Bishop Jelinek's Remarks at Clergy Conference
May, 2008

My friends -- and I call you that, because I believe we are, in spite of our disagreements past and present.  I believe we are because of the reality that we are all in this movement together to work out what it is to be the Church according to our best lights, our proudest moments, our fondest wishes and the fears we act out with again and in the presence of one another. 

With all of that I say “my friends” as a further invitation into that often trite but inescapable, not-dismissible identity as brothers and sisters in Christ.

I want to share with you some reflections and an invitation.

Reflections

We have spent an appropriate yet painful amount of time and energy considering our shortcomings, failings and failures in being Christ’s Body the Church. We have recognized that we have fallen short in countless ways attributable to the actions and inactions, the judgments and misjudgments, the talents and weaknesses of each of us.

In doing so, we have risked further harm by beating each other up, disparaging each other’s gifts and talents and – at worst – each other’s personhood.  We have risked further harm, yet I hope and believe, not irreparable harm to our relationship to trust and to God’s longing for us as this particular part of Christ’s Body.

In doing so, we have tried each other’s patience and faith and hope, and perhaps God’s, as well.

In doing so, we have risked tarnishing the longing that God has for us humans to overcome and transcend the limitations of our own egos and our collective fears like the disciples in that wave-swamped boat on the Sea of Galilee. “Wake up Jesus; can’t you see we are perishing?”

In our critical journey, or journey of critical introspection, where we have come to what we might appropriately call “the truth” about ourselves, we have had a very limited capacity to discern the presence of the Holy Spirit and name what the Holy Spirit is doing among us.

Let me assure you, that I believe, with many of you, that if we had begun this process by looking for and naming what we might call our “positives,” we are likely to have been Pollyannaish and self-deceiving rather than truthful.

However, the gravest dangers I see for us at this stage of our discernment are these:

• Being overwhelmed by self-doubt, negativity and despair, i.e. being both helpless and hopeless.
• Becoming, like the blind man after Jesus’ first healing touch, able to see nothing more than “men as trees, walking,” rather than as he claimed after the second tough, able to “see clearly.”
• Becoming collectively, like a truly depressed person, unable to see light at the end of a tunnel, unable to see any possibilities, any hope, unable to describe God’s hand at work in any of this.

I want to challenge us not to be so small, so limited in vision.

I will remind you that it was not the devil who drove Jesus into the wilderness of mythical, metaphysical any psycho-socio-somatic temptations.  It was the Spirit.

That it was neither Jesus’ powerful intellect nor his critical thinking that saved him from falling into temptation.  It was his faith.

That it was not his absolute clarity, his sense of being right, his certainty about either God or the future.  It was his faith.

That it was neither his cleverness in debating Pharisees nor his wit in trapping scribes that led him to be revered and hated, but his faith.

That it was neither his co-dependency nor some gift of sorcery or divine powers that allowed him to heal.  It was his faith.

That Jesus calls us not because of our perfection nor even our talents and gifts, but because of our capacity to have faith, to be faithful.

That our faith never makes us perfect or even beloved – because we already are – nor even makes us acceptable, because that is scarcely the way God thinks; our faith, when offered, may make us useful.

That while it is possible for God to use any one of us, or only one of us, Jesus started a movement, the name of a communal God who wants, calls and empowers all of us as Christ’s Body.

That God is more likely to be truly and reliable present in what we love than in what we hate, for our loves can rarely be explained away or diminished as mere self-interest, and our hatreds can rarely be more noble than our self-pity for our wounds or our fear.

Isn’t this all part of our human condition, being caught in what Ward Bauman describes as the egoic self? Not “wrong,” but too small, a less view of what it is to become fully human than God’s vision for us?

Bill Tully said at Convention a few years ago, “If we’re going to change, none of us will like it.” As I heard Ward, moving into discernment together is so scary that the earliest dynamics of periods of monumental transition are often a sense of chaos, fear/terror and disorientation, and the earliest manifestations are likely to be either retrenchment and rigidity like the Roman Catholics and others are doing, or denial like many others are doing, or in-fighting, mutual disparagement and rivalry in being right or most-beloved of God, as we Episcopalians/Anglicans are doing. When we look at the early Church, some got caught in each of these.

I do not…I will not believe that we are so limited, so small. I continue to believe that we are a body – a part of THE BODY – that sees, understands, feels, knows that being a communion is not about agreement, but trust; not about intellect, but faith.

Invitation
I want to give you an invitation, again, to play along in this whole process, trusting God that this is truly of the Spirit – stretching you own faith to believe that everyone is trying as hard as you are to live by the best light they have, off the best gifts they have, commit as much of themselves as they know, just as you are. And if you are having your own difficulties with faith, I ask you to name them, to invite others in, and not to project your self-mistrust onto others. Can we be that honest, that self-disclosing, and that willing to trust each other when it is hardest to trust self. It seems to me that heroic faith is what’s called for now.

In playing along, I want to ask you neither to threaten to nor to actually take your tracks or your dolls or your soccer ball and go home when you are mad.

I want to ask you not to look for easy or quick fixes that are likely to be only technical change rather than adaptive change.

I want to suggest that some of the resolutions about budget, structure, canonical changes before we have a clear direction and a set of priorities and an agreed-upon way forward are likely to fall into the category of technical change, and I say that because they seem to benefit some at the expense of others and possibly at the expense of the whole. Even if you believe that the current system benefits some at the expense of others, particularly yourself and your congregation, we do not truly move forward in the Spirit by replacing one perceived injustice with another.

I want to ask the Mission Strategy Network (MSN) and all of you who work with them to be bold enough to do what the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) group has: develop one of more pilots and begin to try them as soon as possible. You and your predecessors have been in existence long enough, have become enough a part of our system, that I would guess the fear of failure lurks in your minds. How can we fail if this is a movement of the Spirit and our main goal is to learn something that can be useful?  MISSION.

I want to ask the rest of us to greet MSN’s work with hope. I am not asking you to suspend critical thinking, but let’s be sure there is more thinking than criticism, for then we are part of the discerning and planning and not obstacles to it. The MDG group could operate more freely because they were not under our microscopes.

I want to ask those of us who have spoken often and loudly, to listen more and quietly.

I want to ask those of us who have said little or nothing to speak up, and loudly enough so we can hear you.

Lastly, I want to suggest we all pray daily – most of all to see how we are all a part of one another. I believe the more we see the Christ in one another, the more we will perceive the Spirit’s movement among us.

I want to end with a faith question: on a spectrum or a continuum, do you believe God calls us out of God’s frustration and desperation, or that God calls us out of God’s joy and hope? Are you willing to partner with all others on this spectrum, for if you are, if we are, then God can use us whether out of desperation or hope.

Where are you seeing spiritual transformation in progress? 

I can name a few: the work of the MDGs as it engages people over this diocese in mission; the merging of St. Philip’s and St. Thomas out of a sense of abundance and hope, rather than scarcity and fear; the University Episcopal Community as it renames itself as a “community” rather than a “center,” placing their vision in people and relationships rather than a building. 

It’s your turn.