The Financial Crisis

I am not a Roman Catholic and I certainly don't agree with all the positions of the Roman Catholic Church. But when they get one right, I'll be happy to say it, and I think this letter from Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development to the Treasury Secretary and the Congressional leadership says the right things. My thanks to the Daily Episcopalian for posting it!

September 26, 2008

Dear Secretary Paulson, Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner:

The economic crisis facing our nation is both terribly disturbing and enormously complicated. I write to offer the prayers of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and express the concerns of our Conference as you face difficult choices on how to limit the damage and move forward with prudence and justice. As pastors and teachers, my brother bishops and I do not bring technical expertise to these complicated matters. However, we believe our faith and moral principles can help guide the search for just and effective responses to the economic turmoil threatening our people.

• Human and Moral Dimensions: This crisis involves far more than just economic or technical matters, but has enormous human impact and clear ethical dimensions which should be at the center of debate and decisions on how to move forward. Families are losing their homes. Retirement savings are at risk. People are losing jobs and benefits. Economic arrangements, structures and remedies should have as a fundamental purpose safeguarding human life and dignity. The scandalous search for excessive economic rewards even to the point of dangerous speculation that exacerbates the pain and losses of the more vulnerable are egregious examples of an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values. This ignores the impact of economic decisions on the lives of real people as well as the ethical dimension of the choices we make and the moral responsibility we have for their effect on people.
• Responsibility and Accountability: Clearly, effective measures are required which address and alter the behaviors, practices and misjudgments that led to this crisis. Sadly, greed, speculation, exploitation of vulnerable people and dishonest practices helped to bring about this serious situation. Many blameless and vulnerable people have been and will be harmed. Those who directly contributed to this crisis or profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done. Any response of government ought to seek greater responsibility, accountability and transparency in both economic and public life.
• Advantages and Limitations of the Market: Pope John Paul II pointed out that "the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs." But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied. Both public and private institutions have failed in responding to fundamental human needs. A new sense of responsibility on the part of all should include a renewal of instruments of monitoring and correction within economic institutions and the financial industry as well as effective public regulation and protection to the extent this may be clearly necessary.
• Solidarity and the Common Good: The principle of solidarity reminds us that we are in this together and warns us that concern for narrow interests alone can make things worse. The principle of solidarity commits us to the pursuit of the common good, not the search for partisan gain or economic advantage. Protection of the vulnerable “workers, business owners, homeowners, renters, and stockholders" must be included in the commitment to protect economic institutions. As Church leaders we ask that you give proper priority to the poor and the most vulnerable.
• Subsidiarity: Subsidiarity places a responsibility on the private actors and institutions to accept their own obligations. If they do not do so, then the larger entities, including the government, will have to step in to do what private institutions will have failed to do.

This is a challenging time for our nation. Everyone who carries responsibility should exercise it according to their respective roles and with a great sensitivity to reforming practices and setting forth new guidelines that will serve all people, all institutions of the economy and the common good of the people as a nation. This includes not just the leaders of the economic life of our country. It means the political leaders and all those whose own expertise can contribute to a resolution of the current situation.

Our Catholic tradition calls for a "society of work, enterprise and participation" which "is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied" (Centesimus Annus). These words of John Paul II should be adopted as a standard for all those who carry this responsibility for our nation, the world and the common good of all.

Sincerely,
Most Reverend William F. Murphy
Bishop of Rockville Centre
Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development

I have heard some conservative commentators talking in the last few days about the "market" and how "the market must be allowed to work its will". I suggest that such worship of the market system is idolatry. We should leave God as our only object of worship.

"A New Heart and a New Spirit"

[Our lessons today were Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32, Psalm 25:1-8, Philippians 2:1-13, and Matthew 21:23-32.]

Ezekiel was a prophet of the Babylonian exile in the Sixth Century B.C.E., and he speaks in a time of change for the people of Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem—where God lived—has been destroyed and the people scattered, with some of the elite taken away to Babylon. When they are forced to worship without having the Temple and in a place far from God’s Promised Land, major changes in their thinking result.

Until now, Israel, like other Middle Eastern cultures of the time, believed in tribal responsibility for wrongdoing. This concept of holding all members of the tribe personally responsible for the acts of its members is exemplified by the proverb quoted here: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

Ezekiel, speaking for God, establishes a new principle: because all life belongs to God, it is unfair to punish others for one person’s wrongdoing. This principle of personal responsibility for one’s actions leads to a statement of the importance of repentance. If you are being held responsible for the sins of others, your personal repentance of sin isn’t too useful. However, God says through Ezekiel that if you turn from your transgressions and get “a new heart and a new spirit”, you will live.

We aren’t very big on personal responsibility these days. “It’s not my fault; it’s because of where I was born or my social status or something that takes the responsibility for my actions off my hands.” I read a column this week about the proposed bailout of the financial system, where the author said that he wanted the bankers and others who lost this money to simply say “I’m sorry” and mean it, because their recklessness has had a horrible cost. They were horrified at the very idea—one even said to him, “I guess you want us to grovel”—of accepting any degree of responsibility for their actions.

Our Gospel lesson from Matthew could stand some context. This takes place during Holy Week. Jesus has already attacked the moneychangers and sellers of animals in the courtyard of the Temple, not, by the way, because the moneychangers and sellers were bad per se. The moneychangers were necessary to convert the Roman coins with the emperor’s likeness on them to more acceptable Jewish coins. The animals needed to be sold to serve as sacrifices in the Temple worship. Jesus wanted to stop the moneychangers and sellers to stop the Temple worship as a protest against the way that the Temple authorities had become a part of the domination system and had become a “den of thieves.” When the chief priests and the elders ask by what authority Jesus is doing “these things,” they are referring to his actions in Holy Week.

Jesus tells this parable of two sons (which is found only in Matthew’s Gospel). The father asks his two sons to go work in the vineyard. One says he won’t, but then changes his mind and goes to work. The other says he will, but doesn’t. The Pharisees correctly say that the first son is doing his father’s will, but they obviously missed how the parable applies to them.

When Jesus says that the tax collectors and prostitutes will go to heaven before them, it isn’t because their answer to Jesus’ question is wrong. It is because they are saying the right things, but not doing them. When God, speaking through John the Baptist, asked the Pharisees to do His work, they might have said they were, but they clearly didn’t do it. They were like the second son. The tax collectors and the prostitutes, like the first son, changed and got themselves “a new heart and a new spirit”. The Pharisees instead remained focused on the laws that secured their own power.

What about us? Are we giving God the right answers with our mouths, but not living up to what we say? Do we say one thing here in Church on Sunday and live some other way outside? A critical point to take away from this parable is that truly being a follower of Christ is not about we say, it is about what we do and how we live. As Paul tells us in his letter to the church in Philippi, we are called to be of the same mind as Jesus—a mind of love, humility, and reconciliation.

We often hear that if we posted the Ten Commandments in public places or had public prayer in schools, things would be better and people would change because of it. But, isn’t that relying on what we say to cause change? Rather than saying prayers in schools or seeing the Commandments on the wall, let’s try living the Greatest Commandment—to love our neighbor as we do ourselves.

Fairness

[Our readings today are Jonah 3:10-4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30, and Matthew 20:1-16.]

Anyone who has more than one child or anyone who wasn’t an only child has more than a passing relationship with “fairness.” My mother used to tell a story of how, after my younger sister was born, my sister and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, to say the least. At her wits’ end, my mother went to our pediatrician and asked what was wrong with us. His reply surprised her: “Mrs. Davison, you were an only child, weren’t you?” And, of course, she was!

We are very concerned with “fairness” and “justice” in life, especially when we feel that we have gotten the short end of the stick. Most people don’t raise issues of fairness when they are favored. I heard a story about a poster that had three fish on it—a large fish, a medium fish and a small fish. The large fish is thinking, “There is justice in the world!” as it’s about to eat the medium fish. The medium fish is thinking, “There is some justice in the world!” as it’s about to eat the small fish. The small fish is thinking, “There is no justice in the world!” I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

In the parable we read today, the landowner pays the same daily wage to everyone whether they came at the beginning and worked all day or came at the end of the day. How outrageous! How unfair! Shouldn’t the ones who work longest and hardest get more as they clearly deserve? Don’t we say “the early bird gets the worm” and “God helps those who help themselves”?

But God isn’t “fair,” at least not by our standards. As a priest said about this text, “I am so glad that God isn’t fair. If God were fair and gave me what I truly deserve, I would be tortured slowly before being consigned to hell forever.”

In Charles Dickens’ wonderful story, A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge back to a Christmas party thrown by his employer in his younger days, Mr. Fezziwig. The Ghost notes Scrooge’s pleasure at the festivity, and comments, “A small matter to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.” When Scrooge protests that it isn’t small, the Ghost reminds him, “Why! Is it not! He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?” Scrooge responds, more like his former self than the cold mean thing he has become, “The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” And even as he says the words, he realizes how much he has changed since those happy days, before money became an idol to worship.

Our landowner is a man very much like Mr. Fezziwig—eager to employ people, but also generous even to those employed only for a fraction of the day. He never claimed to be fair; he says he is generous. Generosity isn’t about giving someone what he or she deserves; it’s about the freedom of the giver to give out of his abundance to whomever he chooses—not because he is paying a debt, but because he wishes to freely give.

God’s generosity was also shown in the reading from Jonah. Jonah is angry with God because God didn’t act “fairly” towards the wicked people of Nineveh. God has forgiven them, when Jonah wants God to be tough and judgmental—towards them, of course, like the early workers want the landowner to be towards the latecomers.

God is fair; he doesn’t give us what we deserve. None of us deserve salvation; God doesn’t owe it to us. But He gives it to us anyway. He treats us infinitely better than we deserve. God is like the landowner who pays the daily wage to all the workers and like Mr. Fezziwig who brings joy without counting the cost.

And what is that daily wage? Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Once there was a man who died and came to the pearly gates where Saint Peter greeted him. Peter, in addition in to carrying the keys, had a clipboard in hand. He said to the man, “Before we let you into heaven there are a few questions you have to answer and I have to fill out this form. We work on a point system here in heaven—maybe you’ve heard something about it. You tell me all the good things you’ve done and I’ll score your points—and when you reach a hundred points I’ll let you into heaven. OK?” The man thought for minute and then began to recite all his good deeds. “Well, I was married for over 50 years and I never cheated on my wife all that time; I never even looked at another woman with lust in my heart.” Saint Peter said, “Very good; better than most, in fact; that’s worth three points.” The man was a little surprised at the score, but continued, “I was very active in my church—I went every Sunday and I was a longtime member of the men’s group.” Peter said, “Excellent; that’s another point!” Exasperated, the man said, “My goodness, at this rate I’ll never get into heaven based on what I’ve done. I can only throw myself on God’s mercy.” And Peter said, “Oh, that’s a hundred points right there. Welcome to heaven.”

We get there on God’s mercy; not what we have done ourselves.

God’s economy doesn’t work as we seem to wish it would, rewarding those who work harder. Instead, God’s economy values us far more than our worth. Shouldn’t we try to follow His example?

Forgiveness

[Our readings today are Genesis 50:15-21, Psalm 103, Romans 14:1-12, and Matthew 18:21-35.]


We often have the wrong idea about forgiveness.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable of forgiveness. The parable is set in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not the afterlife, but it is a time and place, here on earth, where God’s justice is truly done. When the King’s servant, who owed 10,000 talents—a huge sum, like millions of dollars, could not pay his debt and asked for more time, the King forgave the debt completely! But then, the servant was himself owed a hundred denarii—just a few dollars in today’s money—and refused to forgive the debt! The King, learning of this, handed the servant over to be tortured until the entire debt was paid!

Such are the consequences of failing to forgive. When asked by Peter how many times we should forgive, Jesus says seventy-seven times. This is an idiomatic way of saying as many times as we need to. We are always called upon to forgive.

We often act as if we can only forgive someone who has wronged us if they have repented in some way. Forgiveness isn’t easy, because we have been truly wronged and it hurts. Isn’t our hurt, our pain, righteous and just?

This week, we remembered the seventh anniversary of a great wrong—the evil attacks of September 11, 2001. We remembered the victims: those who died, those who were maimed in body or spirit or both, and those whose lives were changed forever by the loss of loved ones.

But we need to remember September 11, 2001, as an event that challenges us to forgive. We aren’t called to forgive for the benefit of the perpetrators of those awful deeds, but for our own.
We pray for this in every service of our church in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Our sins, our debts, are forgiven, only to the extent that we forgive others. Remember the servant, who was forgiven his great debt only as he was willing to forgive a small one.

While it is a good thing when someone who hurts us asks our forgiveness, what if they don’t? Do we hold on to our anger, our pain and say we can’t forgive unless they apologize?

There are many stories of people who will not let anger go, especially when their cause is just. What have they gained with their anger? Sorrow, bitterness, loneliness, physical and mental pain. We believe that when we are hurt we must be compensated. We say, “Don’t get mad, get even!” Sometimes we claim the role of God, who said “Vengeance is mine”—that is God’s—“I will repay.”

After September 11, some felt that we need to take action in reprisal and, to some extent we did, when we invaded Afghanistan. In many ways, that could be justified as removing from power an evil regime that supported the perpetrators. But many of us saw our role as avengers, that we were punishing evil, forgetting that vengeance is God’s role. But, some of bitterness and pain we felt over 9/11 caused us to do things which we can not justify. How do we square some of the things we have done as a nation over the last seven years with the promise in our Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every person”? Might not some of these misdeeds of our own been avoided had we been willing to forgive?

Does forgiveness mean forgetting what has happened? No. Even when we forgive, we may not forget and perhaps should not forget. But when we begin the healing process—the process of reconciliation—by forgiving, we are reminded that we have already been forgiven ourselves. We need to remember the importance of forgiveness in our lives and not the least, here in St. Christopher’s.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to see a concrete example of forgiveness that should inspire us. On November 14, 1940, the medieval cathedral in Coventry, England, was destroyed by the German Air Force in a raid that did horrible damage to the city and took many lives. When a new cathedral was built, part of the shell of the old cathedral was left standing. Behind the altar, on the ruined wall was placed the words: “Father Forgive”. If out of the pain and grief of that war, those people could forgive that debt of 10,000 talents, how can we do less and not forgive that debt of a hundred denarii?

9/11

The events of seven years ago today are still very strong in my mind. I remember how that Tuesday morning was beautiful bright and clear here in Georgia, as it would be in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. I was walking down the hallway of the Headquarters building at Robins Air Force Base (where I worked and still do) when one of the young captains said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. Several of us watched on a small portable TV with bad reception as the horrors of that morning unfolded.

Its hard to understate the fear that many felt that morning. Rumors spread of additional bombs and dangers. Our base was put on lockdown status with buildings locked up and workers confined to offices, even though at the time, I rather doubted Al Quida was much concerned with a base in rural central Georgia.

I truly can't imagine what the victims of 9/11 felt as they realized that this was no adventure movie and only death awaited them. The stories we would learn of fortitude and sacrifice enoble us all, yet I can't help wondering whether I would react well in such a time. I am grateful that, so far, this cup has not been presented to me. Nor can I imagine the grief and emptiness that faced the victim's families, who simply said goodbye to their loved ones as they did every day, not knowing that this would be goodbye for this lifetime. I have tried every morning to make my last words to my wife as I leave for work assurances of my love, so that if something awful happened, she might at least have that consolation.

We need to remember that the acts of 9/11 were the evil of men, not God, and that on that morning, God's will was emphatically not done.

Cost

[Our lessons were Exodus 3:1-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c, Romans 12:9-21, and Matthew 16:21-28.]


Last week, we got to hear about the Confession of Peter that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus’ statement that Peter was the rock upon which he would build the church. Today, we continue the story and Jesus tells the disciples just what being the Messiah and following the Messiah would cost.

And Peter, in his usual way, follows up his great revelation with a tremendous clanger: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”

There are several problems with Peter’s exclamation. First, it is based upon a serious misunderstanding of what Jesus being the Messiah really meant. To Jews of that time, the Messiah was to be a warrior king who would free the people of Israel from foreign domination. For the Messiah instead to suffer and be killed was unthinkable. Impossible! God simply would not allow that to happen!

Also, Peter’s objection overlooks the sacrifice that Jesus would have to make and the sacrifices that we ourselves are called to make. If Jesus’ sacrifices—suffering and death on the cross—are not made, there would be no resurrection!

Peter, like us, wants to avoid the cost—the pain, the unpleasantness, the rejection, the suffering, and ultimately, the death he himself would suffer in Rome. We ourselves want to remember Christmas and Easter and not think of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We are sort of like the story of the young man, eager to make it to the top, who went to a well-known millionaire businessman and asked him the first reason for his success. The businessman answered without hesitation, “Hard work.” After a lengthy pause the young man asked, “What is the SECOND reason?”

When Jesus delivers his crushing rebuke to Peter, “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things,” he is saying that is putting human ways of thinking—about the role of the Messiah, not wanting to pay the cost of discipleship—in the way of what God wanted.

We cannot do what Peter wanted, which was to take the cross out of Jesus’ life and death, because the cross is where God endured the greatest pain and suffering a human can endure. And because He did, he understands and shares in the pain of our mortal lives.


In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer asserted that there is a cost to following Jesus. We hope that we will not be called upon to pay the same cost that Bonheoffer did—a slow, gruesome hanging by the Nazis. There can be other kinds of costs, some petty, some large. We take up our crosses and we must be ready to endure what we must so that God’s work can be done. But we know that with God’s help, the cost will not be unendurable. [Note: in Westminster Abbey's Gallery of 20th Century Martyrs, Bonheoffer is on the right.]

But what we gain for that cost is beyond belief! If we are willing to give up our lives to save them, if we are willing to not hoard ourselves, we can have everything that truly matters. But, if on the other hand, we give up our eternal lives to gain worldly things, we will gain nothing of value.

In one of my favorite plays, A Man for All Seasons, the title character, Sir Thomas More has just heard Richard Rich give obviously false testimony which will condemn More to the block. When he is told that Rich has been appointed Attorney-General for Wales, he says, sadly, “For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!”


While Sir Thomas was executed by Henry VIII’s government, he has been honored for his integrity and courage and has been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, Richard Rich, who eventually became Lord Chancellor as Lord Rich and was a Protestant under the Protestant King Edward VI and a Catholic under the Catholic Queen Mary, may have died in his bed, but he became infamous.

Like Richard Rich, we can sacrifice honor and integrity for personal gain. But, Jesus makes it clear that the little we gain will be dwarfed by what we will lose—our opportunity to be with God in his Kingdom.

Change

[Earlier this month, our rector at St. Christopher's, Father Bill Anderson, announced his retirement at the end of the month. Our lessons were Exodus 1:8-20, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8, and Matthew 16:13-20.]

I’ve always liked St. Peter. He could come up with the most incredible revelation one moment and follow it up with the most off-the-wall comment in the next. A couple of weeks ago, we read how he impetuously got out of the boat to follow Jesus across the water. I remember cartoons from my childhood, like the Roadrunner, where the Coyote can walk off a cliff and stay up until he realizes he’s not on solid ground and down he falls. Peter was like that; when he saw that he was on the water, his fears overcame him and he started to sink. It was Peter who impulsively wished to build three tabernacles on the mountain of the Transfiguration; it was Peter who, just before the crucifixion, three times denied knowing Jesus.

But it was also Peter who, after Pentecost, risked his life to do the Lord’s work, speaking boldly of his belief in Jesus. It was also Peter, the Rock, whose strength and courage helped the young Church in its questioning about the mission beyond the Jewish community. He was first opposed to the baptism of Gentiles. But he had the grace to change, and to baptize the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household. Finally, tradition holds that Peter fled from Rome during Nero’s persecution. On the Appian Way, he is supposed to have met Christ who was heading toward Rome. Jesus told Peter, “I am coming to be crucified again.” Peter thereupon returned to Rome, and was shortly thereafter crucified, head downwards at his insistence. He said, “I am not worthy to be crucified as my Lord was.”

With his stumbling and his failures, Peter reminds us that even the chief of the Apostles was just as human, just as fallible as you and I. Jesus did not come among us to save the strong and godly, but the weak and the sinful—us.

This statement of Peter: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” is called the Confession of Peter. It even has its own date on our calendar—January 18. He is the first person to name Jesus as the hope of Israel. Before this, other than God, only demons had known who Jesus was.

Jesus’ response is famous: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This raises all sorts of questions of authority and our Roman cousins cite this as the basis for the authority of Peter’s successor as the Bishop of Rome—the Pope. I remember in 1978 finding it a curious coincidence that the day after Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected Pope John Paul I, I went to my Episcopal church and heard this passage read.

Of course, as Anglicans, we don’t accept the Roman interpretation that this reading gives a universal authority to the Pope. But it is important to us even so.

First, Peter—Simon up to now—is given a new name. Until this point, there is no record of the word for “rock”—“Cephas” in Aramaic or etros” in Greek—being used as a person’s name. Throughout Scripture, the changing of a person’s name is significant—Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul—because in that culture, when your name changed, you were changed.

Peter is the rock upon which the Church is built by the Lord. The other Apostles, the Fathers of the Church (and the Mothers), and all the saints of God have built and are still building up the Church in love and faith. One commentator said that Peter is “Rocky I” and so, you are “Rocky 5 Billion” with the same director, the same plot and a larger cast. Even as Peter was called, so are we. Through us, Christ continues to be present to his world.

This Church is more than buildings, more than organizational structures like Dioceses and Provinces. It is more than a group of people sitting and worshipping with us today. It is a divine mystery greater than we can imagine reaching throughout space and time joining us all together—a Jewish fisherman in the First Century in Palestine and a lay preacher in Georgia in the 21st Century—in a continuity of faith, tradition, of doctrine, and of people.

That continuity is what we will refer to momentarily in the Creed when we say we belong to “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”. We claim a connection to the Apostles, most notably through our bishops, whose consecrations are traceable back in a nearly unbroken line to the Apostles. With each baptism, each new birth into the Church, Jesus makes us a new “Peter”, a new rock upon which the Church is built.

Fr. Herbert O’Driscoll uses a wonderful image for this. His idea is to look at all of the last 20 centuries as concentric circles of time. We are in the very outermost circle, farthest away from the center—and at the center is the Cross. We are brought into the circle, into the faith, in large part because somewhere, somehow, someone in the circle just before ours took us by the hand and said, “come,” and so drew us in. That is one very important reason why we are here. That person was able to do this for us because someone had taken him or her by the hand and had drawn that person in. And so on, through all the centuries, hands are held through all of those circles. Until we reach the place where a very few of those hands were held by hands touched by the mark of nails. So we hold hands touched by nails. In this way, Christ builds his church; such is the gift we have been given.

Remember what else Jesus says about His Church: “The Gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” No matter what happens, for good or for evil, God’s Church will prevail; we have that promise. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular parish or denomination will survive and prevail, but that at its most fundamental level, the Church will never fail. I find that very comforting when I think of all the things we men and women do and have done on a daily basis to destroy it.

I spoke a few minutes ago about a change; a change in Simon’s name to Peter, a change of great importance in that culture. We at St. Christopher’s are about to begin a process of change ourselves. Next week, we will say goodbye to Bill and Jane Anderson as they end their ministries among us—but not as our friends—and begin the exciting and terrifying process of examining ourselves and finding the right man or woman to join us as we move this parish into its second 50 years. This is Change with a capital C!

We generally don’t like change. We have our comfort zones—our boats, as it were. Father Bill is a known commodity to us. I can assure you, from the position of someone who serves at the Altar, it’s a lot easier to serve a familiar friend. We don’t like change.

On a summer day in 1995, I listened to the radio in my office in San Antonio, Texas, as the Base Closure Commission voted to close the Air Force base I worked at. The place where I worked was going away! Change with a capital C! I could have moaned about how I hated change and what would we do and felt sorry for myself. I didn’t do that. Instead, I accepted that change would come and opened myself up to new possibilities, including a move to middle Georgia. My family and I have found a home that we love far more than our home in Texas; a community of which we feel so much more a part of than we did in San Antonio; a parish which has over the last nine years opened itself to us in good times and hard times, and which has given me opportunities to grow in new directions in ways I could never have imagined! All this because, when change was inevitable (and, by the way, it always is), I was open to the opportunities to grow that change presents.

Change is coming to St. Christopher’s. It always is, to be honest, but it’s more obvious today. It is critical that we look for ways to make that change positive. We will then find new opportunities to grow in faith that we cannot imagine today. And you know what? So will Bill and Jane Anderson!

On the wall of one of the classrooms in my Illinois high school so many years ago was a quote from the former UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld,

For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.

Always say “Yes” to that which will come. For our Christian faith is a faith of change, not a conservative one. When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are praying for incredible, monumental change, so that we will be in a place where God’s redistributive justice is always done, the poor are raised up, the hungry are fed, and the captives are freed. The Resurrection is change, change to the previous finality of death. As Christians, we should welcome change; we should embrace change; we must work to bring change about.

Let us pray:

Almighty Father, who inspired Simon Peter, first among the apostles, to confess Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God: Keep your Church steadfast upon the rock of this faith, so that in unity and peace we may proclaim the one truth and follow the one Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.