| 07/13/2009 |
I have just returned from the opening session of the 76th General Convention, and the address by the Presiding Bishop. I am still trying to digest what I have heard.
In stark contrast to the gathering of Anglicans two weeks ago in Bedford Texas, there was no opening worship. No praise. No prayer. Just a short introduction by a man in a sport jacket that had the same electric lime green tint, and a similar pattern, to that worn by the Riddler.
Then the Presiding Bishop of TEC took the stand. She spoke about the crisis facing The Episcopal Church. “Crisis is always a remarkable opportunity,” she said. Speaking from her own experience as a pilot, she said it is a time to “aviate, navigate, and then communicate,” in that order. Always keep the plane flying through the crisis—even when you are not sure where you are.
She described the essential crisis within the Gospels as Jesus’ decision to set his face toward Jerusalem, and likened the decisions of this 76th General Convention to that decision to set one’s face toward Jerusalem.
And then in a cold, calm, defiant and defining voice she said, "The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention."
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