The Ongoing Saga of "As The Anglican World Turns":

If you're someone who binge watches As The Anglican World Turns, a new series of episodes have just dropped across the pond.

To catch you up, the Church of England has been immersed in a years-long initiative called "Living in Love and Faith" encouraging members to "grow together" on issues of sexuality, identity, relationships and marriage. A recent set of pronouncements by their bishops and decisions by their Synod have resulted in a change in CofE policy to permit the blessing of same-sex relationships.

It is a step that has predictably whipped up the ACNA and GAFCON schismatics into their customary ranting about heresy, apostasy and the irreparable renting of the fabric of the Anglican Communion. It is also a step that falls ludicrously and dramatically short of providing equity for the LGBTQ people, perpetuating de facto sacramental apartheid, convincing the increasing majority of Brits that the CofE is an irrelevant vestigial organ of an anachronistic past at best and a hotbed of hypocritical homophobia at worst.

And none of that has done anything to advance the theoretical mission of the church -- which is to proclaim the Good News of God's inclusive love for absolutely everyone made present for us in the person of Jesus ... who loved us enough to become one of us in order to show us how to love one another.

For those of us who have lived through the Anglican Inclusion Wars on this side of the pond, it feels eerily familiar for some and PTSD producing for others. Yes, we have crossed the Rubicon in the Episcopal Church and revised our canons to make the sacrament of marriage available to all ... but there is still work to do ensure that unfettered access to those marriage rites does not depend on the zip code in which you reside. And there is still SO much work to do protect trans people in general and trans youth in particular both in our church and in our nation.

And yes, where the CofE finds itself on the arc of history bending toward justice for LGBTQ people is just about where we were in 2012 when the Episcopal Church approved blessings for same-sex couples. But we didn't stop there. We appointed a Task Force on Marriage which worked from 2012-2018 to secure "marriage rites for the whole church." And in in 2022 we appointed a Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion "to continue our becoming “The Beloved Community;” a charism of which is a church that functions with equity and care for the whole body, including its LGBTQ+ members."

The arc of history is long and it bends toward justice, inclusion and equity ... but it doesn't bend by itself. It bends because we come together day after day, time after time, setback after setback, incremental step after incremental step forward ... refusing to rest until that kingdom come on earth we pray for every time we gather ceases to be something for which we pray and becomes something in which we live. And refusing to leave anyone behind in that journey.

So today my prayers go out to our siblings in the struggle across the pond -- lifting up especially Jayne Ozanne, Colin Coward and all those we have partnered and labored with lo these many years.

And my thanksgivings go out for all those on whose shoulders we stand as we continue to do this work -- this holy work -- to which we have been called. From Louie Crew to Barbara Harris to the innumerable voices of witness who have brought us thus far on the way.

La lucha continua ... the struggle continues ... and we are in it to win it. Because nothing less than the full inclusion of all God's beloved in the Body of Christ is good enough for Jesus ... or for us.

And now ... listen to the prophetic words of the inimitable Bishop Barbara Harris:

The Arc Doesn't Bend Itself: The Struggle Continues for LGBTQ Equity in the Church

So if you're following the debate across the pond in the CofE over blessings, marriage and whether or not LGBTQ people should be fully included in the Body of Christ (spoiler: not quite "there" yet!) just a little contextual reminder that way back in 1997 the Episcopal Church adopted Resolution D011, issuing a formal apology to "lesbians and gay men" for "years of maltreatment and rejection by the Church" and vowed to "seek amendment of our life together as we ask God's help in sharing the Good News with all people."
And it still took until 2015 to amend our canons on marriage and approve liturgies for equal use by same and opposite sex couples. And there are still a handful of dioceses where same-sex couples have to jump through hoops their opposite-sex siblings do not -- so we are not done yet.  

The arc of history is long and it bends toward justice/inclusion ... but it doesn't bend itself. The journey continues. The struggle continues. And we will overcome. Hats off to all who are engaging "Mother Church" in the good fight. La lucha continua. And we are in it to win it ... together!
==========
NYT Report: Church of England Will Bless Same-Sex Couples, but Won’t Marry Them

Image: Post-2015 TEC Marriage Register

25 Years and Counting

Twenty-five years ago today, God willed and the people consented and +Fred Borsch put his hands on my head and made me a presbyter in the church of God. And it seems like yesterday. And it seems like several lifetimes ago.

It had been a long and winding road to get to that moment (and today is not the day for revisiting that saga) but suffice to say when we got to that moment, I swore as God was my witness that I would never take for granted the privilege of being called to do this work in this place in this time with these people.

And twenty five years later -- while I've failed at more things than you can shake a stick at -- I've managed to succeed in that vow. I am so deeply grateful -- and still awed every single day at the gift of this vocation and the work I have been given to do.

And I hope I'm not done yet. While I can see the light of retirement at the end of the tunnel, I'm delighted to have the portfolios I have both in my roles as parish priest at All Saints in Pasadena and as Canon for Engagement Across Difference in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

I am also beyond thrilled and honored to have been asked to serve as the Chair of the Episcopal Church's Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion -- a new interim body resulting from Resolution D026 adopted at our 80th General Convention in Baltimore last summer. Proposed out of the Diocese of Los Angeles, the explanation for the resolution reads:

In 1976, the 65th General Convention of the Episcopal Church asserted in a resolution 1976-A069 that ”homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the Church.“ In the decades since its adoption, faithful witnesses to God's inclusive love have been working to make that resolution a reality in the Episcopal Church for all members of the human family, wherever they fall on the continuum of sexual orientation or gender identity. As the Episcopal Church continues the work of Becoming Beloved Community, it is time to bring that work from the margins into the center by archiving our history, auditing our present and recommending steps forward into our future.

The resolution was both adopted and funded (no small task!) with members preparing to begin their work in the days and weeks ahead. The first in person meeting will be held in March in Cleveland as part of the Joint Interim Bodies gathering.

It is truly a watershed moment for those who have been working since 1976 to make 'full and equal claim' for LGBTQ+ people not just a resolution but a reality in the Episcopal Church. And while there is inarguably still much work to do, the fact that the church has gone from arguing about whether to include us to strategizing about how to include us is something I couldn't even have imagined twenty-five years ago when we gathered at St. John's Cathedral on that chilly-but-sunny January day.

So Happy Anniversary to me ... and all my ordination day colleagues. A lot of ecclesial water under our bridges since that day 

===============

The full text of Resolution D026, including the scope of work of the task force is available here

And a list of members of the Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion is available here

Words of Wisdom from Three Wise Women

And the Word Became Flesh: Words of Wisdom from Three Wise Women
Christmas Day 2022 | Susan Russell | All Saints Church, Pasadena

And the Word became flesh … the scriptures tell us.
And a weary world rejoices … the hymn sings to us.

Familiar words Comforting words Christmas words
Words we’ve sung, said, and heard (many of us) for as long as we can remember …
maybe even before we can remember.

And so, on this Christmas Day in the morning,
it is the very familiarity of these familiar words
 that can become their challenge.

 It is the challenge to hear them … to actually hear them …
on this Christmas morning as words not just describing
a once upon a time long, long ago moment to us –
but as words that are for us –
words that are about us in this time,
in this place, in this moment.

And so on this Christmas day in the morning,
I want to add to the words we’ve heard
from our beloved ancient texts some words
from those I’ve come to think of as the Three Wise Women of Christmas:
Madeline, Marilyn, and Rachel ...
words that help lead us to claim the power
 to be the change we want to see in the world
still struggling to become the Beloved Community
God created it to be.

For as we gather this Christmas day in the morning
the world we live in is too weary,
the challenges we face are too great
and the opportunities we have are too enormous
for us to claim anything less this Christmas Day
than the full promise of what we gather to celebrate
with our prayers and our praises,
our hymns and our hopes,
our carols and our candles.

And what we welcome this morning
is nothing less than the promise of new life
in the birth of this Christmas baby.
We are called to wonder again
at the power of a love great enough
to triumph over death
as we claim a Christmas Truth 

greater than any of the traditions it inspires:
the mystical longing of the creature for the creator –
the finite for the infinite –
the human for the divine.

It is a longing that transcends culture,
religion, language and custom –
and it is a longing that is represented for us as Christians
in this Christmas baby
all wrapped up in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

The sudden, amazing, and incomprehensible gift of grace:
a God who loved us enough to become one of us
in order to show us how to love one another.
Loved us enough to become human
in order to show us how to become fully human.
Loved us enough to yearn for us
to become the creatures we were created to be
rather than settle for being the creatures we had become.

And the Word became flesh.

All the traditions we inherit
all the rituals we practice
all the customs we claim
are designed to point us to that truth.

As sacramental people they are for us
“outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace”
of God’s love come down at Christmas.

Poet, author, and life-long Episcopalian –
and our first Wise Woman Madeline L’Engle --
offers these words of reflection
on that great mystery of the Word made flesh
we gather to celebrate this morning in her poem “The First Coming:”

He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

And the Word became Flesh ... 

not because the world was sane or anymore ready for it
in first century Palestine than it is in 21st century Pasadena
where we struggle to make meaning
out of the violence, polarization and fears
that surround us in our beautiful and broken world.

And no one better to help with that “make meaning” part
than theologian and Wise Woman Marilyn McCord Adams
of blessed memory who reminds us:

"God not only creates; God resurrects. God makes the worst count for good by bringing life out of death. To be on God’s side, we must bend ourself to efforts that foster life, inclusive community, and creativity. Collaboration revives hope because it convinces us: we are safe because, and only because, we are loved by God!"

No matter what, we are safe because we are loved by God.

And that, beloved,
is the essence of the Word made flesh
we celebrate this Christmas morning
in the amazing gift of our brother Jesus
born of our sister Mary.

Which it brings me to the third of our Wise Women –
Rachel Held Evans – who offered these wise words
centering Mary in the miracle of the Word made flesh:

God trusted God’s very self, totally, and completely and in full bodily form, to the care of a woman. God needed women for survival. Before Jesus fed us with the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, Jesus himself needed to be fed, by a woman. He needed a woman to say: “This is my body, given for you.” … 

To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation— and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant.

In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us. God is for us … and made present among us in the Word made flesh in order to convince us that we are safe because we are loved by God.

And it is out of that safety –
out of the sure and certain knowledge
that absolutely nothing can separate us from that love –
that we can risk – we can dare.

We can be the change we want to see
in the world that is crying for change:
for hope, for light and for joy.

It is out of that safety that we can risk trying again:
countering the powers and principalities
of violence, discrimination, and fear
with love, justice, and compassion.
It is out of that safety that we can allow
the promise of being fully alive
outweigh the fear of loss and vulnerability.

And it is out that safety that can we dare to claim
what Howard Thurman calls “The Work of Christmas:”

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken, 

To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace to all,
To make music in the heart.

And so on this Christmas Day in the morning
I pray that you can hear the familiar words of Christmas
not as once-upon-a-time long-long-ago words
but as words that are for you words that are to you
words that are about you
in this time, in this place, in this moment.

And I pray that the words of the Three Wise Women
will continue to lead us all forward into God’s future
as we align ourselves with the grain of the universe --
the love that came down at Christmas
as the Word made flesh.

Because my brothers & sisters & gender fluid siblings,
the world we live in is too weary,
the challenges we face are too great
and the opportunities we have are too enormous
for us to claim anything less this Christmas Day
than OUR call – each and every one of us –
to become the word made flesh
as the Body of Christ sent out to do the work of Christmas.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.

Merry Christmas.
Amen. 

=============

Madeline L’Engle: The Ordering of Love (Writers' Palette Book) (p. 343).
Published in her collection A Cry Like a Bell (1987).

Marilyn McCord Adams: Ghastly Interruptions. 

Rachel Held Evans: Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu,
Wholehearted Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2021), 3–5, 6.

[Image: Lupita Three Wise Women 1 by Emily Lupita Studio]

A Thank You Note for The Respect For Marriage Act

Every week All Saints Church puts its faith into action on an issue in alignment with the Gospel values of love, justice and compassion. This week we’re sending a thank you letter to President Biden & congressional leaders for the Respect For Marriage Act, signed into law this week. Here’s the letter:

Dear Mr. President and Members of Congress,

We write today to express our heartfelt gratitude and deep appreciation for your leadership in the historic movement forward for LGBTQ equity represented by the signing this week of the Respect for Marriage Act.

As members of All Saints Church in Pasadena, we have been in the forefront of decades of struggle for LGBTQ equality — and this year we marked the 30th anniversary of the blessing of the first same-sex union in our congregation. Advocating for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in our church and for their equal protection in our nation has been a core value of our commitment to put our faith into action. And our commitment to that struggle is deeply rooted in our baptismal promise to respect the dignity of every human being.

As Christians we believe we have a responsibility to both act on that promise and to speak out and stand up when the faith we profess is hijacked and used as a weapon of mass discrimination against LGBTQ people. Religious liberty is a bedrock of our country and a right cherished by Americans of many faiths.

But disguising homophobia as religious freedom is not only a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus, it is a dangerous legal precedent. Religious liberty is not the liberty to impose your religion on everybody else – and equal protection is not equal protection unless it protects all Americans equally.

And so, while we celebrate together the momentous step forward represented in the Respect for Marriage Act, we also urge Congress and the President to continue efforts toward finishing the work by supporting the Equality Act – which would explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Many years ago, our rector emeritus George Regas challenged us to “set audacious goals and celebrate incremental victories.” The audacious goal of liberty and justice for all will remain aspirational in our nation until we finish the work of securing equal protection for those who have been historically marginalized. Nevertheless, we celebrate the incremental victory of the Respect for Marriage Act and offer our thanks to the President and Congress for their leadership in making it happen and pledge our continued support to them for the work ahead.

Faithfully,
All Saints Church, Pasadena

Equal Protection Is Only Equal Protection If It Protects Everyone Equally

Another Monday, yet another opportunity to listen to Nina Totenberg dissect yet another Supreme Court case deciding whether the equal protection guaranteed by the Constitution to all Americans equally protects LGBTQ Americans.

To paraphrase Bishop Barbara — who famously said “there’s no such thing as half-assed baptized” — there is no such thing as half-assed equal protection. But there is a definitive difference between the First Amendment protection of the exercise of religion and the ongoing effort to enable the imposition of religion.

And yes, I am grateful for the Respect for Marriage Act wherein DOMA is finally actually repealed and federal protections for marriage rights are provided EVEN if SCOTUS goes rogue and Kentucky or Ohio or Florida or pick-your state acts up.

It's both a backstop to protect extant rights and a beachhead to regroup and get the Equality Act through when we retake the House and get a filibuster proof Senate.

Nevertheless, it is exhausting to continue to have your life, your relationship, your family and your equal protection a subject of ongoing debate.

So it might be a good week to offer the LGBTQ folk in your lives a little extra TLC. And if you’re part of the rainbow tribe to offer yourself a little self-care. Because clearly la lucha continua. And there are miles to go before we rest.

Advent One 2022 – Hope Is Never Silent

May the words of my mouth and meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our strength, our courage, and our freedom.

"The first candle of Advent is the candle of Hope." And here we are again -- marking yet another trip around the sun and the beginning of another new church year ... marking it as generations upon generations have done before us ... with the lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath, the praying of the familiar prayers and the singing of the familiar hymns as we settle into the familiar time of preparation for the coming of our Lord.

And yet, perhaps what binds us most to those generations on whose shoulders we stand on this First Sunday of Advent 2022 is not the constancy of rituals and routines but the inevitability of change ... and the necessity of those rituals and routines changing and adapting as we move forward into the future evolving -- sometimes it feels before our very eyes -- and sometimes it feels like one step forward, two steps back.

It is into that cycle of both hope and change -- and yes, I choose those words advisedly and not lightly -- that we step as we cross the threshold into this new church year.

 And this year here at All Saint Church, one of the things that changes is the lens through which we will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the sacred texts appointed for our weekly worship.

 The churchy word for the cycle of those readings is "Lectionary" -- and this year ... as you may have read in our newsletter ... we are using "A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church" created by our scholar-in-community Dr. Wil Gaffney.

Earlier this week in her introduction the lectionary, Dr. Gayle Fisher-Stewart reminded us that this women’s lectionary for the whole church is for the whole church not just women … and not just Episcopalians… but for the whole church.

It is a chance for the church to read its sacred texts not for confirmation of what it thinks it already knows -- but to let the sacred text speak to it anew – to tell the whole story.

It is a chance to listen to how the story of God is told when the stories of women are moved from the margins and held in the center. It is a chance to tread into unsettled waters – unsettled waters that risk changes that are revolutionary, revelatory, and threatening.

And it is an opportunity recognize that in so doing we follow in the footsteps of the radical rabbi from Nazareth who loved us enough to become one of us in order to show us how to love one another by doing exactly what Dr. Gaffney is doing with this lectionary for the whole church … by centering voices from the margins and threatening the powerful in the center.

You remember the story. The one where Jesus had the soft launch of his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth and they invited him to read in synagogue that Sabbath -- so he unrolled the scroll and read from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
 because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
She has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 And then he got to his big finish: 

“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!”

… and they were all thumbs up and attaboy and
“Hey, isn’t this the son of Joseph … I know his folks!” …

... until he decentered them from the text
by centering a woman and a foreigner --
the widow of Zarephath and some guy named Naaman the Syrian.

And – as the story goes – “On hearing this, all the people in the synagogue were enraged. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him over the cliff.”

Beloveds, this is what happens when we follow the Jesus who treads into unsettled waters.

It doesn’t always lead to “nice sermon” handshakes at the door and likes on Facebook.

It leads to unsettled waters that risk changes that are revolutionary, revelatory, and threatening. And the threat is real.

In the words of biblical scholar Dr. Verna Dozier “Jesus announced that the kingdom of God had come with him and … offered another possibility to humankind. But since it is another possibility that threatens the existing arrangements the existing arrangements will bend every effort to destroy it: to water it down with religion or threaten it with disloyalty.”

Will bend every effort to destroy it.

When you “threaten the existing arrangements” the existing arrangements can and will do whatever it takes to destroy that threat.

The existing arrangement of White Supremacist Patriarchy will do whatever it takes to destroy the threat of sharing power with Black, Brown, Queer and Female people – including dismantling democracy and replacing it with oligarchy if necessary.

The existing arrangement of cisgender heteronormativity will do whatever it takes to destroy the challenge of transgender and non-binary people seeking to speak their own truth and live their own experience of gender identity – a challenge we see in sharp relief in the onslaught of anti-trans and “don’t say gay” legislation across our nation.

The existing arrangements within the church are designed to keep people conveniently & perpetually in need of a forgiveness that only the church can provide will do whatever it can to hold onto its power by marginalizing and dismissing theologies and narratives that challenge it.

And the existing arrangement of Church-aligned-with-Empire will literally do whatever it takes to destroy any threat to its power – which is what accounts for the rising tide of Christian Nationalism in our nation and in our world.

 Nevertheless, we persist.

And on this First Sunday of Advent
we celebrate not only that there is both hope and change –
we celebrate that there is hope IN change.

And we claim the vision represented in the graphic on our bulletin cover this morning …

May we grow back not to what was but to what we might become

… because we follow a radical rabbi from Nazareth
who is about both hope AND change.

Hear again these words from poet Alice Walker:

 The world has changed:

Wake up! Give yourself the gift of a new day.
The world has changed:
This does not mean you were never hurt.
The world has changed: Rise!
Yes & shine!
Resist the siren call of disbelief.
The world has changed:
Don’t let yourself remain asleep to it.

Our challenge this Advent season is to resist the siren call of disbelief that our hope can change anything … because it not only can – it does

 It is to claim the hope we find in the telling and re-telling of the stories of our spiritual ancestors -- even as we frame and re-frame their telling by centering historically marginalized voices.

It is to continue to pray for the grace to cast away the works of enslavement and be clothed in the hope of liberation.

And it is to embrace the promise in today’s reading from Romans:

Hope that is seen is not hope.
For who hopes for what is seen?
But if we hope for what we do not see,
we wait for it with patience. 

And while we wait – with patience – we remember that another Radical Rabbi – Rabbi Abraham Heschel – famously said ““Patience, a quality of holiness may be sloth in the soul when associated with the lack of righteous indignation.”

We can be patient – and indignant.
We can be patient – and persistent.
We can embody both change – and hope
Because hope will never be silent.

Hope will never be silent.

Today we mark the forty-fourth anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk – member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a national gay rights leader. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down in City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor. Mourning and riots throughout San Francisco followed news of the assassinations and White’s subsequent conviction for manslaughter rather than murder.

Nevertheless, the message Harvey Milk proclaimed forty-four years ago still preaches to us today:

“You have to give them hope.
Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow,
hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great.
If there is a message I have to give, it is this:
that you have to give people hope ...”

And so on this First Sunday of Advent in the Year of Our Lord 2022
for all the daunting challenges there are still to face
for all the work there is yet to do
for all the changes that stand between us
and the Beloved Community God would have us be,
let us remember today that
we are where we are today
because of those who believed in the hope in their hearts
enough to risk the threats from “the existing arrangements”
in order to live out that hope in the world. 

Hear again the words of Alice Walker: 

The world has changed:
It did not change without your numbers
your fierce love of self & cosmos
it did not change without your strength.
The world has changed:
Wake up! Give yourself the gift of a new day.

And then let us pray: 

Come, O Christ and dwell among us! Hear our cries, come set us free.
Give us hope and faith and gladness. Show us what there yet can be.

Set us free to be the change you call us to be.
Set us free to live your love.
Set us free to be your justice.
Set us free to journey into the adventure of God’s future this Advent and always.

Set us free to proclaim the Hope that will never be silent.
Amen.