Mosaic of the institution of the Eucharist as the fifth Luminous mystery of the Rosary in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina
By Bishop Sam Rodman
Earlier this summer, I was invited by one of our deacons, the Rev. Cuyler O’Conner, to be a guest on his podcast, “Seekin’ Deacon.” It was a wide-ranging conversation, and one of the questions he asked was about the challenges in the current climate in our country as we have become so divided and polarized over the questions of governance, politics and partisanship. When he framed the question, he used a word I have not often heard in these conversations. He called this division dualistic.
I picked up on the word, in part because, historically, dualism has been a hot theological topic in our church. And, in fact, it is often identified as a heresy in Christianity. One expression of heretical dualism is the concept that the spiritual and the material are separate.
The reality of the biblical witness is that the material and spiritual are intricately and intimately intertwined. This is at the heart of our sacramental understanding. It is why we can say that the bread and the wine become, in some mysterious way, the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. It is why water is central in the service of baptism.
These sacramental elements point us to a deeper truth, that all we see and experience in the physical world around us is connected to the spiritual reality that lies at the heart of our existence. The world exists because it was created by a supreme, and supremely loving, being we call God. And we, as human beings, are created in God’s image.
The message here is simple. The holiness of God’s love is all around us and within us. It is what animates us, fills us with life and invites us into relationship with one who is our creator and with one another, as beloved children of God.
When we are connected to one another and able to work together, we are living into the harmony and unity that God intends for us and for all of creation. But when we are divided and at odds with each other, we feel the impact of our “unhappy divisions,” and it is painful.
COMMONALITY ACROSS GENERATIONS
The same week I was a guest on the podcast, Lynn Hoke, our diocesan archivist, gave me a copy of a sermon preached at Calvary, Tarboro, on May 29, 1960, by then-rector the Rev. John Shelby Spong, who was later to become the bishop of Newark in New Jersey. In his sermon, Spong lays out the landscape of conflict in his parish and in the diocese around the decision to integrate Camp Cheshire.
In his response to the conflict, Spong speaks about two of the vows he took five years earlier at his ordination to the priesthood at St. Joseph’s, Durham. He says, “To maintain Christian truth and Christian principle—to keep peace and good will among my people, both are my vows. It is not often that these vows come into such sharp conflict as they did last week whether [when] the sincere conscience tried to decide whether the maintenance of a principle or the peace and unity of the parish family should gain precedence.”
Written some 65 years earlier, and coincidentally, about a year after I was born, Spong names a reality that is as true for our own time as it was in his. Put in slightly different words, clergy are called both to speak a prophetic word of Gospel truth to God’s people and to love and care for those same people with a pastoral sensitivity and tender care that promotes peace and unity. Sometimes those two vows and responsibilities come into conflict with one another.
Spong’s sermon helps frame this dilemma as something not unique to our time but perhaps unique to the vocation of all of us who are disciples of Jesus, and especially those of us who are called to tend and care for God’s people. Later in his sermon, Spong goes on to observe, “If a Christian principle is applied unwisely the reaction is violence, hostility, a broken fellowship, a divided people of God. But, if on the other hand, the threat of unpopularity, or the fear of rejection causes the abandonment of the principle, then the soul dies and the church dies with it.” He is describing a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.
That scenario is often how this season has felt to many of us as we seek to lead God’s people through a time of exceptional chaos, confusion and conflict in our country. Jesus’ own life and teachings model the paradox of these conflicting but essential values in the life of the church. He shows us how to speak truthfully, boldly and prophetically, and still express love, deep concern, compassion and care for God’s people. What Jesus models for us is prophetic truth telling without self-righteous judgment.
INSISTENCE, NOT RESISTANCE
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37, English Standard Version)
Jesus’ words remind us that in every generation we resist the call of God to unite for the sake of one another, and, instead, seem to drive one another away. We resist those voices that call us to put the well-being of others ahead of our own, to love sacrificially and to practice radical welcome and hospitality.
Desegregation was the focus of the conflict in Spong’s time. Mass deportations, in our own day, still seems to be driven by the challenge of loving all our neighbors who are perceived, by some, as different or “other.” The Gospel value is clear—there is no “other.” We are all God’s beloved children, and God’s protection is intended and extended to each of us.
For Jesus, standing on this principle meant sacrificing his very life. As the Collect for Mission in our Morning Prayer service reminds us—“Lord Jesus, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.” (Book of Common Prayer, page 101)
Fierce insistence on the sacred dignity of every person is a gospel value at the heart of our baptismal covenant and at the center of our faith in Jesus. Speaking up for this value should not be misunderstood as an expression of partisan resistance to policy, but rather as a prophetic stance with a pastoral intention and commitment. Beloved community is that place where anyone can be gathered under the protective wings of God’s all-embracing love. Beloved community is where the prophetic and the pastoral meet.
Bishop Sam Rodman is the XII bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina.
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