Text:  Luke 9.28-36
Last Sunday after the Epiphany

“Global Schism?  How this Conflict Can Transform Us”

            This headline blared across the Op-ed page of the New York Times this week:  “A Divorce the Church Should Smile Upon.”  The columnist was talking about the potential schism in the Anglican Communion.  This controversy pits most Anglican churches of the global North against a great many Anglican churches of the global South.  Ostensibly, this conflict is over our respective stances on homosexuality.  If you dig a little, it’s easy to see that there are sharp disagreements in the Anglican Communion about how to read scripture.  But one should only need to hear the conflict framed as “global North vs. global South” to perceive that there are much deeper issues at work.    The Times columnist who favors schism sees an insoluble tension between the monarchical church models in the South and democratic church structures in the North.  He sees the opportunity to free ourselves from the Communion as a triumph for democracy. 
            If I were to write a column for the New York Times, it might be entitled, “What you lose when you abandon a good fight.” 
            This has been a rough couple of weeks for people like me who want the Communion to remain intact.   Last week, the leaders of all the Anglican provinces gathered in Tanzania.  These leaders are called Primates.  There are 38 of them, and they include the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Archbishop of South Africa, the Archbishop of Nigeria, and so on.   Their meeting was tense, and concluded with the group issuing a Communique to the American church – that’s us – demanding that we stop blessing same-sex unions and that we pledge not to consecrate any more gay bishops.  The primates have asked our church to respond to these demands by September 30.  Our presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is clearly pained by this Communique, but she appears intent on trying to foster dialogue within our church so that we can meet the deadline and issue some sort of response to the Primates.  In reality, given the democratic polity of our church, such dialogue on such a short timeframe may be utterly impossible.  And so many Episcopalians are bracing themselves for what they perceive to be inevitable schism, or at least a realignment of the Communion.  In the past week, I have heard two priests here in Chicago – men I like and respect – express something close to jubilation at the prospect of us shedding our ties to very conservative Anglicans.  They anticipate divorce, and they are indeed smiling about it. 
            You’d think I would join them in their excitement.  Me, an out and proud lesbian who is passionate about my priestly identity.  The Archbishop of Uganda has publicly accused me and my fellow gay priests of being “followers of Satan who have infiltrated the church.” Why on earth should I want to be in communion with him?
                        I’ll tell you why.  Do you know what it is to be changed by conflict?  Have you ever found yourself talking with someone who sees the world very differently from you, and emerged from the conversation with a completely new perspective?  I recently heard someone describe this phenomenon as “conflict transformation”.  Not conflict resolution, but conflict transformation.   I have experienced such transformation a small handful of times, and those encounters have been among the most important of my life. 
            In a small way, I had a moment of transformative conflict just this week.  I found myself duking it out with the Apostle Paul, trying to understand the passage we just heard from Philippians.  You should know about me that when I duke it out with the Bible, the Bible always wins.  I’m no theological lightweight, but it’s hard to handicap 4,000 years of work on the text and, you know, the fact that God had a hand in writing it.  Truth is, I hate it when I think the Bible is losing.  That’s when I know I’m not working hard enough to hear and understand what scripture is saying to me.  When the Bible finally wins, as it always does, it changes me.  I grow.  And I like that. 
In our epistle reading today, Paul warns the Philippians that there is a renegade group of Christians in their midst.  He calls these people “enemies of the cross.”  Harsh.  He says about them, “Their end is their destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”  Here I am trying to get you guys to appreciate the value of dialogue and reconciliation, and here Paul is telling us that Christians following a path he disagrees with are “enemies of the cross.”  C’mon, Paul, help me out!  Is it too much to ask the founder of the western church for a little support of Christian unity?
So there I am in the library, exasperated, and this is what I begin to see.  Several scholars think that these “enemies of the cross” are a group of libertines.  The word libertine meant two things in the ancient world.  Originally, it referred to slaves who had been freed.  That’s a good thing, right?  Well, the term evolved into a derogatory reference to hedonists, people who showed no restraint in satiating their physical desires.  This is the kind of libertine that Paul appears to be talking about.  Scholars think that these libertines misunderstood Paul’s assertion that Jesus came “to set us free.”  Arguing that they were free to do whatever they want in the name of Christ, they eschewed the spiritual discipline at the center of Paul’s teaching.  In Paul’s mind, that discipline was the way to Christ.  To reject it – and to teach others to do so – was to deal in spiritual death. 
The primates who are angry with the Episcopal Church would probably label us libertines.  In our affluence, we are wide open to criticism that we indulge the flesh at the expense of the spirit.  We are right to take this criticism seriously.  I suspect that our fixation on the Millennium Development Goals stems in part from our recognition that our affluence is dangerous to our souls.  I suspect that we are eager to work on the MDGs in part to atone for past wrongs committed to satisfy our material gluttony.  At some level, I think we recognize that we are guilty of the very sin Paul names, and we are desperate to address it. 
Our primatial critics see a direct relationship between our affluence and our acceptance, even celebration, of what they consider to be sexual degradation.  Those of us in the Episcopal Church who celebrate the lives and ministries of gay people see a sharp distinction between the two.  Not only do most of us in the Episcopal Church reject the idea that homosexuality a form of sexual degradation, but we would argue that the impulse to seek justice for lesbians and gay men stems from precisely the same impulse that makes us work for the MDGs – a desire to atone for past sins; a desire to see people living fuller, richer lives; a desire to free people up to seek and serve Christ.
So how can Paul help us?
I hear in Paul’s epistle another way to frame the challenge we face.  When Paul says that the enemies of the cross have their minds set on earthly things, one can interpret this as an indictment against those who refuse to take spiritual risks.  One way that the Episcopal Church could address the charge of libertinism would be for us to take far more seriously the spiritual challenge Paul raises – to reject spiritual safety, complacency, and pride, which our critics perceive to be arrogance.  In fairness, our critics could do the same.  We could all embrace the possibility that there can yet be conflict transformation in our Communion.
Three conditions must be present for transformative dialogue to take place.  First, both parties must acknowledge that they need each other.  They have to want to work through the conflict.  Second, both parties need to have a sense that they will benefit from the dialogue.  Third, both parties must be willing to put down their certainty that they know what the other is going to say.
One of the greatest challenges to our conversation is that Episcopalians think that “being changed by the dialogue” means changing our minds about gay people.  We know that we aren’t going to be changed in this way, so we don’t see the point in dialogue.  We are adamant that homosexuality isn’t the issue, but we have not been open to the possibility that more conservative members of our church have something else of value to say to us. 
Here is just one example.  Our more evangelical brothers and sisters say that we have adopted a social justice mission at the expense of the gospel.  I think that most Episcopalians see clearly the relationship between the gospel and the Millennium Development Goals, or social justice for gay people.  But we have not articulated this clearly, and we are not living it out in a way that people outside ourselves can see.  If we were engaged in authentic dialogue, we would hear the truth in this charge.  Some progressive Episcopalians do hear it, and are working to address it.  I believe that in this work there stands an opportunity for transformation – transformation I think we need, schism or no schism. 
This conversation between evangelicals and progressive Christians is taking place right here at Canterbury.  Those of you who are engaged in it are demonstrating intellectual and spiritual maturity that the church badly needs right now.  Listening to your conversations has been transformational for me.  If you are not in on this conversation, you can be.  I hope you will be.  We have just launched an online forum, which you can access through the Canterbury homepage.  Log on.  Read what your fellow Canterburians are thinking about.  Ponder these issues, and post your own prayerful responses.  Take the spiritual risk of saying what you believe.  Risk being changed by your conversation with someone else.  In this moment in the life of our church, I am convinced that this is work that Jesus – and Paul – would have us do. 
                                                            Amen.

                                                            The Rev. Elizabeth M. Stedman
                                                            Canterbury Northwestern
                                                            Evanston, Illinois
                                                            March 4, 2007