Cathedral in the City of the Living God: Introductory Remarks at the 2011 North American Deans Conference

In Tron, the 1982 movie, Jeff Bridges plays a character named Kevin Flynn. Flynn ends up entering the internal world of a computer program called the grid – all owned by a company called ENCOM. There he engages in a fight between life and death between him and a security program. After winning the battle for control over the programed universe and its ruler the Master Control Program (MCP) he aims to reimagine and recreate the world through his image of perfection. And, if all goes his way, Jeff Bridges’ character hopes to not only make the computer world perfect but also to make the human world perfect as well; doing this by bridging the two worlds permanently.

Tron Legacy begins where Tron left off. In 1989, 7 years after defeating the MCP (the Master Control Program), Kevin Flynn (played again by Jeff Bridges) disappears.

Twenty years later - 2009, his son, Sam Flynn(Garrett Hedlund), who became ENCOM's controlling shareholder after his father's disappearance, discovers a concealed computer laboratory and unintentionally transports himself to the Grid.

Once again the computer world is at odds with itself and after escaping the bad guys, Sam is taken to a distant, off-grid hideout in the "Outlands," where he is reunited with his father.

Sam’s father explains that in 1989 he had been working on a new, "perfect" system. He had created a program called CLU to recreate the world into a perfect civilization. CLU took over and now was hoping to export the perfect program world, ruled by CLU, into the imperfect world of humans. Not unlike a modern Nazi Blitz Krieg ready to strike, the programs led by CLU are ready to depart into the human world.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work. The good guys win. Sam gets the girl. But in the last scene there is a great confession between Jeff Bridges’ character, Flynn, and the perfect program (now dictator) he had created - CLU.

Clu: I did everything... everything you ever asked!

Kevin Flynn: I know you did.

Clu: I executed the plan!

Kevin Flynn: As you saw it...

Clu: You- You promised that we would change the world, together. You broke your promise...

Kevin Flynn: I know. I understand that now.

Clu: I took this system to it's maximum potential. I created the perfect system!

Kevin Flynn: I know you did.

Clu: I executed the plan!

Kevin Flynn: As you saw it...

Clu: You- You promised that we would change the world, together. You broke your promise...

Kevin Flynn: I know. I understand that now.

Clu: I took this system to it's maximum potential. I created the perfect system!

Kevin Flynn: The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us all the time. You wouldn't know that because I didn't when I created you. I'm sorry, Clu. I'm sorry...

While a critique on perfection sought in technology, the two films are also a conversation about vision and the perfect world, and humanity’s inability to perfect the City and Empire. Tron and Tron Legacy in some way are a conversation about the imperfection of the human initiative called society.

They are films about the “not quite thereness” of our world and attempts to build a perfect society.

In the words of Flynn, “perfection is unknowable…but it’s also right in front of us all the time.”

This contradiction, this dialectic, this manifestation of vision and reality is also the timeless theological struggle between the reign or kingdom of God and the fallen human capacity to bring about its reality within the span of history.

John Milbank, the Anglican theologian, wrote in his book entitled Theology and Social Theory: “[We] must recognize that the church has thus far failed to bring about salvation…and instead has ushered in the modern secular - at first liberal, and finally nihilistic-world.

In your time together you will explore the topic: City of the Living God. As Deans and leaders in the Episcopal Church what does it mean to proclaim the city of your context as the city of the living God?

We might first ask: How did we get here? What is our narrative story? And, what do we need to do change? Is it possible to move beyond the secular and the profane division in our post-modern culture and change the islands of our Cathedrals into outposts immersed in cities of the living God in a new missionary age?

If we turn to our ancient of texts we see clearly that the foundational narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures reveal to us that the people of Yahweh clearly understood that God was in conflict with the notion of empire and state. The creation stories of Babel, Noah, and Abraham all offer this view. The cities of Egypt were in the end not a hospitable place for God’s people.

The tribes of Israel were marked by their refusal to stay within the ideological boundaries of Egypt; thereafter their first leaders and judges struggled with the notion of empire. We don’t have to look too deeply to recognize the concern in the Prophet Samuel’s words to God and to the people that he was concerned about the creation of a royal house.

Only in the shadow of the first and second Temple do we see a change. It is here that we see meaning emerge that supports for the first time the City as the dwelling place of the living God.

In 2009 Walter Brueggeman spoke to the House of Bishops meeting in Kanuga and helped us to understand the historical difference of Israel’s prophetic tradition in the context of city. He explained Israel’s wrestling match with power. When Israel was in power and under self-rule the prophetic witness was focused upon the change needed internally within the sacred Abrahamic family. However, when Israel was occupied their prophetic voice was targeted at the occupying power, empire, and city.

It is within this latter prophetic tradition that we make our way through the inter-testamental period of the Greek occupation, to the occupation of the Romans, and the time of Jesus.

While the words of Jesus in the Gospel lesson from Matthew are a testimony of this time period we must also recognize they are written from within the context, and urban life, of Matthew’s community; probably written in a large city – possibly even Antioch.

We must understand that within a decade of the resurrection the village culture of Palestine had been left behind and it was the Greco-Roman city that became the dominant environment of the Christian movement.

Cities were where power was, places where changes could occur. It was in the city that new lives were made; after all subsistence living in villages did not provide much fertile ground for change. The city was the place where the new civilization could be experienced.

Antonio Nigri, the Marxist philosopher, reminds us that it is in the city that groups have power to define how human life is produced and managed without consultation of those whose lives are being shaped by their actions.

It was in these cities that Paul stirred up leaders and people followed and built the first footprints of a new Christendom – the potential for a new city of the living God was taking root; a city unseen since the brief years of the first Temple.

As the biblical scholar Wayne Meeks put it: Paul didn’t get imprisoned by the authorities by meditating in the desert or the sandy wastelands of Damascus; nor by wandering from village to village but by preaching in Petra, Gerasa, and Philadelphia.

John Baldwin the Roman Catholic historian and liturgist described the context of the emerging community in this way:

A city involves a certain concentration of population brought together for various social, economic, and political reasons. But a city is more than this, just as it is more than its number of buildings, streets, and public places. The city is a powerful idea, a symbol of human society. The Roman concept of civitas, for example, stood for the city as well as for civilization. A city is a public symbol expressing and facing a society’s concept of itself.

Pluralism and religious tolerance are modern ideas unfamiliar to the biblical witness. So it is that unlike what many scholars might suggest the America (and the West) of today is a context wholly unfamiliar to the context of Jesus and his disciples.

Baldwin continues:

Medieval Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople [were] a world in which Christianity found the symbolic basis for social life; worship was not confined to the neighborhood church. It was public; it acclaimed the society’s connectedness with the sacred; it made the streets and plazas sacred places in addition to the church and shrines, the city became church.

In this first five centuries of Christianity’s missionary explosion they understood the city as a sacred place. In the empire of Christendom there was no non-sacred space.

John’s Revelation provides us with a glimpse of the earliest vision of what was to come to pass. He uses the image of city to describe heaven (21.2, 10-21) symbolic of itself but also of society’s intimate connection with sacred reality.

In the context that was to build up the great cathedrals of Europe and Vatican city we see a continuum from the very earliest days of coopting synagogues well into the post reformation period that churches were essentially assembly halls. Churches were the public meeting space. These gathering places included separate space for holy actions but were centers of trade and politics. Often times the sacred art of making Eucharist occurred in conjunction with a king or nobleman dealing with the matters of business and state.

Early Church historians are very clear that the missionary outposts within the city walls were not shrines or special cites. Certainly there were shrines, but the majority of Christian livelihood permeated the city and the city permeated the church.

These churches were not some kind of separate sacred oasis for the spiritually oriented; quite the contrary.

We might say that they were in a very real way the centers of the living God’s work in the world; each rippling out the Gospel message of a resurrected Lord who was active in the world in which people lived and moved and had their being. After all, Jesus was not martyr and his body was not enshrined for people to come and visit but was rather part and parcel with life.

Early churches represented the city in miniature; they encapsulated within themselves an icon or representation of public life. Churches were public buildings that lay at the heart of social symbol systems. While a part of the city they also were place with a clear and distinguishable environment which formed the citizens into Christians.

Chrysostom, while Antioch was in a time of civic turmoil, remarked “the whole city has become church for us.”

Unfortunately Christianity has had an easier time moving into the power center of city life than it has moving out of the Constantinian ideal of the Empire Church.

And, despite its difficulty in doing so, it has probably been best for the church to lose its grip on power.

I think all of us recognize that the abuse of power at this time, today fodder for cable programming, is not something most of us wish to return to.

Today the church exists in a world without a single common symbol system; and most of the symbols are not our own.

One priest recently noted after visiting churches for three months while on sabbatical that we are speaking a dying language. The expression of our faith, our liturgy, and our language have more in common with the 7,000 vanishing languages globally than they do with the language, civic culture and society in which we make our home.

Today our Cathedrals and our church find their context in a society that affirms a healthy pluralism in which, in principle, no single religious group or church can demand adherence of all citizens.

What has happened then is that symbolically speaking the city must has become secular, separate, and not directly related to the sacred. As Richard Semeth, a philosopher noted in his book The Fall of the Public Man, “In a pluralistic society the whole of life…and… religious belief, have become a highly practical affair.”

Our churches have in large part become shrines. They have become sanctuaries within a divided city. Our churches, and our Cathedrals, are expected to be sanctuary from the civil life and politic of our culture. The problem emerges Harvey Cox suggests, that it becomes very difficult to merge the world of worship and the world of living in a civil society.

The task before us is to somehow reclaim the notion of our City being the City of the Living God. We must work to bring the church (ecclesia) and city (civitas) closer together.

To see again for the first time the potential of a missionary field that stretches out from the four corners of our Cathedrals.

I am not in any way proposing a return to a Constantinian church, state, theocracy, or religious city. This is impossible in our current social context; it is the problem with most discussions around reclaiming the city of or for a living God.

I have a vision though. I have a particular hope. I imagine that the Episcopal Church, and the Cathedral as chief exemplar, can become a community immersed in the world. We have the potential to be a missionary and public voice proclaiming our cities as places of the living God.

The challenge and the problem is that most of us continue to have a view of the church which is primarily modern in its thought and its mission.

If we are to claim our Cities as cities of the living God we are going to have to change our theology and our mission; we must change the why of engagement as well as the how.

Harvey Cox writes in his musing on the secular city, “The failure of modern theology is that it continues to supply plausible answers to questions that fewer and fewer people are asking.” Not unlike the twentieth century, we are largely continuing to answer questions and problems from a period that no longer exists.

It is our very theology that has birthed nihilism and moralistic therapeutic deism. We have birthed a desert of repose for our people and have emptied the church from its missionary sense of purpose: To make Christ known and to change the world by loving God and neighbor is our mission; the Augustine virtue of caritas being the living out, the practice, of Cathedrals in a city of the living God.

We have claimed a vision where the city is secular and the church is sacred. Where there are the poor and there are the wealthy; there are the powerful and the voiceless; there are the free and the bound; the young and the old. Much of what we proclaim from the pulpit sets up a straw man argument for the continuation of a false dichotomy where some are blessed and some are not.

Christian theologians and preachers alike, the bishops of our churches and deans of our cathedrals, tend to see people as exploiters and exploited. The problem is that those who array themselves against the modern city may actually be striving for contradictory objectives under the same principles of power. The problem with liberation theology applied to the city is that the formerly exploited often use power in the same way as before, becoming the exploiter of the past enemy; a kind of theological and political version of trading places.

If we are to reenter the world and proclaim the city of the living God we must move beyond the theologies that have given us the modern era with its lack of meaning, moral relativism, and disconnected virtue.

We must reengage a proclamation of the Gospel within the city. If we are to claim the Cathedral immersed in the city of the living God we are going to have to see this as a very real, incarnational mission, that engages the world, the civic society, and the political order, in a constructive conversation and interaction which is free from some imaginary ecclesial ideal built upon the Constantinian model of church or a misconstrued an misappropriated version of a new violent Passover narrative.

If we are to proclaim the city of the living God we must reclaim the God of our ancient narrative. We must give testimony to the Christian narrative that God is community. God - the Trinitarian God – creates and generates the city and all its creatures in a harmonious order which is intrinsic to God’s own being. The God we proclaim is a God who encompasses all difference.

In this manner we learn that to claim our cities as cities of the living God does not mean exporting our version of perfection as Jeff Bridges in Tron points out, it is to go out into the city and meet there the city of God and to meet God in the city.

“This is a counter ontology,” John Milbank, a leading Anglican theologian, writes, “Nothing is evil insofar as it exists, all has been created good. It is only separate from God in terms of its failure to be related to God, to infinite peace, or to exemplify the finite pattern of true desire for God.”

There is no space, or city, that is outside the sacred creation of God. There is no person that is not created good with the capacity to relate to God, to engage in infinite peace, and exemplify in life the desire for God.

If we are to proclaim the city of the living God we must also proclaim, make real in word, the testimony of our God’s salvific act. We are to be prophetic in the world, out narrating the world’s nihilism and emptiness. The God we, as Christians who are uniquely Anglican and unabashedly Episcopalian, proclaim is a God who is incarnated in the earthiness, the fleshness, of the city. We must claim and speak, in word and with words, the powerful transformational message of creation, incarnation, resurrection, and transformation.

The cathedral church must also enact the vision of “paradisal community” at work on every street, in every courtyard, in every corner of the city. The cathedral church has to engage in the proclamation of an exodus from meaninglessness, disconnection and division of the city. We must see the incarnation throughout the city of God speak it and for our own sakes act it.

The cathedral church must engage in the action of following and acting out, making real salvation. The cathedral church must engage in the work of praxis.

Admiration means to express a feeling of wonder, pleasure, or approval. Admiration is the primary mission and ministry of a shrine. The cathedral church must be a place beyond the admiration of music and art and be a community of action seeking out the living risen Lord who is in the community already and at work there. We are out narrating not simply in the word proclaimed but in the peaceable kingdom whose boarders encompass the whole city and not the boundaries of the Cathedral close.

The Cathedral and its Episcopal Faith become the “`Entire practice’ of signs, images, and actions with nothing in isolation…fundamentally a “performative” faith of the imagined and acted out incarnation.

The Cathedral church in the midst of the city of the living God will have to be gentle and meek as it steps out of the shadow of its shrine to a church which does not exist any longer. The Cathedral church will have to mourn with all sorts and conditions of people. The Cathedral church will have to proclaim in word the commandments of our God: to love neighbor as Jesus loved us. The Cathedral church will have to show mercy as Jesus shows mercy. And, the Cathedral church will have to seek a non-violent immersion with the world outside its walls no matter how persecuted it may be..

We must be fearless in taking our place in the public square throwing aside the notion that religion and faith is a private matter. Through invitation, partnership, and participation we must reclaim the streets and public places and spaces as venues for liturgy and life of the Cathedral beyond the close.

It is true that for some the city may always be a symbol of evil, corruption, and decay. But for others, and especially for the Episcopal Church, the city is a symbol of life, human cooperation, human potential, the ever expanding family of God, and corporate salvation. Our cities are cities of the living God.

Bless you and welcome. I bless you in your time with us. Enjoy the hospitality of our cathedral and share in the goodness of your successes. May God who gives you the will to do these things give you the imagination, wisdom, strength, and power to perform them in the name of Jesus Christ.

Disharmony and the Harmony of God: Meditation on the Last Words of Jesus

Introduction
I begin with a poem by the Nicene Church Father Clement of Alexandria, from the third century:

Sunset to sunrise changes now,

For God creates the world anew;

On the redeemer’s thorn-crowned brow,

The Wonders of that dawn we view.



Although the sun withholds its light

Yet a more heav’nly lamp shines here;

And from the cross on Calv’ry’s height

Gleams of eternity appear.



Here in o’erwhelming final strife

The Lord of life has victory;

And sin is slain, and death brings life,

And earth inherits heaven’s key. (Triduum 1 [T1], 50)

In the Gospel’s witness to Jesus Christ’s death on the cross we receive what the theologian Paul Ricour called “uniquely unique” testimony of the events. (Richard Bauckhman, Jesus and the Eye Witnesses [JAEW], 507)

What we do and read and meditate upon today is an exceptional disclosure of the death of the humble king, the prophet, the healer, the rabbi, the Son of God.

This witness to the moment of Jesus’ death is irreducible to simply a historical account. For these witnesses, these Gospellers, stand uniquely at the foot of the cross and in the immediate tidal wake of the cross. We are receiving when we read and meditate upon these words of Jesus insider knowledge from involved participants. They are engaged in the event, and interpreting it in its moment. They speak to us out of their own ongoing attempts to understand this truly significant and world changing event. (JAEW, 505)

So as we step into this time of meditation we read, we hear, we respond to a faithful witness, which is accurate and faithful to the meaning and witness of the crucifixion. (JAEW, 505)

So it is that what we do today is to remember, to bear witness to the particular and unique understanding, the testimony of the act of crucifixion as a vehicle and vessel of God’s grace and love. Like the first witness we see what is disclosed in the historical event, and know and understand it as the revelation of God. We see the intertwining of history and the hand of God at work in the world.

It reminds me of that passage from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes 4:9-12: “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

What we do today is of multiple strands, a threefold chord.

We are hearing the eyewitness testimony as reflected and remembered by the first followers of Jesus.

We are pondering the meaning and significance of our Lord’s death – for the church – that sacred community which is the first fruits of God’s salvific work.

And we are exploring the meaning of this event theologically as it applies to our lives.

We are in some way I suppose making Gospel. We are today in the things we do, through the manner of our listening and praying and signing, bearing witness to the Good News of God in Christ and of Salvation.

In our listening to the first witnesses and their testimony of Jesus’ words upon the cross we are becoming both witnesses (through our remembering) but we are also becoming Gospellers (through our telling).

So we turn from the world, we give our time to God this day. We offer and honor him with our presence, and we make known, through the things we do this day, the saving work of Jesus.

Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). Forgiveness

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Salvation

“Woman, behold your son: behold your mother.” (John 19:26-27) The Family of God

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34). Wholly Other

“I thirst.” (John 19:28). Suffering

“It is finished.” (John 19:30). Victory

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46). Harmony

So I invite you pilgrim to come with me. I invite those of you who have made lent holy by your sacrifice and reflection, and those of you who did not…come and make your way to the foot of the cross. See here your own transformation caught in the remaking of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. Come and see.

Come take your place at the foot of Jesus’ cross and see the hand of God at work…shaping…making…remaking…and transforming the world…

As the Israeli poet Abrahm Shlonsky wrote on life and death:

In the presence of eyes

Which witnessed the slaughter,

Which saw the oppression

The heart could not bear,

And as witness the heart

That once taught compassion

Until days came to pass

That crushed human feeling,

I have taken an oath: To remember it all,

To remember, not once to forget!

Forget not one thing to the last generation

When degradation shall cease,

To the last, to its ending,

When the rod of instruction

Shall have come to conclusion.

An oath: Not in vain passed over the night of terror.

An oath: No morning shall see me at flesh pots again.

An oath: Lest from this we learned nothing. (T1, 101)

 

Meditation One: Forgiveness

Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”



The hymn writer and Episcopal priest Carl P. Daw, Jr. wrote:

How shallow former shadows seem

beside this great reverse

As darkness swallows up the Light

of all the universe:

Creation shivers at the shock,

the Temple rends its veil,

A pallid stillness stifles time,

and nature’s motions fail.



This is no midday fantasy,

no flight o fevered brain.

With vengeance awful, grim and real,

chaos is come again:

The hands that formed us from the soil

are nailed upon the cross;

The Word that gave us life and breath

expires in utter loss.



Yet deep within this darkness lives

a Love so fierce and free

That arcs all voids and -- risk supreme! –

embraces agony.

Its perfect testament is etched

in iron, blood and wood;

With awe we glimpse its true import

and dare to call it good. (T1, 88)

The first meditation is on Forgiveness. The passage is taken from Luke’s Gospel chapter 23:34: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has been tried and has made his way with the help of Simon of Cyrene carrying his cross, past the weeping women of Jerusalem to the place of execution the place called “the skull.” There they crucify Jesus with two criminals one on either side.

After a day of torture and trial, a day of pain and suffering, a day of shame Jesus says these words, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". (Luke 23. 34th verse)

The soldiers continue to jeer and sneer at him, the people standing by as he suffers. The soldiers gamble for his cloak. Still others mock and deride him calling him so save himself. They chide and tease calling him Messiah and chosen one. And he says, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

They mock him and give him sour wine. They say, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” (Luke 23.37) And he says: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“It is immensely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to suffer in the freedom of one’s own responsible deed. It is immensely easier to suffer with others than to suffer alone. It is immensely easier to suffer openly and honorably than apart and in shame. It is mmensely easier to suffer through commitment of the physical life than in the spirit. Christ suffered in freedom, alone, apart and in shame, in body and spirit…” (T1, 86)

This first saying of Jesus on the cross is traditionally called "The Word of Forgiveness". It is theologically interpreted as Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him: the Roman soldiers, and for all others who were involved in his crucifixion.

In these words which begin the death of the prophet we see a revelation of who Jesus is, and our work of forgiveness.

In Luke’s Gospel the testimony is that Jesus is living out before us and exemplifying the life of virtue and that he does this to the very end of his life.

Jesus in Luke’s Gospel is the most high prophet, humble king, and Son of God. He is the righteous one the great teacher, the Sophos, with whom God is well pleased.

These words here on the cross match the words of Jesus’ own prayer, the Lord’s Prayer and touch on a key teaching of Jesus throughout his journey from Bethlehem to the place of the Skull.

So essential was Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness that it continues not only through the testimony of the Gospel of Luke, but throughout the first witnesses to Jesus resurrection. Some 14 different chapters in the Gospel of Luke Acts are concerned with Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness and the disciples’ own witness, teaching and practice of forgiveness after the resurrection.

Jesus’ words on the cross are the hallmark of the proclamation of forgiveness. God forgives. God forgives. God forgives.

When one sins God forgives.

When one repents God forgives.

Before one asks God forgives.

In and through our intentionality and when we are not intentional God forgives.

When we do things and leave things undone God forgives.

When others do things that are sinful and we benefit indirectly God forgives.

God forgives. God forgives. God forgives.




Meditation Two: Salvation

Luke 23:43 “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Charles Wesley the theologian, hymn writer, and Anglican missionary and priest of the eighteenth century wrote:

And can it be that I should gain

An interest in the Savior’s blood?

Died he for me, who cause his pain?

For me, who him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be

That though, my God, shouldst die for me?



‘Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies:

Who can explore his strange design?

In vain the firstborn seraph tires

To sound the depths of love divine.

‘Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,

Let angel minds inquire no more.

He left his Father’s throne above-

So free, so infinite his grace-

Emptied himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam’s helpless race.

‘Tis mercy all, immense and free;

For, O my God, it found out me! (T1, 115)

Meditation Two: Salvation, the passage is from Luke 23:43 “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Luke’s Gospel continues and we well remember that Jesus is accompanied upon the cross with two criminals. One of the criminals keeps deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” He is speaking to Jesus abusively. The other one, perhaps out of fear, or respect we know not which, rebukes him and says, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?” For they are all three suffering under the same sentence of judgment, under the same sentence of God. He goes on to say, “We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this mans has done nothing wrong.” (23:39-41)

This is the fourth time in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus’ innocence is proclaimed. Literally in Greek he is saying that Jesus is out of place and is not a wrongdoer.

Then this criminal, the one who is concerned, the one who speaks the truth, speaks to Jesus. “Jesus,” he says, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It is interesting here that the text may be read in two different ways. On the one hand it is about this remembering today, or there could be a second interpretation from the Greek meaning that he hopes Jesus will remember him when he comes. Furthermore, the only time that Jesus’ name is used in the Gospel of Luke is either when a person is crying out for healing or when demoniacs call on him. (LTJ, Luke, 378)

Jesus, the name itself, means “the Lord saves.”

Jesus then replies, “Truly I tell you today (ἀμήν λέγω σοί, amēn legō soi), you will be with me in Paradise (παραδείσω, paradeisō, from the Persian pairidaeza "paradise garden").” (23:42-43)

And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise".

Paradise is only used three times in the New Testament and always refers back to the garden in which was the “tree of life.”(LTJ, Luke, 378) If we broaden our search to read the scripture and see that Paradise is a place of joy and pleasure (Gen 2.15), later in the prophetic books our wilderness is to become like a paradise on a fertile river. Even rabbinic teaching of the first century understood a life after death which was a place where brothers lived together with God. (LTJ, Luke, 379)

The Gospel of Luke gives a unique picture of the events of Jesus’ crucifixion, mixing the supporters of Jesus with the leaders, the people, and the criminals. Each is bearing witness to the event. Each is and will be able to give testimony to what they see and experience.

It is the midst of this camaraderie of experience, of common witness, that Jesus is revealed in his words as the one who saves, as our Savior. Each of the individuals combines a title and the challenge to save himself.

For the leaders he is the Messiah, the elect one.

For the soldiers he is the King of the Jews.

Luke Timothy Johnson, the Lukan scholar writes:

The distance between Jesus as the proclaimer of God’s kingdom and his opponents has never been clearer, for they can understand no salvation except that involving the perpetuation of his human existence. (Luke, 380)

Yet we know and understand through the revelation of our scripture and the testimony of centuries of Gospel proclamation that it is “through faith that god has brought salvation in the words and deeds of Jesus. (Luke, 380)

We know and understand in our time that salvation is not a restoration of the Constantinian Faithful Empire; because in reading Luke’s Gospel we know that salvation is not the political liberation for which many of his followers hoped. (Luke, 380) Salvation was not as we see in this passage a perpetuation of life.

Salvation is the restoration of creation, and specifically of God’s people by the forgiveness of sins.

In this passage and in Jesus’ words we see the irony of human life lived with God. We see Jesus extending forgiveness to his executioners, even as their mocking shows them incapable of receiving it (23.34). And to the criminal who responds to Jesus in faith, asking to ‘be remembered’ in the kingdom, Jesus responds with the promise of a place with him in paradise. (23.43).” (LTJ, Luke, 380)

In this crucifixion scene we see the prophet and humble king enhanced as he fulfills all that he has said would happen earlier in the narrative.

Luke is making a witness to who the person of Jesus is.

It is his testimony that Jesus is the one who saves us. He is the one who forgives, he is the one who saves, and this action takes place on the cross in the offering of these last words, and in his death which is to come.




Meditation Three: The family of God

Behold your son: behold your mother

John 19:26-27

Brian Wren a hymnodist, author, educator and member of the United Reformed Church wrote these words:

Lord God, your love has called us here

As we, by love, for love were made.

Your living likeness still we bear,

Though marred, dishonored, disobeyed.

We come, with all our heart and mind

Your call to hear, your love to find.

We come with self-inflicted pains

Of broken trust and chosen wrong,

Half-free, half-bound by inner chains,

By social forces swept along,

By powers and systems close confined

Yet seeking hope for humankind.

Lord god, in Christ you call our name

And then receive us as your own

Not through some merit, right or claim

But by your gracious love alone.

We strain to glimpse your mercy seat

And find you kneeling at our feet.

Then take the towel, and break the bread,

And humble us, and call us friends.

Suffer and serve till all are fed

And show how grandly love intends

to work till all creation sings,

To fill al worlds, to crown all things.

Lord God, in Christ you set us free

Your life to live, your joy to share.

Give us your Spirits liberty

To turn from guild and dull despair

And offer all that faith can do

While love is making all things new.

Meditation three: The Family of God. From John’s Gospel chapter 19:26-27. This statement is traditionally referred to as "The Word of Relationship" and in it Jesus entrusts Mary, his mother, into the care of a disciple.

In John’s Gospel after the soldiers have finished the nasty work of crucifying Jesus, they take his clothes and divide them into four parts. In this manner each gets a piece of the historical relic.

But when it comes to the tunic, which is seamless, they choose to cast lots for it. This moment is the central symbolic image of this portion of the Gospel. In a mystical way the rending of the seamless tunic is a symbol of the created order fashioned and whole by the Logos becoming torn in the death of Jesus himself.

This action of casting die for the article is prophesied and therefore fulfills what the scripture had said,

‘They divided my clothes among themselves,

and for my clothing they cast lots.’

And John says… “that is what the soldiers did.”

We are told by John that, “standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

Other Gospel accounts remember and bear witness to the friends and followers of Jesus standing far away, fulfilling the words of Psalm 38.12: My kinsmen stand at a distance from me.”

John however is clear, the women were witnesses. They were close. They were eyewitnesses and they along with the beloved Disciple heard and saw these things.

There are four women in all. There are volumes written about how many women were standing there. (Raymond Brown, John, vol 2, 906) I am going with the New Testament scholar Raymond Brown’s understanding that there are four. Moreover, that the important fact being testified to is that his family is present. There are a number of women, family, friends, and followers all.

This is important as it bears on the statement significantly and is unique in the witness of the Gospels.

The disciple whom he loved is there as well. He is standing beside them. This is the only time he is not in Peter’s company. This disciple is mentioned five times and it is his witness that makes up the Gospel of John. (Raymond Brown, John, vol 2 [RBJ], 906)

Jesus then address his mother saying, “Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

This is a momentary interruption in the Gospel’s witness of the crucifixion and points to a relationship of the future.

Certainly in this moment the importance of the disciple is revealed to be high, so important that Jesus on his cross raises him to the “rank of his own brother.” (RBJ, 923) As we reflect on this we may see clearly and understand what seems of the utmost importance and that is the family nature of the words that Jesus uses. The words “this is your son” is an adoption formula (RBJ, 907) It certainly is similar to other scriptural forms. What is unique is that it is definitely a revelation of the work of the cross, especially as witnessed by John’s Gospel.

All of the ancient church theologians speak of this action by Jesus as being part of the caretaking of his mother, of his family, and of his friends. But there is more too that they see in this passage.

Let us here be mindful of the very next words that are to come, “After this [Jesus was] aware that all was no finished.” (RBJ, 923] This adds a dimension to the care of family and friends.

The disciple and his mother are representative of all the followers of Jesus throughout the fourth Gospel and as it points to the future family relationship I would say of all those faithful saints who have followed and follow Jesus today.

Perhaps like the great historian and New Testament scholar Jurgaan Bultmann Mary represent the Jewish Christendom and the Disciple the Gentile Christendom united. This is what the first systematic theologian of the church Origen wrote:

Every man who becomes perfect no longer lives his own life, but Christ lives in him. And because Christ lives in him, it was said to Mary concerning him, “here is your son, Christ.” (RBJ, 924)

This too adds dimension and thought to the revelation of this particular text.

Origen’s words captures the idea of the nature of discipleship of following Jesus. It is at once an individual connection to Jesus and thus to the Godhead, and it is also the connection of the community; one disciple with another.

Ephraem the Syrian states that just as Moses appointed Joshua in his stead to take care of the people so Jesus appoints the disciple. Ambrose in the west maintains the mystery of the church is revealed in the words, “here is your mother.” Moreover, that in this mystery of adoption made possible by Jesus Christ’s words and his victory on the cross, the Christian, the follower of Jesus, the disciple becomes sons and daughters of the family of God the Church. (RBJ, 924)

We can hardly see the new relationship of mother and son and daughters as none other than Lady Zion’s giving birth to a new people in the age of Christian mission and discipleship. Like the mother in Revelation 12.5 and 17 this adoption, this new birth and the bringing forth of new children is a family of God which fulfills all righteousness as did Jesus and themselves keep the commandments of God. (RBJ, 926)

We might remember that in John’s Gospel 14:21-23 “we are told that those who keep the commandments are loved by Father and Son, so that a beloved disciple is one who keeps the commandments. (RBJ, 926)

Not unlike this new relationship between the mother and son, we are adopted by Christ into the church the wider and ever growing family of God - the first fruits of the resurrection.

“Behold,” Jesus says to the disciple whom he loved, “behold and see your mother….behold mother…and see your son.”

Behold I see before me my brothers and my sisters

Behold next to you your brother

Your sister

Your mother

Your father

See all around you the family of God.

See and behold the miraculous creation that is being brought forth by the cross of Christ.

See the reconciling of the world one to another

See the death of enemies.

See the birth of friendships.

See the healing of division.

See the power of the cross and the love of Christ.

Behold all is being made new.

 

Meditation Four: Wholly Other

Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Francis Xavier, the sixteenth century Roman who co-founded the Society of Jesus, a monk and mystic wrote:

I love thee, Lord, but not because I hope for heav’n thereby, not yet for fear that loving not I might forever die, but for that thou dist all the world upon the cross embrace; for us dist bear the nails and spears, and manifold disgrace, and grief’s and torments numberless, and sweat of agony, e’en death itself; and all for one who was thine enemy.

Then, why, most loving, Jesus Christ,

Should I not love thee well,

Not for the sake of winning heav’n nor any fear of hell,

Not with the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward,

But as thyself has loved me, O ever loving Lord? (T1, 98)

Around the ninth hour, Jesus shouted in a loud voice, saying "Eli Eli lama sabachthani?" which is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This saying is traditionally called "The Word of Abandonment" and is the only saying that appears in more than one Gospel. It is a sign of the wholly other nature of Jesus’ humanity, of our humanity.

This saying is given in Aramaic with a translation (originally in Greek) after it. This phrase is the opening line of Psalm 22. It was common for people at this time to reference songs by quoting their first lines.

In the verses immediately following this saying, in both Gospels, the onlookers who hear Jesus' cry understand him to be calling for help from Elijah (Eliyyâ).

1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

2O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

3Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

4In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.

5To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

6But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people.

7All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;

8“Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

9Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.

10On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God.

11Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

12Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me;

13they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.

It is likely that Jesus recited the whole psalm. In understanding this we are reminded that the psalm itself, which continues, even in our next phrase, is one that moves from despair to faith to praise. (Allison and Davies, Matthew vol 3 [ADM], 625)

“Unlike the glorious death of a martyr,” write the New Testament scholars Allison and Davies in their tome on the Gospel of Matthew:

Of Jesus heroic valour and faith we hear nothing. [These] verses do not encourage or inspire but rather depict human sin and its frightening freedom in the unfathomable divine silence. There is terror in this text. The mocking and torture of the innocent and righteous Son of God are not intended to make but to shatter sense, to portray the depths of irrational human depravity. And the patient endurance of feelings of abandonment powerfully conveys the frightening mystery of God’s seeming inactivity in the world. (ADM, 639)

While we typically imagine that Jesus is purely speaking of his abandonment by God, we cannot forget the Matthean theme of abandonment.

Jesus was first abandoned by his country, then his followers, and then the crowds. (ADM625)

In the midst of despair and loss is also our salvation. Allison and Davies write:

[Jesus words do] not express a loss of faith –certainly the soldiers who soon confess Jesus Son of God have seen no such loss – but it is instead a cry of pain in a circumstance 9unparalleled elsewhere in the narrative) in which God has not shown himself to be God. And yet the truth, apparent from what follows, is that God has not forsaken Jesus. The abandonment, although real, is not the final fact. God does finally vindicate his son. (ADM, 625)

It is this abandonment, our abandonment of God, that we need saving from.

We believe and claim as Episcopalians that we are part of creation and made in the image of God and that we are given the ability to make choices: to love to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God. (BCP, 852)

But that we have forever “misused” our freedom and made wrong choices. Again and again we have abandoned God.

Not unlike the crowds or disciples in our Gospel. We too much like to be God ourselves and be responsible for our own salvation. We are afraid and our fear cowers us from responsibility.

Our only help is in the saving work of Jesus Christ, and in his promise.

We believe that God has forever worked at and continues to work at revealing himself and his will to us in nature, history, through the saints, and prophets of Israel.

As our Eucharistic prayers says God continually called us to return:

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another. Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace. By his blood, he reconciled us. By his wounds, we are healed. (BCP, 370)

We know that this sin has power over us and that we lose our freedom when our “relationship with God is distorted.” (BCP, 845) God does the work of salvation when God redeems us and “sets us free from the power of evil, sin, and death.” (BCP, 845)

We recognize through the prophetic witness of scripture who the person of Jesus is and that God has prepared us to accept the coming of Christ into our lives.

We bear witness that Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God and the perfect image of the Father, revealing us who God is and his nature.

We believe that we are adopted. That we like all who stand beneath the shadow of the cross are adopted as children of God and made heirs of God’s kingdom in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ and through his teachings, and in his promise to us.

In Jesus’ abandonment we are not abandoned.

In Jesus’ suffering we are saved.

As psalm 22 says, “On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God.”

We bear witness and testify to the importance of Jesus’ suffering, his abandonment, and death on the cross.

It is the power of his loneliness and his suffering, it is the very words that illustrate and make plain his obedience to suffering and death that Jesus himself makes the offering we could not make.

That in Jesus, in him we are freed forever. We are given a means and way into eternal life.

So hear the words of suffering. Hear in them God’s profound love for us.

Hear God’s embrace of all that is human misery and death being consumed.

As Jesus breaths out these words hear in them the power of Christ crucified to forever bridge the gap between life and death.

We shall never die alone because our savior did.

 

Meditation Five: Suffering

John 19:28: I thirst

From Psalm 22

14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast;

15my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

16For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled;

17I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me;

18they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.

19But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid!

20Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!

This statement “I thirst” is traditionally called "The Word of Distress".

These words from John’s Gospel come shortly after the words of Jesus to his mother and to the disciple whom he loved.

John understands the intimate connection between Jesus’ words “I thirst” and the psalms 22 and 69.

19 You know the insults I receive,

and my shame and dishonour;

my foes are all known to you.

20 Insults have broken my heart,

so that I am in despair.

I looked for pity, but there was none;

and for comforters, but I found none.

21 They gave me poison for food,

and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

A jar full of sour wine is used by means of a sponge and brought up to his mouth via a branch of hyssop.

This event and Jesus’ words are connected to his great work. Death is upon him.

The importance of the phrase may lie in the antecedents, “aware of his death.” For the Gospel and for us what we recognize in these words is the impending completion. He is bringing to a close his prophetic death; he is fulfilling all the scriptures with these words. He is fulfilling all righteousness.

The witness and testimony is that Jesus is bring to fulfillment all of the old covenant and its promise of a suffering Messiah.

Jesus’ thirst is an expression of Jesus’ desire to go to God and to assure the salvation of the world. Such an idea is buoyed by the notion that the scriptural context for the hyssop is used to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the Israelite doors the night of the Passover. (RBJ, 930)

We too thirst.

Like the woman at the well we thirst for the living water. (John 4.7ff) In John’s Gospel the image and symbolism of water is the Holy Spirit poured out for us by Jesus Christ on the cross.

We thirst and we pray heavenly Father give us a drink. Let us drink deeply of the waters of life poured out from the fountain which is the cross of Christ.

We know and we see and we hear and bear witness to the gift of Jesus Christ crucified and suffering before us. We know and claim the gift.

We know that if we drink from the fountain of Christ’s sacrifice we will never thirst again.

As Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Fully aware of God’s sacrifice we plead, “Give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty.”

Jesus says to us: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Our sacred response to the satiated thirst is to beckon others to “Come and see.” We bear witness that this is the savior of the world.

We bear witness by living out the life of Christ crucified. We live out our witness having received living water.

As children of the Most High God we bear witness to all conditions of people, we are merciful and act with justice and kindness.

We do not judge, and we do not condemn. We forgive. Knowing thirst ourselves, and having found the living water of Jesus Christ we so work in the world that those whose cups are empty run over with our love and care; in our incarnational witness to Jesus Christ.

Having thirst for the living water, and having drunk deeply, we do good, without expecting anything in return, we lose hope in no one, we forgive without expectation.

This is the standard of the recreated, transformed, disciple of Jesus Christ. This is our work to do good, hope in all, and to forgive all.

Our actions and lives are to reflect the covenantal actions of our God who pours out the living water through his sacrificial offering of himself.

As a hyssop branch is used to provide safety for every house of Israel as the Lord passes over, we are to offer the same living water to all.

That the world my come to know God and Christ crucified, that the world may hunger and thirst no more.

The great Syrian monk and priest John of Damascus wrote:

Come, and let us drink of that New River;

Not from barren rock divinely poured,

But the Fount of Life that is forever

From the Sepulchre of Chrsit the Lord.



All the world hath bright illumination –

Heav’n and earth and things beneath the earth:

‘Tis the Festival of all Creation:

…Yesterday with thee in burial lying.

Now today with Thee aris’n I rise;

Yesterday the partner of Thy dying,

With Thyself upraise me to the skies.

 

Meditation Six: Victory

John 19:30: It is finished.

From an Easter sermon by the great liturgist, theologian and Father of the church Hippolytus.

Are you God's friend and lover?

rejoice in this glorious feast of feasts!

Are you God's servant, knowing God's wishes?

be glad with your Master, share his rejoicing!

Are you worn down with the labor of fasting?

now is your payday!



Have you been working since early morning?

you will be paid fair and square.

Have you been here since the third hour?

you can be thankful, you will be pleased.

If you came at the sixth hour,

come up without fear, you will lose nothing.

Did you linger till the ninth hour?

come forward without hesitation.

Even if you came at the eleventh hour?

have no fear; it is not too late.



God is a generous employer,

treating the last to come as he treats the first arrival.

God gives to the one and gives to the other:

honours the deed and praises the intention.



Join, then, all of you, join in our Master's rejoicing.

You who were the first to come, you who came after,

come now and collect your wages.

Rich and poor, sing and dance together.

You that are hard on yourselves, you that are easy,

celebrate this day.

You that have fasted and you that have not,

make merry today.



The meal is ready: come and enjoy it.



The calf is a fat one: you will not go away hungry.

There's hospitality for all, and to spare. No more

apologizing for your poverty:

the kingdom belongs to us all.

No more bewailing your failings:

forgiveness has come from the grave.

No more fears of your dying:

the death of our Savior has freed us from fear.

Death played the Master: but he has mastered death



Isaiah knew this would happen, and he cried:

"Death was angered when it met you in the pit."

It was angered, for it was defeated.

It was angered, for it was mocked.

It was angered, for it was abolished.

It was angered, for it was overthrown.

It was angered, for it was bound in chains.





Death swallowed a body, and met God face to face.

It took earth and encountered heaven.



It took what is seen and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting?
O Grave, where is your victory?
Glory and power to him for ever and ever!

Jesus said, "It is finished".

This statement is traditionally called "The Word of Triumph" and is theologically interpreted as the announcement of the end of the earthly life of Jesus.

Raymond Brown writes:

"The other gospels mark Jesus' death with miraculous signs in the ambiance: The Temple curtain is torn; tombs open and bodies of the saints come forth; and an expression of faith is evoked from a Roman centurion. but the Fourth Gospel localizes the sign in the body of Jesus itself: When the side of Jesus is pierced, there comes forth blood and later. In 7:38-39 we heard: "From within him shall flow rivers of living water," with the explanation that the water symbolized the Spirit which would be given when Jesus had bee glorified. That is now fulfilled, but the admixture of blood to the water is the sign that Jesus has passed from this world to the Father and has been glorified. It is not impossible that the fourth evangelist intends here a reference not only to the gift of the Spirit but also to the two channels (baptism and the Eucharist) through which the Spirit had been communicated to the believers of his won community, with water signifying baptism, and blood the Eucharist." (RBJ, 930)

The piece that I find the most interesting is the uniqueness of John's Gospel and in particular the last words of Jesus. There is a tremendous feeling of agony and suffering in the last words of the synoptics.

Jesus in the fourth Gospel accepts death, in all of its pain and suffering, as the completion of God's plan to unite the world (its earthiness and creatureliness – its wholly otherness) with the Godhead. The fourth Gospel's death scene from the cross is a song of victory.

We remember Psalm 22 and how it parallels much of Jesus’ last words. It is both a psalm of suffering, abandonment, thirst, and prayer. Yet it is also a psalm of victory.

24For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.

25From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.

26The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!

27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.

28For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

29To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.

30Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,

31and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

It is John's Gospel thought that is most like the end of this psalm. The words, "It is finished." are a victory cry!



Raymond Brown explains it this way,

"In John's theology, now that Jesus has finished his work and is lifted up from the earth on the cross in death, he will draw all meant to him. If "It is finished" is a victory cry, the victory it heralds is that of obediently fulfilling the Father's will. It is similar to "It is done" of Rev. 16.17, uttered from the throne of God and of the Lamb when the seventh angel pours out the final bowl of God's wrath. What God has decreed has been accomplished." (RBJ, 931)

This victory cry is our victory cry.

The real death upon the cross, the bodily death of Jesus, is the essential ingredient in understanding the bodily resurrection which is new life in the world.

As N. T. Write says in his book Surprised by Hope:

When Paul wrote his great resurrection chapter, I Corinthians 15, he didn’t end by saying, “So let’s celebrate the great future life that awaits us.” He ended by saying, “So get on with your work because you know that in the Lord it won’t go to waste.” When the final resurrection occurs, as the centerpiece of God’s new creation, we will discover that everything done in the present world in the power of Jesus’ own resurrection will be celebrated and included, appropriately transformed. (Surprised by Hope, 293ff)

This victory cry, here upon the cross, is the victory that allows us to set about the work of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Through the bodily death of Jesus Christ, which is the doorway and gate to resurrection, which is in fact through baptism our doorway to a life of resurrection, is about the beginning, the potter’s remaking of the world – of all of creation.

N. T. Wright makes the point that it at once “point[s] ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation…[which means that] every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’ own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope.” (Surprised by Hope, 294ff)

We, like the criminal, like Jesus’ mother and the disciple whom he loved, each of us, brothers and sisters alike receive the promise of resurrected life through the gate which is the cross of Christ. We are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ.

We are given a life to live out and the work we do participates in the life to come. We are given through the cross the ability to allow our sin and disobedience to be crucified with Jesus so that we may not find before us a stumbling block to the work of proclamation and building of the kingdom of God.

We cannot inherit the promise of eternal life without recognizing that the death of the incarnate God means that we must incarnate the work of God in our lives and in our relationships, in our families and in our communities.

The cross of Christ is freely given. This is true. But with the recognition of such a gift comes the responsibility to participate as virtuous citizens in this world. We are not invited to wait around for the world to come.

In this gospel today, on this hill, beneath the shadow of the cross we are watching the very order of creation remade. We are witnessing the very birth pains of all creation as a new order of life is made through the passion of the Creator God.

And the call comes to us from Luke chapter 9:

23 Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. 25What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? 26Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

Look and see before you the victory of Jesus Christ upon the cross, pick up your own and follow him.

Meditation Seven: Harmony

Luke 23:46: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

St. Romanos the sixth century hymnist wrote these words:

O Heaven, be struck with horror;

Earth be plunged in chaos;

Do not dare, Sun, to behold

Your master on the cross,

Hanging there of his own will.

Let rock be shattered, for the rock of life

Is now wounded by nails….

In fact, let all creation shudder and groan

At the passion of the Creator.

Adam alone exults. (T1, 109)

In Luke’s Gospel chapter 23:46 it is written, “And speaking in a loud voice, Jesus said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’".

This saying, which is an announcement and not a request, is traditionally called "The Word of Reunion" and is theologically interpreted as the proclamation of Jesus joining the God the Father in Heaven.

Jesus is in control. He says his prayer and then he exhales. He gives up his spirit. He hands his spirit over.

Luke Timothy Johnson writes:

He has in Luke’s Gospel forgiven his executioners. He has promised paradise to the repentant criminal. And having done these things, he entrust his spirit to his Father in prayer, and dies. He is death is shown to be utterly consistent with his life, his life an enactment of his teaching. He is philosopher, prophet, Lord of God’s Kingdom and Son of God.

Harmony is restored and the distortion and disharmony and gulf that existed between the sons of Adam and the Son of God is forever bridged.

This is the high point of revelation of who God is and this final prayer and breath is the capstone of the work of salvation.

We witness that salvation comes from the Father and that it is necessary for God to reconcile Godself with a creation and humanity which is wholly other.

We understand that we willfully turn away from God as human beings. That all of creation was in need of harmonizing with God.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, Roman Cardinal and friend of Archbishop Rowan Williams, writes in Harvesting the Fruits:

It is the salvific will of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to reconcile to himself all humanity which had turned away from Him through sin, to set creation free from its bondage to decay, and to draw anew all humankind into communion with Himself. (Harvesting the Fruits [HF], 31)

In the scripture we know and understand that this saving work has many names: justification, kingdom of God, salvation, reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, sanctification, grace, new life, new creation, rebirth and many more. (HF, 31)

This passage itself from Luke touches the very nature and fundamental truth of our human condition.

We are saved not by our own means and our good works, nor are we saved by killing the Messiah, but by what Jesus Christ has done for us and what He is for us

Christians all, brothers and sisters, protestant, Roman, non-denominational, Anglican, Episcopalian all understand the central passage of John’s Gospel 3:16-21 to be central; reflecting well the promise of Jesus on the cross to us. It is a vision of God’s love for us and for all.

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

We believe that salvation is the proceeds from the Father and is the work of the triune God:

That the Father sent his Son into the world to save sinners.

That this work is chiefly enacted through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Jesus Christ is our righteousness, in which we share through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father.

We confess and make our witness that through God’s forgiving grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work, and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God.... (HF, 34)

In this moment of ultimate saving work, and death, Jesus returns to the divine community.

Jesus reconciles us and all creation to God.

The breach between God and God’s creation is forever mended.

Jesus himself takes his created nature, our human nature, into heaven with him, making way that our adoption in this world as sons and daughters of Abraham may be eternal adoption into the family of God in the world to come. (BCP, 848)

The promise to us today, on this side of the heavenly kingdom is to pray “thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven.” With our saving already undertaken, we are free to begin the work now of living in the world as a saved, redeemed, and justified people.

We are the redeemed sacred community bearing witness to our place within the family of God and the proclamation of the Gospel for the sake of reuniting and continuing the saving work of Jesus.

Paul writes in Romans 8.15 and 23. (CTG, 26)

15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba!* Father!’ 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness* with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

And…

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

So it is that in Jesus’ Christ’s suffering and death on the cross he makes way for a new bond of relationship and a new bond of family; that is the family of God on earth which is the Church.

Today we the church, one, catholic, and apostolic make our corporate witness, we make our testimony of the truth of the cross of Christ.

It is finished, his breath is gone, and his pierced side releases the water of life.

The glorification of God through Jesus’ work in life, in ministry, in healing, in preaching, in feeding, and in blessing is finished.

The glorification of God through Jesus’ suffering upon the cross is finished.

Jesus return to the Father begins our work as the family of God -- the church -- in God’s new creation – restored, forgiven, and transformed.

It is finished.

I leave you with these words from Benrhardt S. Ingemann the nineteenth century Danish poet and hymnist:

Through the night of doubt and sorrow

Onward goes the pilgrim band,

Singing songs of expectation,

Marching to the promised land.

Clear before us through the darkness

Gleams and burns the guiding light;

Pilgrim clasps the hand of pilgrim

Stepping fearless through the night.



Onward, therefore, sisters, brothers;

Onward, with the cross our aid.

Bear its shame, and fight its battle

Till we rest beneath its shade.

Soon shall come the great awak’ning;

Soon the rending of the tomb!

Then the scatt’ring of all shadows.

And the end of toil and gloom.

Pastoral Letter Released on the Episcopal and Lutheran Celebration of Full Communion

 

 

Episcopal, Anglican, Lutheran Pastoral Letter issued

on 10th Anniversary Celebration of Full Communion 

 

The Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Canada,

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

 

“We look forward to the development of fuller relationships

that will lead to a common mission, ministry, and witness in the world.”

 

[April 26, 2011] The leaders of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have issued a Pastoral Letter for the May 1 celebration marking the 10th Anniversary of full communion.

 

“On the basis of Called to Common Mission and the Waterloo Declaration,” the letter states, “we look forward to the development of fuller relationships that will lead to a common mission, ministry, and witness in the world.”

 

Called to Common Mission, for full communion between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the similar Canadian document, the Waterloo Declaration, between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, both took effect in 2001. The anniversary of this historic milestone will be celebrated on May 1 with the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church; Bishop Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada; and Bishop Susan Johnson, National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. On May 1, simultaneous celebrations will be held at 3 pm Eastern at St. Paul's Anglican Church, Fort Erie, Ontario and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY (Diocese of Western New York). Bishop Johnson will preside at St. Paul’s Anglican and Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori will preach. Presiding Bishop Hanson will preside and Archbishop Hiltz will preach at Holy Trinity Lutheran. 

 

The Pastoral Letter in full follows:

__________________________________________________________________

A Pastoral Letter On the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary Celebration of Full Communion: Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church

May 1, 2011

 

Grace to you and peace.

 

Ten years ago, when Lutherans and Anglicans in Canada and in the United States embarked on journeys of full communion with one another, we pledged our commitment to unity in Christ for the sake of the mission of Christ’s church.  On this anniversary, we rejoice and give thanks for those places of cooperation and ministry that our agreements have enabled. We are mindful that our commemorations in Buffalo and Fort Erie this day take place during the great Fifty Days of Easter. As the Resurrected Lord breathed his Spirit onto his disciples and commanded them to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth, we continue to ask for God’s Holy Spirit to empower us continually to live together into that call.

 

We have chosen a place near the border between our countries to celebrate our historic agreements, to provide a unified witness to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus, to share our commitment for renewal in Christ’s Church and God’s creation, and to serve our neighbor in need. 

 

As we continue this journey, we call upon our pastors, bishops, and denominational and congregational leaders to active engagement in God’s mission and an increase in their capacity for multiplying ministry in the world.

 

We recognize God’s call to serve and protect Earth in the face of unprecedented global threats to our air, land, and water.  Principles of justice call us to live more sustainably as individuals and in community, and to work for systemic changes that support care for God’s creation and for our neighbors. We acknowledge that our economy is based upon a worldview that sees creation as “resource” rather than sacred, of intrinsic worth, and “very good.” As a result we often plunder creation, and the well-being of low-income and minority communities, as well as other-than-human communities, suffer. We call upon our congregations and institutions to advocate for and embody a more sustainable, compassionate economy. We also challenge our congregations and institutions to make choices and support policies to reduce our collective consumption of energy, thereby reducing the pollution and climate change that stems from the burning of fossil fuels.  We call upon our four churches to work together in matters of environmental justice.

 

As people of faith, we have a strong tradition of helping our neighbor in need. These acts of charity are an integral expression of our faith and help meet the immediate needs of people living in poverty and those hit by disaster. Now is the time to work for justice as well, to advocate for more substantial long-term solutions that will create an anti-poverty agenda which we can all support. We will continue to encourage members of our congregations to meet immediate needs but also ask them to join together and pressure our governments to focus seriously on reducing poverty. We must continue to advocate for decent employment and to enhance our social safety net -- and to ensure that all have the opportunity to access both.  Working together on matters of poverty and economic justice is an area where our four churches can forge an important common witness.

 

Meeting along the border of our countries, we are painfully aware of the issues of immigration and of people who lack lawful immigration status along other borders in the world.  In our own context, we are mindful of those who have migrated to our countries to join their families, to work, or to seek refuge from persecution or violence.  Countless families are separated by stringent immigration laws.  As Christians, we are compelled by Christ’s life and teachings to welcome the stranger as neighbor, serving, as Christ did, those who are marginalized.  In our national and international ministries with and for migrants and refugees, we continue to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. 

 

We acknowledge that almost all of us are immigrants ourselves:  we live in nations built on land taken from others.  Our churches have long involvement in mission and evangelism among First Peoples.  Sadly we have an equally long history of marginalization and oppression, often through church-run boarding schools, whose main goals were assimilation and the eradication of First Peoples’ culture and heritage.  As we atone for the past, we call upon our churches to continue processes of dialogue, healing, and reconciliation. Today, the definition of Evangelism and Mission has transformed into partnerships with First Peoples and their ministries walking side by side with Christ.

 

We are also aware that our own full communion arrangements reflect this border between our two countries:  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Anglican Church in Canada are in full communion, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church are in full communion. We ask our four churches to explore ways to formalize our relationships and deepen the partnerships between all four of our churches.  On the basis of Called to Common Mission and the Waterloo Declaration, we look forward to the development of fuller relationships that will lead to a common mission, ministry, and witness in the world. 

 

We put our trust and hope in Christ, who has led us thus far in these relationships. With boldness we venture now with a time of breaking new ground, planting more seeds, and tending them in the spirit of authentic partnership in the Gospel. With humility we offer all our labors to the Lord, hoping they take us and all our brothers and sisters in Christ towards a fuller realization of that unity for which he prays.

 

In the words of the Waterloo Declaration, “We rejoice in our Declaration as an expression of the visible unity of our churches in the one Body of Christ.  We are ready to be co-workers with God in whatever tasks of mission serve the Gospel.  We give glory to God for the gift of unity already ours in Christ, and we pray for the fuller realization of this gift in the entire church.”

 

In the words of Called to Common Mission, “We do not know to what new, recovered, or continuing tasks of mission this Concordat will lead our churches, but we give thanks to God for leading us to this point. We entrust ourselves to that leading in the future, confident that our full communion will be a witness to the gift and goal already present in Christ, ‘so that God may be all in all.’”

 

 

The Rev. Mark S. Hanson

Presiding Bishop

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

 

The Most Rev. Fred Hiltz

Archbishop and Primate

The Anglican Church of Canada

 

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Episcopal Church

 

The Rev. Susan C. Johnson

National Bishop

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada

 

 

The Episcopal Church

Office of Public Affairs

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org

Anglican Church of Canada: http://www.anglican.ca/

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: http://www.elca.org/

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada: http://www.elcic.ca/

 

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY: http://www.holytrinitybuffalo.org/

St. Paul's Anglican Church, Fort Erie, Ontario: http://www.stpaulsfe.com/

 

Called to Common Mission: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/110055_111495_ENG_HTM.htm

 

The Waterloo Declaration:

http://www.elcic.ca/What-We-Believe/Waterloo-Declaration.cfm

 

# # # #

 

For more info contact:

Neva Rae Fox

Public Affairs Officer

The Episcopal Church

publicaffairs@episcopalchurch.org

212-716-6080  Mobile: 917-478-5659

 

 

 

La Iglesia Episcopal

Oficina de Asuntos Públicos

Carta Pastoral Episcopal, Anglicana, Luterana publicada en el  

10º Aniversario de la Celebración de la Comunión Plena

 

La Iglesia Episcopal, la Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá,
la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá, la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de América

“Esperamos con interés el desarrollo de relaciones más plenas

que conduzcan a una común misión, ministerio y testimonio en el mundo”

 

[26 de abril 2011] Los líderes de la Iglesia Episcopal, la Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá, la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá y la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Estados Unidos han publicado una Carta Pastoral para la celebración, el 1 de mayo, del 10 º aniversario de la comunión plena.

“Sobre la base de Llamados a la misión común y la Declaración de Waterloo”, dice la carta, “esperamos con interés el desarrollo de relaciones más plenas que conduzcan a una misión, ministerio y testimonio en común en el mundo”.

Llamados a la misión común, hacia una comunión plena entre la Iglesia Episcopal y la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de América, y su similar documento canadiense, la Declaración de Waterloo, entre la Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá y la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá, ambos entraron en vigor en 2001. El aniversario de este hito histórico se celebrará el 1 de mayo con la Rvdma. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Obispa Presidente y Primado de la Iglesia Episcopal, el Obispo Mark Hanson, Obispo Presidente de la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de América, el Rvdmo Fred Hiltz, Primado de la Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá, y la Obispa Susan Johnson, Obispa Nacional de la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá. El 1 de mayo, tendrán lugar celebraciones simultáneas a las tres de la tarde (tiempo del Este) en la iglesia anglicana de San Pablo, Fort Erie, Ontario y en la iglesia luterana de la Santísima Trinidad, Buffalo, NY (Diócesis del Oeste de Nueva York). El Obispo Johnson presidirá en la iglesia anglicana de San Pablo y predicará la Obispa Presidente Jefferts Schori. El Obispo Presidente Hanson presidirá y el arzobispo Hiltz  predicará en la iglesia luterana de la Santísima Trinidad.

La Carta Pastoral en su totalidad se encuentra a continuación:

__________________________________________________________________

 

Carta Pastoral en Ocasión de la Celebración del 10 º Aniversario de Comunión Plena:
Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá, la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá, la Iglesia Evangélica Iglesia Luterana de América y la Iglesia Episcopal
1 de mayo 2011

Gracia y paz a ustedes.

Hace diez años, cuando los luteranos y los anglicanos de Canadá y de Estados Unidos nos embarcamos en viajes hacia la comunión plena, prometimos nuestro compromiso a la unidad en Cristo por el bien de la misión de la iglesia de Cristo. En este aniversario, nos alegramos y damos gracias por aquellos lugares de cooperación y ministerio que nuestros acuerdos han hecho posibles. Somos conscientes de que nuestras conmemoraciones en Buffalo y Fort Erie este día tienen lugar durante los gran cincuenta días de Pascua. Como el Señor Resucitado sopló su Espíritu sobre sus discípulos y les mandó a predicar el Evangelio hasta los confines de la tierra, continuamos pidiendo al Espíritu Santo de Dios que nos capacite continuamente para vivir juntos ese llamado.

Hemos escogido un lugar cerca de la frontera entre nuestros países para celebrar nuestros acuerdos históricos, para ofrecer un testimonio unificado de la gracia salvadora de nuestro Señor Jesucristo, para compartir nuestro compromiso de renovación en la Iglesia de Cristo y en la creación de Dios, y para servir a nuestro prójimo necesitado.

A medida que continuamos este viaje, hacemos un llamado a nuestros pastores, obispos y a los líderes de las denominaciones y de las congregaciones para que activen una participación en la misión de Dios y un aumento en su capacidad de multiplicar el ministerio en el mundo.

Reconocemos el llamado de Dios a servir y proteger a la Tierra en vista de las amenazas mundiales sin precedentes a nuestro aire, tierra y agua. Los principios de la justicia nos piden que vivamos de una manera más sostenible personalmente y en comunidad, y que trabajemos para lograr los cambios sistémicos que apoyen el cuidado de la creación de Dios y de nuestros vecinos. Reconocemos que nuestra economía se basa en una visión del mundo que ve la creación como un “recurso” en lugar de algo sagrado, de valor intrínseco y “muy bueno”. Como resultado, a menudo saqueamos la creación, y así sufre el bienestar de comunidades de bajos ingresos y de minorías, así como otras realidades más allá de las comunidades humanas. Pedimos a nuestras congregaciones e instituciones que promuevan y encarnen una economía más sostenible y compasiva. También desafiamos a nuestras congregaciones e instituciones a que tomen decisiones y apoyen normas para reducir nuestro consumo colectivo de energía, reduciendo así la contaminación y el cambio climático que se deriva de la quema de combustibles fósiles. Hacemos un llamado a nuestras cuatro iglesias a que trabajemos juntos en asuntos de justicia ambiental.

Como pueblo de fe, tenemos una fuerte tradición de ayudar a nuestro prójimo necesitado. Estas obras de caridad son una expresión integral de nuestra fe y ayudan a satisfacer las necesidades inmediatas de las personas que viven en la pobreza y a los afectados por desastres. Este es el momento de trabajar también por la justicia, para abogar por soluciones más substanciales a largo plazo, que creen un programa de lucha contra la pobreza que todos podamos apoyar. Vamos a seguir alentando a los miembros de nuestras congregaciones a que satisfagan las necesidades inmediatas, pero también les pedimos que se unan y presionen a nuestros gobiernos para que se centren seriamente en la reducción de la pobreza. Debemos continuar abogando por un empleo decente y por una mejora de nuestra red de seguridad social - y continuar garantizando que todos tengan la oportunidad de acceder a ambos. El trabajar juntos en cuestiones de pobreza y justicia económica es un área donde nuestras cuatro iglesias pueden forjar un testimonio común importante.

 

Al reunirnos en la frontera de nuestros países, somos dolorosamente conscientes de los problemas de la inmigración y de las personas que carecen de estatus legal de inmigración a lo largo de todas las fronteras del mundo. En nuestro propio contexto, somos conscientes de los que han emigrado a nuestros países a unirse con sus familias para trabajar o buscar refugio de la persecución o de la violencia. Innumerables familias están separadas por rigurosas leyes de inmigración. Como cristianos, estamos obligados por la vida y las enseñanzas de Cristo a acoger al extranjero como vecino, y a servir, como Cristo lo hizo, a los que están marginados. En nuestros ministerios nacionales e internacionales con y hacia los migrantes y refugiados, continuamos abogando por una reforma migratoria integral.

Somos conscientes de que casi todos nosotros somos inmigrantes: vivimos en naciones construidas en terrenos quitados a otros. Nuestras iglesias tienen larga participación en la misión y evangelización de los Pueblos Originarios. Lamentablemente también contamos con una larga historia de marginación y opresión, a menudo a través de internados administrados por la iglesia, cuyos objetivos principales fueron la asimilación y la erradicación de la cultura y patrimonio de los Pueblos Originarios. A medida que expiamos por el pasado, hacemos un llamado a nuestras iglesias a continuar los procesos de diálogo, sanación y reconciliación. Hoy en día, la definición de Evangelismo y Misión se ha transformado en alianzas con los Pueblos Originarios y con sus ministerios caminando juntos con Cristo.

También somos conscientes de que nuestros propios arreglos de comunión plena reflejan esta frontera entre nuestros dos países: La Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá y la Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá están en comunión plena, y la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de América y la Iglesia Episcopal están en comunión plena. Pedimos a nuestras cuatro iglesias que exploren la manera de formalizar nuestra relación y profundizar la colaboración entre nuestras cuatro iglesias. Sobre la base de Llamados a la misión común y la Declaración de Waterloo, esperamos con interés el desarrollo de relaciones más plenas que conduzcan a una misión, ministerio y testimonio en común en el mundo.

 

Colocamos nuestra confianza y esperanza en Cristo, que nos ha conducido hasta ahora en estas relaciones. Con audacia nos lanzamos ahora a una época de abrir nuevos caminos, de sembrar más semillas y atenderlas con el espíritu de una auténtica asociación en el Evangelio. Con humildad, le ofrecemos todo nuestro trabajo al Señor, en la esperanza de que nos lleve y a todos nuestros hermanos y hermanas en Cristo hacia una realización más plena de esa unidad por la que él ora.

En las palabras de la Declaración de Waterloo: “Nos regocijamos en nuestra Declaración como una expresión de la unidad visible de nuestras iglesias en el único Cuerpo de Cristo. Estamos dispuestos a ser colaboradores con Dios en cualquier tarea misionera de servir al Evangelio. Damos gloria a Dios ya por el don de nuestra unidad en Cristo, y oramos por la realización más plena de este don en toda la iglesia”. 

En las palabras de Llamados a la misión común: “No sabemos a qué nuevas, recuperadas o continuas tareas misioneras conducirá este Concordato a nuestras iglesias, pero damos gracias a Dios por guiarnos hasta este punto. Nos encomendamos a ese liderazgo para el futuro, confiando en que nuestra comunión plena sea testigo del don y objetivo ya presentes en Cristo, ´para que Dios sea todo en todos´”.

 

 

El Rvdmo. Mark S. Hanson

Obispo Presidente

La Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en América

El Rvdmo. Fred Hiltz  
Arzobispo y Primado
La Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá

La Rvdma. Katharine Jefferts Schori  
Obispa Presidente y Primado
La Iglesia Episcopal

La Rvdma. Susan C. Johnson
Obispa Nacional
La Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en Canadá

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

La Iglesia Episcopal: www.episcopalchurch.org

La Iglesia Anglicana de Canadá: http://www.anglican.ca/

La Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de América: http://www.elca.org/

La Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Canadá: http://www.elcic.ca/

 

Iglesia Luterana de la Santísima Trinidad, Buffalo, NY: http://www.holytrinitybuffalo.org/

Iglesia Anglicana de San Pablo, Fort Erie, Ontario: http://www.stpaulsfe.com/

 

Llamados a la misión común: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/110055_111495_ENG_HTM.htm

 

La Declaración de Waterloo:

http://www.elcic.ca/What-We-Believe/Waterloo-Declaration.cfm

 

# # # #

 

Para ulterior información contacte a:

Neva Rae Fox

Oficial de Asuntos Públicos

La Iglesia Episcopal

publicaffairs@episcopalchurch.org

212-716-6080  Móvil: 917-478-5659