Bishop Ted Eastman preached at St. George’s Church in Arlington, Va., yesterday, taking as his text, Luke 4:14-21 and the recent op-ed article by the Rev. John Yates, former rector of The Falls Church, and former parishioner Os Guinness. You will find the sermon beneath the continue reading tab.
An excerpt:
Following the example of Jesus, Christians are called to the never-ending task of revisioning. We Episcopalians who have no intention of leaving the church are, to be sure, revisionists. And so are dissenting and departing Episcopalians. Each entity continually attempts to interpret and apply scriptural and creedal authority to concrete situations in the culture that envelopes us. Such revisioning may lead to the revising of old notions, assumptions or understandings. Or it may not. It is interesting that both conservative and liberal Episcopalians have been led in the recent past to revision and revise their attitudes toward divorce and remarriage, once so narrowly proscribed by scripture and canon law.
Faithful people can emerge from revisioning processes with different – sometimes conflicting – perceptions. That should be no surprise, given the wide variety of human experiences. Nor should these differences be a barrier between Christians, as long as we all respect the spiritual gifts that God has given to each one of us. More than that, our various revisionings can, by the grace of God, challenge us all and help us all to move into deeper realms of the truth.
In order for there to be mutuality in revisioning, however, there must be a spirit of generosity which is ready to grant that other faithful individuals do take the authority of the Bible seriously, read it comprehensively not selectively, and apply what is revealed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the situation at hand. Of course, if any entity believes that it alone possesses the truth, then meaningful conversation is no longer possible.
FROM REVISIONISM TO REVISIONING
A Sermon by
The Rt. Rev. A. Theodore Eastman
St. George’s Episcopal Church
Arlington, Virginia
The Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 21, 2007
Texts: Luke 4: 14-21; Matthew5:1-7:27
Two weeks ago tomorrow an op-ed piece appeared in The Washington Post entitled “Why We Left the Episcopal Church.” It was written by John Yates, the former rector of the Falls Church, and former parishioner Os Guinness, a writer and lecturer connected with a conservative think tank that deals with issues of faith and culture. Along with many former members of the Falls Church, Yates and Guinness are now connected with a new congregation of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which for the moment occupies the Falls Church facility. Some of you probably read the column. For those who didn’t, here is a summary.
The authors begin with a disclaimer. They state that the core issue for them is theological. It is not about the leadership of women or a partnered homosexual bishop, nor even what they call “the leftward drift of the church.” Their primary concern, they say, is the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world and faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus Christ, whom they worship and follow.
In their opening paragraph they request “the right to define themselves, speak for themselves and not to be dehumanized by the definitions of others.” Ignoring that very principle, they proceed to issue this sweeping and dismissive indictment: “The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers.” As evidence, they cite certain innovative ideas of “some [unnamed] leaders,” as if these anonymous persons are typical of the entire Episcopal Church.
The rest of the column proceeds to define the Episcopal Church today in their terms, identifying five areas in which the church has engaged in what they call “revisionism,” a word used repeatedly with contempt. We will examine this word further in a few moments. The authors’ five points are these:
• Episcopal revisionism has abandoned true fidelity to God. This apostasy, they say, is the theological version of adultery.
• Episcopal revisionism has negated the authority of scripture alone as the sole basis of the faith. Sola scriptura, they claim, has been replaced by sola cultura, (culture alone). The church’s authority is now based on the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion.
• Episcopal revisionism has cut itself off from the universal faith that spans both centuries and continents so that it is now captive to a single culture (ours) and one time only (now), which issues in arrogance and racism toward Christians elsewhere in the world.
• Episcopal revisionism has destroyed the credibility of faith, they claim, so that there is little left that is distinctively Christian.
• A fifth accusation is basically a restatement of the fourth.
* * *
I have been actively engaged in the life of the Episcopal Church since before my baptism at age thirteen, sixty-five years ago – as a young lay person, as a parish priest on both coasts, as a long-tenured, widely-traveled missionary executive, and as a diocesan bishop with major national responsibilities. The warped caricature presented by this article bears no resemblance to the church that I know well. Of course there are groups and individuals in the church who push the limits of theological inquiry beyond what other Episcopalians are comfortable with. But enduring a certain discomfort is the price we pay in a church that encourages us to “seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will,” as a prominent Virginia evangelical leader famously declared a century and a half ago.
There are too many distortions in the article to take them all on in a single sermon, so I will focus on just one of its key words, partly because its use irks me but largely because it is challenged by today’s gospel. Revisionism, the word used pejoratively in the article, is a curious and misleading choice. In the heyday of Soviet Communism, for example, revisionism referred to any departure from Marxist doctrine, theory or practice, especially to favor reform rather than doctrinaire revolutionary change. In that long gone context revisionism could well be honored as an expression of the desire for freedom over authoritarian tyranny.
In the present context, revisionism could be viewed in a more neutral way. That happens when its trumped-up ideological mask is removed and its true nature is revealed, not as an “ism” but as a creative process, a process of re-visioning, a process of seeing things anew with the fresh eyes of the Spirit.
* * *
At the very nexus of our faith we find a grand precedent for creative revisioning, for as the reading from Luke today reveals, Jesus himself was a revisionist.
According to Luke, the event described marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. In Matthew and Mark, the same event is placed later in his brief career.
Jesus is in his home synagogue. He has been appointed to read from the prophet Isaiah and he chooses a poem about how God’s servant will someday liberate God’s people from captivity, blindness and all forces of oppression. Jesus gives the book back to the synagogue attendant, sits down and calmly applies Isaiah’s poem to himself. This is clearly a revisionist’s interpretation of the prophet.
The rest of the synagogue story is concluded in the next seven verses of the gospel, which were not appointed to be read today. Here the new self-proclaimed ministry of Jesus takes a quick turn. The hometown folks quite naturally expect that the young prophet will stay on in Nazareth and take care of their local problems. Citing the model of Elijah, who refused to use his powers among his own people but did so with foreigners, Jesus indicates that he too will be moving on, uttering that famous line, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” The crowd was furious that he would not stay among them but would instead use his powers among non-Jews. With one stroke Jesus, the revisionist, had challenged Jewish assumptions and expectations. So the good citizens of Nazareth drove him out of town and tried to kill him. That often happens to revisionists.
The revisioning of Jesus is documented elsewhere in the gospels, especially in that large segment of Matthew known as the Sermon on the Mount (5:1-7:27). Here he declares forcefully that he has not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. He goes on then to demonstrate what he means: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” (5:21-22) He repeats the same pattern with other traditional moral strictures regarding adultery, divorce, oaths, retribution, and attitudes toward enemies: “You have heard such and such,” he says, “but I tell you thus and so.” Jesus revisioned the law and the prophetic tradition, not by ignoring them or rejecting them, but by deriving from them a deeper meaning for the benefit of humankind. In the end, of course, he paid a huge price for his revisioning, of which we are the beneficiaries.
* * *
Following the example of Jesus, Christians are called to the never-ending task of revisioning. We Episcopalians who have no intention of leaving the church are, to be sure, revisionists. And so are dissenting and departing Episcopalians. Each entity continually attempts to interpret and apply scriptural and creedal authority to concrete situations in the culture that envelopes us. Such revisioning may lead to the revising of old notions, assumptions or understandings. Or it may not. It is interesting that both conservative and liberal Episcopalians have been led in the recent past to revision and revise their attitudes toward divorce and remarriage, once so narrowly proscribed by scripture and canon law.
Faithful people can emerge from revisioning processes with different – sometimes conflicting – perceptions. That should be no surprise, given the wide variety of human experiences. Nor should these differences be a barrier between Christians, as long as we all respect the spiritual gifts that God has given to each one of us. More than that, our various revisionings can, by the grace of God, challenge us all and help us all to move into deeper realms of the truth.
In order for there to be mutuality in revisioning, however, there must be a spirit of generosity which is ready to grant that other faithful individuals do take the authority of the Bible seriously, read it comprehensively not selectively, and apply what is revealed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the situation at hand. Of course, if any entity believes that it alone possesses the truth, then meaningful conversation is no longer possible.
* * *
All of these thoughts today have led me into what is perhaps a temporary state of ambivalence toward those who misconstrue the process of revisioning, place a negative connotation upon it, and twist it into a phantom ideology. My ambivalence is that, on the one hand, I would much prefer to see dissident Episcopalians, who have not yet departed, remain with us for the sake of the comprehensiveness and richness of the body of the church. On the other hand, if they are as contemptuous of continuing Episcopalians as the op-ed piece suggests, it may be that their spiritual life will be happier and healthier apart from us. In either case I wish them well, as I hope you do too, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we also worship and follow.