Save for advertisements and press releases on the weekend “Religion” page, the secular press usually doesn’t have much to say about ecclesiastical institutions such as The Episcopal Church.  And when it does, it usually isn’t accurate.  So, I don’t know how informed you may be about current events in the Church.  It seems Katherine, our Presiding Bishop, has become quite annoyed with the resistance of some of the Diocesan Bishops to her support of “reimaging” Holy Scripture and Church doctrine to make it more “accessible” to modern persons.  . . . The Presiding Bishop’s pique has resulted in her interfering with the orderly process of the Diocese of San Joaquin leaving The Episcopal Church (as is it’s right); and her pique has resulted in her deposing Bishop Robert Duncan of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and imagining that Bishop Jack Iker of the Diocese of Fort Worth renounced his orders in a press release.  . . . My spiritual mentor and thesis advisor in the late 1980’s, The Rev. Dr. Philip Turner, wrote a recent article observing that this unruly behavior on the part of the Presiding Bishop, and the House of Bishops’ cooperation, is evidence that the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church are being subverted and the Church’s business ordered according to “the will of those in power.”

    Now, I mention this not by way of complaint nor to arouse your righteous indignation.  I mention this so that we might begin Holy Week today by clearly seeing the contrast between the good intentions of distractible men and women (Bishops, presiding and otherwise, in this case) . . . and Jesus.

    Saint Paul, writing to the Church at Philippi in Macedonia; . . . Saint Paul exhorts the Church that in all matters She must “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  . . . And what is this gospel of Christ?  The gospel of Christ is that

Jesus, . . . though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Speaking of this death of Christ upon the cross, British theologian John Macquarrie has written,

whether we lay [the crucifixion of Jesus] at the door of the Romans or the Jews, it would seem that his offence was not any direct political teaching on his part, but rather that the kind of person he was and his message of the Kingdom of God were seen as a threat to any political system that lays claim to absolute power.  (Mary For All Christians, p. 122)

And most political systems I can think of do; . . . most political systems lay claim to absolute power, . . . even the Church, it seems.  . . . And this is something we must go into Holy Week grieving and repenting; . . . that Katherine, our Presiding Bishop, cannot love the Kingdom of God; . . . that we all are capable of sharing Katherine’s spiritual infirmity; . . . that unlike Jesus, Who was in the form of God (which none of us are); . . . Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (which most of us do).  . . . How many of us make important sounding prayers which instruct God on what He must do to make things right; . . . how many of us cry out in despair, “where was God to prevent such a thing from happening?”  . . . We, prelates and laity alike; . . . we make God our equal and act as if it were true, . . . unlike Jesus.

    Instead, Jesus emptied Himself of himself; . . . Jesus emptied Himself and took the form of a servant.  Jesus took the form of a servant, . . . and on Maundy Thursday He will tell you,

You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to was one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.

That is the example that Jesus gives us, Saint Paul says; to empty ourselves of our self-importance and love the Kingdom of God.  Imitating Jesus, it is in our souls’ best interest to take the form of a servant; . . . to become a servant:  . . . a servant to God, . . . a servant to Jesus; . . . a servant to one another.  . . . That is not the example we are given most often.  Katherine, our Presiding Bishop, did not wash Bob Duncan’s feet; she stepped on them; . . . she stepped on the feet of dear Bob Duncan who was so kind to Fran and myself and our boys when he was Dean of Students at General Seminary.  . . . And so, we must begin Holy Week, today, mindful of the contrast between the good intentions of distractible men and women … and Jesus, . . . lamenting and repenting our disordered affections and begging the Lord God Almighty to create and make a right spirit within us; . . . a spirit like that of Jesus, Who was obedient to God by dying to Himself so that He could go to the death of the Cross for our justification.

    Of the Christian Life that has Jesus as its example, John Macquarrie says,

A . . . point of tension between [the Christian virtues] of faith, hope, and love on the one side and [the Enlightenment virtues of] liberty, equality, and fraternity on the other is that these modern secular virtues are assertive in character whereas the Christian virtues encourage meekness and self-effacement.  . . . Of the Christian triad of virtues, faith stands first.  But faith is an acknowledgement of one's incompleteness.  . . . On the secular list, what stands first is liberty, and from the Enlightenment onward, liberty has been understood as autonomy.  The individual claims the right to order his or her own life . . . (Ibid., pp. 124; 126)

From the Enlightenment onward our Western culture has contrived to assert that Jesus and His followers are quite wrong; that there is a human identity apart from God; . . . that the Commandments, the Nativity of Jesus, the reading of Holy Scripture to school children, and obligating them to pray as a community are quirky Christian aberrations completely unnecessary for the development of a complete “personhood”; . . . that it is possible to have a public life apart from God; . . . that our sexual preferences or racial configuration or ethnic roots or ontological limitations are not accidents of nature . . . but descriptive of a person’s nature.  It is the assertion of Western culture that we are not created in God’s image, but that we have an identity of our own choosing and of our own crafting, not according to the divine virtues of faith, hope, and love infused into us by God’s grace, . . . but according to the chemical composition of our DNA.  And so, in these present times we maunder over ancestral indignities, emotional scars, and perceived insensitivities.  It has made us, more and more, a fragmented, grim, and humorless society.  It has made us a people who are whiny and uncooperative unless certain accommodations are made to our “felt needs”.  We are a self-absorbed and self-limiting people.  And the sickness even infects the Church.

    But Jesus can heal us; for, He came to reveal to us what it means to be created in God’s image.  Ah, if only Bernie Madof had taken to heart the example of Jesus and the teaching of His Church to live with simplicity, detachment, and focus; . . . to love poverty, chastity, and obedience, . . . Bernie would be a happier man today.  For, Jesus,

though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And so, as we begin Holy Week, today, be mindful of the contrast between the good intentions of distractible men and women . . . and Jesus, . . . lamenting and repenting our own disordered affections and begging the Lord God Almighty to create and make a right spirit within us, . . . the spirit of Jesus, . . . so that our manner of life might be worthy of the gospel of Christ, and on Easter Day (and ever after) the Lord God Almighty might highly exalt us with His Son.