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Will the Center Hold: The Crisis in the Anglican Communion

by

Father Dan Handschy

from a Sermon delivered on the
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 19 October 2003
Church of the Advent Crestwood, MO

Proper 24B
Isaiah 53:4-12
Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:35-45

In Sunday School, I received a very idealized picture of the early church. Jesus had gathered around him chosen disciples, to whom he passed on teachings about his own purpose in God's economy of salvation, and about his own death. After his resurrection, those same disciples became apostles and began evangelizing the world.   Everywhere they went, the content of their proclamation was the same.   Because of the truth of what they proclaimed, their mission was wildly successful.   Many suffered because of the threat they posed to the Roman Empire.   This state of affairs prevailed until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. Then, all bets were off.   The church began to be corrupted by Empire, reaching a dubious compromise with power.   In the Sixteenth Century, brave Martin Luther saw his way clear to correcting the corruptions, but didn't quite go far enough. Reformer after reformer came along and succeeded in bringing the church a little closer to the New Testament ideal. Of course, the church I belonged to had been most successful of all churches to date in returning to that ideal.

I realize now that this picture is seriously flawed.   There never was an ideal period in the history of the church.   It is safe to say that there never really has been a single church.   The only real unity the church has enjoyed is that forced on it by Constantine.   To serve the purposes of Empire, he needed a common definition of the faith.   He gathered all the bishops together, and essentially held them captive, until they drafted the first version of the Nicene Creed.   Even among those closest in time to Jesus, differences of opinion about the significance of Jesus' teaching and of his death arose almost immediately.   As time went on, those differences grew deeper.   The church, if we can speak of such, was fractured from the beginning.

The Anglican Primates met at Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, on Wednesday and Thursday of this last week. They issued a statement at the end of that meeting.   The Primates state that the meeting led them to a new and deeper commitment than ever before to work together in proclaiming Christ's Good News to the World.   They also confessed tension within the communion.   They are not sure what will be the outcome of recent events in the Anglican Church.   Will some provinces consider themselves out of communion with the Episcopal Church (USA) if Gene Robinson is consecrated bishop?   They don't say clearly, but they do say that in some provinces he will not be considered a bishop.   There is a real possibility of rupture within the church, although it is nothing new:   those same provinces don't recognize the women bishops of ECUSA.

It's not the first time.   The New Testament itself records in several places an "extraordinary" meeting of important people.   The Book of Acts (Chapter 15) describes what has been called the Jerusalem council, probably not 20 years after Jesus' death.   Paul and Barnabas travel to Jerusalem to meet with Peter, James and and the other apostles.   After frank discussion (diplomatic code for a shouting match), they reach an agreement that Gentile converts to christianity need not first be circumcised nor required to keep the whole Law.   James asks only that Gentile christians refrain from meat sacrificed to idols.

Paul himself, in his letter to the Galatians, records the events a little differently from the account in Acts.   Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem, and met with Peter and James for 15 days.   No decision was reached.   Fourteen years later, Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem again, this time with Titus, a Gentile convert to christianity.   Peter, James and John extended to Paul the right hand of fellowship.   Later, Peter came to Antioch, and used to share table fellowship with the Gentile christians.   That is, technically, he was in communion with them.   However, some men from James came down to Antioch, and argued that the Gentiles needed to become Jews first, in order to be good christians.   Peter was carried away by the argument, and withdrew from communion with the Gentile christians.   Paul and Peter exchanged sharp words, and never spoke again.   The communion of the church was ruptured.   Even Barnabas, Paul's trusted assistant, withdrew, and he and Paul parted company, never to speak again.

I guess being the church has always been a messy business.   The picture of the early church I received in my Sunday School years is sadly inaccurate.   The current situation isn't any happier.   What are we to do?   How are we to live?   Does the unity of the church trump the inclusion of the Gentiles?

Mark's community was largely Gentile, probably located somewhere in Syria.   Mark's community didn't have much use for the Jerusalem church.   The Jerusalem church, according to Luke's account, was waiting for the imminent return of Jesus and the establishment of God's reign.   The Human One would sit on God's throne in Jerusalem, and all would be well with the world.   Mark's christians, meanwhile, were suffering at the hands of Romans and Judeans alike.   Consistently, Mark portrays Peter, James and John, the reputed pillars of the Jerusalem church, as fools or worse.   Over and over again, they just don't get that the Human One must suffer. In the passage we just heard, James and John assume that Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem to set up God's glorious Reign.   In that case, it makes sense to wonder who will be his right- and left-hand men.  

Mark's Jesus suggests that God's Reign looks a little different from the promises of the past.   Mark's Jesus speaks of a cup and a baptism, instead of thrones.   The cup is clearly the cup of suffering which Jesus asks that God remove from him during the agony in the Garden in Mark's story.   The baptism is rite by which Gentiles became christian, that obliterated the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.   Mark's Jesus suggests that James and John must also join this wide-open community.

At the end of this saying, Jesus says that the Human One, the divine/human figure of Daniel's story, the one who will judge the earth for God, came not to be waited on, but to wait on others, and "to give his soul as a ransom for many."   In my same Sunday School training, I always assumed that meant that Jesus' death paid some terrible debt I owed to God.   We all know this particular theory of atonement:   Humans have sinned, and someone has to die to pay the penalty of the crime.   But only the death of a sinless human will do.   Christ dies so we don't have to.

But the metaphor Mark is using here is different.   In petty wars, victors took loot and as many important hostages as they could.   It was a way of supporting the economy.   They held the hostages for ransom.   The vanquished then had to raise the money to buy their king's or nobles' freedom.   If the vanquished needed their king back to raise the money, they could offer another hostage in exchange.   The word ransom in this saying applies to the sum of money raised.   What Mark is suggesting is a hostage exchange.   Death has captured us, and Jesus is willing to take our place in prison in order that we go free.   Then, Jesus is too strong to be held by death and frees all who are held captive.

Mark's Jesus enjoins the same kind of service on us:   "It is to be thus among you."   I don't know what will come of the current situation in the Anglican Church.   Will the center hold?   I do know that this is God's church, not ours.   There have been divisions from the very beginning of our history, yet here we are.   This will not destroy us.   I also know that throughout christian history, there have been those who tried to tell others how to be christian.   James and John wanted Paul's converts to keep the whole Jewish Law.   They wanted to sit on the thrones of judgment.   They wanted moral clarity.   So do we all.   The reality is messier.   Mark tells us that where the christian stands is in the stead of those held captive.   Which captives?   Those held at arm's length from the church because they are gay or lesbian?   Those understandably confused because of the apparent collapse of a world and a church that seemed sure?   The answer is yes to both.   Above all, God desires the freedom of all, and if God must be hostage in the stead of all, so be it.   Being the church has always been a messy business.   We will need God's wisdom as we go forward, wisdom that comes from putting ourselves in another's captivity in order that the other may go free.   Pray God give us the courage.