Episcopal News Service January 23, 2007
God's business is unfinished, James Carroll tells opening Eucharist for Trinity Institute
By Daphne Mack
[ENS] Author and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll told the congregation gathered for the January 22 opening Eucharist of Trinity Institute's 37th national theological conference (http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/education/?institute-2007) that "the human presence is by definition unfinished because we know what we remember and we know what we want."
"And how do we know this?" Carroll asked. "Because we ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which is the knowledge of mortality."
Carroll was preaching, in part, on this year's conference theme: "God's Unfinished Future: Why It Matters Now." Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori celebrated the Eucharist.
This year's gathering, offered by Trinity Church (http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/), runs through January 24.
Carroll, a theologian, was a Roman Catholic priest from 1969 to 1974 and was chaplain at Boston University. He is a novelist whose books have been compared by reviewers with the moral fiction of Graham Greene. His memoir, "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us," received the National Book Award in 1996. He is a regular op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe newspaper and his most recent publications include his tenth novel, "Secret Father" (2005) and two works of nonfiction: "Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History" (a bestseller) and "House of War" (2006), a history of the Pentagon.
In his sermon, Carroll said that the gospel reading (John 12:27-36) "has invited us to begin our learning with [the word] trouble."
"The astonished Christian intuition is that in telling the story of Jesus, we are telling the story of God," he said. "That story begins, of course, with the saga of creation."
To listen to Carroll's sermon in its entirety, visit Trinity Institute's website at: http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/index.php?event_id=40240
The conference continues January 23 with the Rev. Barbara R. Rossing, professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and Jurgen Moltmann, emeritus professor of theology at Tübingen University in Tübingen, Germany.
Full story and photographs: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81416_ENG_HTM.htm
-- Daphne Mack is staff writer for Episcopal News Service.
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