Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 21, 2010
Solemn Evensong
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year 2: Jeremiah 23:16-32; Romans 12:1-21; John 10:1-16

This morning’s Old Testament lesson was from one of the most hopeful passages of the Hebrew scriptures, the part of Isaiah commonly called “Second Isaiah.” It comes from the time after the Babylonian exile. The Lord has been ready to show compassion to his people who have suffered. The prophet directs them to the future not the past; the Lord is doing a new thing.

Tonight, we hear a much longer passage and from another prophet, Jeremiah, who lived before the Babylonian exile. Jeremiah’s book, broadly, is about the apostasy of Israel and it’s full of exhortations to repentance. The long lesson we heard tonight was about Judah’s false prophets.

The problem for me, as I listen, is to wonder if I were hearing Jeremiah, Isaiah or Second Isaiah, would I choose to listen to them. How would I know which one truly spoke on behalf of the Lord?

The Anglican Communion has never been a confessional church. We have no Augsburg Confession like the Lutheran tradition or the confessions or catechisms of the Presbyterian traditions. We do have something called the Articles of Religion – you can find a copy of them in their 1801 form in the back of the Prayer Book.[1] They have played and continue to play a some theological and, if you will, political role within the Church of England. For us, they have never been a sufficient statement of faith. Far more important has been a question asked at ordination services of the clergy to be ordained about whether they believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain everything necessary for salvation. This question has been characteristic of Anglican services since the Reformation.

The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Church put it this way, “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”[2] I can’t think of a Christian denomination that would not make this kind of confession, even if the different communities might disagree on how they might express the particular truths needed for salvation.

A century ago, the temperance movement and women’s suffrage sat atop the so-called moral agenda of the United States. Fifty years before that, the United States fought a civil war, ultimately, over slavery. In all of these movements, clergy played a leading role on both sides. Sadly, one of the most important broadsides on the side of slavery was a book written by the bishop of Vermont, who would serve as our presiding bishop from 1865 until 1868. I don’t expect to see Robert E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington, Virginia, return to its original name, Grace Church, in my lifetime. Nor do I expect to see an end to discrimination in my society against people who differ from us in some way.

I want to leave you with two things. First, it’s very tempting for most people to quote scripture selectively – and it’s successful. A bigoted fundamentalism combined with a prosperity gospel still fills churches more easily than any other teaching – and I’m not just talking about small Protestant groups here. There’s a certain television station in Alabama that’s not Protestant but manages to promote bigotry with the best of them.

Second, despite all the uproar within our own Anglican Communion at the present time over the inclusion of women in ordained ministries and the inclusion of homosexual persons even being members of Christian churches, much less serving the church in any way, Scripture, reason and tradition allow, I would say demand, that the Church change and grow in its understanding of its mission to welcome all to know the Lord Jesus. And that’s what we’re about in this parish and in many, many other places.

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.