Jesus did not endear himself to the scribes when he pointed out that they liked to walk around in long robes and be greeted with respect and have the best seats and places of honor but they were at the same time devouring widows' houses and for the sake of appearance saying long prayers. Then to top it off he pointed out that the poor widow who had dropped two small coins in the treasury had given more than all of them. No wonder they hated him and wanted to kill him.

To understand the full impact of this confrontation, you have to remember the place of widows at that time. They had no status. The story of Naomi and her daughter in law Ruth shows this. Naomi had to concoct a complicated scheme, so that Boaz would marry Ruth and then both Ruth and Naomi would have a place in society. So a widow was really insignificant. When Jesus said that this poor widow had contributed more than the scribes had, this was infuriating to these power brokers.

This is just one of many instances where Jesus confronted the leaders of the people, accusing them of hypocrisy, avarice and not living according to God's design. The prophets had been saying things like this for centuries, but the prophets were not well received. They were hated and sometimes killed. Jesus was worse than the prophets because he said the same things, but he also said that God's kingdom was even now among them and that it was centered in him.

Not only that, Jesus hung around with the riff-raff of society: sinners, outcasts, tax collectors, the poor. He went to dinner with them. Unlike the drab and dreary moralists of his time, Jesus was a party person. He liked feasts and he liked to party with folks at the low end of the social order

In our enlightened time and place, of course, we don't have leaders and powerful people who neglect and oppress the poor. Our political and corporate powers can't do enough for the poor and for us ordinary folk. They have our best interests at heart 24/7. Well not exactly. Maybe they don't wear long robes. But we do have what's called power clothes. A thousand dollar suit does trump something off the rack at Kohl's. And we also have people who are constantly spinning their ethical lapses and sins into virtue. So maybe things haven't changed all that much since that long ago day in the Temple.

All this would be enough to make one cynical except for the fact that the kingdom of God which Jesus was proclaiming is a kingdom of hope. In our weekly Bible study in the mission center we have been looking at a book which describes the kind of kingdom this is supposed to be.

The book correctly points out that we are called to be agents and instruments in that kingdom of love and mercy. Our mission is to work with God to bring it about. We must really mean it when we say Lord's Prayer: Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What is the spiritual equipment we need for this task? First we need courage to confront the leaders of our day; we need to remember always this poor widow in the Temple and the countless others like her in our own time. We need to do what the prophets and Jesus did. We need to be right in the face of the scribes and leaders of our own time. Second. We need to be people of profound prayer as Jesus was and as his first disciples came to be.

But we also need to avoid the sour-faced glum moralizing and the utter seriousness of those who think that they alone by their own efforts can bring about this kingdom. The best antidote to this is to be like Jesus a lover of feasts and we need to spend our time hanging out with our fellow riff-raff in that great community called the church, the Body of Christ.

Before he died Jesus gave us a special feast, one that we celebrate today. The Lord's Supper, a feast which makes present for us here and now his death and resurrection. This feast is a foretaste of that eternal celebration in heaven. It is a prelude to that banquet to which the poor widows and the outcasts and the people from the world's highways and byways are invited. In this sense we are truly party people. Because we live in hope, we cannot ever be cynical or fearful. Our faith engenders not utopian optimism, not a false happiness, but a joy which goes deeper than sadness and suffering and oppression. A joy that stares evil in the face and then transcends it. This is the peace that passes understanding. Though we always walk through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil

We are a community of poor widows and outcasts and yet also of the wealthy who care about them. We are not yet at that great and eternal feast, but we are pilgrims on the way. Our feast today is a reminder of where we are headed. As a great American preacher once said. "We're on the move now." As we limp along through history down through the centuries and into our own time, we keep on inviting others to join us until we become that biblical great cloud of witnesses. As we journey along we keep on walking and keep on singing our song. And what is that song?

In the early fifth century Rome was sacked and the tribes were invading and destroying civilization as it then existed all over Europe and North Africa. To the people who lived then it seemed that the world was coming to an end. Augustine, a great bishop in North Africa preached a remarkable sermon giving his people guidance in that terrible time. What he told them was: SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

That's really what the Body of Christ has always done. When the emperors came and butchered them and fed them to the lions and terrorized them, what did they do? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

As time went on, they became aware of their own sin and corruption and did evil things and fought crusades and wars. And yet they also cared for the widows and orphans and built hospitals and freed slaves and they built a new civilization and kept on limping along. And all the while SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

So right now here we are mired down in two wars, a sinking economy, surrounded as always by oppression, by huge systems that want to use us up and spit us out, fearful of terrorism, plagued by environmental degradation, tempted to despair. We are corrupted ourselves and see no way out. And as always we have to call out our leaders--and ourselves--on our own hypocrisy. So what do we do in the face of such evil? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Aware that we are still in the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil for the divine rod and the staff comfort us and a table is prepared before us and our cup overflows and goodness and mercy shallow follow us all the days of our life and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord. We need nothing more so we can SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

And as we prepare the table for the Lord's Supper today, this interim feast on the way to the great banquet, we are aware as a parish of our own problems and failures and of the obstacles that face us. So what do we do? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

And we shall find others to join us at our weekly feasts and we will deepen our community life and enter into deeper spiritual waters together and pray more profoundly and worship with joy. We shall invite others, among the widows and the outcasts and from the highways and byways to come along with us. And we shall fear no evil for we dwell in the house of the Lord.

And all the time we will SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Once more SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Now Sing it: Sing Alleluia to the Lord, sing alleluia, sing alleluia Sing alleluia to the Lord.

And now KEEP ON WALKING. AMEN

Edward Douglas Lockton does not understand what we are doing here today. So why baptize him? Why do we baptize infants at all? There are two reasons. Anyone who has been around babies knows that from birth, infants relate fully and completely to their parents, siblings and those around them. They don't think in abstract terms, but they relate to people and to their surroundings no less than we do. Just cuddle a baby and you realize this.

The ability to laugh is a sign of human cognition. Babies laugh very early. They have a sense of humor. At four months Eddie has a great sense of humor. He laughs a lot. Every time I sing to him he laughs.

The second reason we baptize infants is found in Scripture. Paul tells us (Rom 6:1) that "All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death" Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."

On this day Eddie is buried by baptism into the death of Christ. The Eternal Word made Flesh; the Eternal Son of God took on human nature, sharing life and death with us, so that we might share resurrection and newness of life with Him. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too, will be united with him in a resurrection like his. Each of us is included in the design of God for humanity, which is to be united with Christ in his resurrection. This is Eddie's destiny.

But it is not just humanity, for Paul tells us (Romans 8) that all creation waits with eager longing until it is delivered from the bondage of decay. So the cosmos itself, having evolved to its present state over vast eons of time, will be restored and renewed, sharing in the resurrection of Christ.

God, becoming physical with us in Christ, remains present in the world in physical ways. The Church, the body of Christ is a physical reality. Baptism and the Eucharist are physical events which bring God's presence to us in the here and now. So today's baptism is a physical sign, a sacrament, which makes present to us a far greater reality. It is a sign which puts us in touch with the great cosmic design of God for each of us, for all humanity and for the universe itself.

But there is yet more. Paul tells us in the reading we just heard (Eph 4) that we are "baptized into Christ." "we must grow up in every way into him who is the head. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as we were called to the one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We must do this by "speaking the truth in love" so as to promote the body;s growth in "building itself up in love."

This then is Eddie's destiny, one he shares with all of us.
Baptism is a call to mission, it is a call to renounce the demonic powers and spiritual forces and the sinful desires that create a world which abounds in greed, narcissism, injustice, violenc,, war, hatred and in a society which becomes every day more dangerously self-focused. All of us are called to take a stand against these forces. This is Eddie's mission.

We are made in the image of God by creation. By baptism we are now co-heirs with Christ and partakers of the divine nature by adoption into Christ. This means that we are followers of the One who came not to be served but to serve. We are followers of the One who threw the money changers out of the temple, the One who proclaimed the Kingdom of God.

As followers we are called to be not only hearers of the word, but doers of the word. We are called to act. We are called to live differently. We are called to be agents and instruments of the mercy and kindness and love of God in the world. This is now Eddie's calling.

Eddie's mother, Marie, used to be a musician in this parish church. She played the guitar and so she is quite familiar with the songs we sing. She had a lot to say about the songs we will sing at Communion. They are songs that represent aspects of the Christian life that she would like to exemplify the way her son will grow into the full stature of Christ.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God. As followers of Christ, we must be intense seekers. We must hunger and thirst for justice and for mercy and love.

I will never forget you my people. If God does not forget the people, if we are carved on the palm of God's hand, if we will never be left as orphans then we too must never forget the people. We ourselves must never forget God's own people.

Won't you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you. This represents the hope of our entire family for Eddie. May he always remember that we are travelers on the road; we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load. May Eddie learn to hold his hand out in the night time of our fear and speak the peace we long to hear.

Look around you, can you see? Times are troubled, people grieve. Walk among them, I'll go with you. Reach out to them with my hands. Suffer with them and together, we will serve them, help them stand. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. May Eddie sing this song not only with his voice, but with his entire life.

So now we will baptize Edward Douglas Lockton, remembering that

"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. …But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ."

After healing Simon’s mother-in-law Jesus healed those who came with diseases and expelled evil spirits. Immediately after this, Jesus found a solitary place for prayer. It is only after this period of prayer that Jesus and the disciples began the work of proclaiming the kingdom of God.

The healing of Simon's mother in law was the first step in a journey of healing which pointed to something even deeper, something that changed the world and must change our lives as well.

Jesus did not heal all the sick and suffering in Israel, but only a relatively few. He did not expel enough evil spirits to eliminate all or even most of the evil in Israel. Nor was his healing permanent. Everyone he healed eventually died. Having the power of God, he certainly could have healed all the sick. He could have forestalled death for all and he certainly could have avoided death himself. Why did he not do this? Why did he have to do it the hard way?

Because we know the end of the story, we now realize that these early healings were signs along the way of the final healing toward which all else pointed. Expelling evil spirits was the beginning of the expulsion of all evil and the healing of all pain, sickness and even death itself.

God wanted to heal the broken world. Jesus himself was the physical sign and cause of God’s work in the world. What Jesus did during his ministry and completed in his death and resurrection was itself a sign of that final completion of that work in all of us at the end of time when Jesus comes again. Scripture tells us that Jesus was the mysterion, the mystery which was largely hidden from the beginning of time, but now was revealed in him.

Mysterion translates into Latin as sacramentum and into English as sacrament. Jesus is Sacrament in the primary sense. He is the physical embodiment of God's healing grace in the world. He is the sign and cause of it all. But the mission of Jesus is continued in the church, so the church, what Paul calls the Body of Christ, is sacrament in the secondary sense. This presence of Christ is embodied in physical signs which we now call sacraments like Baptism and Eucharist. But the work of God requires our personal participation for its fulfillment.

We are called to continue the work of the Lord in our time and our place. Paul tells us to be "imitators of Christ." He also tells us to have that same mind in us which was in Christ Jesus. (1 Cor 11:1 and Phil 2: 5) Thus in a very real sense we are sacraments to the world of God's presence and healing.

The healings mentioned in this passage are physical healings of individual sick people, but the total healing of the world means the healing of societies and peoples. It encompasses emotional healing, social healing and spiritual healing. The expulsion of evil spirits is the forerunner of the victory over the demonic forces at work in the world, the total defeat of the principalities and powers.

In this broken world, we must remember that evil is rampant. What Paul called the principalities and powers are deeply embedded in the world. It would be simplistic to say that the present global economic crisis has a single root, but certainly greed, pride and their like are very much involved.

Yesterday at diocesan convention I had lunch with one of our priests who has spent the last ten years living and working in Jerusalem. He described the hatred, the lust for vengeance, the rage and the killing that takes place there. I call to mind as well the work I do with veterans at the VA. It is very clear that there is a demonic presence in war. Sometimes it does amount to commanding the unclean spirit to depart. Sometimes they do leave and remain silent. Sometimes they come back. But in any case, they have already been defeated by the healing power of the cross and resurrection.
The urgent question for each of us today is how are we--each in our lives--sacraments, signs and embodiments of the healing work of Jesus. This is not an abstract question. It requires an examination of conscience on how we are--or are not--living signs of God's healing presence to those around us. How is our home life? What is it that we embody to our spouses, our children, our parents? Can people in our work place look at us and catch some glimpse of power and presence of the One who healed Simon's mother in law?

We must ask ourselves serious questions about our personal and corporate response to the Gospel. Can it truly be said that the church is a public sign of healing in a broken, sinful and narcissistic world? Or are we just another undifferentiated part of the culture? We have healing prayer for the sick, but we must also act in their behalf. We try to act as healers of the emotional wounds we encounter. We must do our best to expel the evil spirits, the demonic forces at work in the world which cause enormous spiritual wounds. In all this we are followers of Jesus.

Brent has called this parish to a year of serious preparation to proclaim the Gospel in our time and place and to invite as many new members into our community as are now present. This is a call, as he has put it to 'tell our story." Yesterday the bishop asked the entire diocese to do the same thing Our story is really the story of the Gospel and of our place in it. It is the story of the young teacher who cured a sick woman of her illness and then began a journey that would bring ultimate, complete and absolute healing to the world.

The son-in-law in this story, Simon Peter was called to be a follower of Jesus and an active agent in this story. So are we called to be followers, signs and agents of this wonderful story. This is the good news.

It is a story that is ever ancient and ever new. For, as Scripture tells us "all things have been made new." We have been made new, we have been healed--and even though the wounds of sin and suffering remain, we are healed in principle. The victory has been won and we are those who now embody and enflesh the story to all we meet. We have been healed and together with him we are also healers.

Let us begin now, for the Gospel is always about the present moment. We look to the past, for in the past Christ has died and we look to the future for Christ will come again. But right now, Christ is risen, right now we are healed, right now healing is offered to the world. Let us be about this business with the fierce urgency of now.

Let us resolve to be exemplars in this parish in this community, in this time and place of a healing story that will end only when every knee shall bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I not only killed enemy soldiers in combat, but I murdered lots of innocent civilians as well." Knowing I had been a chaplain, he went on: "You have spent your entire life working for God, and I have done all this evil, so where does that leave me?"

"You get the party and I don’t," I replied.

"What are you taking about?" he asked.

I threw in the story of the lost sheep, with me being among the ninety-nine left alone by the shepherd who goes out and finds him. "It leaves me feeling jealous of you," I said. "Because you’re getting all this attention from God."

He had never looked at it that way before, so he decided to stay alive long enough to ponder these things.

At our next session, I told him about Saul of Tarsus, a man with blood on his hands, on another murder mission, who was converted and became the great apostle. Subsequent meetings introduced him to assorted biblical characters, and also to John Newton, the slave ship captain who, after his conversion became a priest and the author of the great hymn Amazing Grace. We got around to Ignatius Loyola, a soldier, recovering from wounds, who decided to become a soldier for God and then founded the Jesuits.

After several sessions, I introduced the conclusion to all this. "Compared to a lot of people God has used to accomplish great good in this world, you really are kind of a Sunday school kid. So quit wallowing in guilt and do some good for other people."

He decided to do just that.

In the two or three years remaining in his life, he became a friend, counselor, benefactor and mentor to a great many people. When he finally died of the liver disease that his many years of drinking had caused, we celebrated his life at a funeral attended by hundreds of people he had helped and who were inspired because they knew the history of his life. As the preacher on that occasion, I was able to add his name to the list of those in whom God's grace had accomplished much.

Because he was doubtless enjoying the feast prepared for him in heaven, we had one in his honor right after the funeral. It was quite a party.

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI ALOHANU ADONAI ACHAD
Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

Thus begins the Shema Yisrael, the ancient Hebrew prayer found in Deuteronomy 6. It is the foundational and daily prayer of the people of Israel from biblical times to this very day--a bold proclamation that there is only one God--a gutsy statement in the ancient world--the foundational understanding of God as well for us, the people of the new Israel, the new Covenant. The Lord our God is One.

It was this God who made the promise to Abraham. It was this God who called to Moses from the burning bush and promised to rescue the people from slavery in Egypt. And when Moses asked the voice for a name, he got a very short answer and no name at all: 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' translated "I am who I am" or better "I will be who I will be."

It was this God whose name could not really be uttered, a God of awesome mystery, who dwells totally beyond the world--and yet a God who hears the cry of the people. This is a God of absolute power, more powerful the Pharoah's army, more powerful than the sea--One who could rescue his people. This name and this God admits of no further penetration, no further interpretation.

But this God had to be called something: Adonai, El, Elohim or simply the short form of God's unpronounceable name "Yahweh" which means: "he is," or "he will be" or "he will cause to be." And, God tells Moses, "this is my name forever and my title for all generations." (3:15)

As we heard in the readings from Isaiah and Revelation a moment ago: This is the God who created the heavens and is now enthroned in the heavens and is called: "Holy, Holy, Holy." "Who was and is and is to come." The people will see who this God is when they witness what this God does--as Ezekiel reminds us: "And they will know that I am Yahweh." This is the God who tells Isaiah: "I am the First and the Last." (48:12) and yet a God whom Isaiah knows cherishes the people with a mother's love and comforts them as a mother comforts her child (49:15; 66:13).

This is the God who hears the groaning of all creation (Rm 8:22). This is the God who has mercy on his people in their struggles with sin and suffering and death. This is a God who connects with earth, not like the kite at the end of a string, but as One who comes among us: This is Emmanuel, God with us.

And yet there is more, far more. For this God is finally revealed in a way so new and shocking that it remains down through the centuries a scandal and foolishness. Within this one and only God, there is also community life. For in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Distinct from the Father, and yet also God. This is One who is the image of the invisible God, and yet is also the firstborn of all creation, the One in and by whom and for whom all things were created...the One who is before all things and in whom all things hold together. This was One, who, though by nature God, thought it not robbery to leave aside the form of God and to come among us, taking on the form of a servant, being found in human likeness. This One became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is the Eternal Word of God who became speechless for us in the womb of a young woman. This is a God who did not turn away from a stable in Bethlehem, nor from human friendship and dinners and wedding feasts. Nor did this One refuse the torture and agony and awful death of the cross. This is the One, Jesus, Eternal Son of the Father, now Son of God in human flesh, whom God raised from the dead. This is Jesus, who shares our flesh, victorious over death and suffering, having destroyed the power of sin, now seated in at the right hand of the Father, who has gone before us to prepare a way for us.

Because we have seen the "Jesusness" of God, Paul can now rewrite the Shema Yisrael to include Jesus (1 Cor 8: 6) "There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

And yet, there is more--far more. Within the one God, there is yet another Person, One who also has the power to create and to renew and to do all things. One who cannot even be imaged except as tongues of fire or a dove or as a powerful wind. The Holy Spirit. Called the Comforter, the Advocate, this One, promised by Jesus, as we heard in the reading from John's Gospel, This One now remains among us. Jesus, having gone before us in the flesh to claim for us our eternal inheritance, together with his Father, now sends among us this Advocate, whose powerful presence continually does in us those things that were accomplished in Jesus. Constantly re-creating and renewing us, the Spirit, with all the creative power of God, causes the work of God to continue among us.

So Paul can rewrite the Shema Yisrael yet again: "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Cor 13:14)

The name of God remains, still 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' , "I will be who I will be." But now this Name has new power, new meaning, for the Lord our God is One--and yet the Lord our God is a community of three divine persons. We can never understand this, for it lies beyond our comprehension, but it is revealed to us in a way we can just barely begin to grasp.

The power of God is absolute: the power to create in the first place and then to re-create, to bring redemption out of sin, peace out of suffering, life out of death. But so too is the love of God absolute: It is the boundless and infinite love that exists among Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When, as Paul tells us, we shall see God face to face, we shall see the face of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Incredible as it seems, we are called into this community life of God--and into the love of God. We are called, as scripture tells us, to be sharers of the divine nature--sharers, through adoption and as creatures, as co-heirs with Christ--but sharers nonetheless of the divine nature. Yes, we are called to enter in some way into the community life of God. All human community is an echo of the divine community. All human striving for love, acceptance, community can find its ultimate fulfillment only within the community life of God and within the limitless love of God.

So the mystery of the Trinity, that feast we celebrate today, reveals to us our final personal destiny, the will of God for the entire human family, and hence the life and mission of the Church. Trinity Sunday is our feast as well as God's, for we are baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

This is no abstraction. It is God's reality here and now in this congregation, at this moment in the life of this parish. For even now, the voice from the bush "I will be who I will be," demands of us a response: who are we and who are we to become. We are called to enter into God's community life even now at this moment--as even now the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is present among us.

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI ALOHANU ADONAI ACHAD
Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

From the New Intro to Out of the Night on civil religion and war

Once again the country is divided over a war which seems to have no end in sight. Once again, troops are called upon to fight a war against an insurgency that seems to grow stronger. Once again the American military is called upon to chase an enemy into the midst of a civilian population. Once again the American military is seen by an indigenous population as oppressors. As was the case in Vietnam, the origins and conduct of the war seem grounded in erroneous intelligence, misjudgments, mistakes and outright deception on the part of political leaders.

Soldiers and their families are beginning to raise their voices in protest about shabby medical treatment they have received back home. Multiple deployments of military personnel back into the war zone have caused serious morale problems among the troops. Reserve and National Guard units have been called up and deployed in ways not seen since World War II.

Once again the American civil religion--which is often confused with authentic Christianity--has been used as a religious and moral underpinning for war. The discussion of civil religion in Out of the Night is as relevant today as when it was written. The religious rhetoric used to support the war in Iraq is even more blatant and virulent than that used during Vietnam. The dangerous doctrine of American exceptionalism which formed the basis for this pre-emptive war has its roots in civil religion. There has never been a greater need for a public conversation about religion and war than there is now. Out of the Night provides a framework for this discussion.

Discussions with counselors who work with newly returned veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and some personal contact with these veterans make it abundantly clear that the questions and problems confronting these young men and women are the same as those that plagued older generations of warriors.

The sole exception and crucial difference between these new veterans and those who returned from Vietnam is that the country has learned from the bitter experience of a generation ago that we must provide support for our troops. We must not scapegoat them for whatever errors the civilian authorities might make in the decision to go to war and the blunders they make in fighting the war.

As are other Vietnam vets, I am profoundly grateful for the support our troops have received during this war. I like to think that this book has played a small part in making Americans aware that veterans need our support, whatever we may think of the war itself.

Brent's description of Gordon's death was both accurate and deeply moving. He wrote: "Gordon died cradled in the arms of Louise and surrounded by friends of many years who have stood beside him (and Louise) in good times and bad. His death was peaceful and holy, as Louise hoped it would be. He knew that it was time to die and the passage was mercifully swift. The continuum between life and death was fully evident and Gordon made the transition with grace, surrounded by love."

The doctors and the medical staff at the VA loved and respected Gordon and Louise. In fact one of the doctors who visited during his last hours commented that most people aren't surrounded by this kind of love as they slip away towards death.

Certainly there is a large and deeply felt absence here in this parish. To quote Brent again: "The voice of St. David's died. Gordon’s voice was heard in worship, in the pages of The Gospel, in his strength of spirit, and in the dignity with which he lived his life. That voice is now silent here, but singing the praises of God in a place where there is no suffering or pain."

At the reception after the service we will hear many stories from the life of this multi-faceted and magnificent man. We will learn that he was a lifelong devotee of railroading, he was at various times a gymnast, a radio announcer, a licensed pilot, a soldier, an electrical engineer, a computer expert, a pioneer designer of the internet and a handyman who could do just about anything. Gordon knew everything about computers and would answer any question. The only trouble was, after talking to Gordon you always needed just a little more ram or another few megabytes or gigabytes.

Louise and Gordon loved children and before the accident they would offer assistance to parents by taking care of the kids for a weekend or a few days. And kids loved them and responded to them. When the parents returned, Gordon and Louise would remark on how well-behaved the kids were--and you'd wonder whose kids they were talking about.

We who remember Gordon before the accident know that his great delight was in doing all that he could to make life pleasant and bright for his beloved Louise. And then there was that terrible day in March of 1989.

When Gordon returned to St. David's in his wheelchair, though diminished in size, he grew in stature. He never complained, rather, he inspired us all. He resumed his place in the choir he loved so much. He served on the vestry. He read the Scriptures from the very center of the church. He published our monthly newsletter. After the accident Gordon moved even more into the center of our parish life.

And so did Louise, for she continued on as our liturgist and devoted parish helper, but now she was constrained by the tremendous responsibility of caring for Gordon. So Louise and Gordon inspired us in new ways from their place at the very center of life in this parish.

Many people came to their assistance, and were in turn inspired and helped by them. Parishioners went over to help. There were the attendants and the choir. Their circle of friends grew to include the wonderful medical staff at the VA hospital where Gordon was a patient so many times.

Then there was that incredible day sixteen years ago when Gordon discovered a daughter he had never met. When that daughter and her husband came to San Diego to visit, there was a public ceremony of adoption right here in this parish.

Gordon and Louise accepted Tinker as their daughter and Barry as their son-in-law. The lives of both couples were immeasurably and permanently enriched by this relationship and they have been even further blessed by the four children since born to Tinker and Barry.

When Gordon died, the VA presented Louise with a flag because Gordon had been a soldier. When Tinker opened the box, this young woman who had been an army wife, realized the flag was not properly folded, so we went to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to have the Marines fold it the right way. Louise decided that Tinker should receive the flag.

So six Marines from the color guard folded the flag properly--as at a military funeral--and presented the flag to Tinker. And upon leaving the premises they rendered a proper salute to the departed soldier, to his wife and daughter.

Tinker, that flag is yours. Keep it and treasure it, for it is a reminder of your father at a stage in his life when he was young and vigorous, when he endured the rigors of basic training and lived the army life with which you and Barry are so familiar. And Arielle, Caleb, Adrianna and Alexis--remember that your grandfather was at one time a young man whose energy was at least the equal of your own.

Really Gordon's life is best summed up in his signature hymn: The
Exultet, the Easter Proclamation. Each year on the night before Easter at the service of the Great Vigil, Gordon sang right here in this church that most ancient and beautiful Christian hymn. It is a hymn that summarizes all we believe about the core of our faith: that Christ crucified, was raised from the dead and that we who are baptized into his death are joined also in his resurrection. The root meaning of Exultet is to exult. That's our Easter faith. That's the way Gordon sang it and that's the way Gordon lived it.

You see Gordon, the skeptic, the doubter, the careful scientist had come to faith by resolving in his own mind the deepest questions of science and faith and he had also accepted that faith in his heart and at the very center of his soul.

Gordon sang the Exultet every year, but he lived it every day. This year he had again prepared to sing it at the Great Vigil of Easter, but was too sick to come to church, so he called our home that night and sang it beautifully over the phone for Carol and Marie. He sang it and he lived it.

So, what does it say, this song which was Gordon's song and is actually the signature hymn for the entire human race? It begins when the church is dark and the paschal candle is brought in signifying the light of Christ, This light is then spread to the smaller candles, representing all of us who receive our light from the light of Christ. Did Gordon, confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, understand darkness and the night of the soul? Oh yes, he did! Did he understand the light of Christ and did he extend it to others? Oh yes, he did!

Just remember or imagine for a moment that man with less than 30% lung capacity, in his wheelchair singing with full voice and great joy the opening words of that ancient hymn:

"Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!"

Remember this man, who lived for 19 years in the darkness of quadriplegia singing this:

"Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!"

And the hymn goes on, bidding us to do what Gordon did with his life among us:

"Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!"

On the morning he died, Gordon refused any further treatment, knowing it was fruitless. He told Louise, "I've decided to bail." A paraphrase of the words of Jesus on the Cross: "It is finished." When he was anointed and heard the prayers for the dying, he was still able to respond, in imitation of the one who said: "Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."

And then came the transition from life into the long night of death…but here's what the Exultet says about the finality of death:

"This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave."

Gordon lived out the Exultet every day. His example and his inspiration to us was his Easter faith. His legacy to us is to be found in the final words of that great song, his song, our song.

"May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all humankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen." And for Gordon. Alleluia, Alleluia.

(The text of the Exultet used in this homily is from the longer version, cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exultet)

Infectious, compelling, transcendent and transforming, violence continues to demand obeisance at the deepest levels of the soul. The veteran, having undergone a "conversion experience" into the realm of violence, cannot and will not depart from that domain. In a paraphrase of J.R. Oppenheimer's famous comment when he witnessed the first nuclear explosion, it can be said: "The veteran has known violence and that knowledge cannot be taken away." The tree of that knowledge, like the tree in the Garden of Eden, entices and intrigues for it provides access to the godlike power of life and death--but its fruit is poisonous beyond all others.

The knowledge of violence is a revelation, an initiation into the unspeakable--the unthinkable--mystery of good and evil. Like all revelation, it is only partial, for it promises further disclosure, deeper understanding, and more power. The veteran continues to search for that which remains hidden beneath the veil of this transcendent experience, while hoping somehow that further revelation might include a restoration to innocence, a return to the garden. As life unfolds for former soldiers, it becomes clear that no return is possible--but the quest for peace of soul continues.

No one knows better than the soldier that war has irrevocable and enduring consequences. People are dead and maimed, homes and villages destroyed. Personal responsibility for such actions cannot and should not be denied. The great moral discovery in a combat zone is of one's own limitless capacity for malice, and, by extrapolation, the unsuspected depths and pervasive nature of human depravity. A veteran must live with this knowledge for a lifetime.

The attributes of violence are authentic and enticing, but the effects of violence, both upon society and upon the soul, are clearly evil--evil beyond anything else in human experience. And yet there is a stubborn refusal to accept evil of this magnitude as the final reality. The human spirit both demands and understands that there be some reality beyond violence. This realization is the beginning of spiritual healing.

Propensities of nature and grace assert themselves so that conscience, wisdom, weariness, religious impulses, and a desire for healing: all conspire in a struggle to dethrone violence from its primacy. In this pursuit of peace the subtle contour of another revelation emerges: a disclosure that violence may be only penultimate, that another reality might instead be definitive. At this point the issue becomes truly religious, amounting to a clash between two contenders for ultimacy. There takes place within the soul a practical testing of these two alternative and contradictory religious hypotheses.

Psychotherapy provides a formidable critique of violence. It allows the veteran to revisit the brutality of the original event in a benign and supportive context. It discloses the futility and destructiveness of clinging to combat survival mechanisms.

Psychiatry offers remedies for the biochemical residue of violence. Therapy is an essential step in healing the wounds of war for a great many veterans. Therapy loosens the grip of violence upon the soul but is unable finally to dislodge it. The final displacement of war's violence requires a transforming experience that exceeds in magnitude and significance the original transformation into that realm.

This new transformation must be more infectious, compelling, transcendent and transforming than is violence. It must be expressed in a liturgy. It must be a community experience. The second transformation requires a peace that transforms violence itself, a peace that passes understanding.

John Fergueson, Marine combat veterans of Vietnam, also an Episcopal priest, is convinced that some combat events create a transcendent experience of evil. The experience is one of true ecstasis—ecstasy in the classic sense. In ecstasy, one seems to transcend oneself. The other self is created in what is often a dissociative state.

A person then must live in both selves, but sometimes there is insufficient energy. The person goes back and lives in the evil self, by continually reliving the experience, by going back over it again and again. For Fergueson, PTSD is the liturgy and worship that victims go through of their encounter with evil. It is what they do in order to be empowered to deal with their fragmentation.

In any case it is true that the residue of war remains entrenched and often intractable because it was etched upon the soul through an event that took a person outside of himself in a moment of massive violence. Another self was created in a moment of ecstasis which bore the semblance of a religious transformation. It was a conversion experience, an introduction into a new realm wherein goodness was subverted. The only effective remedy is a counter-transformation, a second and more powerful ecstasis than the first. This is a lifelong journey. There must be an experience of transcendent good which is more powerful than the evil experience.

Combat creates a dark night of the soul. And this is a classic religious term. Veterans came very close to experiencing a state of soul which is described throughout the literature of Christian mysticism. The spirit enters a period of bleakness, a night of the soul. God is grasped only as if in a cloud--a cloud of unknowing. Religious good feelings, joy and enthusiasm all disappear. This experience of the mystics is the biblical experience lived to its fullest extent. This is quite biblical. Christians, in following Christ, also must cry out with him on the Cross: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Veterans can get that spiritual place very rapidly and at a very young age.

For the mystics, God is found in the depths of one's soul only after a period of apparent absence (dark night, or cloud of unknowing are terms commonly employed to describe this state). The dark night experience shatters shallow religious images and practices. Religious enthusiasm disappears. God no longer seems to be present either in one's own life or in the world. Often one is almost overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy and even of sin and guilt. Eventually, through a very painful process, one becomes aware again of God's presence. Now, however, the presence arises from the midst of a deep and abiding "cloud." The emptiness and desolation of life, the sense of personal inadequacy and sin can become points of contact with God. But this takes a good bit of understanding, lots of guidance and some very hard work.

This new awareness gradually becomes one of God's pervasive and gracious presence. A far more profound faith has replaced the one which was lost. Through the grace of God, one comes to perceive the Easter experience of the risen Christ emerging from the darkest corners of the soul. The fog of war embedded in the soul can be transformed into the cloud of unknowing in which God is perceived in the deepest parts of the cloud.

Vets understand these concepts through personal experience. Understanding the relationship between the veterans' journey and that of the Christian mystics has been helpful to many. Vets have undergone a journey of the spirit not unlike that described by the mystics. They have had consciousness altering experiences. Our modern world offers a number of these: War, holocaust, genocide, massive starvation, nuclear awareness.

To make this journey a fruitful one, we must first unmask a religious underpinning that is most detrimental to veterans’ spiritual health. This is the myth of American innocence; it is the belief in American exceptionalism. It is a form of civil religion that goes back to 17th century England and was transported to the American colonies. It was best expressed in a veterans group by a Vietnam helicopter door gunner. "Before I went to Vietnam," he said, "I believed in Jesus Christ and John Wayne, but in Vietnam both went down the tubes."

The John Wayne and Jesus Christ connection amounts to a national myth. According to this myth, our nation is incapable of fighting an immoral war. The myth goes even further. We believe that the wars we fight must not merely be just, but they must be waged in behalf of a holy cause. For us war must be a crusade. In a holy war,we tell ourselves, the nasty business of killing is really God's work. Get on with it and God smiles on you. In Vietnam and again in the present war, that myth is unmasked.

The Jesus Christ and John Wayne myth is pervasive. It lies at the heart of American self-definition as an article of religious faith. Our pilgrim forebears felt that they had been called to a religious destiny unique in human history. John Winthrop (1588-1649), who was to become the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, set a tone and direction to American life that remains almost unaltered to this day. Before disembarking in Salem Harbor in 1630, Winthrop reminded the settlers: "[We] must consider that we shall be as a City set upon a Hill, the [eyes] of all people are [upon] us." In that moment the myth was born: America was to be a chosen people among the nations of the earth. It was to be a moral example to the rest of the world. The corollary was also implied by Winthrop: the rest of the world must keep its eyes upon us and follow our lead, for "the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory.…"

Scholars call the mythology of a nation its "civil religion." Every tribe, people, and nation has some sort of civil religion. What distinguishes the American version from others is its dependence on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures for its language and concepts. Though the United States owes its cultural origins as much to the philosophy, laws, and ideas of ancient Greece and Rome as it does to biblical religion, we have never acknowledged this fact. We prefer to express our self-understanding in terms of the traditional biblical faith. Civil religion in America seems to resemble biblical religion, but in fact it is very different. Our civil religion convinces us that our national goals are transcendent and beyond question. It diminishes other nations and inverts religion, constructing its own model of God.

While sometimes war is the lesser of two evils, and combat sometimes a necessity, we don't usually discuss war in these terms--the terms of the classic just war tradition. We usually revert to our civil religion. There has never been a greater need for a public conversation about religion and war than there is now.

Returning veterans are aware of the disjuncture between battlefield realities and this religious belief system. The journey out of the night becomes possible, when civil religion is laid to rest.
Liturgies, retreats, sacramental ministry, conferences, various approaches to prayer, Scripture study, spiritual reading, and use of the various religious and spiritual traditions are more fruitful without the impediment of civil religion.

Twelve Step Spiritual Recovery Program, or The Spiritual Bootcamp. Steps 11 & 12, living out GOYA, ACVOW

Step 11. We committed ourselves to completing the final mission of a combat soldier: becoming bearers of peace, prayerfulness, happiness and rejoicing, resolving to go behind the "enemy lines" of fear, mistrust, selfishness, greed, hatreds which surround us in our culture, confident that, as warriors of peace, we will overcome these barriers using the weapons of peace, mercy and kindness which we have been given.

Step 12. Where before we were infected with the contagion of violence, we will now spread to others the contagion of peace which we have received, planning our mission carefully, including all those within the ambit of our lives.

While only God can bring about the ultimate transformation of humanity and the final peace which is the final destiny of the world--the divine plan revealed in Scripture, we must continue to be agents and instruments of that divine plan.

We exist in the "not yet complete" stage of God’s plan. Only in the risen Christ has God's plan for the entire cosmos been fulfilled.

As Paul tells us "We know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now." (Rom 8:22) We are part of that creation. We must actively wait for and allow ourselves to be open to the work of grace on an international, global scale and we must be agents of grace.

The just war tradition is only for now, but the ideal that must inform us is always before us. Peace, the final work of God, remains our goal and our vision. Paul has the last word: "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus… And the God of peace will be with you." (Phil 4:7 & 9)

Jesus raises the young man to life (Lk 7:11-17), exercising the power of God, over even death itself. In the first reading (1 Kings 17:17-24) we hear the Elijah implores God to restore life to a young man who had just died. God responded. We learn that the author of life fully intends that death shall not have the final word. In this morning's second reading, Paul testifies that he proclaims what he has seen through a personal appearance of the risen Christ. Like the original disciples who had seen the risen Lord, Paul also has first hand knowledge of God's power over death. Paul now knows God's final intention for the world; he understands the decisive event which points humanity in a new direction as children of adoption towards the newness of life. He has become an apostle, a messenger of this good news to the world.

Paul explains to the Galatians that he received his mission first hand from the Lord and he exercises his mission independently and in no way is he subordinate to the Jerusalem apostles. And yet, he also tells us, and we know from other passages, that he had checked out his message with the original apostles. We know that Paul was a part of the community which itself decided on how the mission to the non Jewish world,--the mission to the gentiles--was to be exercised. He did not operate outside the church, but he was an equal and independent force within the church. Paul once persecuted the church and now he is an apostle of the Lord. He states that those who witnessed this change in him now "glorified God" because of him. He the messenger of God's new life in Christ also embodies and exemplifies what he preaches.

A couple of years after I was ordained, while I was happily teaching in a small New England college, the Order sent me where I had asked to go.

I lasted in Japan only about a year because I experienced extreme culture shock. Most of the Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Latin Americans who were there experienced to varying degrees the same thing. About half had to return home within the first few years, but some endured for many years and some spent the rest of their lives there. Though for me the mission experience was very brief, it was both formative and normative for the rest of my life.

When I joined the Episcopal Church, I was impressed with its formal and complete name, i.e. the "Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."

But does our branch of the Church still live up to its name? Are we really a missionary society? Or, have we now become merely "the Episcopal Church?" Episcopos is the NT Greek word for "overseer." Oversight of the community is only one of the many gifts mentioned in Paul's letters--it being no more important than any of the others. Are we now known simply as the church that has bishops? Our very public and now pervasive squabbles are all about who should be ordained as overseers. We have taken an office which in the New Testament has only a secondary significance and elevated it into the decisive and defining component of who we are. That's the way the general public sees us. Whatever the case, we are no longer recognized by others, nor perhaps even by ourselves, as primarily a missionary society.

Paul and his contemporaries in the first generations of our faith were above all missionaries. They took seriously the Lord's command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Of course the pastoral care of those already in the church must be met. Paul himself cared for his people. He wrote his letters to them. But he and they were immersed in the mission to those still outside. They stood against the ruthless and brutal Roman Empire and gave testimony by their lives and by their words that Jesus Christ and not Caesar is Lord. To be a missionary to the Roman Empire was dangerous business. Their vision of reality, their way of life was at odds with the Empire. They refused ultimate allegiance to Caesar and his minions. The Christian mission to the Roman Empire was a costly one, it was seeded with the blood of thousands of martyrs, men and women who died for their faith.

Like Paul, those early Christians were a "resurrection people," aware the God's power over death would triumph even over the Empire. Like Paul, they were members of a community of people. They were the body of Christ.

But like Paul, they were strong and independent and they were thoroughly innovative. For them, the mission came first and they organized the church according to the needs of the mission. Defined only by the common mission, different churches had different structures. Some had single overseer bishops, some had other forms of leadership. The notion of "clergy" was foreign to them. They did whatever it took to proclaim and live the Gospel of God's love in the teeth of a ruthless and brutal culture.

Nor did they wait till they got it all together before they went out on the mission. Paul publicly disagreed with Peter. Paul and Barnabas had a conflict that led to them taking separate missionary journeys. There were conflicts and questions, but they resolved these issues as they went along. They played it by ear and got on with the mission. And it worked

In that context let us now examine the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It is true enough that we have our foreign missionaries, people like the Clearys and the Hardisons. True enough, we do mission work in our own parishes. The Vietnamese and the African congregations in our own diocese are examples. It is also true that there is much domestic mission work going on among some of our people. People here at St. David's are involved in many projects that fall within the ambit of mission.

But where is the zip, the zeal, the drive, the spiritual depth, the constant focus on the presence of God that is the sine qua non of all mission work? Where are the serious conversations among ourselves and with other Christians of other branches of the Church about how to exercise our common mission?

I read some of the stuff that comes out from the national church--and from those who have seceded from the national church. I get emails from the diocese about clergy stuff. I get the latest on the Windsor report and hear about what happened at this or that conference. But who cares? Where's the beef? Where's the sense of mission? This program, that program, or program-sized parish, or clergy wellness or tactics of congregational development. Can you imagine "wellness conference" in the church of apostles and martyrs? Perhaps in the Colosseum as they waited for the lions.

It seems to me we are spending all our efforts on trying to resolve the "Episcopal" part of our church. We are trying to figure out who can or can't be ordained a bishop. Or whether bishops from other provinces can come into the American church or what the House of Bishops will do or the Lambeth Conference of bishops, or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Presiding Bishop. Other denominations are as bad. Look at all the time and energy spent in Roman Catholicism over the role of the Bishop of Rome. Look at the synodical battles of Protestant groups. Perhaps we at least, should try to surmount this nonsense and remember that the entire Church is supposed to be always and everywhere a foreign and domestic missionary society.

What has all this got to do with real life in the real world. Only this--don't take all the "churchy" episcopal stuff too seriously. Take only the mission seriously. Paul and the very first Christians were personal witnesses to the risen Lord and we are not. But, as John's Gospel says, "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." That's us. We do not face the Roman Empire, but we are confronted by the various empires of our present world, empires that focus almost exclusively on the autonomous individual self; empires that beguile us into believing that comfort and pleasure and the satisfaction of all our wants are the reason for being.

Our Christian ancestors resisted the empire, but too often we do not resist. We are instead immersed and subverted and seduced and co-opted Perhaps the reason the church is so self-focused is that its members worship at the altar of the Imperial Self, that most tyrannical of all rulers. God, as the readings today remind us is the author and giver and restorer of all life. Paul, in this reading as always calls us to mission.

Our mission, like that of our ancient ancestors is in the world and to the world. Our mission requires an overarching sense of community, but it requires as well that we be strong and independent operators in the world. It is a mission that requires time spent in prayer and study. It requires regular Sunday worship. It requires self-giving and attention to others. It is a mission of love, compassion, and sometimes of personal witness, a mission exercised on the run, at home, at work, in the markets and classrooms and shops and businesses.

It is a mission given equally to all of us in baptism, young and old, men and women. It has nothing to do with being ordained or not ordained. Herein lies the reason that all church offices or structures--like all ethnic, racial or national boundaries are insignificant. All creation, the vast expanse of interstellar space, the entire cosmos results from an outpouring of the love that exists within the Trinitarian heart of God. The exuberant and abundant love among Father, Son and Holy Spirit is given, donated to all creation. This is a direct, immediate and personal gift of God to each individual. Just as the persons of the Trinity are co-equal, so the gift is given to human persons as co-equals in the presence of God and to each other.

The word "missionary" comes from a Latin word which means "to send." We are sent by God into this world. But the prior sending takes place when the Father sends the Son into the World to become flesh among us, to live and die as one of us and to overturn the powers of sin, suffering and death. The Father and the Son send the Spirit among us to accomplish in us what was done in Christ. For this reason scripture says that we are "partakers of the divine nature" because we are children of adoption and co-heirs with Christ. Our first response is to give back that abundant love of God directly to God and then to each other and to everyone we encounter. That is our mission and it is a direct response to God's own mission.

So this morning let us renew our commitment to this fundamental mission. Let us resolve not to be distracted from it by anything in the world or any issue in the church. Let us praise God in our Eucharistic prayer, for "whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we show forth the death of the Lord until he comes." Indeed in the breaking of the bread we again recognize the risen Lord. So unto God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor praise and thanks. Amen.

The betrayal at the highest levels: by bush, Cheney and the cabal of their cronies in Congress is at the root of why my fellow veterans are in such pain. It is at the root of why my VA colleagues are so distressed.

The consequences of this betrayal are laid out in considerable detail by a wonderful piece of reporting by McClathey Washington Bureau. I invite you to read the entire piece. Then please do what I intend to do along with some of my fellow veterans: contact your local congressional representative now, without fail and raise absolute hell. Demand that they "support the troops," not with cliches and bumper stickers but with funding. Hold them accountable.

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

John was preaching repentance. He was announcing the final outcome of God's plan for the world. John told his hearers that in God's own time, the mountains and hills we humans create will be made low; our crooked paths will be made straight and our rough ways smooth.

The New Testament word for repentance is metanoia. It means a change of mind. It means acquiring a new attitude. It means turning our thinking toward God. Because thinking, believing and acting are really inseparable, repentance means not only to have God-centered thinking but to act upon it--to act upon our renewed thinking. We are always in need of repentance because we are always walking along crooked paths and rough ways.

John used the majestic language of Isaiah in his call to repentance. But there is a very earthy word used often in the Old Testament which can be used to elucidate the steps by which we repent. That word is dung. Let me explicate. In the Italian city of Siena stands Europe's greatest medieval square, the Campo. This is the place where a centuries old rivalry takes place each year. It is a horse race like no other. It is the famous Palio. It is the working out of an ancient enmity between the city's districts which are called contrade.

A person is born into a contrada and remains in it for life. Each contrada is centered around a parish church. If a person marries someone from outside the district, one of the spouses makes the terrible sacrifice of leaving the contrada and parish of birth. After the annual race, people from the winning contrada wear their colors for months. The men walk around for weeks with pacifiers in their mouths signifying a new birth. These customs have endured for centuries.

One of the more colorful traditions of the Palio is bringing the contrada's horse into the church before the race and blessing it. If the horse should happen to leave a residue on the floor, this is not picked up until the race is over. And the horse droppings are festooned with flowers.

Even though garlands of flowers may surround the smelly substance and rest upon it, and even though it sits on the church floor in the presence of the reserved sacrament, it remains nothing more than horse dung. And so it is with our sin, with our evasions and denials.

There is a well-known colloquial expression which calls manure a holy item. At first glance, the placing of flowers around horse droppings might seem to signify its holiness but the flowers really disguise the manure. They deny its reality. This resembles ever so much the way we deny our own sin.

It is quite human to produce fecal material in both the physical and the spiritual sense. With running water and flush toilets it is quite easy to dispose of the former, but we place flowers around the latter and tend not to remove it at all. We say such things as: "This is just the way I am," Or my anger is righteous, my dalliances are explainable, my greed is unavoidable, my pride is just honesty about myself--and so on. We place flowers of self-deception around our own spiritual mess and tend to leave it there for a lifetime.

The first step toward repentance, toward metnaoia is to remove the flowers from our own spiritual dung When we can see it for what it is, then we can roll up our sleeves, grab a shovel and begin to remove it. Recognizing it is the first stage of repentance, and removing it is the second. This is a lifetime job. Holiness resides not in the aforementioned substance which lies on the floor of our own temple. Holiness is first to recognize it for what it really is and then to haul it away. As long as we surround it with flowers of self deception we can never get started. So repentance begins with a clear vision about ourselves. A spiritual sense of smell helps as well.

Repentance waxes and wanes in our lives. Sometimes the pile gets very large, but sometimes we manage to haul some of it away. Repentance and unrepentance have consequences in the world. We can see this easily. Individuals in a group can either act as a mob or work for good. Whole societies do the same. Germany in the 1930s and '40s was totally unrepentant and set towards evil. Germany today is not. South Africa was mired in apartheid, but has come to a kind of national repentance. Other parts of the world have never repented of genocide.

Narcissism, injustice and violence are all contagious and infectious. Groups of people and even whole societies can be drawn into the bottomless cesspools they create. Sin always affects others. That is why metanoia/repentance spills over and affects others. It changes societies.

We Americans have heaped tons of flowers around our own national dung. We become steadily more greedy, materialistic, narcissistic and coarse, piling up for ourselves a huge pile of dung, disguising it with wreaths of what we pretend is individual freedom. The garland of self-interest renders us insensitive to the needs of others.

And now we condone the destruction of human rights and we fight a pointless and endless war in the name of good against evil--all the while avoiding the stench by placing upon it the idolatrous wreath of self-righteous morality and a perversion of the Christian religion.

Prepare the way of the Lord! Only God can finally purge the global human temple of the dung that accumulates. Complete cleansing will take place only with coming, not of the infant Jesus, but of the risen Lord at the end of the age. We cannot bring about the final outcome of God's plan. It is not we who fill in the valleys or make low the mountains and hills or make the crooked ways straight. It is God who does this. We can only prepare the way of the Lord. But we can and must prepare the way of the Lord by rolling up our sleeves, grabbing our shovels and hauling away as much of the mess as we can.

Repentance, metanoia is a personal individual act. It is both a command and a promise given to each one of us. Prepare the way of the Lord! The mountains and hills and valleys and crooked paths of our lives are all included within the vast sweep of God's plan. We as individuals will personally see the salvation of God. What is spoken to all the peoples of the earth is addressed to each one of us.

But repentance is also a word spoken publicly to all the world's people--to the entire human race. Especially to the so-called "people of the book" who supposedly take Isaiah seriously: It is spoken to Jews and Christians and Muslims. The call to repentance is both a promise and a warning. It echoes down the ages to Sunnis and Shiites, to insurgents and suicide bombers and to armed militias, to Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaeda, to the Knesset and Likud, to all invaders and occupiers of nations and to all who kill the innocent with cluster bombs or rockets or i.e.d's, or through massive military operations among civilians. It is a word spoken to generals and soldiers and politicians and leaders and citizens of all nations including our own.

It is a word spoken from the distant past to the peoples of the book in Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, to the nations of Europe and to the British. It is a word spoken to us, the people of the most powerful nation the earth has ever seen.

Repentance is a new way of thinking. It is the first glimpse of the salvation of God. It is a call to re-orient our attitudes. It is a vision of the way things really are. It is a call to action. It is a demand that we remove the flowers from our spiritual dung. It is a command for us to pick up our shovels and get to work.

Hear again the words of Isaiah and John the Baptist.

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

Most of my ordained ministry has been spent, not in parishes, but in other settings: school teacher, the military, the university campus, federal employee, health care clinician, administrator, non-profit employee. Though retired, I remain fascinated by work environments and still occasionally work for the VA. When I go into any kind of establishment or conduct business dealings on the phone, whenever possible, I do informal surveys of workplace conditions. I listen to and try to learn from everyone.

I am sorry to report this year that workplace conditions continue to get worse across the board. Though each workplace is different and some of them have excellent conditions, pay and benefits, sadly the larger trends are in the other direction. Recent statistics tell part of the story that many people experience daily. This past week we learned that:

At the end of 2005, wages and salaries made up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, though a slight surge in wages took place since December. At the same time, corporate profits climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability."

For the 91 million households with working people under 65, the median income dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under 65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full time working men for the second year in a row, and among full time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under 65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out. Those of us over 65 did better because of Social Security income. Real wages have been stagnant since 1973.

The Union Tribune reported on Wednesday that the 64[ercemt of households whose annual income is below $60,000 live in the bottom two tiers of a "stagnant hour-glass shaped" San Diego economy. Lots of high paying job, lots more of low paying jobs and a diminishing middle.

This correlates with what I am finding in my conversations with working people. The name of the game today seems to be simply "pay as close to minimum wage as you can, get as much work out of people as you can, pay as little in benefits and pensions as you can. Whenever possible, outsource, downsize and lay off."

As an employee at a large department store said last Wednesday: "sorry for the delay, but to have only one person at the register during a sale just isn't right." No it isn't right, but that's the way things are done nowadays--and at all levels.

Though our various workplaces are different and distinct, they are not unrelated to, or exempt from, the larger trends in our culture. The relentless pursuit of the absolute bottom line, the “in your face” arrogance and corruption of political and economic leaders, the inexorable downward pull of materialism and cynicism have cheapened, trivialized and coarsened American life--and this is all related to what we do at work.

Everything is up for sale--including spirituality which is now sold as a means to increased efficiency and profitability. Spirituality (whatever that means) has been called the "latest mega-trend."

Everything is a commodity, including personal relationships. We are encouraged to see ourselves primarily as consumers and everything is individualized, privatized and sold to us. The shopping mall has become the new spiritual center of life.

What has this got to do with a Sunday sermon? Well, it describes the kind of situation the Old Testament prophets spent most of their time speaking out against. It is contrary to the teaching of Jesus. It is a mockery of the Christian ideal found throughout the New Testament. We are called by our risen Lord into community with God, with each other and with all of humanity. We are not exempt from that call of God in our workplace.

Money, profitability, efficiency and the pursuit of things are now obsessions bordering on idolatry. We are like the ancient Israelites in our worship of the golden calf. We need to remember that the laws of the marketplace are not the laws of physics. The force of gravity is not a matter of human choice, but the organization of the economic culture is.

So, what do we do about it? Most working people are trapped themselves and have very few options--but there is always something we can do. Jesus spoke in three different ways to three different types of people. He spoke intimately with his disciples. He spoke with compassion to the ordinary people. But he spoke scathingly to the leaders, excoriating them for hypocrisy and oppression. Where on that scale do we fit?

What can we do to change things? We have to start at the level of personal relationships. The first step is to recognize that those we meet in any setting, even in the briefest commercial transactions, are real people. Whenever people meet, our faith tells us that the encounter is potentially a sacred event. If even a small percentage of people realized this and acted upon it, our society would be transformed. Some already do operate this way, but not nearly enough.

Fortunately we encounter some clerks, teachers, government employees, bank personnel, insurance company reps, medical people who give evidence of treating us like real human persons. These people are the biblical leaven in the workplace and we need more of them. We need to make a conscious effort on a daily basis to be ourselves among these blessed people.

Though the culture of the market, the office, the shop, where we work might be almost devoid of the human touch, we are able to bring real humanity in with us. We must acquire a foundational Christian mode of thinking and acting. We must realize we are called by God into community. The eternal, Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has made a common life with us through Jesus. All human community flows from this fundamental biblical truth. We are called to be "partakers of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4) We also know that "we are children of God, and if children, then heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Rom 8:16). We are, through Christ, children of the Father by "adoption." (Eph 1:5; Rom 8: 15, 23, 9:4)

This is the great Christian reality. If we are conscious of this in all human transactions, especially at work, we transform our environment. When we see each customer, clerk or client as a fellow child of God and act as if it were, then that encounter, while still a business venture, is no longer purely functional and utilitarian, but truly a sacred act.

In a culture where business transactions are increasingly constrained by computer-like speed and efficiency, taking the time and making the effort to engage another person as fully human and worthy of our love are decisive Christian steps—and this is directly contradictory to the overarching trend of our culture. So there is my simple suggestion for beginning to change your part of the workplace. You can also do this not only as an employee, but as a customer or client as well. Everyone in a human transaction can make a difference. That is your "homework." Practice constantly to acquire "that mind in you that was in Christ Jesus." (Phil 2:5)

Do we have any models available as a guideline? I think we do. Too often the church extrapolates and brings the agenda of the surrounding culture into the church. Seldom does it work the other way. I suggest that we reverse the direction and take a church model out into the workplace. What church model? One very close at hand: St. David's.

Though I am ordained a priest, I spend most of my time in this parish as simply a member of the congregation. During Bren's recent medical leave I was asked to help out. I did so, but not in doing pastoral visits. Jim Kellett arranged for the pastoral calls with assistance from Maryanne and Jack. I was the acting office administrator, a kind of "office gofer" for our Rector's Warden. As such I got to observe very closely St. David's as workplace. I observed the office staff and the volunteers and got involved with some of the construction issues Volunteer work is still work and St. David's is a place where lots of work goes on.

St David's is a workplace in which the Christian life is truly carried out well. There is a loving collaboration and a gentle ongoing conversation. Problems that arise are quickly resolved through honest communication. It is a terrific workplace. Of course, you can't transpose a church situation completely into a secular context, but you can use it as a model and an ideal, incorporating as much as you can in your own work environment.

So, having observed this workplace closely for the past four months, I hold it up for your consideration as a model and I consider you good people as exemplars par excellence. Of course, I shouldn't name names, but I will name one who has become a role model for me. Our Rector's Warden Melinda Murdock, is a peerless administrator, who truly has raised that function to the level of a magnificent spiritual gift.

So let us go forth from this place into the world of home, family, neighborhood and work, mindful that we are called by God to enter as creatures and children of adoption into the very ambit of the common life of God. And to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

Conservatives are quite right in holding that Scripture everywhere repudiates homosexuality. The prima facie reading of Scripture is clearly opposed to homosexual behavior. Those who oppose Robinson's ordination say that the Episcopal Church has become schismatic because it has departed from its biblical base. The liberal argument from justice does not refute this position because the ordination of anyone to a church office is a matter of neither biblical nor secular justice. The office of bishop is rooted in Scripture, so the selection of bishops, like everything else within the Christian faith, must be done in accord with biblical standards.

Because Robinson's ordination seems so blatantly contradictory to biblical norms, conservatives are able, quite plausibly, to accuse the liberals of disregarding Scripture. To this accusation, liberals respond only that "we are not fundamentalists" but they seem unable to articulate any biblically grounded theological basis for their position. This inability points to a profound deficiency in the way they and many American Christians do theology. This is a long-standing problem. It has deep historical roots and it goes far beyond the present issue. The election of Robinson was for many the straw that broke the camel's back, but the discontent runs deep and is of far longer duration. For a very long time conservative Christians (not just Anglicans) have been aware of an erosion of faith, not only within the culture, but within the Church itself.

For conservatives within our Church, the attitudes and behavior of the Robinson supporters bespeak a set of attitudes and habits of thinking that have, over time, undermined religious faith. Conservatives have long seen this tendency within liberalism and they react against it in order, as they see it, to protect what remains of the Christian faith. They see the election as a political act.

Conservatives or "traditionalists" accuse progressives, quite rightly, of not taking Scripture seriously and of being unwilling to engage in theological thinking. For liberals, sociology and politics seem most often to trump the search for religious truth. The liberal hermeneutic seems always to begin from a set of criteria external to Scripture or the Church. Granted that both Scripture and the Church must be subjected to political, historical and sociological critiques, but liberals seem to come at the task from a vantage point of "outsiders" to the faith.

This can be readily seen by looking at the starting points taken by the various participants in the Robinson debate. While conservatives begin with Scripture (however rigid and deficient their interpretive framework), liberals almost always begin somewhere else. They may begin with something as elevated as justice or morality, but careful examination of their argument reveals that God is usually superfluous to its main thrust. Scripture may be used, but usually in a proof-text fashion, with biblical considerations being extraneous and subordinate to another premise.

Liberals often view truth as subordinate to power. The biblical narrative and the canon of Scripture seem for them not so much divinely revealed truth as the outcome of ancient power struggles. Thus they seem to make judgments apart from the internal religious dynamic inherent within both the biblical text and the Church as living interpreter of the text.

The liberal argument as it is commonly expounded seems derived primarily from psychology, politics and ethics or from the general cultural drift toward a more benevolent view of homosexuality. You can see this in almost any discussion among the progressives on the homosexual issue you hear affirmations that we repudiate "gay bashing," "homophobia" and "we demand justice for all." But you almost never hear Scripture or theology invoked. There seems to be no recognition of the biblical/theological dimensions of the problem. The liberal agenda seems to be drawn by the surrounding culture rather than from the Gospel as a primary source. This, in the minds of conservatives is a consistent and logical outcome of the liberal seduction by contemporary culture. They believe the "liberal church" will disappear into the culture

Examples abound. I am familiar with one parish in which the rector asked the people to call the bishop's office to lobby his vote for the election of Gene Robinson. He talked about how Robinson was a good priest and should be bishop. There was no discussion whatever of the theological questions. This request was made at announcement time during the principal service. Sadly, this is simply one instance of the way "progressives" see the problem. For many of them it is simply a matter of political decisions to be made within the framework of canon law

Any argument in favor of ordaining Gene Robinson to the episcopate that does not deal seriously with Scripture is fatally flawed. Any attempt by liberals to discuss with conservatives the Robinson issue without addressing philosophical assumptions is also doomed.

What Liberals Get and Conservatives Don’t

The Church has always embedded its message within the culture where it finds itself. It develops theology and practices which are fully attuned to the surrounding milieu. This has been necessary since Pentecost and will continue to be so until the end of the age.

Conservatives seem almost incapable of doing much more than revisiting the past, restating theological positions, quite valid in themselves and appropriate to the time and place of their formulation, but which do not really address current issues. Their theology seems to be more a reiteration of past theological formulations than a real engagement with the present. Biblical reflection must incorporate all the data of culture, philosophy, science, politics and economics if it is to lead to a theology adequate to the era. Conservatives seldom do this. Those in the conservative camp within our Church now include some real Protestant fundamentalists and a scattering of Pentecostals who seem to be rooted nowhere.

Conservatives, seeing the erosion of faith implicit in modern thought, retreat into a kind of pre-modern cocoon, circling the wagons tightly, with a narrow angle of vision, fortified only by the residue of a once vibrant and engaged theology. Truth to tell, they fall into the same cultural trap as do liberals—to whom they become mirror opposites. Where the liberal biblical agenda seems determined almost entirely by whatever the "criticism du jour" may be or whatever sociological fad is current, conservatives, on the other hand, seem to acknowledge few legitimate historical or sociological developments to incorporate into their rapidly stagnating theology. Their positions are coherent and consistent, but unfortunately, by reverting to untenable pre-modern assumptions, conservatives have also lost touch with the dynamic of "mission theology" which uses everything within the culture to proclaim the Gospel.

Roots of the Problem

Roots of the current crisis lie in a confluence of theological responses to the modern world itself. In the 17th Century, a theory of knowledge arose that has been eroding the foundations of faith ever since. According to this epistemology, God cannot be known in an intellectually respectable way in a truly modern world. If there can be no knowledge of God, there can be no discourse about God. Religion is thus completely irrelevant to real life. Many theologians and church people, quite rightly wanting to make the faith relevant to their times, unwittingly bought into a foundational premise that is thoroughly destructive of religion.

The new epistemology held that no real knowledge is possible beyond nature. According to this theory, the only acceptable questions that can be asked are those about the natural processes within the cosmos. In this view the only valid tools of knowledge are those developed to explore nature. Agnosticism and even atheism were implicit in this epistemology from the beginning.

Religious people were able to hold on to faith in spite of this onslaught, but they paid a price. God was relegated, first to the sidelines, then to irrelevance, and finally to non-existence. This premise grew stronger with the passage of time, resulting in a relentless secularism and growing atheism, even in a country like ours which pays so much lip service to religion.

Post-enlightenment liberalism holds that the modern worldview, which excludes transcendence, is superior to those of the biblical period and all other subsequent eras. Newton's statement in the Principia Mathematica: "I will not use God as an hypothesis," was elevated to the status of a necessary philosophical principle under-girding all reality. What Newton intended as a necessary foundation to the newly emerging scientific method became a statement about the existence of the universe itself.

This new philosophical assumption provided the intellectual substructure for physical science, the social sciences, politics and economics from the 18th century to the 20th century. It is the root source of much of contemporary philosophy and it has become the very operating principle of modern life. Religious conservatives see the trap implicit within this epistemology but liberals do not. This is the real theological fault line between liberals and conservatives. Countless people have abandoned the faith because of the clash.

The Church and many religious people quite properly rejected the new assumptions. Unfortunately much of the opposition took hideous forms. The Galileo case and the reaction to Darwin's findings are examples. So too are the events surrounding the French and Marxist revolutions and their aftermath. Both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism are a reaction to a world without God. Transcendence was, and still is, the central question. Liberals have been seduced by modern epistemology, but conservatives, dwelling in a pre-modern era, cannot fully grasp the force of transcendence rediscovered within contemporary thought.

There is also a theological seduction within the liberal camp. There is a continuum among the liberals ranging from the classic historic faith and the best of the Anglican tradition all the way down to a Spong-like miasma. A few on the fringe have become de facto Unitarians, denying both the Trinity and the Incarnation. Some seem to be monists. The liberal intent, which begins well, is able to fall into this kind of mess on its fringes precisely because it accepts uncritically the philosophical assumptions of the modern era and applies them to theology.

Given this situation, Christian theology must be about two very different tasks simultaneously. The first is to probe the roots of modern philosophy, punching intellectually credible holes in its quite erroneous assumption regarding transcendence. The second is to incorporate the data of contemporary life-whatever its source-into the life and thought of the Church-this is theology: ever ancient, ever new.

A New Epistemology Required

A sharp break with the Enlightenment took place in the early 20th century. Relativity and quantum physics caused a "paradigm shift" in theory of knowledge. Some now label this divide "modern" and "post-modern." I believe post-modern thought is far more open to transcendence and to traditional Christian theology than was the Enlightenment.

We now understand that: You cannot in principle know both the position and velocity of any particle. You can determine one but not the other. You select the result you want and test for it-your outcome will be determined by the parameters you set. Knowledge thus becomes a matter of selective interaction between the knower and the known. Time is relative to the observer's standpoint. Everything is interdependent and interrelated. Though new discoveries abound, the laws of physics seem to apply everywhere. Reality is more in process than in static state. Knowledge is largely a matter of finding the most adequate explanation for current data. Knowledge is a matter of approximation and probability. Knowledge is historically conditioned and time-limited. There must be a constant check of one theory against another. Adequacy and verifiability are determinants of truth. The universe is full of surprises.

While these theories apply most appropriately to the hard sciences, they have influenced the way our contemporaries think about the world. Of course none of this is really new. Heraclitus and Parmenides began a debate that has never ended. Plato and Aristotle engaged in it. Theology has always used the tools at hand (e.g. Augustine-Plato; Aquinas-Aristotle).

The dangers in post-modern epistemology: Assuming that all truth itself—rather than our ability to know the truth—is relative; falling into the trap of scientific empiricism—assuming that the laboratory method of verification is all there is to cognition; failing to incorporate adequately the wider human questions into our scope of inquiry. Denying legitimacy and intellectual credibility to religious experience is another trap: really a residue of the previous era.

Advantages of the new epistemology. Because selectivity plays such a role in how we go about seeking the truth, we can now see that nothing about the enlightenment model is actually inevitable or necessary. Atheism from Feuerbach to Sartre in Europe and in America with the prototypical John Dewey was largely a matter of selecting out the notion of God for a variety of reasons, none of which were necessitated by the facts at hand. Both atheism and the enlightenment erosion of transcendence entailed a freely chosen and totally unnecessary postulate, i.e., the existence of God as a threat to human development. Present day exponents add nothing really new and are now are riding an obsolete if not dead epistemological horse.

Post-modern epistemology is demanded by relativity and quantum physics because reality simply is not what it appears to be. As we get glimpses into the incomprehensible mystery which lies at the horizons of physics and astronomy, the question of God re-emerges in a new way. Transcendence was in principle dismissed by modern thought in favor of a closed system. Religion was considered a rear guard action. Post-modern thought is in principle open to transcendence as the most adequate explanation of available facts.

The modern worldview relegated divine functions only to a "god of the gaps" role. But now we find that by conceding to the universe the autonomy and the randomness required by biological evolution-and even more by cosmology and particle physics-we discover dependencies within autonomy and patterns within randomness. The cosmos has been "demythologized." We now recognize that, though vast, the universe is finite and measurable. It has a point of origin—and it is truly knowable by at least one species that evolves from within it.

Some, seeing this remarkable convergence, have posited anthropic principles within the cosmos. Others recognize that in fact these tendencies are actually theotic. Thus the ancient and classic questions of ultimate origin and meaning return with a force and power impossible in either the pre-modern or the modern eras. The religious question is once again central. Contemporary thought is more open to "ciphers of the transcendent" scattered throughout the cosmos than was philosophy in the recent past. The God discovered-and revealed-within the vast space-time continuum is unmistakably transcendent.

Post-modern thought is less arrogant. The requirement that we continually check and verify both fact and theory leads away from a tyrannical imposition of ideas. If the hard sciences are capable of ascertaining only partial truth at any given time, then a fortiori any particular finding in the social sciences is applicable only part of the time and under certain conditions. Social agendas carried on through politics are likewise limited and pragmatic exercises capable of only partial success. Contrast this with the ideological and political juggernauts with which American liberals and conservatives, still steeped in modernity, constantly assault us. The new approach also has a deeper respect for intuition as the basis upon which thought ultimately rests.

The post-modern attempt to "deconstruct" ideas, texts and concepts, while it can be carried to absurd extremes, nonetheless has the value of showing the great flaw in the modern epistemological premise. It turns out that a great deal of what was assumed to be purely objective unbiased measurement and analysis was really not so at all. The experience of the observer is not purely subjective, but is an integral part of the fabric of reality.

While "meta-narratives" and abstract universals can be deconstructed-including the meta-narrative of modern epistemology-smaller narratives and some kinds of human experience cannot be. Religious experience can no longer be dismissed out of hand, nor can the experience of the Church. The biblical narrative is "incarnational"-time and place specific-reaching all people, not as overarching propositional statement, but as relational, experiential truth, grounded in history and intellectually defensible. Unlike, propositional theology, the biblical narrative and the way we apprehend and live it cannot be deconstructed.

In another consonance with postmodern epistemology, classical theology always understood that the biblical text had many categories and forms and was susceptible to interpretations ranging from the allegorical to the literal with every shade in between. Consequently traditional theology knew that both its conceptual formulations and their articulations were only poor approximations of divine reality. Richard Hooker said it well: "He is above and we upon earth, therefore it behoveth our wordes to be warie and fewe."

Classical theologians employed religious language, but they knew that they were only using analogies when speaking of God. Classical theology's intellectual humility regarding its own formulations was best expressed in the "negative way" of Thomas Aquinas. This theology had its counterpart in the way the spiritual life was understood through such ideas as a "cloud of unknowing," and a "dark night of the soul." So the new epistemology is congenial as an intellectual ground for Christian faith and can provide a foundation for the spiritual life as well. This task requires also a renewal of analogical religious language and a theology that incorporates it.

A Larger Theology of Creation

Theology and philosophy are engaged with a new worldview that is amazingly open to a very large God. Reflection upon contemporary cosmology suggests subtle hints that the universe is moving not into the chaos of final entropy but toward a genuine eschaton for all creation—which now "groans and suffers." It is moving toward the One by whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together. The "vast expanse of interstellar space" and all that lies within it requires a larger God than modern theology and philosophy were able to perceive. Our era requires fresh theological formulations across a wide spectrum.

A major theological stumbling block for conservatives can be stated in a quip made by Albert Einstein when he was confronted with the undeniable implications of quantum physics. He said: "God does not play dice." Einstein was wrong: God does play dice-on a cosmic scale. The "game" is vast. Just as Einstein's relativity theory with its order and predictability is unassailably true, so too is quantum physics with its thoroughgoing randomness and probability The "quantum flux" is inherent in all reality. Theologians, scientists and philosophers are coming to a new understanding of how it is that God creates. A breathtaking view of creation is beginning to emerge, providing the basis for a true theological breakthrough.

The cosmos is both ordered in ways that we can truly grasp and express mathematically and at the same time it is also profoundly chaotic and random. The universe is simultaneously both ordered according discernible laws and random to its core. In a universe of immense and fundamental flux, the vast complexity can be expressed paradoxically in starkly simple (though not easy) "elegant equations." What at first appears contradictory and opposite is most often discovered to be in fact integrated. This seems to be the case not only in particle physics and astronomy, but it appears to be a fundamental principle of existence.

Cosmological and biological evolution seemed at first to have overthrown the classic teleological argument for the existence of God, also known as the argument from design. (This old argument has nothing to do with what is currently known as "intelligent design" in the current controversy between evolution and creationist thinking-in fact the contemporary notion of intelligent design is fallacious both scientifically and philosophically.) Authentic theological engagement with evolution simply expands the range of data considered to include the entire scope of contemporary cosmology with evolutionary biology as a subset. This constitutes a full embrace of all the randomness required to explain evolution. We can do this because chance on this cosmic scale is only the reciprocal of the order now so clearly manifested in the universe. The old argument was also known as "order and design." I would call its contemporary version "disorder and design." We now see that God’s ongoing creative act includes both.

Creation is now viewed not just as a single act in the past but as ongoing. An evolutionary universe is always moving on into the future with all its contingencies. This fits much better with the Genesis story which pictures God imposing order on a chaotic universe. It also is more congenial to eschatology and to the kenotic Christ of Phil 2: 5-11.

We find the evolution of species that become extinct (e.g., the recently discovered "hobbits" of Indonesia) as well as those toward which evolution seems to tend (ourselves). What appears at first anomalous is a part of a total fabric of reality. On a higher level, we find both human freedom and biological determinism. Good and evil coexist. Randomness is coextensive with order in ways that indicate a genuine and discernible teleology (as shown by the so-called anthropic principles of the universe). It is now clear that within the ordered randomness of being, there are immense variations within organic species. Neither the vast ages of time required for evolution, nor its random course devalues human dignity. This is the way God creates. God looked at Creation and pronounced that it was good. Therefore all creation is good including random variations that occur within it. Contemporary science and the epistemology required for it demonstrates anew that: "the heavens show forth the glory of God."

First Reason for a New Understanding of Homosexuality: Moral Theology

Within this larger frame of reference, we can now make case that would allow for the decisions of General Convention within a biblical context. For example, though homosexual behavior was known throughout history, the notion of homosexual orientation was not understood until very recently. For this reason, biblical statements about homosexuality must now be read in light of new discoveries.

The underlying assumption, not only of Scripture, but the common understanding of homosexuality for millennia, is that homosexual acts are freely chosen acts of people who are by inexorably and by nature heterosexual in orientation. If this assumption is inaccurate, then a new question arises which must be thoroughly explored and incorporated into traditional theology.

The notion of sexual orientation as a predisposition existing prior to sexual activity was not understood until the 20th Century. It is certainly true that the basic sexual orientation the vast majority of individuals in all mammalian species is heterosexual. This is necessary for the propagation of species and it is clearly the normative purpose of sexuality. But it is now clear that there is a fairly small, but random distribution of homosexual, bisexual and anomalous sexual configurations in many species of mammals. This is a genuinely new discovery. Though the phenomena may have been known in prior ages, the data seem never to have been incorporated into a coherent body of knowledge prior to our own era.

This discovery presents theology with a new question. Granting that homosexual acts between heterosexual people are sinful as Scripture clearly states, we must then deal theologically with the discovery that homosexual orientation is, as we now know, randomly found throughout mammalian species, including humankind. Sexual activity is a normal part of life for all but a few people-and Scripture assumes this. Sexual desire and passion are simply part of life. Concupiscence, though it applies to desire of all kind, has often been narrowed to sexual matters. In this context, marriage has been called in classical theology a "remedy for concupiscence."

Marriage exists as an option for heterosexual people, but there is no such option for homosexuals. Are they then morally bound by a norm of celibacy that most heterosexuals cannot observe? Is this the intent of Scripture or of classic theology? I think not.

Using accepted principles of moral theology, we can now posit that the virtual impossibility of refraining from sexual activity would make allowance for homosexual activity between people with a genuine homosexual orientation. This does not deny the truth of biblical statements, but simply asks a new question of Scripture and theology in the light of recent discoveries.

One way to formulate the question: If most heterosexuals cannot live a celibate life, marriage being the biblical and acceptable remedy for the human sex drive, then what if humanity discovers at a date later than the writing of the biblical documents, that most homosexual activity derives from a prior sexual orientation, unknown in biblical times? Is it then possible to consider this newly discovered situation in the light of Scripture? I believe it is possible to do this and to arrive at the conclusion that the homosexual activity of people with homosexual orientation is done without sin-though same sex relationships are not marriage in the biblical sense. This does not diminish or change Scripture, but it interprets Scripture in light of new findings.

Other examples: Jesus prohibited divorce except for uncleanness. St. Paul allowed second marriages after divorce for a specific reason. The Church has expanded the reasons for allowing second marriages. The New Testament is not amenable to making war, yet we do it. The "just war tradition" arose to deal with the question of when Christians may engage in combat even though the New Testament and the earliest Christian traditions prohibit the violent taking of life. All this is legitimate development of doctrine resulting from the biblical faith confronting new situations throughout history. These precedents may be a guide in the present situation.

At any rate, it is now clear that homosexual orientation exists in individuals prior to sexual activity. This is now a fact beyond question. Homosexuality is increasingly understood to be a biological phenomenon antecedent to human choice-and hence antecedent to sinful decision. This must be accounted for in an expanded theology of creation.

Second Reason for a New Understanding of Homosexuality: Larger Theology of Creation

When we read the creation account in Genesis, it is clear that God created male and female. God intends that the human race be propagated by sexual intercourse between men and women. Nothing could be clearer. There seems to be no room in the biblical account for homosexual orientation as something intended by God. But there is also no immediately apparent way to reconcile the findings of Galileo or Darwin with the Genesis accounts, yet-except for American fundamentalists-we have been able to do so. Even when one adopts the position that there is no disjuncture between the Genesis accounts and the theory of evolution, there still seems to be no room to allow for homosexual orientation within God's intent. Conservatives hold that homosexuality "constitutes an objective disorder in the structure of human existence."

I believe this conservative position regarding homosexuality has been supplanted by the expanded theology of creation described above. Homosexuality, along with a wide variety of what appear to be sexual anomalies existing in many species, seems simply a random variation-an element of profusion in creation. It seems that the ordered randomness of God's creation applies to sexuality as well. This in no way disturbs or diverges from the basic tendency and purpose of sexuality, nor from the pattern and order of the universe. It is simply another example of the integration of apparently disparate realities within the cosmos.

Given this new frame of reference, it may be shown that the Old Testament and Pauline injunctions against homosexuality may be taken as both accurate and true given the assumptions at the time of their writing. Heterosexuality is clearly the necessary and prevailing pattern upon which depends the continuation of biological species. In this perspective, Christian theology can readily assimilate new data without detriment to the Genesis story or to any other Scripture.

God's creative act through cosmic and biological evolution is, like everything else God does, mysterious and almost—but not quite-beyond comprehension. While we await final answers in the transformed cosmos of the eschaton, theology must attempt to understand and to integrate everything discovered at every step along the way until "we shall know even as we are known."

In this way a theological path is now open to a resolution of the conflict within our church. Liberals now have a theological point of reference from which to explain their stand on homosexuality and the Robinson election. Conservatives have an expanded theology, biblically based and perfectly orthodox that would allow them at the very least to tolerate these new developments as being within the ambit of what is allowable to the Church.

I believe the principles of "probabalism" in traditional moral theology allow for this position. Conservatives, though not happy with it, should be able to live with a legitimate probable opinion, while waiting to see whether it will be "received" by the Church as all theology must be. This is simply another instance of the ancient principle "faith seeks understanding," and its reciprocal "understanding in turn seeks faith."

The Sinfulness and Scandal of the Robinson Controversy

People on both sides are willing to further divide the Church over the Robinson issue. They do this on the basis of "principle." They are misguided in this. Jesus demanded that his followers be one even as he and the Father are one. Paul demanded the unity of the Church. The unity of the Church is related to its essential constitution. Church unity is a consequence of the unity of God within the Trinity. It flows immediately from the fact that we are all baptized together "into Christ Jesus." It is a gift of the Spirit who accomplishes in us what was done first in Jesus Christ, crucified, dead and risen. Church unity is essential if we are to proclaim the Gospel effectively. Disunity and strife present major impediments to the divine mandate to preach the Gospel and to live out its implications in love and service to others.

When I was in the missions in Japan, it was clear that the great obstacle to proclaiming the Gospel there was the divisions among Christians. This is now true in the U.S. as well. A major reason for the evolution of unbelief in western societies was the scandal given by centuries of religious wars. Today's rancor in our Church now approaches scandal. Now in the ascendancy, the liberal wing seems intent on imposing its will through political power, even inviting those who disagree to leave. Though platitudes about the importance of loving dialogue abound, there is little evidence of anything beyond cynical power plays. The question then becomes: if the Church differs so little from other institutions in society, why belong to it?

The election of anyone to the office of bishop is a secondary and relatively insignificant matter. Not long ago we debated whether bishops are of the esse or only the bene esse of the Church. Unity among the disciples is far more important than election to any office in the Church. At the core of the Gospel message is the unity of the Body of Christ. He is the head, we are the members. Diversity in the Church coincides with and is consequent upon its unity.

Orthodoxy vs. the Prophetic Voice?

Liberals seem to believe they represent the "prophetic" voice in our time because of their stand on homosexual issues. The word "prophetic" has been applied to those who endorse Robinson. But this devalues that biblical/theological term. What we have here is probably a necessary intra-church adjustment of whom we ordain. This is an adjustment which goes in the same direction as the contemporary cultural movement, not counter to it. It will hopefully enhance the lives of people and will deepen our knowledge of Scripture and expand tradition. But it is not prophetic.

The prophet stands against the culture in the name of God and calls it to task. Prophecy takes real risks. It does not operate in comfortable circumstances. Authentic prophets are usually in jail, on the margins of society-or dead. They speak the truth to power, and power wants to get rid of them in a hurry. Real prophets are few. The liberals in our diocese are not among them.

Conservatives have taken to calling themselves "orthodox," with the implication that liberals are not. But wait. We are now aware that knowing and doing are not as separate as we once thought. We know things in many more ways than we previously understood. So we must now recognize that orthodoxy and orthopraxis are inseparable and interrelated.

Traditionalists, assume to themselves alone the mantle of orthodoxy. This is arrogant and self-righteous. It is also untrue, for their orthopraxis, and hence their orthodoxy is no better than that of liberals. We have here neither prophetic voices nor orthodox guides, but an absence of charity. Very recent developments in the diocese of San Diego, involving the departure of several parishes, involved lying to the bishop, deceit, and apparently also some financial chicanery.

No Sense of Common Mission?

The disruption caused by the Episcopal Church within the wider Anglican Communion may have roots antecedent to the ordination of Gene Robinson. A recent article in The Anglican Theological Review suggests that there is a "missiological background" to the crisis. According to this author, the Episcopal Church has not been sufficiently engaged in "meaningful participation in the ongoing lives of other provinces." As a result ECUSA has not really understood other Anglican churches as it should have. The author believes that long before Lambeth 1998, conversations focused on “recognizing diversity” became an "anemic surrogate for incarnate forms of engagement with the wider Communion."

Having already lost interest in the life of the wider Communion, General Convention 2003 was just another example of patronizing American ecclesial imperialism. The author also notes that had there been more effort toward biblically based examinations with a shared Eucharistic life together, things may have been different. "The issue is now seen as a sterile contest between the authority of Scripture on the one hand and human rights on the other, which seems much like a re-labeling of a prior debate going on within American society."

I have no way of knowing whether this view is correct. But when applied to our diocese where there is no trans-parochial shared Bible study/reflection/prayer and there is no common mission, it is certainly relevant here. Each parish is a bastion unto itself. People make commitments to the diocese of time, money and support for diocesan programs, but there is no inter-parochial exchange at a deep level.

There is also a lot of mean-spirited factionalism, mutual suspicion, backbiting and gossip. This may impede the work of some people on both sides who have tried to initiate real dialogue. In a society becoming ever more coarse, bellicose and selfish, we can no longer be devoured by intra-church strife. The world needs us and the Gospel demands that we be about our mission.

Using the New Epistemology in Our Diocese: A Modest Proposal

Let's use the new epistemology and find out who is orthodox and who is not, who is really prophetic and who is not. Second Corinthians suggests a way.

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Cor 3: 17-18)

We can discern the truth of this neither through reason nor by our own power. Only grace enables us to see it—grace operating at that profound level which precedes thought, wherein we are grasped by God through simple apprehension. Because the entire person is enveloped by God, the transformation takes place in all dimensions of life, not just the cognitive.

This transformation includes our relationships within the Church. We each become aware, not only of our own reflected glory, but of the reflections of the same glory in our fellow Christians. This gathering of those who reflect the Lord's glory includes all who confess "one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism"-all of whom are sinners, all both orthodox and deficient in orthodoxy.

Being transformed into his likeness means acquiring "that mind which was also in Christ Jesus…who thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but took upon himself the form of a slave…and humbled himself becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross." (Phil 2: 5-11). This requires an active conformity to Christ, not just a passive acceptance of propositions.

So, I propose that we take direct action in our diocese to resolve this controversy by an actual test of orthodoxy, orthopraxis and the exercise of the prophetic voice of the Church. Let us begin with pulpit exchanges between different parishes of liberal and conservative clergy, preaching only on the Sunday readings. Because sermons are a traditional theological locus, the orthodoxy of the preacher will soon be judged by the congregation through the process of "reception of doctrine" by which the Church understands its faith.

Let us begin to meet together for prayer and Bible study in small groups, not in separate parishes, but as people of the diocese in random groupings from parishes of different persuasions. In this way we can test out our orthodoxy as ordinary members of the laos in this small section of the Church. Then let us begin to test together whether we actually do exercise a prophetic role by working together on some of the major social injustices in our area. Homelessness and poverty with their myriad manifestations come immediately to mind as arenas in which to work.

Let us do this regardless of what the National Church or the Anglican Communion or various groups within it do. I suspect these larger bodies have no more idea what should be done than we do. Because the Gospel always requires immediate action, let's begin to do these things right now. We can always tell the larger bodies what we are doing. If they wish to join us, they are free to do so. But let’s not wait for them. We are called to love and serve others and to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Let's get on about that business and let's do it now.

I believe this is exactly what our bishop is calling us to do in spite of recent events. It's time to get on about the real mission of the Church, given to us by the risen Lord.

Endnotes

See the magisterial work on this question: At the Origins of Modern Atheism. Michael J. Buckley, S.J. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987

See Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. James Turner. Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London, 1985.

See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962. A “must read” book in philosophy of science.

Lawes1.2.2; Folger Lib. Ed. 1.59.12-20 cit in ATR, vol 87, #2, p 255

Thomas Aquinas S.T. 1.103.7; 3.2

See especially: Stephen M. Barr. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 2000. John F. Haught. God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. Westview Press, 2000. Arthur Peacocke. Paths From Science Towards God. Oneworld Publications, Oxford and New York, 2001, also Theology for a Scientific Age. SCM Press, Ltd. London, 1996. John Polkinghorne. Science and Theology an Introduction. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1998, also The God of Hope and the End of the World. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002. See also Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe:….

Benedict XVI statement: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/international/europe/04pope.html

The Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2004, vol 86, no 2. Willis Jenkins, “Episcopalians, Homosexuality and World Mission,” pp 293-316.

See especially selections from http://www.ntwrightpage.com

The Fundamental Christian Position

1. Problems, questions and issues

May a Christian ever resort to violence? What does scripture have to say about this question? What does the history of the Church and theological reflection say? What are the real world problems?

a. Old Testament

The OT is replete with violence and commands by God to do acts of violence. Josh 6:17, Joshua 10:40 (annihilation of Jericho) killing malefactors at God's command (1 Sam 15:1-3) (Ex 32:27)

On the other hand the OT shows God as intervening without Israel's armies or fighting in Israel's behalf: the people are told not to fight. The entire Exodus story is one such case--this is the paradigm experience in the OT. Other examples: (1 Sam 5-6) (2Kings 18:13-19:36) Even Joshua won by divine intervention (Josh 24:12)

Problems from the OT: how to reconcile the Christian understanding of God with the violence of the God revealed in the OT; if God, the creator of all life commands or allows violence, can we ever assume to act in God's name?
American "civil religion" raises this question quite clearly.

The OT views peace as the product of the Messianic age: SHALOM is the major theme of the Messianic era.(Is 2:4; Micah 4:3)(Is 9:5-7) (Is 11:6-9)

b. The New Testament

The New Testament is clearly non-violent in its teaching. The life and example of Jesus is primary. Jesus specifically refused to do violence, told his followers to put up the sword when he was captured, died on the cross forgiving his enemies. (crucifixion narratives of all 4 gospels)

In the face of conflicting Messianic strategies among the Jews--some of which entailed violence--Jesus specifically chose a non-violent one and did so in the face of an occupation force which repressed the people.

Jesus' central teaching: (Mt 5:38-48) statement to Pilate about the nature of the Kingdom (Jn 18:36)But Jesus is not verbally or psychologically passive. (Mt 23:13-33) scribes & pharisees "brood of vipers." (Jn 18:19-24) he reproves the one who struck him.
Controverted NT passages

"render unto Caesar" (Mk 12:17; Mt 22:15-22; Lk 20:20-26) and its connection with the requirement to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29)

The meaning of Romans chapters 12 and 13: the complex passage on leaving vengeance to God, but being subject to rulers who are not "bearing the sword in vain;" repaying no one evil for evil, etc.

Cleansing of the Temple (Jn 2:13-19 and corresponding passages in other gospels) did Jesus use or advocate violence? what was his purpose? what kind of violence does that authorize us to use?

"wars and rumors of wars" (Mt2 24:6; Mk 13:7;Lk 21:9) does this mean that we simply accept war?

Soldiers in the NT (Mt 8:10 and Acts 10) as justification for killing which is the soldier's raison d'etre.

"buy a sword" (Lk 22:35-38) why does Jesus instruct his disciples to buy a sword when he later says that whoever lives by the sword dies by the sword? what is the purpose of the sword in this passage?

3. The Early Church life and teaching

Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Cl;ement of Alexandria, Cyrpian, Minucius Felix, Lactantius--Christian writers of the second and third centuries--all condemned Christian participation in war. The pagan author Celsus complained that Christianity was a threat to the empire because Christians refused to serve in the army.

There were Christian soldiers in the Roman army. Officers were supposed to sacrifice to the gods, enlisted men were not. Some Christian complaints to military stemmed from need to sacrifice to gods, but most seems to have come from teaching of Jesus against violence. Most Christians would not serve. Council of Nicea reproves soldiers who return to combat. Opposition was not so much to service in the army but to combat roles. Roman army acted as occupation force throughout much of the empire, though they brutally suppressed rebellion.

The Fundamental Christian Position

Mt 5:38-48. This coupled with Jesus' example of forgiving enemies on the cross and the entire thrust of NT faith enshrines the position of the Christian pacifist as normative. It derives directly from Scripture and was the position of the early Church. Soldiers served in the Roman army, but combat operations were not approved. Any position which differs from this must "show cause" for its existence. The pacifist position is related the Messianic age and the Hebrew notion of Shalom--Peace.

Shalom. The Hebrew word is very rich. It means Peace in the ultimate sense. This is the peace that passes understanding. It is the peace of God who is the author of peace. It is more than the absence of conflict. It has to do with wholeness and health, security and prosperity, comfort and joy, righteousness and justice, political and economic and spiritual well-being, all in their fullest sense. It is a right relationship involving self, fellow creatures, the creation and God. It is the vision of things promised and hoped for. It is eschatological in nature. According to Isaiah, shalom is the vision of the "latter days" when people will beat swords into ploughshares and that nation will not lift up sword against nation. It is a messianic vision.

Hebrew and hence authentic Christian thought cannot separate the latter days of the messianic age from the present day. It is the purpose of the religious community to work always toward the fulfillment of God's Shalom. The Christian must live in the world this way, but the Christian must also be a citizen of the world. Citizenship in the Roman empire by members of the early church was always dangerous.

4. The Just War Tradition

After 313 situation begins to change. The Church is freed from persecution and becomes religion of the empire. Rome declines and the "barbarian invasions" begin. The Germanic and Frankish tribes were very hostile and warlike, e.g. Attila the Hun or Alaric's statement before the gates of Rome:"I terrify you, Rome, with my bare hands, take a spear and hide yourself.")--and he did!

Augustine of Hippo (d.430) and other Christian thinkers develop the "just war tradition."

The "just war tradition" growing out of the problems of the early middle ages is also arguably legitimate. In it war can only be the "lesser of two evils" never a good. It attempts to bring about Peace in a different sense, expressed by the Latin word: PAX

Pax, peace in penultimate sense. It is the peace of the ordered political community that makes corporate existence a possibility. It is the absence of conflict, or its minimization. It has to do with proximate justice, compromise, half a loaf, negotiation, prudence, balance of power. It denotes more an impermanent state of affairs, than a permanent relationship. It is based on mutual agreement or contract, perhaps fragile, and is usually backed up by force. It symbolizes a temporary and at least adequate balance between order and liberty in the human community. 1

The just war tradition allows us to function in a very weak and sinful world by adopting the lesser of two evils when both choices are evil. Just war principles reflect this:

The pacifist tradition is "in possession" of the high ground as a Christian moral theory, given the clear New Testament teaching. However....given the changed conditions...?

Problem: Is it ever legitimate for a Christian to use lethal violence against another human being and still be faithful to the gospel of Jesus. The just war theory answers a reluctant "yes," but only under certain conditions. The reluctance comes from the realization that the New Testament endorses only non-violence. The question: how does a Christian live in a world of changed social conditions wherein violence seems sometimes to be the lesser of two evils--it is never considered a good.

The Christian moral presumption is always against war. War can only be tolerated as the lesser of two evils--it is never a good.

IUS AD BELLUM "Right to go to war." Obligations of the nation in making the decision to go to war. Whether the war is just or not.

a. war is truly a last resort. after all other means like negotiations are exhausted. war is the only possible way to restore justice.

b. just cause. war can be used only to defend against an unjust aggressor who threatens innocent life and the existence of the common good of a society.

c. right intention. only to restore justice, not for vengeance or angry reprisal.

d. war called by legitimate authority. only when society's legitimate authorities call for war. never an act of a mob

e. reasonable hope of success. if no chance of success, combat only brings about meaningless and useless slaughter of those who engage in it. must be a reasonable probability that the society will not be destroyed in the process.

f. non-combatant immunity. no military action may be aimed directly at that portion of the enemy's population which does not constitute a threat. non-combatant life must be preserved wherever possible.

g. proportionality. there must be some proportion between the violence and slaughter caused by the war and the purpose for which it is fought. the horrible evils of war may not exceed the reason for the war in the first place.

IUS IN BELLO "Right conduct in war." Obligations of the combat soldier. The moral aspect of combat operations.

a. non-combatant immunity. the tactics of war, combat operations must preserve non-combatant life as much as possible.

b. proportionality. the combat operational tactics must preserve some proportion between the violence and the goals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Michael Walzer. Just and Unjust Wars 1977;
Ron Sider, Richard Taylor. Nuclear Holocaust & Christian Hope. 1982
Allan M. Parrant unpublished paper 1983
James Turner Johnson. Morality and Contemporary Warfare 1999
Chris Hedges. War is a Force That Gives us Meaning. 2002
William P. Mahedy. Out of the Night:... 1986,1994,2004

For an update on just war tradition see: Mark Douglas. "Changing the Rules: Just War Theory in the Twenty-First Century." Theology Today. Jan 2003

ADDENDUM TO THE JUST WAR TRADITION

IUS POST BELLUM "Right conduct after war."

(Ideas from Michael J. Schuck, Associate Professor of theology, Loyola University, Chicago in The Christian Century Oct 26, 1994)

1. Principle of Repentance. Victors conduct themselves humbly after a war. Victors should show remorse for the price of war paid, not only by comrades, but by the vanquished. No nationalistic, ethnocentric celebrations of victory which disregard the profound pain of those on both sides. Distinction between celebrating the return of sons and daughters from war and celebrating the defeat of one's enemies. Distinction marginal: J.C. Murray: "in morality margins often make all the difference."

2. Principle of Honorable Surrender. Victors construct terms and method of surrender in a way that protects the fundamental human rights of the vanquished. No punitive terms like Versailles Treaty of 1919. Ideal: Joshua Chamberlain and the salute of defeated Confederate troops at Appomattox, April 9, 1865. This avoids degradation and desperation, desire for revenge on part of victors, allows vanquished to resume their lives.

3. Principle of Restoration. Victors should return to the battlefield to remove the instruments of war and assist in the repair of the social infrastructure (and also the physical infrastructure). Proscribed would be the neglect of the vanquished and disregard for the fact that for many innocent victims the war continues after the battles. (UN estimate that 105 million land mines remain in 62 countries.)

These principles expand the moral sensibilities of people who believe that war, while evil, is sometimes necessary for the protection of human life. Existing just war theory discredits war if principles not adhered to. Post bellum principles would do the same. Abuse of post bellum principles would call into question the victor's actual motives.

In addition to Schuck's principles I would add:

4. Principle of moral, spiritual and psychological healing of veterans and victims on both sides.

HOW HISTORICAL CHANGE HAS IMPACTED THE JUST WAR TRADITION
(suggested by the Mark Douglas article)

1. Technological changes: air war, the use of missiles, satellites, carpet bombing, ability to destroy civilian infrastructure. The death of non-combatants is much more widespread because of current weaponry. Question: Can these non-combatant deaths still be considered "collateral damage" or must they be factored in as intrinsic to the intention of those waging the war?

2. Political changes. Democracies and the role of the people in determining whether to wage war. (Responsibility for ius ad bellum is now more diffuse.) In this situation who has the authority to wage war? The executive, the legislature? The people?

Many present wars are actually not between states but "intrastate" types of insurgencies, revolutions and civil wars. (The colonial uprising in Boston in 1775 and the attack on Ft. Sumpter in 1861 are more distant examples)

Current moral questions arising from changed political conditions:

The Iraq war has apparently slipped into a civil war between Shiite and Sunni, with Kurds on the edges. The Lebanese government can clearly not control Hezbollah, which has widespread support among the people of South Lebanon. Hamas was democratically elected in Palestine. Who has legitimacy to start an insurgency and what are the conditions of injustice that bring about such a war? Can a nation-state legitimately wage war on an elusive group within another nation-state, especially one which cannot be controlled by its own government?

3. Economic Changes. The world now has a global economy with economic interdependence. Such measures as sanctions, embargoes, bloackades which used to be considered as steps to be taken before resorting to war, have now become equivalent to acts of war. Usually, the people who suffer most from these are the most vulnerable members of a society. An example: the sanctions on Iraq prior to the invasion of 2003 had been responsible for countless deaths.

THE ROLE OF THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY, REGIONAL CONSORTIA OF NATIONS, THE UN, NATO, THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS.

The just war tradition seems to be moving in the direction of requiring the a plurality of legitimate and morally responsible governments exercise constraint upon rogue regimes like that in Iraq, ultimately disarming and changing them through continued pressure. The UN seems to be the agency through which this will occur. Military intervention may, in extremis, be justifiable.

Because political and economic systems are now more fluid and inter-connected, there has been a moral shift away from the nation state as the final arbiter in many areas of life. Economic power within a nation can no longer be controlled internally. The movement and aspiration of peoples is no longer contained within national boundaries. Just war thinking has begun to recognize this inter-connectedness with the result that there is now a greater emphasis on seeking the consent of other nations. The ius ad bellum criterion of last resort is more clearly met when a body of nations and a wider spectrum of people decide that war is justified than when a single state makes the decision to go to war. The Nuremburg war crimes trials exemplified the belief that the opinion of other nations was crucial. The UN, NATO and the Geneva Conventions all embody this belief--and all were instituted at the behest of the United States. Both the ius ad bellum decision to wage war and ius in bello judgements regarding the conduct of the war must now take into consideration this wider body of judgement.

RELIGION AND WAR, INCLUDING AMERICAN CIVIL RELIGION

Clearly, religion continues to play a significan role in waging war. It is an open question whether it is truly religion at stake or political agendas which use religious idealogy as a cover. The misuse of religion, especially when separated from moral principles can screen out the kind of thinking required for real ethical analysis. Religion misused in this way can create a moral blind spot. This is expecially true in waging war. The just war tradition has not been rendered obsolete, but some religious undercurrents cause many people to believe that it does not apply to "our side."

American civil religion. We have invested our political system, our way of life with religious characteristics. We have given to them a sacred dimension through which we intepret our historical experience. Americn life is usually seen in terms of the New Jerusalem, city on the hill perceptions of our myth of origin. We believe we are still God's new creation (Novus ordo saeclorum on the dollar bill). We decided that transcendent goals lay at the heart of our own political processes. At the same time we contructed a model of God based on our own polity. Our political categories: law, justice, democracy became more than analogues. They took on the characteristics of ultimate reality. Of course, the corollary to this is our mythology of war. We do not fight wars, we fight crusades.

This has been a problem throughout American history, but it is now more virulent and dangerous than in the past. Those now in the ascendancy in the American government who began the war in Iraq clearly believe they are fighting a war of total good versus total evil. This represents an ancient philosophical dualism, but in the U.S., it takes the particular form of American civil religion. Given this context, just war analysis, though never more needed, becomes almost impossible to conduct because of the visceral opposition to real critical thinking.

JUST WAR, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ AND LEBANON IN AUGUST 2006

The just war tradition has never held the combat soldier responsible for the justice of the war, i.e. for any decision connected with the ius ad bellum, but only for his or her personal actions during the war, the ius in bello. The moral presumption has always been that citizens of any nation are justified in following their political leaders when they call for military action. Ordinary citizens who become military combatants are presumed not responsible for whether the war is just or not. This is a time-honored principle.

Examples: after World War II, the leaders of both Germany and Japan were held morally and legally accountable for what was clearly an unjust war, but no combat troops those who actually conducted the war of either nation were put on trial. This reflects international law and just war principles. But Vietnam veterans, on the other handx, were wrongly blamed for the entirety of the Vietnam war.

Afghanistan.

The United States, with justification, invaded Iraq to capture Osama bin Laden, disband Al Quaeda and their Taliban supporters and to prevent further 9/11 type aggression. This was in accordance with the ius ad bellum. Subsequent events in Afghanistan raise further questions, which will not be addressed here.

Iraq.

The argument for war on humanitarian grounds, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had oppressed, brutalized and terrorized his own citizens for decades has some plausibility. This was the justification for military operations in the the former Yugoslavia. In such cases, the proportionality between the violence inflicted and the end to be achieved must be weighed. Humanitarian intervention in places like China or Russia could never be contemplated because no humanitarian goal would outweigh the level of violence, death and destruction.

This argument was not made as a justification for the invastion of Iraq. The arguments that were made: weapons of mass destruction, the capacity to produce nuclear weapons were false. The aim which has come to be used as a justification, i.e., exporting western style democracy, fostering more benevolent governments in the area have also proven to be false.

The violence unleashed in Iraq, which was publicly predicted ahead of time by many astute observes, has certainly exceeded anything Saddam Hussein could have inflcted on his own people

This was also the case in Vietnam. The Communist regime was clearly ruthless and brutal, terrorizing its own citizens. But the massive violence inflicted on that country by the American military and the NVA/VC response to U.S. operations exceeded the bounds of any morally legitimate goal.

In the case of Iraq, the moral issue is further complicated by the fact that the U.S. was aware of Hussein's ruthless regime when it supplied him with weapons to use in his war against Iran in the 1980s.

It seems that at this point, the level of violence visited upon Iraq, the suffering of the innocent and upon the Iraqi people, the waste of American lives and the suffering of American military and their families is out of all proportion to any goal that could reasonably have been attained. The problem is that we are now in Iraq, so where do we go from here? The ius post bellum requires that we cannot abandon Iraq without assisting in its reconstruction.

Lebanon.

The bombing of innocent Israeli citizens by the Hezbollah is clearly immoral, but the Israelis have already inflicted more violence upon Lebanon than Hezbollah could possibly inflict upon israel. The fault lies on both sides, but the government of Lebanon cannot control Hezbollah. The United States insisted that Syria evacluate Lebanon. The U.S. also tolerated the Israeli incursions to capture Lebanese prisoners. The abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah was a strike against a military target. The Israeli response has been to target the entire population of Lebanon, including the Christians, who can in no way be accused of being Shiite supporters. The Israeli response has already rendered their incrusions immoral according to just war norms. The U.S., because it has the capacity to influence the situation.

Moral Responsibiliy.

Moral responsibility for military action in Iraq according to the ius ad bellum lies with the political leadership of a nation. In a democracy this leadership devolves ultimately on the people. The Bush administration and Congress bear the primary responsibility, but American citizens are ultimately the morally responsible parties. Passive acceptance of an unjust war amounts to complicity in it. Those who understand what war is (veterans) have an obligation to speak out. Those with power and influence (business and political leaders) and those who articulate and interpret events (the media) have a greater degree of responsibility than ordinary citizens, as do religious leaders.

Responsibility of Military Personnel.

Military personnel, citizens themselves, who are genuinely convinced of the immorality of war have the option of filing for conscientious objector status, but ordinary soldiers cannot be held to this kind of moral insight or action. Just war tradition has always held that citizens may without moral blame enter military service and participate in a war that their national leaders tell them is just and necessary. Military personnel, once on active duty are bound to follow lawful orders. An unlawful order, which the soldier is morally bound to disobey, refers only to those actions connected to combat operations, the ius in bello provisions of just war. Military personnel are never responsible for anything connected with ius ad bellum.

For this reason we must not hold active duty personnel responsible for the war in Iraq excepting those of flag rank who exercise political power (e.g. the Joint Chiefs). Therefore we should support the troops in the Gulf in every way possible. Military chaplains, even those who oppose the war, may legitimately serve the troops because these men and women have a right to have their religious leaders with them in combat.

The Mt. Soledad Veteran's Memorial in San Diego is located upon a hilltop overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Built with private funds but located on city property, it is topped by a forty-three foot cross, visible for miles. In 1989, the city was sued by an atheist Vietnam veteran to have the cross removed on the grounds that a Christian symbol on public land violates the principle of separation of church and state. The courts have agreed that this is the case and the cross must be removed by Aug. 1, 2006, or the city will face severe fines for each subsequent day that it remains. As a Vietnam veteran, I am strongly inclined to keep the cross in place. But, though this cause has a very powerful emotional appeal, as a Christian I realize that it may be spiritually destructive. I believe that this current local issue points to a much larger and more pervasive problem in American Christianity.

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (NRSV)

Reflection: Because it states that Christ Jesus "emptied himself," it is called the "kenosis" passage, from the Greek "ekenesen" (he "emptied" himself). It binds Christians to imitate this kind of self-emptying in our attitudes and actions toward others: "Let that same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus." This is a paradigmatic statement, a shortcut and a vantage point from which to view the entire New Testament: the beatitudes, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the mandate to love others as he has loved us, the admonition to seek the lower place, to lay down our lives for our friends, to turn the other cheek and many other texts. This text, Phil 2:5-11, is a summary of Christian teaching.

The lowest point in the self-emptying of Jesus is in verse eight. Jesus becomes obedient even to death on a cross. The kenosis/emptying of Jesus reaches all the way from equality with God to the most abject death on a cross. The cross is thus central to the redemptive activity of God in Christ. Kenosis for Jesus means leaving aside the form of God ("morphe theou") in order to assume the form of a slave ("morphe doulou"). This is more than mere poetry. The power of God is absolute while the power of a slave is non-existent. By voluntary subjection to absolute powerlessness, to suffering and death and to all the effects of human sinfulness, Jesus undergoes the fate of a slave and does so precisely on the cross. The transition is, as one author put it: "from the light of God to the darkness of death." The "way of the cross" for the followers of Jesus is in this way forever decisively defined.

Jesus dies. He can do no more. It is over. But then comes the "therefore." The vindication of Jesus is brought about by God. The upward movement in the hymn beginning at verse nine, is exclusively the work of God the Father. The transition upward is from slave to Lord. The One who was found in the form of a slave is now given the Name and the status that was his by right, but which he did not exploit. God has reversed the order of things. Jesus has undergone descent into suffering and death and through this ("dia kai") he is now brought into exaltation and is given his rightful Name. The exaltation/resurrection is entirely the work of God. This kenosis hymn encapsulates Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection while at the same time binding Christians for all time to have that same mind in them.

Any attempt on the part of Christians to bring about any kind of exaltation of Christ, of the Church or of cultural Christianity directly through political action contravenes this text. Though history is replete with attempts to do just this, each instance represents a capitulation of the basic Christian faith to prevailing cultural and political currents. This central New Testament passage precludes at the outset any form of Christian "dominionism" or political "exceptionalism" at that time or in any age to come.

What has this to do with the cross on Mt. Soledad? The cross, though not the earliest Christian symbol, quite rightly became the preeminent one. But it is a symbol that requires kenosis/self-emptying on the part of its adherents. To the extent that we do not have that same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, we subvert the meaning of the cross. We are called to empty ourselves and follow the way of the cross. If we use the cross as a tool to aggress upon others or to rally people for a political end, then we have turned the symbol into its opposite and have publicly distorted its meaning. This is true even if we suppose we are doing so for religious reasons. The cross has no legitimate Christian meaning save that of self-emptying given it by Jesus.

Christian history is relevant to the issue at hand. The earliest Christians had no power. They were periodically persecuted. They attracted adherents, not only by their preaching and writing and by the witness of the martyrs, but by their lives of service. One of the Roman emperors declared that the Christians cared more about the poor of Rome than he did. But when Constantine freed the church and established it, the public meaning of the cross became altered. "In this sign you shall conquer" is a slogan not derived from Philippians 2: 5-11, and is in direct contradiction to all that is embodied in that kenosis hymn.

By the end of the first Christian millennium, followers of Jesus were wearing the cross over suits of armor and were killing both Muslims and fellow Christians in "crusades." This was in violation of even the "just war tradition." This distortion continued through the Reformation and the wars of religion.

Constantine's unfortunate legacy of Christianity as the normative religion of the state passed into European and American history and was transplanted to the American colonies, becoming enshrined as a very persistent form of "civil religion." However much it might use Christian language and symbols, American civil religion bears little resemblance to the "kenotic" root of the Christian faith. Civil religion is now used blatantly and aggressively to impose political attitudes and policies both globally and domestically. As such, it has taken an idolatrous turn.

The preparation for a long, costly and aggressive "in your face" struggle to retain the cross on Mt. Soledad involves buying into this civil religion. They are prepared to further subvert the true meaning of the cross. The decision to fight this in court, to use taxpayer money to pay whatever fines are levied against the city is to subvert the true meaning of the cross. This is a city which cannot or will not adequately fund its police or fire departments, a city where public infrastructure is falling apart and the pension fund is in serious jeopardy. Those who would "save the cross" propose a misuse of public funds for a campaign that paradoxically subverts the true meaning of the cross. A waste of resources of such magnitude flies in the face of the Gospel requirement to insure justice, to feed the hungry, and the like. That this would be done in the name of the cross borders on blasphemy.

We need to remember that the "separation of church and state" enshrined in the Constitution, has worked very well for the church as well as for the state. We also need to remember that this principle was enshrined precisely because the bloody history of the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the years after the Reformation was transported to the colonies. Separation of church and state was absolutely necessary to ensure that this kind of violence could not occur in the fledgling nation. It seems that many among us have forgotten this history. With this fight over the cross, we move one more step away, not only from the Constitution, but from the very kenosis demanded by the Gospel.

If we are confident in our faith, we need not resort to the use of any Christian imagery for any political or national purpose. This use of Christian symbols can lead to physical violence.

A final comment for veterans. Much has been made of the fact that the Mt. Soledad cross is a sacred shrine for veterans. But the rhetoric used to retain it is aimed at veterans to protect "their" space. First of all, to those veterans who are Christians. We may be veterans, but we are Christians first. There are no true sacred spaces or shrines in Christianity. There are places that have historical significance for us as for anyone else. But our shrine is the risen Christ and his presence among us and in the world. The cross and our scriptures and our sacraments are all portable. They go with us wherever we are gathered together. Our sole task is to love and serve the world in his Name.

Remember. For those of us who have been there, combat experience makes it very easy to enlist us in just one more battle, even if it is only cultural. There is something about aggression that is addictive. It's like an alcoholic needing just one more little drink to face the day. If we can't sign up for a real war, we'll substitute whatever is at hand. This is very seductive, especially for anyone with even a touch of posttraumatic stress disorder. We don't get over PTSD by doing a little more aggression for whatever cause, even one that sounds as good as this one, We heal the spiritual wounds of war by becoming agents and instruments of peace. Don't get sucked in if you want to continue healing the wounds of war in your own soul. The only real antidote to the violence of war is for the combat soldier to do a smart "about face" and march in the other direction.

William P. Mahedy