They were just a routine set of emails ... the kind I've gotten dozens of during my decades at work in the Episcopal Fields of the Lord ... from our Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs notifying us that two dioceses -- Missouri and Lexington -- had received the necessary canonical consents to their recent elections of new bishops.
And ... I sat there for a minute staring at the subject lines before opening them -- wanting to just savor the moment and not lose sight of just how much this very ordinary, first-thing-in-the-morning email on a routine matter of church bureaucracy would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. And inconceivable a few decades ago.
It was another one of those moments when I thought of the words of George Regas ... who famously challenged us to "set audacious goals and to celebrate incremental victories."
We cannot yet say that we have reached the audacious goal of the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments when some dioceses still create separate and inherently unequal standards for access to the sacrament of marriage for same-sex couples and others still discriminate against LGBTQ people in the ordination process.
And yet the incremental victory of the election of Deon Johnson as the Bishop of Missouri is one to be celebrated. Deon is a awesomely faithful priest, pastor and person who will make a brilliant bishop ... and when he is consecrated on April 25th, he will among other things become the fifth openly LGBTQ bishop in the Episcopal Church.
Some of us lived through the height of the Inclusion Wars and the high drama of the constant threats of being voted off the Anglican Island (not to mention the Lake of Fire, which was also on our threat list) for the election of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003-- and we took our share of licks here in the Diocese of Los Angeles when we elected Bishop Suffragan Mary Glasspool in 2009.
And so the fact that Deon was elected Bishop of Missouri because the good people of Missouri and the Holy Spirit decided he was the right person for the job is one thing to celebrate -- but the fact that the wider church consents were received with dispatch and the news came in a regular old email just like it was the most ordinary thing in the world is absolutely an incremental victory also worth pausing to celebrate.
So congratulations, Diocese of Missouri. And Diocese of Lexington, too. Wishing you all nothing but best blessings as you begin new chapters of mission and ministry in your corners of the kingdom.
And we continue as a whole church toward that audacious goal of full inclusion, let's give thanks for all who have gone before us ... some of whom did not live long enough to get perfectly routine emails in their inbox like the ones I got yesterday. May their memories be for blessing ... and may we be given the grace continue the struggle until the work is finally done.
No comments:
Post a Comment