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| The Episcopal Public Policy Network Policy Alert | |
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| Dear Robert, "Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. And it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equity, development and peace." – Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations Did you know that one out of every three women around the world will be abused – physically, sexually or otherwise – during her lifetime? In some developing countries, rates of violence against women are as high as 70 percent, with social norms often giving women few options for escaping the cycle of abuse. None of this has to be so. Violence against women is totally preventable, and there are proven strategies for combating its prevalence in the developing world. A new, bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress – The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) – would, for the first time, comprehensively incorporate these strategies into U.S. foreign-aid programs. The bill (S.2279, H.R. 5927) devotes $1 billion to create a five-year strategy to combat violence against women around the world. (Click here to learn about IVAWA and how it would work.) Violence against women not only fundamentally violates human dignity and destabilizes families and communities; it also serves as a significant deterrent in the fight to end deadly global poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Violence and abuse keep women from getting an education, working, and earning the income they need to lift their families out of poverty. Violence also poses a barrier to combating public-health epidemics that affect women and children disproportionately, like HIV/AIDS and malaria. In Nicaragua, for example, a study found that children of female victims of violence left school an average of four years earlier than other children. In India a survey revealed that women who experienced even a single incident of violence lost an average of seven working days: the difference between survival and starvation for their families. TAKE ACTION: | |
A good but rather old joke which has come into circulation again. Thanks to Madpriest for pulling it out of its tomb.By Donald Schell
Like many Anglicans I’ve got the Windsor Report’s phrase, ‘Bonds of Affection’ rolling round in my head like a melody from the radio that won’t be dismissed. I think about affection and whether it makes relationship or just happens sometimes in it. What sense do we make of people who say affection is fleeting? Does good affection bind? That gets more wondering about choices and how we make them, and how bonds and choices live together. And that brings an old personal story to mind.
For eighteen months after she got her R.N. my wife Ellen worked nights caring for sleeping and sleepless patients at teaching hospital near our home. When she was on, I’d walk her over to the hospital, leaving our children sleeping for ten minutes. There had been some late night muggings in our neighborhood and I didn’t want her walking over alone. Ten minutes to eleven I’d steal a good-night kiss from my lovely nurse in uniform and walk home to sleep alone while she worked the shift that hospitals don’t call ‘graveyard.’ Next morning at 7:15 while I was making the kids’ breakfast, we’d listen for her key in the door and her weary "Good morning." Then it was breakfast together and, if it was a weekday, I’d deliver the children to school and child care while Ellen slept.
Regular weekdays I plunged into the priestly and missionary tasks I’d taken founding a new congregation from the ground up, leaving the house to Ellen as a temple of silence. With earplugs and a sleeping mask, she could sleep, more or less, and be ready to greet us in the late afternoon for tea and dinner together before my evening church meetings. Whenever Ellen had a week night off work, I’d take off the following day (with the children off at school) and we’d do something outdoors in the daylight (rain or shine) and enjoy lunch together.
On the weekends that Ellen worked, my task was to keep an intense three-year old son and our more contemplative seven-year old daughter happily occupied away from home so she could sleep. Wherever I took the children on Saturday, our company was divorced dads, men and their children haunting the hands-on Exploratorium, the zoo, the beach, the park. Ellen would make herself stay up for church if she’d worked Saturday night, so on Sundays, our outings were in the afternoon.
Night shift made Ellen’s weekends off important events to us. The Saturday I’m remembering we’d planned a hike and picnic to Tennessee Beach, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area just north of San Francisco. It’s a beautiful place and the long gentle hike to Tennessee Beach was a favorite for us and the children.
I can’t remember how the morning went wrong except that something Ellen said as we were packing the picnic angered me. I made a tentative statement of what bugged me and why and quickly decided she wasn’t listening. So I decided to sit on my anger and say nothing about it. Of course, I was absolutely certain I was right, that Ellen was wrong, and furthermore that by not listening to me she essentially conceding that I was Right about The Very Important Point I Was Making. Happily casting myself as a righteous victim, I concluded that her evident wrong-headedness gave me no choice but to claim the intellectual and moral high ground and hold it in silence. I didn’t say, "Fine, have it your way," but I thought it.
However, not wanting to be a jerk, I decided to pity her for a long week of working nights, by doing my duty as a dad and father in every particular, being exquisitely nice and helpful as I did it. I agreed with absolutely everything she said, and I smiled a lot and kept busy. I felt Ellen picking up on my rage as we were walking from the ridge down to the beach where the Gold Rush era S.S. Tennessee was wrecked in 1853. My first indication was a look from her – angry, hurt, reproachful, and questioning all at once. The children seemed to be enjoying dad’s catering to them and had a great time. Since I wasn’t making conversation but only responding to Ellen’s or the children’s questions, I had some quiet time during the picnic to think about the early steamship whose wreck had given the beach its name.
Coming up from Panama finding the Golden Gate enshrouded in heavy fog, the Captain was counting on dead reckoning to establish his position. He knew there was land just to the north of him and thought he was entering into the Golden Gate to make anchor in San Francisco Bay, but the sound of waves breaking directly ahead told him his navigation calculations had been disastrously wrong. Through the mists a high cliff appeared, now directly astern. Turning the ship hard away from the cliff and driving the big steam-driven sidewheels full speed he struggled against waves and current and until he saw the other cliff that defined the little cove directly ahead. No way forward and no way back, each succeeding wave drove the ship closer to the beach until finally the sand caught it broadside. More than five hundred passengers and all the U.S. mail were successfully brought ashore. The Tennessee’s owners came out to find their ship beached, but still sound. Soon they had tugs and cables and workmen on the shore trying to re-float the ship, but a couple of days after the Tennessee was beached, a big storm blew in from the Pacific and fierce waves pounded it to pieces.
Three hours or so into my folly of forced niceness, fake smiles and cold helpfulness, I thought I was as trapped as the S.S. Tennessee had been, a nearly new ship, best technology of its era, now little left but rusty boilers buried beneath this beach. As the kids explored the quiet beach and played at the sea’s edge, Ellen asked what was going on. "Nothing," I insisted with all the warmth of an airline steward. Did I actually think I could fool her? Probably not. "Everything" was what I really meant, and she heard me.
We packed our picnic and hiked back to the car. I was impeccably helpful, showily available to the children, excruciatingly respectful and solicitous of my wife. And I knew as I did all this that I was trapped in my own folly and doing us serious damage. All the work of parenting had Ellen stranded too - baffled and frustrated with her incommunicative husband.
Finally, after a dinner at which I tried to channel Ward Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, and then cheerily took dish duty while Ellen put the children to bed, she came back to the kitchen, stood looking at me for a fierce, loving moment and said, "We don’t do it this way. Tell me what’s wrong."
Words of a response lined up in my head, ‘Well, this is how we do it now!’ but I hated those words and knew I’d regret them for ever, so I left them unspoken. She had me. I was immediately embarrassed to recognize that I’d long since lost track of the fine points from our morning’s conflict, but knowing I was as trapped as the captain of the doomed steamship, I welcomed her direct appeal to unbreakable bonds of affection. I’d never heard us say it before, but she was stating an immediately evident fact – we had tried to shape the course of our life together from a steady intention to grow in love and truth. She was offering us what the S.S. Tennessee could not find, a way forward.
I told her what remained from our conversation that morning, how I’d felt unheard and not taken seriously. She replied describing the scene I’d actually witnessed that morning – her very steady focus on all it took to get the picnic made and us out the door and in the car.
What generated the strain of that day was real bonds of affection we’d forged in the eight years before. I felt the painful bind with which wisdom and the force of my loving her cramped my self-righteousness. Like St. Paul in Acts (26:14) I was straining against the constraints of love. Real bonds of affection are like the muscles and sinews of our bodies, and like those living bonds, practicing relationship makes the bonds more flexible and effective through the strain of use.
Taking ‘bonds of affection’ seriously gives the lie to the old, neat distinction between agape and eros—Christian love and erotic love. Ellen was calling on our established practice of disciplined affection. Letting her touch me with that reminder validated our history together, good memories, and hopes we’d shaped over some years. Her demand rested in the delight in each other’s presence and voice and yes, in the flesh she knew I treasured. She was asking me to use the blessed, powerful bond we’d forged together to break the bind I’d created that morning. We needed to talk. She appealed to what we knew but had never declared before. This new phrase, "How we do it," refused to accept that there were any disagreements we couldn’t talk about.
I am grateful for every liberal and every conservative in our Anglican Communion who is saying now, "That’s not how we do it." With cliffs behind ahead of our ship, there’s no way forward in the righteous certainty than "I’m right" or "She’s wrong." Genuine bonds of affection demand what forged them, the commitment to keep talking, graceful conversation, through whatever conflict we face.
The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company, working for community development in congregational life focusing on sharing leadership, welcoming creativity, building community through music, and making liturgical architecture a win/win for building and congregation. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.
Confession
When we have acted out of judgement rather than grace
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy
When we have forgotten your story and been shaped by the story of the Western Dream of the good life
Christ have mercy
Christ have mercy
When church has taken all our energy and we've not had time to get stuck into our locality
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy
When all our friends have become Christians and we haven't made new friendships
Christ have mercy
Christ have mercy
When we have acted in our own strength and forgotten the gifts of your Spirit
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy
But when we are filled with grace,
live out the gospel
in our locality
make good friends
and share the gifts of the Spirit
then God rejoices with us
Almighty God who forgives all who who truly repent
have mercy on us
pardon and deliver us from our sins
and keep us in life eternal
through Jesus Christ our Lord
Amen
To go along with the excellent Windsor Report cartoon I posed a link to recently here is an excellent summary of The Windsor Report prepared by Patricia Bays in January of 2005 (any comments or additions I have made are in brackets). It can be found on the internet at: http://72.14.253.104/search?q
The Windsor Report - a Summary
What is it?
In October 2003, at the request of the primates, the Archbishop of Canterbury set up the Lambeth Commission. 17 members represented member churches of the Anglican Communion, and included bishops, priests and lay people. The Rev. Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, director of Faith, Worship and Ministry, represented the Anglican Church of Canada. The Eames Commission in the 1990s studied the question of the ordination of women as bishops, and the Inter Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission meets regularly to look at issues related to the Anglican Communion. They produced the Virginia Report on the nature of communion.
Its Mandate
The commission was asked to report on the legal and theological implications of decisions in [the Episcopal Diocese of] New Hampshire [to elect and then the Episcopal Church ordain a gay man in a relationship as a Bishop] and [the Canadian Diocese of] New Westminster [to approve the blessings of same sex unions], and on canonical understandings of communion, in order to suggest ways in which communion can be maintained. They were to look at the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in maintaining communion.
They were not asked to debate issues of homosexuality.
Summary of the Report
A. The purposes and benefits of communion .
· The report explores the biblical background (Ephesians, I Corinthians). We are called into fellowship with God and with each other. As Anglicans we have a common life of mutual responsibility and interdependence.
· How can the communion function in situations where mutual discernment is needed? The report explores the way decisions were made regarding the ordination of women and then the current discussion on issues of human sexuality.
B. Fundamental principles
Some parts of the communion feel that decisions taken in NW [the Diocese of New Westminster located in Canada] and NH [the Diocese of New Hampshire] are "departures from genuine apostolic faith." Other concerns for which we need a common forum:
· Perceived lack of consultation before action
· What does communion mean? Are there degrees of communion? What of our present impaired communion with respect to ordination of women and of divorced and remarried persons
· How is the gospel to be interpreted and inculturated in diverse cultures?
· Are there questions on which Christians might have legitimate differences? Are there limits to diversity?
· What matters should be decided on a communion level and which can be decided on the local level?
· What is the authority of scripture, tradition, reason, the episcopate?
C. The instruments of unity
The report describes the instruments: The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates' Meeting, and suggests that further work needs to be done on the relationship and relative authority of these.
Some proposals:
· The Archbishop of Canterbury "should be able to speak directly to any provincial situation on behalf of the Communion where this is deemed advisable. Such action should not be viewed as outside interference in the exercise of autonomy by any province." The report affirms that the Archbishop has the right to invite to the Lambeth Conference and Primates' Meeting.
· A Council of Advice should be established "to assist him in discerning when and how it might be appropriate for him to exercise a ministry of unity on behalf of the whole Communion." It might be formed from the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council] and Primates' Meeting.
· Canon lawyers should "produce a statement of the principles of canon law common to the churches, and examine shared problems and possible solutions.
· The commission proposes a common Anglican Covenant, to be signed by the primates, "which would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion." It would deal with the relationships of communion, the commitments of communion, the exercise of autonomy in communion, and the management of disputes.
D. The maintenance of communion
The report reprimands both Canadian and US churches on the one hand [for the actions taken by the Diocese of New Hampshire and the Diocese of New Westminster], and certain primates on the other [primarily for entering other Diocese with permission for the purpose of performing unauthorized visits and other episcopal acts], for acting without consideration for the impact of their decisions on other parts of the communion.
Elections to the episcopate should "pay proper regard to the acceptability of the candidate to other provinces in our communion." The Archbishop of Canterbury is urged to exercise caution in inviting Bishop Gene Robinson to the councils of the communion.
NW [the Diocese of New Westminster] and NH [the Diocese of New Hampshire] are invited to express regret for the consequences of their actions. Those who took part in the NH consecration [the consecration of Gene Robinson as a bishop] should consider withdrawing from representative functions. The Episcopal Church should refrain from further consecrations of persons living in same gender unions. NW [the Diocese of New Westminster] should refrain from authorizing any further blessings.
All provinces are urged to study and reflect on the issues.
The report calls for the "conditional and temporary provision of delegated pastoral oversight for those who are dissenting" only as a last resort. It asks bishops who believe it is their duty to intervene in dioceses other than their own to express regret for the consequences of their action and to refrain from further interventions.
The report urges all parties "to seek ways of reconciliation, and to heal our divisions."
Prepared by Patricia Bays January 2005
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Year A
April 27, 2008
Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-18
I Peter 3:13-22
Paul was a pretty amazing preacher. He always seemed to know just the right thing to say, and was never afraid to shape his message to really catch the attention and understanding of his listeners. Paul was also a keen observer of society around him and that enabled him to preach in particularly powerful ways. As I was reading Paul’s sermon from the reading in Acts for this morning, I was wondering how Paul’s message would be different if he were preaching it today somewhere in the
I think he would start off the same. How can anyone assume anything other than that our nation also seems to be extremely religious. Since we are in the middle of a presidential election, it is hard to miss the fact that most of the candidates wear their faith on their sleeve. Many religious leaders attempt to demonstrate how we are a “Christian nation” from our founding. Polls indicate that many people in the
But Paul found fault in the religious practices of the Athenians. They practiced idolatry. He found temples with idols everywhere he looked. So Paul’s look around the
Alas, we are not to get off quite so easy. I have started looking at idolatry in a different light thanks to my former Bishop. For the past few years before he left Bishop Mark McDonald had been calling our attention to the sin of idolatry in our own lives. To be honest, I would had never thought of it in those terms, so I’m grateful for the clarity of thought Bp. Mark provided. Bishop Mark thoughtfully reframed idolatry for me, but taking my focus off the idea of graven images (a convenient concept since I can let myself off on that account) and placing the focus on what an idol does, namely take the place of God in our lives. Most of us understand and agree with Paul that God “does not live in shrines made by human hands”. But Bishop Mark reframed the issue in a new and challenging way for me.
And so thanks to those insights and challenges I see that there seems to be quite a parallel to our nation and the Athenians with respect to the tricky sin of idolatry. In fact, I think that we are a people in love with an idol more powerful than the Athenians could have ever imagined. Perhaps unfortunately for us, our idols are not idols of gold, silver or stone in images that make it clear that someone is worshipping them.
This makes our idols much harder to identify. They are not as something as simple as seeing a carved image on our table. But I think Paul would have seen our idols for what they are. It seems to me that the idols most worshipped in the United States consists of money, cars, over consumption, self centeredness, racism, sexism, selfishness and I’m sure the list could run pages if I really put my mind to it, but since I have a reputation for brevity in my homilies, I will end the list here.
The danger with our idols is that it is easy to dismiss them or imagine that they are not really idols. Sure we can tell ourselves that they are dangerous things to our spiritual health that must be considered, but certainly it is not idolatry. But we are faced in our nation with the most insidious form of idolatry there is. In a nutshell, all those idols add up to one theme of idolatry, and that is the idolatry of self.
We seem to live in a society that encourages, almost demands, that we place self in the center of the universe. That is idolatry plain and simple. The shrine we have made is a shrine of self.
Against this worship of self, Christians we are called to follow Jesus as the ultimate example of self-sacrifice.
It can sometimes be a tricky balance. God calls us to love God and to love our neighbor as our self. So the solution to self-centeredness and the idolatry of self is not self loathing and self contempt. We must love ourselves if we are too truly to know how to love our neighbors.
The answer to finding this balance of moderation in our lives will be different for each one of us. No answer will work for all of us. We are at different places in our lives. But the solution lies in balancing our needs and desires with what we feel God is calling us to do in the world around us.
What self centeredness does is cause us to look away from the concerns of the Gospel. We are faced with the challenge of self centeredness every time we watch the television. And while it might be the answer for some of us I’m not saying we all have to give up on television. But we do need to be much more critical to the lessons we are learning both in the programming and the commercials. We should be talking to our children about those lessons as well.
God truly does want us to live happy, fulfilling and enjoyable lives as Christians. But there is much in the world around us that would call us from following in the fullness of Christ. Paul gives a wonderful thought to what we are called to do in response to the Gospel. Paul reminded the Athenians that as a result of creation God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us”.
As a person who has struggled and sometimes failed to follow God as closely as I might have hoped, I take comfort in the picture of myself searching for God and perhaps groping for him at times, while always knowing that God indeed is not far from me. This thought gives me great hope and comfort and I continue my journey in faith.
My prayer is that it will also give you hope and comfort as well.
By George Clifford
The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, in his majority opinion in Baze v. Rees, No. 07-5439, the recent Kentucky death penalty case challenging the constitutionality of execution by lethal injustice, wrote:
Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm’ that qualifies as cruel and unusual [under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment].
A premise underlying Roberts’ comment – that the death penalty is not a kind, gentle act – seems commonsensical to me. Unfortunately, modern culture often lacks an adequate supply of the precious commodity we call commonsense. Why would anyone think that capital punishment, however administered, is not painful?
Societies impose the death penalty on convicted criminals for three reasons. First, a society may intend the death penalty to deter people from committing crime. Deterrence obviously proved ineffective with respect to the criminal justly convicted of a crime. Both death penalty proponents and opponents point to research that supposedly supports their argument that the death penalty deters, or does not deter, crime. From my ethical perspective, the research is irrelevant. My ethical problem with justifying the execution of one individual to deter other persons from committing crimes is that this reduces the one executed to a means to an end, thereby denying that person’s inherent dignity and worth as a child of God. Christians should never view a person as simply an instrument for achieving a goal, no matter how laudable the goal. The Gospel of Luke’s account of the crucifixion portrays Jesus assuring one of the criminals crucified with Jesus that the two of them, that very day, will be together in Paradise (23:39-43). Jesus clearly regarded the criminals crucified with him, who both acknowledged their guilt, as persons worthy of dignity and respect in spite of their crimes. In Luke’s narrative, one criminal experiences transformation, the other does not.
Admittedly, Scripture’s witness on the issue of deterrence, like the research on deterrence, is inconsistent. Some Biblical passages recognize the value of deterrence:
• “Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness.” - Deuteronomy 13:10-11 • “All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act presumptuously again.” - Deuteronomy 17:13 • “The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you.” - Deuteronomy 19:20
Other passages suggest that retribution belongs to God, undercutting the rationale for deterrence:
• “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people…” - Leviticus 19:18 • “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” - Romans 12:19 • For we know the one who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’” - Hebrews 10:30
I discuss retribution, the third rationale for the death penalty, below. Suffice it to say, the Deuteronomic passages supporting deterrence reflect a more rigid legalism and less robust understanding of personhood than I find in Leviticus and the New Testament. These latter passages point to a developing awareness of the demands of loving as God loves. Not surprisingly, the Baylor Institute of Religion survey, American Piety in the 21st Century, published in September 2006, confirmed that individuals who have an authoritarian image of God are more likely to support the death penalty than individuals who have a benevolent image of God.
Second, society may impose the death penalty intending to prevent a person convicted of a serious crime from further harming anyone else. As a Christian, I have two ethical problems with this rationale. Capital punishment is a final solution that allows no second chance. What if new evidence becomes available that the person executed was, in fact, innocent? Worse yet, what if the executed person is innocent but nobody ever finds the exculpatory evidence? At least in the first instance, society can release and compensate the convicted person discovered to be innocent. No evidentiary standard, no matter how high it is set, can guarantee that absolutely everyone given the death penalty is in fact guilty.
Even more morally troubling to me, the death penalty makes a large number of people – legislators, police, judges, lawyers, jurors, prison officials – complicit in the death of each person executed. William J. Wiseman, Jr. was a member of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980. He admits that for six years his highest priority, like that of every legislator he has ever known, was retaining his seat. Everything else was in a different category of regard and concern. Philadelphia Quakers had educated Wiseman and he opposed the death penalty. He believed that at best it was unjustified and at worst was immoral.
When a bill came before the legislature to re-write Oklahoma’s death penalty law, Wiseman found himself in a difficult position. Ninety percent of his district, as measured by a poll that he had commissioned, supported the death penalty. He was afraid that if he voted against the death penalty he would not be re-elected. Wiseman attempted to rationalize supporting the death penalty by seeking a more humane means of execution. Working with the state medical examiner, who sought out Wiseman after learning of Wiseman’s quest for a more humane method of execution, they drafted what became the nation’s first legislation authorizing capital punishment by lethal injection. Over thirty states have copied that groundbreaking legislation.
Today, William Wiseman lives with the knowledge, the guilt, that he is morally responsible for the execution of many criminals. He sacrificed his principles for political expediency. (William J. Wiseman, “Inventing lethal injection,” The Christian Century, 20-27 June 2001, pp. 6-7) I do not believe that I have the moral right to ask others to kill another person to prevent that person from committing additional crimes when at least one viable alternative exists, e.g., life in prison without parole. This belief mirrors Christian Just War Theory, which requires any potential war to satisfy a number of criteria, one of which is that war is truly the last resort, before waging war with the attendant use of lethal force is morally justifiable.
Third, society may impose the death penalty as retribution against the criminal for the crime committed. The gospels report in several places that Jesus taught his disciples, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31). Jesus’ teaching echoes the Torah (Leviticus 19:18) and the New Testament repeats it several times (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8). Pretending that Jesus thought that anyone involved in imposing the death sentence on him or in executing him acted out of love for him mocks the brutally cruel reality of his crucifixion. Similarly, no amount of thought or imagining allows me to construe legally executing a convicted criminal as loving that person.
Some death penalty proponents argue that executing the guilty individual somehow expiates, atones for, makes amends, or compensate the victim or victim’s loved ones. Executing the guilty, from this perspective, becomes an act of justice, if not love, for the victim or victim’s loved ones. This entails, as with the first rationale for the death penalty, reducing the executed to a means to an end. In other words, the way to set the first wrong – the crime(s) that led to the imposition of the death penalty – right is a second wrong – the dehumanization of the criminal. Two wrongs never make a right.
Capital punishment is obviously painful. Its principal pain stems not from the method of execution, no matter how agonizing. Prematurely extinguishing a human life causes the real anguish of capital punishment. The executed criminal experiences that pain most intensely. The rest of us are diminished by the loss of a brother or sister and because we ourselves become a little less human every time our society executes one of its members. The time has come to declare loudly, emphatically, and decisively through our political process that capital punishment is inimical with whom we believe God has called us to become. Capital punishment should end, regardless of constitutional issues, because capital punishment is morally wrong.
The Rev. George Clifford, a retired priest in the Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years.
 Different denominations often vie over access to parts of the site |
Israeli police had to break up a fist fight that erupted between Greek and Armenian Orthodox clergymen at one of Christianity's holiest sites.
The scuffles broke out at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Orthodox Palm Sunday.
ONE OF THE GRAVEST weaknesses of contemporary Christianity is the little attention paid to the wrath of God. We have become sentimental and have so stressed the love of God as to become unwilling to talk about his wrath.
In part this is because the culture will not let us do so. There is an outcry whenever the clear teaching of the Bible is given in public. Church members have to live in this world. They do not want their minister to talk about unpopular or divisive subjects. The minister is aware of this and he is tempted to soft-peddle on matters which are scriptural. Among them is the subject of God’s wrath.
There is an even deeper reason. Many false teachings (or lack of true teaching) begin with an inadequate idea of human sin. In the twentieth century, there were significant advances made in psychology. We learned more clearly than ever before the effect of the brain on human behaviour, the shaping we experience through our parents, and the sort of things which motivate and explain the way we operate. Much of this has been for the real betterment of people.
On the other hand, too much credit was given to these new ways of looking at human beings as though they fully explained us. What was missing was an adequate account of human evil.
God’s wrath is his holy response to our sin. It is a righteous anger at unrighteous behaviour, indeed at unrighteous beings. It is completely just. Indeed it is an expression of love, since it takes us with utmost seriousness and refuses to accede that we are like insects, not responsible for our actions. The wrath of God is one of the foundations of the whole moral and spiritual order. The Bible portrays us as living at a time when we experience a foretaste of the wrath of God.
He said more after this, but I think you get his drift. You can get the full text here if you like:
I'm personally voting against a wrathful God. Not because I don't think that God can't get wrathful now and then (at least God was clearly understood to be wrathful in the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures from time to time) but because I just don't see that much wrath popping up in Jesus. As Christians we are called to follow Jesus as the ultimate example in our life. And quite frankly I didn't see Jesus paying much attention to the wrath of God in his ministry. So if it is good enough for Jesus, with all due respect to the Archbishop, it is good enough for me!
A very good friend of mine forwarded me this sermon to provide some comfort as I go through a difficult time in my life. The quote in bold from Barbara Taylor Brown was particularly comforting. One of God's greatest gifts to all of us is each other, particularly the gift of friends willing to stand beside you in your moments of darkness and distress. I'm very grateful that God has blessed me with so many of these kinds of friends.
Below is the entire text of the sermon (which was preached by The Rev. Judith Carrick is a deacon in the Diocese of Long Island, currently serving at St. Anselm’s Church in Shoreham, New York. E-mail: revjudy95@aol.com ):
Doubt and disillusionment, discouragement and despair: these are emotions that are common to all of us at some point in our lives. Loss of a job, loss of a loved one, divorce, illness, even the loss of a pet, any of these things and more can throw us into a tailspin and fill our hearts with anxiety and fear. We think that things will never be right again. Especially in the middle of the night, things seem at their very worst. We forget that there ever was a thing called hope, and all that we have learned about God’s saving grace is nowhere to be found. If ever we knew how to call upon God, it is now only a distant memory from a better and happier time; and even when we need God the most, we turn our backs on God and walk away.
That is exactly the situation in which we find Cleopas and his friend in today’s Gospel. Followers of Jesus, they had believed in the new life he had promised them. Their hearts were filled with joy and anticipation as they looked forward to hearing more of his word and to being witnesses again and again to his good works, to his miracles. Fed in body, mind, and spirit by their fellowship with Jesus and with other believers, their lives had become filled with a new joy, and even all that they had to give up to follow him was as nothing compared to what they now had. They thought it would go on forever.
But that was then. Now all their hopes and dreams were as dead as Jesus. The events of the past few days, ending with the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, had beaten every last shred of hope from them. They thought there was nothing left to do but get out of Jerusalem and go to another place, perhaps to pick up the pieces of their former lives and begin again; to turn their backs on all that had seemed so expectant and hopeful, and walk the seven miles on the road to Emmaus.
So they started out, the two of them, talking as they went, and going over and over the same ground—as if saying it one more time would change the outcome. Don’t we all do that? If we’ve lost something, don’t we keep revisiting the same spot, thinking that if we go there often enough, the lost item will miraculously appear? As they do this, Cleopas and his friend, a stranger meets them on the road. It is Jesus, but their hearts are so full of defeat and so devoid of faith that they do not recognize him. What’s more, when this stranger asks what they are talking about, they cannot believe that he doesn’t know all that has happened. Where has he been? And so they tell it all once more. They even tell him about the empty tomb, how some women had seen a vision of angels who said that Jesus was not dead but alive. But still, they said to the stranger, no one had seen him, so perhaps the women had just heard what they wanted to hear.
When they had finished their side of the story, the stranger chided them. “Weren’t you listening when he told you how all of this must come to pass? Don’t you know how, from the beginning of time, the prophets had foretold exactly what has just happened, that the Messiah must suffer before he enters his glory?” As he recites Scripture to them, going all the way back to the time of Moses, they are so taken in by his words that when they reach Emmaus, they don’t want to let him go; they want to hear more, and so they invite him to stay with them. He agrees, and as they sit down to supper, the strangest thing happens. A guest in someone else’s home, Jesus becomes the host. He picks up the bread, he blesses it, he breaks it, and he gives it to them. And in that simple but so meaningful act, something they had seen him do time and time again, their eyes are opened and they know with certainty, not only who he is, not only that this is indeed Jesus, but they also know that all he had said to them was true. It was just like Mary and the tomb. Jesus had only to speak her name, to call out to her in the same way he always did, with the same familiar voice and inflection, and she knew immediately who he was. For Cleopas and his friend, their doubt and despair were instantly forgotten. They were so renewed in faith, so excited and happy that their feet grew wings, and they ran all the way back to Jerusalem to tell others the Good News.
If Jesus was disappointed in the disciples and all the others who deserted him at the end, who, in the midst of their despair and disillusionment, chose to take the road to Emmaus rather than stick it out by his side, we never hear about it. One of the most wonderful things to come out of the resurrection is that we learn this about Jesus: no matter how bad things become for us, no matter where we go to hide ourselves when the world gets to be too much for us, even if we lose our faith for a time, he will come to be with us. He won’t ask us for explanations, we won’t have to justify our position, and there will be no recriminations. He will simply meet us as we walk, each of us along our own road to Emmaus. It may be in a shopping mall where, out of frustration, we are buying something we don’t really need, or it may be in a car that is taking us away from those things we can no longer endure; or it may actually be on a road as we try to walk off the results of that recent medical test that took us completely by surprise.
Whatever route we take when we just can’t take it any more, Jesus will meet us there. Even though it is us who are going away, he is always faithful. In the words of the noted preacher Barbara Taylor Brown, “He comes to the disappointed, the doubtful, the disconsolate. He comes to those who do not know their Bibles, who do not recognize Him even when they are walking beside Him. He comes to those who have given up and are headed back home, which makes this whole story about the blessedness of being broken.”
This should not surprise us. Jesus’ entire ministry was centered on those who needed him the most: the poor, the sick, the blind. Wherever he could find them, he shared not only his love, but whatever else he had, until finally he shared his broken body as well. The wonderful truth of this story is that God uses everybody to proclaim God’s kingdom, and not only when we are being good and faithful and true, but even in our moments of waywardness and faithlessness as well. Just as he made himself known to the two men walking along the road, and then used them to make his story and the news of his resurrection known to the world, so he comes and stands beside us in our moments of despair, calling our name, waiting for us to recognize him, to realize again the truth of his words, to be renewed in faith so that he can use us again. In countless ways, Jesus comes among us, never demanding, but patiently waiting for us to open our eyes and see him. It may happen as we stretch forth our hands in prayer, it may happen in the reading of Scripture or in listening to a friend; it may come as we walk along a road or, like Cleopas and his friend, it may be in the breaking of the bread. He is there. We have only to be willing to have our eyes opened in faith so that we can see the Risen Christ for ourselves, so we can feel his presence and his peace as they surround us.
The gift of Emmaus awaits you. Wherever you are on that road, pray that when the Risen Lord comes to you, your eyes may be opened so you can behold him in all his glory; and then, renewed in faith, run to tell others the Good News. Amen.
