayed this morning begins: “Almighty God, you have built your church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of the Church when there has been greater difficulty in understanding what such words mean.
What is the “foundation of the apostles and prophets?” In what way is Jesus Christ “the chief cornerstone” of this foundation, and how is the church built upon it? How we answer these questions will determine how we approach issues that affect the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and our relations with other Christian denominations and with other faiths.
Within our Church there are those who think that the “foundation of the apostles and prophets” is a deposit of revealed truths enshrined forever within the pages of Holy Scripture. These truths are expressed in doctrines about God and God’s relationships with the world and in moral precepts about what God expects of us. Above all these truths are focused in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as recounted in the Gospels and expounded upon in the New Testament letters. For the Church to be built upon such a foundation requires a faithfulness to the text of Holy Scripture and to the doctrines and commandments taught therein.
Anglicans who think this way have a lot in common with protestant fundamentalists of other denominations who hold up the bible as the guardian of the true faith. A somewhat different point of view is held by many high church Anglicans, and by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. For them, it is the Church which is the guardian of true faith. The Bible is still fundamental, but it is the Church which interprets the Scriptures and through councils of Bishops, or the Pope, informs the Church’s members what they are to believe and do.
It is precisely because some Anglicans here and abroad believe that the Episcopal Church has not been faithful to Holy Scripture that they have criticized and distanced themselves from our Church. In particular they strongly condemn the decision of our 2003 General Convention approve the ordination of an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire. They also protest General Convention’s decision two years ago to provide for the blessing of same-sex unions. They cite verses from the Bible which take a negative view of homosexual activity and claim these as the proper foundation for the Church’s decision-making about actively homosexual clergy, homosexual relationships, and homosexual unions. For example, they turn to the first chapter of the letter to the Romans where Paul identifies homosexuality as “degrading,” “unnatural,” and “shameless” and pronounces God’s judgment upon it. Given such a passage, how could the Episcopal Church approve the ordination of gay people and even consider blessing same-sex unions?
The answer to that question is that there is another way of viewing the church’s foundation on the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. It is a way that sees the Church as built not just upon a deposit of doctrine and teaching enshrined in the Bible, but upon a living relationship with the God who is always leading us into a deeper understanding of what is true. This is the way that treasures as holy the story of God’s people as recorded in Scripture. But at the same time this way recognizes that the treasure of the Bible is bigger than the earthen vessels that contain it, the words that reflect the limited understanding of men and women. It is a way that requires grappling with Holy Scripture to figure out what is of God and what is a merely human attempt to describe God. It is a way of understanding the Bible that enables us to look carefully at a story like the one we heard today from Genesis and hear more than a horrifying narrative. It is a way, in fact, that is profoundly like the journey of the people of God told in the Scriptures, a story of revelation and discovery, an unfolding realization of how deep and how wide God’s love is. It is a way that is founded on apostles like Peter. You remember Peter – always a step or more behind his Master, slow to catch on, who needed a special sign from heaven to understand that the Gospel includes everyone, not just the Jews. It is a way founded on prophets like Jeremiah and Amos who dared to challenge the status quo at the court of the King and to speak an uncomfortable word from God. Or consider John the Baptist who announced the new thing that God was doing in Jesus. It is a way also that places the priority in decision-making on obedience to the law of love revealed in Jesus Christ.
I believe that the delegates of our Episcopal Church’s General Convention looked at Scripture this way when they have met to consider issues of human sexuality. In approving the ordination of a gay man as Bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions, our Church has concluded that God is calling us to change our view of homosexuality, to see homosexuality not as “degrading,” “unnatural,” and “shameless,” but as capable of being the means for loving, responsible, faithful relationships as heterosexuality. The real issue is not our sexuality but what we do with our sexuality.
In arriving at such conclusions, the General Convention did not disregard St. Paul’s words in Romans but decided that St. Paul’s views of homosexuality are in the same category as his teaching about women keeping silent and women covering their heads in church, about his acceptance of slavery, and about always obeying civil authorities because they are God’s appointed agents. It is worth noting that in previous ages, Paul’s words on these matters were used to deny women the right to vote, let alone be ordained, to defend slavery, and to denounce rebellion against tyranny and unjust laws. And while there are still opponents to the ordination of women who quote St. Paul (including many of the same people who oppose gay ordination and gay unions), no one still argues that the Bible is against the emancipation of slaves, the equality of women, the Civil Rights movement, and the American Revolution. Those voices are long silent.
As Jeremiah pointed out more than two millennia ago, the only way to distinguish a true prophet from a false prophet, one who speaks the word of God rather than the word of human beings, is whether the prophecy turns out to be true. The proof is in the pudding. Or as a familiar hymn puts it, “new occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.” And this fact, even the most conservative of Biblical fundamentalists knows full well. I don’t know of any Christian, however Orthodox, who believes that the instruction in Leviticus to stone a disobedient son to death should be literally obeyed. Nor do the conservative Anglicans of Africa, with their strict view of the inerrancy of Romans 1, have an equally strict view of 1Timothy 3 where St. Paul lays down the rule that Bishops must be the husband of one wife. The decision was made at a Lambeth Conference many years ago that this text does not apply to men who were polygamists before they became Christians. Hence there are African Bishops who in fact do have more than one wife.
And there are other laws in Scripture that even the most fundamentalist Christians disregard. Leviticus forbids wearing fabrics that contain both cotton and wool, eating shellfish, having tattoos, shaving off the corners of beards, and charging interest on loans. And what about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? If we took that seriously, our country wouldn’t have a Defense Department, let alone troops in Afghanistan.
What is increasingly clear to me is that the Church’s foundation is not a set of doctrines, not a text. To be sure, Holy Scripture mediates God’s presence, purpose, and power to generation after generation, and doctrines and creeds are valuable attempts at putting the truth about God into words that we can understand. But God is not and cannot be confined to a set of words, no matter how ancient and revered the text. We the Church get ourselves into trouble when we forget that this is so.
Abraham Heschel makes this point in his book God in Search of Man. He says that organized religion has declined, not because it has been refuted by modern science or secular philosophy but because it has become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, and insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by words, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of preoccupation with the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.
That is why God calls us to be apostles and prophets ourselves. God calls us to be watchful and alert, to see the new thing God is doing, to have ears and hearts open to what God is saying to us today, trusting that God, as Jesus promised, is indeed leading us into all truth.