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"Grounded in scripture, rooted in prayer, discovering what God is up to" - Bishop Beckwith's address at the 141st Annual Convention

Bishop Mark Beckwith
By: 
The Rt. Rev. Mark M. Beckwith, Bishop of Newark

On July 3 of this past year, I was scheduled to travel to Liberia as the Presiding Bishop’s representative at the consecration of my friend and colleague, Jonathan Hart, as Archbishop of West Africa.

On July 2, I received an email from Kit Cone, a member of Grace, Madison, who had lived in Liberia and has a long list of partnerships and relationships in West Africa. Kit had bundled together a series of emails from medical people in Liberia, England and the US indicating that the Ebola virus had not just spread to Monrovia, where the consecration was to take place; it was out of control.

Before I could really process these rather chilling messages, my amygdala had kicked in. That’s the primitive part of the brain that registers danger, and immediately plots a fight or flight response – all having to do with survival. My mouth went dry. I was scared.

As it happened, I had my annual physical an hour after I read these emails. My doctor told me that I couldn’t go. He thought that Ebola was an airborne virus, and there was no protection against exposure. And that it is 90% fatal. It turns out that Ebola is not airborne, but it can be transmitted through personal contact. And the fatality rate is in the 60-70% range. But still.

I didn’t go. Nor did anyone else from the small American contingent. I regretted not being there for an important event; but I didn’t regret my decision. And I continue to thank Kit Cone for his warning. And it took a couple of weeks for my amygdala to calm down.

We all know that fear – that fight/flight response. For about six weeks this past fall our individual and collective amygdalas were given quite a workout as a couple of Ebola cases – or threat of cases, made it to this side of the Atlantic. It was all people could talk about. It turns out that Ebola wasn’t as contagious as anticipated, but the fear was. My wife Marilyn told me that kids in her elementary developed a new put-down: “don’t touch me, you have Ebola.” And then there was ISIS in the Middle East and Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, each of which seemed to come out of nowhere, and took ruthless violence to a new extreme. And a couple of weeks ago, the Charlie Hebdo massacre paralyzed Paris – and sent psychic shockwaves across the world. In November and December, Grand Jury rulings exonerated police officers for the shooting deaths of unarmed young black men; and then in early January two New York police officers were assassinated, revealing a tension between police and populace – and also exposing, yet again, that race relations in this country are far from being healed.

And those are just the issues we share in common. Each of us has other issues – in our families, communities, churches and psyches that present threats of a dizzying variety. The amygdala makes no distinction. A threat is a threat. Fight/flight kicks in. The brain wants to tell us that the only path to survival is to hide under a rock. Stay in. Shut down.

It was into this sort of world that Jesus was born. Actually, it was probably a lot worse than what we face today. Disease was rampant – and carried with it life-denying stigma. Roman rule was ruthless – and no doubt reminded the Jewish people of their enslavement generations before in Egypt. Executions were as public and arbitrary as those of ISIS; they just took longer. Rome generated endless waves of fear, which was exactly her intent.

And as often happens when a community is under enormous stress, the religious world, as portrayed in the Gospels, devolved into a cocoon of dogma and righteousness. Those silos of certainty provided an environment in which spasms of flight/flight responses could be kept to a minimum – but only if you followed all the rules.

And Jesus said - over and over again, following the rules just isn’t enough. The life of faith is not about protecting scarcity; it is all about having abundant life: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Giftedness. Freedom. Creativity. If we frame our lives under the shadow of fear, we will have no life.

So what did Jesus do? Instead of sealing the religious tradition off from the world as it was, he built a bridge between his faith and the world he lived in. Instead of shutting himself in, he went out. He breached the walls of the religious cocoon by healing on the Sabbath, eating with tax collectors and prostitutes, consorting with lepers and people possessed by demons – and in so doing built a pathway for others to follow.

How did Jesus do it? By being grounded in scripture and rooted in prayer. Early on in his ministry, Jesus goes to his home synagogue in Nazareth – and takes out the scroll and reads from Isaiah 61: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” He recites the psalms; he is schooled in the wisdom of the prophets – not so he can pass some test, but so he – and others, can live a life in hope and freedom.

And Jesus is rooted in prayer. Over and over again in the gospels we hear how Jesus went off to a lonely place by himself to pray. Early in the morning. Late at night. Whenever he could find the time. My teacher and mentor Henri Nouwen used to say that Jesus’ ministry could be visualized as a triptych – the center panel being prayer, flanked by panels depicting his teaching and healing, which were the hallmarks of his ministry. His ministry proceeded from prayer, and he always came back to prayer.

For Jesus – and for us, being grounded in scripture and rooted in prayer provides an alternative response to the stimuli of danger and fear. The amygdala will always go to work whenever it feels threatened. The fight/flight response may completely take over our nervous and respiratory systems for a time; but God is still there. And active – offering blessing and hope.

In a recent conversation with a group of clergy about signs of God’s grace, one priest recounted a terrifying incident years before when this priest’s life was seriously threatened. All the fight/flight responses kicked in; but in the midst of it all – this priest said, there was this surprising –and unmistakable, sense of God’s blessing and grace. A breath of divine presence in the midst of terror. The priest survived the threat; and the promise of hope and blessing began to take on a new and deeper meaning.

Jesus’ purpose in ministry was to assure people of God’s hope and blessing – even in the midst of all the threats of oppression, disease, poverty and degradation that made them feel worthless. That was his purpose. And he asked – and continues to ask, that it become ours.

As many of us know, the American culture has more and more people who claim no religious identity. People who, when asked their religious affiliation, say none. Nones are the fastest growing religious group in America – especially in the northeast and northwest. And for many of these nones – they perceive religion as organizing people into silos of certainty, where fight/flight has become a practiced response to the world. To the uninitiated and often uninformed nones, religion is about dogma and righteousness – and hostile to the workings of the secularized world. Nones tend to regard religious people as against the world.

My eight year experience in this diocese is that we are just the opposite. Instead of being against the world – sealed off by dogma and righteousness, more and more of the communities in the diocese are engaging the world – in solidarity and compassion; grounded in scripture and rooted in prayer. At least two thirds of our congregations offer “Ashes to Go’ on Ash Wednesday at train stations and bus stops. An equal number invite people in their community to bring their pets to be blessed on the Sunday closest to St. Francis Day. Many of them offer the blessing outside on church grounds or in a local park. Members of St. David’s in Kinnelon went to the local dog pound to bless the animals there.

Following Jesus’ example of building a bridge between our faith and the world we live in, some congregations are including in their weekly prayers issues and concerns of the neighborhood, in addition to praying for their members. This year, the diocese – and some of our congregations, have created a line item in the budget specifically earmarked for investing in the community. Not a donation, but money set aside to invest – to in some way begin to build a bridge between our faith and our local community.

At the beginning of the school year, many congregations bless backpacks filled with school supplies – to be given out to community children. On the Sunday before Halloween, some congregations invited kids to wear their costumes to church in order to bless their costumes and their Halloween journey. St. Paul’s in Chatham decided to move their midweek Lenten study program from the church to the pubs and diners of the community.

For the past year, All Saints in Millington has served as the spiritual center for the local community – as the Millington community continues its search for a well-known man who disappeared into the Great Swamp a year ago. All Saints hosted a prayer vigil shortly after his disappearance, and another a few weeks ago on the first anniversary of his disappearance. On Good Friday, the three Episcopal churches in Jersey City organized a Stations of the Cross liturgy on the streets of the city, joined by the police and community residents, stopping to pray, remembering Jesus’ Good Friday journey – and honoring, at each stop, local youths whose lives were taken by violence.

For the past eight months, leaders from three congregations – Christ Church, Short Hills, St. Paul’s, Chatham and House of Prayer, Newark – along with leaders from the diocese, General Seminary and Apostles House in Newark – have engaged in scripture and prayer to discern how all these institutions might create a partnership ministry that offers transformation for everyone involved.

We are all learning as we follow Jesus’ example of building a bridge between the life of faith and the world as we find it. Engaging the world and discovering what God is up to. I want to introduce to you the Rev. Juan Rosario de la Cruz, who has recently come from the Dominican Republic to serve as Priest in Charge of Grace Church in Union City. He has much to teach all of us, as his ministry has long been about building a bridge between the world and the life of faith.

Fr. Rosario de la Cruz is new to us. Fr. Brian Laffler of St. Anthony in Hackensack has been doing similar ministry in that city for nearly 25 years. Building pathways between the life of faith and the neighborhood.

Yes, it is about building a bridge between our faith and the world we live in – grounded in scripture, and rooted in prayer. It is also about discovering God’s abundance and blessing. In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus sends out seventy – like lambs in the midst of wolves. Which means that it is a world in which people instinctively protect their scarcity, with a ferocity fueled by fear. But Jesus sends his disciples as bearers of peace. And he sends them forth in the confidence that God’s peace has the capacity to counterbalance a flight/flight response, and to bring about transformation – for both the lambs and the wolves. It doesn’t matter if the seventy are welcomed or rebuffed, the message is the same: “the kingdom of God has come near to you.” God is at work, in the world – bringing people together and offering blessing. That is what God is up to. And we can be a part of that too.

One of the primary reasons we are deeply engaged in the life of our churches is because that is where we find and are fed by God’s abundance and grace. Church is the place where we get grounded – in scripture, prayer, the Eucharist, the music and all the rest. Church is where we find God at work. But our commitment to what we do in church – and everyone here this morning has a deep and abiding commitment to what we do in church, (otherwise you wouldn’t be here at 8:30 on a Saturday morning), our very commitment runs the risk of believing that the church is the center of God’s work. It isn’t. We gather in church, we are grounded in scripture and rooted in prayer in church – and then are sent out from the church as messengers of God’s peace – and to discover what God is up to in the world. And then to join God in that work. To follow Jesus by building a bridge between our faith and the world as it is.

This past September 11th, Greg Jacobs, Nina Nicholson and I went to Penn Station in Newark to offer blessings. I did the laying on of hands, Greg anointed with oil – and Nina took pictures and held our sign – “Blessings for a Wounded World”. As soon as we set up our prayer and blessing station in the indoor concourse, a line began to form. For several minutes we were very busy offering blessings on the 13th anniversary of one of America’s most tragic days. And then there was a lull – and I looked out over the concourse, watching literally hundreds of people rushing to catch a train or a bus. And in that moment I saw God at work – bringing people together, and blessing them. Our blessing was merely making manifest what God was already up to – which was to offer hope and blessing. In retrospect, what I saw was what the writer of Revelation saw – “the new Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2) God’s abundance. God’s blessing. That’s what I saw, until the rational part of my brain kicked in and told me, in no uncertain terms – ‘You didn’t see that. That is fantasy. It didn’t happen. It can’t happen. ” And the rational part of my brain also reminded me of all the things that were driving people apart – their siloed frenzy, that they were wolves and I was a misguided lamb, not to mention the fact that a police officer just opposite me had an AK47 draped over his shoulder. Despite all the rational evidence that suggested that it was just another day at the train station, it was – and remains, a transformational experience for me. God was very much at work, and I was able to see it and join in.

And the world as it is may not be what we think it is or want it to be. We need to see for ourselves – with eyes, ears and hearts wide open. I often hear – in myself, and in others, that our cities are infested with heart rending scarcity, and our suburbs are havens of protected abundance. Look more closely. Listen more intently. Which is what our congregations in the Going Local process are doing. There is a measure of joy and pain in every neighborhood and community. Some of it is hidden. Some is open. And the joy and pain are expressed in many different ways. But God is there – beckoning us to join with the living Christ to build relationships that help heal the pain and celebrate the joy. By bringing peace – and in some creative way, indicating that the kingdom of God has come near. Because it has.

One of our churches, Christ Church in Newton, has made an intentional effort to build relationships with the non-church neighborhood within their church. I am speaking of the many 12 step groups that gather there, most of them filled with young adults who support one another in their resistance to falling into behaviors marked by fight or flight. Let’s hear their story.

This is all about seeing what God is up to. And joining with God – and being open to transformation. Is it a pathway to church growth? Well, no – and yes. If joining with God becomes a technique for church growth, it is dead in the water – because then it is an exercise driven by anxiety and fear. But – but, if we discipline ourselves to dwell in the Gospel, and follow Jesus out from the Gospel – we will adopt habits, practices, attitudes and values that will grow our communities. Because our churches will be transformed.

“I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves”, Jesus said. Over the years I have discovered that I – that we, are remarkably vulnerable to someone else’s labeling the other as wolf. A creature to be feared and to stay away from. A creature that hunts in packs – whose fight instinct is honed to a vicious edge; and who is unrelentingly aggressive and mean. Over the centuries we have developed whole categories of wolfness in the other. My sisters and brothers, these are all projections – and these projections dishonor our humanity and grieve the Holy Spirit.

Because of recent events across the country, in some quarters the police are being identified as the wolves in the local community. And quite frankly, some police are identifying parts of the local populace as wolves. There is a lot of snarling going on. Which tells me that police and local residents are feeling vulnerable – for very understandable reasons. A fight/flight response is very close to the surface. One way to lower the tension is to build a bridge across it. Every one of our communities has a police department. I commend people in congregations to meet with members of the police department – on their turf, and build a relationship. Reduce the projection and misunderstanding. Let’s ask ourselves, “Where is the pain? Where is the joy? What is God up to? How can relationship between police and congregation shape our ministry?”

And because of recent events in this country – many having to do with responses – or lack of responses, to police behavior, issues of racial injustice in our country have once again been exposed. The cultural myth – since the Civil Rights Movement, is that we live in a color blind society. Grand Jury decisions in Ferguson Missouri and Staten Island suggest otherwise. The blogosphere is filled with statements and positions that fuel fear and create silos. So I invite the people and congregations in the diocese to ponder and pray with me about how we might create opportunities for us to talk about race in a safe space that honors difference – and where we all have the opportunity to be transformed. The Michael Brown and Eric Garner tragedies – along with a host of others that have turned the stomach and broken the heart, have created a window of opportunity for deep conversation that this country hasn’t really had since the Rodney King verdict in 1992. We need to take advantage of the opportunity – and discern, amid all the hurt and fear, what God might be up to. And join God in that work.

We are not social scientists or social workers. We are followers of Jesus – who have committed ourselves to journey beneath and beyond the temptations of flight or flight. We are disciples of Christ – daring to engage the world and discover what God is up to. Grounded in scripture and rooted in prayer – and open to life-changing transformation.