Lambeth Day 7 - 7/23/2008

Wednesday morning I awoke to two pieces of news in the British press that were of some concern. The first was a report that the Sudanese Archbishop had called for the Bishop of New Hampshire to resign. That act, in and of itself, was not novel. Numerous people have suggested the same over the last five years. What is disconcerting is that it came where and when it did, in the midst of a conference-wide effort to seek understanding before discerning (let alone demanding) specific actions or consequences.

The second report was that the Bishop of Fort Worth, Jack Iker, had publicly urged all Bishops of The Episcopal Church who are supportive of Bishop Robinson’s ministry as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire to withdraw from the Lambeth Conference and go home, reasoning that the conference had rejected Bishop Robinson and was therefore rejecting those who are sympathetic to him. To be invited by a colleague in our own House to leave this conference was a startling early-morning revelation. It served to wake me up sufficiently to realize also it was a beautiful, sunny day and that Sue, having arrived the day before, was in the room next door. (We are all housed in dormitories at the University of Kent in Canterbury.) Things were looking up.

By the time I had gone to the 7:15 Eucharist and had had some breakfast, I was focused less on the nature of these two requests and more on the timing of them, delivered right when the vast majority of participants were giving themselves to deeper understanding and companionship, rather than to volatile suggestions of where one another could go. I regretted that they came as such a distraction from the productive work being done, and I headed off to Bible Study and Indaba.

My Bible Study group discussed these disappointing pronouncements, and one member made a very constructive suggestion. He allowed as how it has been helpful to him in situations like this to pay attention to the feelings expressed rather than the words. Listen to the feelings, not the words, he proposed. Great advice for parents of teenagers, I thought. Listen to the feelings, not the words. I wondered if maybe that is what Jesus was doing, listening to the feelings not the words, while he drew in the sand as the Pharisees accused the woman caught in adultery, tossing up and down in their hands the stones of judgment they were waiting to throw. As we get further into the challenging topics before us, I will try to drop my own stones and do the same.