What Do We Do While We Wait for What's Next? A Sermon for Easter VII

Once again I preached at St. Mary Magdalene Church, and once again the sermon was recorded. You can listen here. It's about discernment; but if nothing else you'll hear about the songs that didn't make sense for this Sunday....

Part of a Heritage

Preached for A Service of Worship for Graduates of Saint Luke's College of Health Sciences on May 11, 2012.

For the past two years, you have been students in Saint Luke’s College, a part of the Saint Luke’s Health System. Perhaps you’ve been told at some point that the Saint Luke’s Health System is associated with the Episcopal Church. Now, I’m an Episcopal priest, and it won’t surprise you at all that the Episcopal heritage means a lot to me. If you’ll bear with me a bit, I’d like to share some reflections coming from the Episcopal tradition that underlies Saint Luke’s.

Now, some of you will know that in the Episcopal Church we structure our worship according to a calendar. Certainly, we do remember the well-known days and seasons, like Christmas and Ash Wednesday and Lent and Easter. But in our calendar we also remember people, those folks we call Saints or Worthies. We remember them because they demonstrated in their lives the faith that lived within them.

For me as a hospital chaplain it’s been important that in that calendar we remember those who have provided health care. We remember quite a number who have found their ministries in caring for the sick and dying, I thought I might share some of those names with you.

Some you know. For example, we remember Florence Nightingale. You should know her work well, bringing sanitation and light and air into the tragedy of the Crimean War, and then to hospitals at home in England. We remember the Mayo family and the Menninger family. The hospitals they founded have become known world wide for care their of body and mind. And of course we remember the Beloved Physician, Luke.

Some you may not know. We remember, for example, the Martyrs of Memphis. In the 1870’s and ‘80’s Memphis, Tennessee, was so devastated by yellow fever that the city actually lost its charter. Anyone who could leave did; but there were so many who could not. A small group of people from a variety of faith traditions stayed in Memphis and cared for the sick. Constance and her companions were four Episcopal nuns of the Congregation of St. Mary, two priests, and a lay physician who stayed to care for the sick and the poor, and died of yellow fever themselves.

We remember Harriet Starr Cannon, who founded the Congregation of St. Mary, and began their vocation in hospitals. Coming from this order, it’s no wonder Constance and her companions saw their mission in staying to care for the sick.

We remember Damien and Marianne of Molokai. They were a Catholic priest and nun respectively who found their ministries and gave their lives caring for lepers, patients with Hansen’s disease on the island of Molokai.

We remember Innocent of Alaska, Russian Orthodox missionary and the first Orthodox bishop in the New World. He worked among the Aleut people, who like many native peoples suffered terribly from diseases brought by sailors and traders. He convinced them to accept vaccination for smallpox, and many were saved.

All these stories, all these people well known and less known, speak to me of a heritage, a tradition; and in this case, it isn’t the Episcopal tradition. After all, they weren’t all Episcopalian. Indeed, when in Memphis each year they remember the Martyrs of Memphis they remember those who were Christian, and also those who were Jewish, and some of no faith at all. If you know Florence Nightingale’s story well, you will know that she caused quite a scandal. She took with her to the Crimea some nurses who were Anglican and some who were Catholic and some whose faith was not recorded; and there were many who disapproved of that disregard for convention.

No, it is the heritage of those from every faith and culture and language who work for health and wholeness. It is the tradition, as you have heard, of those who feel called to give much because they have received much themselves. It is vocation, as you will hear, of those who find their service to their Creator in caring for the least and the last of their brothers and sisters. It is the heritage, expressed in Luke and Florence and Constance and Damien and so many others, expressed in so many languages of faith and in those moments when language fails, of those who have committed themselves to the care of the sick and the dying.

As you graduate, you take your own places in that tradition. I don’t really think it’s something that Saint Luke’s gave you. You came to Saint Luke’s because you had it in you. Rather, Saint Luke’s, reflecting that heritage of healing and supported by the Episcopal tradition, has worked with you to inform you in that heritage and to form you for that vocation. From now on, each of you will discover in your own life how you will express that it in word and deed.

You are part of the great tradition of those who commit themselves to the health and wholeness of others. May you so live out that tradition that you may take your place with those who have gone before you, and so shape and form the heritage of those who will come after.

General Convention 2012: On Health

The General Convention is coming again this summer, and this brings me back to one of the first purposes I had for my blog: to share information about General Convention, and especially information related to health, ethics, and/or chaplaincy. The Blue Book, the collected reports of the Commissions, Committees, Agencies, and Boards of the Episcopal Church (CCAB’s) is now available on line. With those reports are included the  resolutions (“A” resolutions) that CCAB’s are bringing to Convention. I encourage you to download it (you can do that here), and check out those that interest you.

It will not surprise anyone that I turned first to the report of the Standing Commission on Health. This year the report is long and detailed. The Commission reported on few topics, but sought to address those in depth. They did do something that I wish more of us in the Church did more often. They went through the Electronic Archives of the Episcopal Church, as they said, “so as not to repeat the work of the past.” Clearly they made a concerted effort over the past Triennium.

I was impressed, though, because the report began, not with an issue or a resolution, but with a reflection. “Despite the archival evidence of vehement commitment to improved health for the Church and the world, there has been little time spent in articulating the Church’s motivation for this work. The Commission finds this to be an unfortunate oversight, and sought to lay a foundation for a future theology of health.” This is an interesting observation, and I see the point. The Commission was deliberate in responding to this lack:

During the summit in 2011, Steven Fowl of Loyola and Leonard Hummel of Gettysburg Seminary facilitated a theological brainstorm, and as a result of such study helped collect these springboard insights:  

• A belief that we are created by God, that creation is a gift, and that our health is a gift from God. We believe we are called to be thankful for and excellent stewards of this gift. 
• An acknowledgment that we are not all healthy and do not all have equal opportunities to be healthy, and that these disparities and suffering are marks of the need for reconciliation with God and God’s plan for us in the world. 
• A belief in the incarnated God, who lived as a person with a mind for the health of his people, who experienced bodily suffering, and who bore the wounds of his suffering in his resurrected body. The implication for health is the assurance that we have a God who suffers with, and cares deeply for, the human creation in body as well as spirit. 
• A belief that engagement in personal and communal health issues is a sign of our hope in God’s creation and redemption. Our commitment to justice is the living out of our faith in God’s gift of health. Conversely, a lack of commitment shows a lack of faith. 
• A belief that scripture provides a model for these efforts: including but not limited to Eden, the prophets including Amos, Jesus’ efforts towards healing, Jesus’ resurrected body, and the Christian community of Acts
• A belief that our tradition is rich in communal attention to a spiritual life that honors the body. We also experience in our tradition a valued engagement with the secular world, critically valuing participation and contribution at personal, local, national and international efforts. 

Again, these are the result of a brainstorming session, and not an analytically reflected theological position statement. That said, they seem quite encompassing. They reference explicitly Christ’s incarnation, and the Scriptural evidence of God’s desire that we be healthy. It also references our responsibility to reflect that desire in the world, and the Scriptural foundation of our ministries of justice and reconciliation. While I haven’t analyzed them in depth either, my sense is that these thoughts align well with the Baptismal Covenant.

I also find myself questioning the statement that, “there has been little time spent in articulating the Church’s motivation for this work.” As in everything else, we Episcopalians articulate our theology first liturgically. We might look to the Prayer Book and to the services for Ministration to the Sick, Ministration at the Time of Death, and perhaps Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child. We might look at the Public Service of Healing in the Book of Occasional Services. These are certainly not theological treatises, but, then, we don’t usually focus on theological treatises. We begin with worship.

I think these reflections are important, certainly because they are comprehensive, but even more because the Commission offers them as a place to start. I think we should appreciate these thoughts, and then take the Commission up in its call for a more reflected theological statement about the Episcopal Church’s understanding of health, of God’s commitment to health and healing, and God’s call to us to participate in that commitment.

At Episcopal Cafe: Reflecting on Power

My newest piece is posted at Episcopal Cafe. It's a reflection about power, and especially about power in the Church - the Body of Christ, but especially the Episcopal Church. So, go over and take a look. Then, whether there or here, let me know what you think. I value your comments, as do all of the contributors to the Cafe.

Where You Place Your Faith: Sermon for Second Easter

It's a bit unusual for me to be preaching two weeks in the same place. However, I had the opportunity to preach again at St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church. Once again, my sermon there was recorded, and you can listen to it here.  I hope you find it worthwhile.