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August 6, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
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97-1923
Sermon at the Closing Eucharist of General Convention, Philadelphia,
July 24, 1997 
Bishop Frank T. Griswold III of Chicago

     When, on Monday in the House of Deputies, I said that I looked
forward to today's Eucharist as a time when I would be able to address
you with a more recollected spirit, I had no idea how utterly naive that
expectation was: These last two days have been wild and yet filled with
grace in so many unexpected ways--so many of you in this room are the
occasions of that grace, and therefore I thank you. I'm also grateful to
those who have made suggestions to me about what I might do on this
occasion, what agendas I might reveal, what messages I might send, what
assurances I might give, what challenges I might utter. Fortunately, I
didn't have time to put it all together so all I can do is to attend to
today's feast and the readings we have heard.
     Some weeks ago the four nominees were sent a letter informing
them that the person elected would be today's preacher and that the
readings for the day were those appointed for the Commemoration of
Thomas a Kempis. a 15th century monastic whose book The Imitation of
Christ has formed generations of Christian men and women all the way
from such persons as Ignatius of Loyola and John Wesley. The letter also
discretely suggested that we, the nominees, might want to prepare a
sermon in advance, just in case. I couldn't bring myself to do it. It
seemed so presumptuous. So harried, and singularly unready, here I am
before you.
     One thing I did do, however, was to go out and buy a copy of
The Imitation of Christ, as a companion to the other book which has
helped to distract and calm me during this curious season which began
last Ash Wednesday when four members of the Nominating Committee
arrived in Chicago. The other book was Dickens Nicholas Nickleby. I
chose it in part because it is 935 pages long. I hoped that I could make it
last through convention and I am happy to report that I have 192 pages to
go. And therefore my first pastoral directive to you as your presiding
bishop elect is, when you are beset by 
anxiety and fear and wonder what you have gotten yourself into, read
Dickens. He is a wonderful storyteller and social critic.
     But now let me turn to the other book, The Imitation of Christ.
As I said, it was written by a monastic for monastics from a 15th century
perspective that requires the contemporary Christian to read it with
prudence and no small amount of discretion. Still, there are any number
of quite wonderful 
passages that speak to us directly, even to a church body such as this,
gathered in solemn assembly. And here are a few:

     "If only . . . people were as diligent in the uprooting of
     vices and the planting of virtues as they are in the debating
     of problems, there would not be so many evils . . . ."

Or again,

     "If God is to dwell among us, we must sometimes yield
     our own opinions for the sake of peace. Who is so wise
     that he/she knows all things. So do not place too much
     reliance on the rightness of your own views, but be ready
     to consider the views of others."

     And here I would like to spend a moment, "ready to consider the
views of others." Ready to make room for, to be hospitable toward the
views of others. And I would observe, that our words "conversion" and
"conversation" come from the same root, a Latin verb, converse, which,
in its passive form means to be turned, to be turned around, to be turned
in the right direction, and that certainly is what conversion is all about.
     And so is conversation. Conversation is about being turned
around. Conversation is a sacred enterprise in which I am turned around.
I am changed by making room for, by considering, by being hospitable
toward the opinion, the word, the lived and incarnate truth of another.
     Conversation--considering the views of others with an undefended
heart--can be terrifying because conversation at this level exposes us to
the possibility of encountering the mystery and imagination of God,
God's wisdom in the lived truth of another, a lived truth which
frequently confutes and stretches and transforms our paltry and partial
grasp. At such moments, we usually run for cover and take refuge
behind prejudgments or seek out a cozy community of like-mindedness.
Then from such positions of safety we lob labels and texts at one
another.
     And one of the fundamental ingredients of authentic and
grace-filled conversation is love. Not our own deficient and compromised
capacity to love, but the love God works in us, pours into our hearts
through the action of the Holy Spirit, thereby rendering them hospitable
and permeable to truth however it might come upon us or choose to show
up in our lives.
     Here again. Thomas has a word for us:

     "If you rely on your own reasoning and ability, rather than
     on the transforming power of Jesus Christ, you will
     seldom and only slowly attain wisdom. For God wills that
     we rise above cold reason on the wings of a burning love .
     . . ."

     The transforming power of Jesus Christ is Christ's own love
finding a home in us and making it possible for us to love with God's
own love. "Remain in my love" Jesus tells us in the Gospel, which
means, "Allow my love to unfold within you, to open you to the world
around you in the power of my all-embracing, all- including
compassion."
     And here I think of some words from another Thomas, Thomas
Merton:

     "It is not a questions of either-or, but of all in one, of
     wholeness, whole-heartedness and unity....which finds the
     same ground of love in everything."

     To an anxious, fearful, downcast and bickering church, St. Paul
in today s first reading says, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And because
the words were such a contradiction to the state the Christian community
at Philippi was in, he adds, "Again, and again and again. I say rejoice."
     But the command to rejoice is not an invitation to some sort of
mindless, manic enthusiasm, but to a rejoicing life characterized by, as
our reading told us, gentleness. The Greek word for gentleness has a
much richer meaning suggested by our translation (NRSV). It connotes
the forbearing spirit, a spirit that is not unduly rigorous, a spirit
possessed of an unconditional readiness to welcome and forgive. This is
the gentleness Paul invites us to make our own.
     Paul then goes on to speak of a peace which passes all
understanding, because it is the consequence not of some external
rightness based upon "cold reason," but of that deep inner knowing that
"All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well", which is the
fruit of prayer and supplication, which is in turn, an openness to God's
love on every level of our being.
     A forbearing, welcoming, and forgiving spirit, grounded in
prayer, is therefore, able to receive God's peace, is then able to discern
and welcome, in the life of the community and it members, whatever is
"true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable" in one another.
     Left to our own devices, we are critical, fearful and protective of
our own take on truth. Cracked open by the Spirit and the transforming
power of Jesus Christ, we are able to welcome the paradox, complexity,
ambiguity and outright contradiction which is where real life is lived and
the grace and peace of God are truly to be found.
     I think that this is the point of the Beatitudes in today's Gospel
reading. They are impossible, they make absolutely no sense whatsoever,
except to those who have lived them, those who know from the inside
that by losing we find, and by dying we live, not just as individuals but
also as a community of faith.
     Contradiction, paradox, certitude challenged by the Spirit of
Truth, thereby enlarging our experience of truth, is painful and difficult.
Yet "again, I say rejoice."
     This is not easy to live and we can t live it alone, which is why
God has made us all limbs of one body in baptism. "The foot cannot say
to the hand: I have no need of you," anymore than the right can say to
the left: "I have no need of you." We are members one of another by
God's will and incomprehensible design in this disparate, occasionally
ill-tempered, and sometimes wonderfully loving bundle of aspiring
faithfulness we call the Episcopal Church.
     I look forward with some fear and trembling, to be sure, to the
next nine years as your Chief Pastor and presiding bishop. And right now
I tell people that this is the season of transfiguration: We are on the
mountain, but we have to go down the mountain and up to Jerusalem.
Right now I am enjoying a wonderful blame-free period. It won't last for
long. But as I look ahead, I am very clear that you are my fellow
ministers. You are my fellow truth-tellers, grace-bearers, co-discerners
of where and what our God is up to and is seeking to transform and heal
in this broken and sinful world in which we live.
     A colleague of mine has said on numerous occasions: The
Episcopal Church can only do one thing well: "celebrate failure." And I
am aware that one of the tactics of the evil one is to fix our attention
wholly on the negative to the total exclusion of the larger picture. And
therefore, we have to be particularly mindful of Paul's injunction:
"Rejoice always in the Lord, and again I say, rejoice." Through the
discipline of prayer, and encounter with the risen Christ in word,
sacrament and one another--and conversation at its deepest level is all
about meeting Christ in one another--we are able to recover that larger
picture and find ourselves free from the tyranny of any single issue.
     Another and more immediate cause for rejoicing is the sacrificial
ministry--and I use the word "sacrificial" advisedly--of our Presiding
Bishop Edmund Browning. I know of no one who deserves the title
"chief pastor" more than he does and am deeply grateful, as we all are,
that he and Patti have kept us focused over the last 12 years on our
needy and broken world and have not allowed us as a church to become
completely self-absorbed, even at our worst moments.
     Next January 10, I will formally receive the fruits of his ministry
symbolized by the primatial cross. I pray that with your prayers and
collaboration, and I stress collaboration, we may take a step forward
together into God's future and our own relying on the transforming
power of Jesus Christ, the driving motion of the Holy Spirit, and on the
wings of God's burning love.
     "Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I say, rejoice." Amen.