SERMON BY THE RT. REV’D STEPHEN CHARLESTON
I wanted to say as I began my sermon that a few of you may have heard me preach before, and if you have, you know that I always try to speak from the heart and to let the words come to me under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And so the reason why I asked you to be seated is because I want to ask you if you will, please, to help me in your own spirits and in your own hearts as I offer this simple prayer. And this is really especially important to me this evening, because you can imagine, I hope, the emotions I would feel being honoured like this, to come before you in this particular moment, in this history of the Anglican Church of Canada to offer a sermon to begin this Synod; it is a great honour for me, and I feel privileged to be here. So it’s extremely important for me that God will anoint and bless what I’m about to say, so that it will reach out and touch all of your hearts, so please join me in your spirit as I offer this simple prayer.
Lord God Almighty I come and stand before you as I have so many other times and in so many other places. But this moment is different. This moment has a power all of its own because this room is filled with so many hopes. I ask you therefore gracious God to take from me any sense of false pride or vanity. Do not let my words come from my own mind alone, but let them come through the filter of my heart which is graced by the touch of your Holy Spirit. Anoint me, anoint me, O God through your Holy Spirit. Touch me with your hand Jesus, and let every word that I say be the word that you would have be spoken tonight. Amen.
I am very very pleased to be with you this evening. As you know my name is Steven Charleston. I’m from the Episcopal Church USA, I’m the President and Dean of one of our seminaries there in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Episcopal Divinity School, and I wanted to say how grateful I am to your Primate for inviting me to be the preacher at this service because, as I just mentioned, I’m very aware, as I think everyone in this room, much more so than I, is aware, that this is a very special important synod to have, gathering as you are as representatives from all of your dioceses.
So when I come before you, I come with some honest sense of fear and trembling because I asked myself, when I got this invitation, why would they want me to offer this sermon, to start such an important meeting? I do not believe that it is because of my vast intellect, as you will soon discover. (laughter) That’s not why I am here. I am no expert in the church affairs of Canada. I don’t pretend to be any person who can come to you with any deep words of wisdom about the situation in which you find yourselves.
I thought, well, it could be that by my very nature, I am a person who represents and embodies the cross-cultural reality of the church today in North America by that, I mean I am a Native person. An indigenous person from the United States. I am a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I am both Cherokee and Irish. And so I represent, embodied in myself, that cultural bridge between two communities, and an effort to try to understand what that truly means in a spiritual light. So I thought, maybe they invited me because I have lived through what it means to build bridges of reconciliation standing in a space between these two great historic communities, the indigenous communities of North America and those many immigrant communities that have come to our shores throughout history.
But I’m not sure if that was really the reason. But then I thought that it could be that I have been, and always will be proud to be a strong supporter of the Anglican Church of Canada. And I can’t tell you why. I have been in Canada many times. I have been in many different provinces, in many different parishes and dioceses. And I do not understand, to this day, exactly, in that mysterious and utterly unexplainable way, that I have formed this emotional, heartfelt bond with your community. I cannot explain it, but I feel it deeply. I feel some mysterious calling, over and over again in my life, to turn my eyes toward Canada, and in my prayer life to discern what the meaning of God’s witness here in this church which all of you share together. I believe very deeply that that witness is about to have profound importance, not only to those of you who are part of the church in Canada, but to so many of us around the world who are your brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion.
But I do not believe that any of those reasons alone would be sufficient for me to be asked to be with you. I think that there may be a more subtle reason And that is the fact that today is the fourth of July and I am from the United States. And here I am wandering around in Waterloo! (laughter) It’s so funny to me! I’m so out of place! Why am I here, I thought? Why would I be here? What word of possible wisdom or possible healing could I bring to this community? It struck me: the very fact that I am the outsider, in that sense that I am the stranger, listening, listening. That I am the stranger. That I come from a different place. That I have not been embroiled and enmeshed in all of the trials and tribulations that all those of you who have come to this great Synod have known first hand. But instead, have been an observer, from a distance – a faithful observer, a caring observer – but an observer, still, watching to see what was going on in the Anglican Church of Canada, indeed, in the whole of Canadian society. And I often believe that it is true, and perhaps many of you will bear witness to this in your own lives, that it is often the outsider who can come in, and perhaps catch a glimpse of something that those of us who have been deeply involved in, in an issue or in a struggle, in a trauma, are not able to see for ourselves.
You know what I’m saying? Someone who comes from the outside might bring a clarity, a different perspective, might see things in a slightly different way. And in so doing, be able to enlighten our own eyes, in this case your eyes, to the reality of what’s happening around you.
Yes, I think that’s it.
I do believe that is one of the reasons that my voice this evening, in the opening service, may be of some benefit to you, even though it is not because of my vast experience in church life, or my intelligence, or any other reasons that I can offer to you. I think that perhaps it is sufficient to say that yes, I am a stranger, somewhat, in your midst. But I come from a place where I have been deeply committed to observing what is going on in this church, what is going on in all of your lives, and I think, with God’s grace, listen. I think, with God’s grace, I have come to bring you a message of enormously powerful healing. Of an uplifting, through the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe that I am anointed by God now, under the Holy Spirit, to really share with you what I really understood from this Gospel lesson, from this reading in the Bible, from Revelation and from Isaiah and from the Gospel, what this really means to us.
Listen to me.
I can see things in a different way. And that’s what got me thinking about these readings. Did you notice in these readings, how many times that simple phrase, that simple image was used: “come and see!” Come and see. In Isaiah, the great prophet Isaiah says, “I am doing something new. Can you perceive it? I am making something happen. Can you see it?” – in that sense is what God is speaking to us.
In Revelation you hear that same echo: something new is about to happen. Can you see what I am doing? Behold, look and see what I am doing. I am doing something different for you. And even in that strange, wonderful, simple, earthly story of Jesus, when they follow him and say, “well, where are you staying? We want to get to know you better, we want to get closer to you.” He says, “well, come and see.” It is so simple: come and see. I love it, in the Scriptures, when he answers the disciples of John, and they say, “we want to know, so we can tell John, if you truly are the Messiah.” Do you remember what Jesus’ answer to them is? “Go and tell John… what you learned in seminary?” (laughter) No! (more laughter.) Surprised you with that one, didn’t I? What you read in a theological book? What the daily news reports tell you? What your friends told you across the back fence? No.
He said: come and see. Go and tell John what you have seen with your own eyes and heard for yourself. There’s something in the Scriptures, Christians. There’s something about the immediacy of our ability to see, to perceive, to have vision, into the reality of our lives that is profoundly important in all of the Bible, but certainly in the teachings of Christ. It is tremendously important that we see for ourselves, that we are witnesses to the truth with our own eyes. Now why is that so important to Jesus?
Well, look at the situation we’re in here in Canada. And I use the term ‘we’ because I am a brother of yours in the Anglican Communion. I feel, as I said, intimately and deeply bound up with what is going on in the lives of the people of this church. And if I were to say to each one of you, ‘what do you see?’ what would you answer? What would you answer? What do you see going on around you in the church?
There are many, I believe, in Canada, as there would be in my own country, and I believe in many other countries, who would say, to be honest with you, ‘we’d rather not see.’ We’d rather not see. Because if we look truly into the depths of what is happening that has brought us to this point in the Anglican Church of Canada, don’t you understand, we would have to look at things that would make us uncomfortable. We’d have to see the reality of our own histories. We’d have to catch a glimpse of cruelty. Of lost opportunity. Of damaged lives. Of bigotry. Of prejudice. Of misunderstanding. The list could go on and on. And we, as people, do not often like to see those things.
And many there are, and many there will continue to be, in this country, I believe, of yours in Canada, that will turn and divert their eyes from this reality, and choose not to see what truly happened that created the situation in which we find ourselves. That would prefer not to know the truth of their own colonial history. And I do not say this, brothers and sisters, from my observations at a distance, of the situation in Canada. Listen: I say this from the absolute experience of my own life being a Christian in the United States, where we prefer not to see the racism that haunts our church, has done so in the past, and continues to do so to this day. Where we prefer not to see the truth of human despair and degradation that prejudice and bigotry and hatred always create. Where we prefer not to see on the fourth of July the truth of our own colonial past. So, yes, there will be many who will walk away and who will not want to truly capture the vision of Canadian church history, of Canadian social history, over generations, of the relationship between peoples of all cultures and all colours. There will be others who, when asked to see with their own eyes what is really happening here would say to you, would say to you, “I don’t want to look at that because when I look at it, all I can see is darkness ahead.” Have you any friends like that in the Anglican Church of Canada? Some who feel as though they’re so anxious and so nervous about what they read in the newspaper and hear in the news what their understanding of what’s happening in the Anglican Church, that they would be afraid of what the future would hold, uncertain, as we, as Saint Paul says, see only as through a glass, but dimly. Darkly. Where the future is not clear to us, where our vision seems clouded.
And so this question of what do you see becomes important. Because there will be many, in the church around the world, and certainly here in Canada, who, faced with a situation like this would say, “I see no way out of this. I see no easy solution. I see no quick answers. I see only that it will cause us to strain and to stretch and to struggle to find a new way.”
What are you seeing, Christians? What are you seeing?
There are some who will still see through the eyes of an unhappy anger.
Am I telling you the truth?
There are some who, faced with situations like this will choose the option of saying “well, all I can see is it’s those people.” (muted laughter from the congregation). Well, I got somebody out there. Those people. “I see it’s those people, their fault. They’re to blame. They’re the ones who made this happen. There will be a few who will see through the eyes of anger and through the eyes of their own fear and so distort the vision of the reality and the community that exists in this nation between Native people and those from many other cultures, that they will see only what they choose to see, which is the trouble, the anger they have brought to the situation themselves.
What do you see?
What do you see? Let me tell you in a very heartfelt and simple way what I believe I can see through the lenses of the Gospel of Christ, why I believe that when Jesus tells us, “go and tell John what you’ve seen for yourselves,” when he says to these first apostles and disciples coming to him and wanting to know him better, “come and see me up close, come and see where I live,” why the Gospel asks us, over and over again, to pay attention to how we see things. I believe it is because when we take Jesus Christ as our Gospel example, even for situations as confusing and as difficult as the one in which you find yourselves, we begin to see in an entirely new way.
What I believe is that, as an observer of your situation, is that what I can see is, in Canada, in this church, that you are not turning away from your past and pretending that it never happened, glossing it over and covering it up. But instead, are facing the realities which are not unique to Canada at all, but are, in fact, the realities of colonialism around the world, are, in fact, the realities of relationships among peoples of all cultures in every continent on the face of the earth – that are looking squarely at the results of what happens when men and women cannot communicate with each other with equal respect and equal dignity in the same common community.
We do not have to look far to see, brothers and sisters, clearly, in the world around us, the results of that kind of prejudice and bigotry, both between races and between religions. If we look clearly with our eyes, we can see this occurring in places like Northern Ireland. You can see it occurring in the Middle East. You can see it in the Balkans. You can see it in every part of the world where cultures and colours of people come together and can only see in one another what they fear, and not what they should cherish, in human dignity.
But in the Canadian church, this is not the case. In the Canadian church you are looking squarely at the result, at the outcome of when this kind of situation occurs. You are not turning away, but looking honestly, and with dignity. And I applaud you for that. I would say what I can see occurring in the church in Canada today is a group of men and women who are not looking at each other with fear, but looking at each other with an amazing, astounding degree of hope. That are looking at one another with a sense of community that is, I think, of absolute important to the rest of the world. You are, in your own communities, becoming witnesses and examples for the rest of us to follow about how communities that have become torn by situations that are deep and old in their points of origin and difficult to resolve, how you can still stand together as a common community in the faith of Jesus Christ. What I see so clearly in my eyes is a church that not teetering on the point of ruin, but just standing on the threshold of glory.
And I say that because I see you through the eyes of Jesus, the one who said, “what do you want to see? Come and see for yourselves.” And I believe that what I see so clearly is Jesus in the midst of this church. Do you?
Do you? What do you see in the midst of the Anglican Church of Canada today? I see the Holy Spirit. I see the love of God. I see the faith of good men and women of every colour and of every culture standing up and working together. I see people of courage who are not afraid at all of change. God said, “behold, I am making something new come into being.” It will not always be comfortable. It will not always be easy. If you look ahead and say, ‘but it looks so dim out there in the future’, – well, of course it does, because it hasn’t been created yet.
Well, who’s going to create it? You are. With the help of God and the grace of Christ.
I see Jesus in the midst of you, working something new that we will only begin to perceive dimly in the start, but will soon become what we will give to our children and our grandchildren as an inheritance of faith. An Anglican church that will be reborn and revitalized and stronger than ever before. And one that has been through the fire and tested by times of trouble. And what a gift that will be to our grandchildren and to their children. Not a church caught in a past that it seeks to avoid or control, but a church reborn and made fresh and new as God has said.
What I believe I see when I come here to Canada is a hope for Anglicanism around the world. I wish to God that my church had that same energy, that same courage, that same vision that you possess in abundance. I do not come here lightly to share these words with you, to say that I know that the struggle will not be difficult for you. You’re going to be making some decisions soon, you know, that aren’t going to be easy. But I believe with all of my heart that the choices that you make are going to be blessed by God and will bring this church back to its true witness. Its true witness, not just in Canada but around the world. For generations this country and this church have stood for the meaning of community, when men and women of all colours and all languages can come together to worship God with dignity, with freedom and enjoy. I believe that’s exactly what you embody, and I believe that’s what the Anglican Church of Canada will continue to embody in the days to come.
Oh, brothers and sisters, if I could open my heart and let you catch just a momentary glimpse of how much I have in my heart an affection and a respect for what you are about to do. And how much hope and joy I see come of it. I really wish that I could do that for each and every one of you, and touch you with a feeling of strength and courage and hope that I feel for you. And I pray with all my heart that when this day is done and you look back, when you are called to see where you have been and see truly what you have done, that you will perceive it as I do, as a vision of God’s coming into community to bring the Gospel alive, to heal, to restore, to reconcile, to bring forgiveness and love and justice and mercy, not just between a few people in Canada, but around the world.
You may not believe this, you may not believe this yet, but hear a closing word of prophecy from the voice of the Holy Spirit: Anglican Church of Canada, do not look back with any sense of grief with any sense of loss. What has happened in the past is a reality. But what is about to come into your future is also a reality. And that future is resplendent with the love, with the grace and the mercy of the Jesus who died for us all. I bless you and sanctify you in these days ahead, brothers and sisters. And though I am a stranger in your midst, I hope I can come back some day and rejoice and celebrate with you at the rebirth of the Anglican Church of Canada. God bless you and thank you for letting me be with you.
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