I had a birthday
party yesterday with a few good friends, most of whom I don’t see very often if
at all. We got together and laughed and talked and enjoyed a lovely English
tea. I thought it was a very classy birthday party and I enjoyed it. The neat
thing was I didn’t have to worry about an extensive guest list.
There’s always a
question of “Who do we invite?” when we're having a social event. Of course,
there’s always the family, but then there are events with friends, coworkers,
people from church, or the people we feel we owe an invitation to because they
have been gracious enough to invite us. Each category is its own brand of
intimacy or congeniality. So who we invite seems to be a matter of with whom we
feel comfortable.
We talk a lot
about evangelism in the Episcopal Church. Yes, our numbers are down a bit, and
we have people scratching their heads as to why. Growing up in a more
evangelical church, it was not uncommon for people to invite guests or people
that they knew to come to church with them and then come over to the house for
lunch, which in the South, meant a full-blown dinner with a lot of food. The point
was that you invited folks. Episcopalians are noted for their politeness, their
beautiful liturgies, and often hospitality to people who find their way into
the doors of their churches. Yet if you mention inviting people to come to
church, it’s like the suddenly the collective jaws drop and someone will often
remind the others of the old saying, “But we’ve never done it that way.”
But now it’s a new
day, and now we're being advised to invite people to church. After all, how are
they going to get to know us if they haven’t been invited into our churches and
congregations.? And how does this fit in with the commemoration today of the
martyrs of the Reformation era?
Wars have been
waged, often over religion, since Cain and Abel. After Jesus’ ascension, the
disciples in Jerusalem had disagreements with Paul and the Greek Christians. As
the movement spread, differences appeared, and schisms took place. While not
actual warfare per se, the stresses between factions grew. Christianity spread
throughout Europe, northern Africa, and as far as India. The church in Rome
considered itself the true church, which they still claim today. In the British
Isles, Celtic Christianity existed before the Romans invaded and the Roman
church began to exert its power, but finally made some compromises that at
least allowed for some religious flexibility, but the struggle continued for
centuries.
Eventually,
another schism took place in several areas that changed the religious landscape.
Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Wittenburg Cathedral
in an attempt to purify the church. Anabaptists, Calvinists, and other groups began
in Europe, while in England, Henry VIII sought approval for his divorce from
Katharine of Aragon. Thus it began—first Roman Catholics killing Anglican
heretics, and then when the Anglicans came into power, they began killing the
Roman Catholics. Sadly, that warfare continued in Ireland until a few decades
ago. There are still tensions between the two, although armed conflict has
lessened considerably.
The Roman
Catholics celebrated the forth martyrs for the faith between the years 1535 and
1679 for centuries. Much more recently, the Church of England began the
commemoration of the martyrs of the Reformation era, including the Roman
Catholics and Anglicans. Going one step further, they included fellow
Christians such as the Anabaptists and the Quakers who also died for their
faith. In a sense, the Anglicans invited others who had suffered to join with
them not necessarily join them but to worship with them to remember how hard it
can be to be a Christian accepted by everyone.
All this brings to
mind the talk of the 2020 Lambeth conference in Canterbury, where the
Archbishop invites all active Anglican and Episcopal bishops to category every ten
years to work together for unity and focus on ministries. Invitations have been
sent out to the Roman Catholics and several other denominations to send
observers to listen to the sessions and talk to the bishops and archbishops to
create a sense of collegiality among them all despite their differences. It’s
an opportunity to find where common ground exists and where divisiveness is
still present.
I think it’s a
good thing to hold such a conference. It gives a level of transparency and the
way the Anglican Community functions, a much different process than many of
those in the observer churches and denominations. But the Archbishop of
Canterbury has thrown a cat among the pigeons by refusing hospitality to
spouses of LGBTI clergy in attendance. They have not been invited because the
Church of England feels it might be divisive and unsettling to other
denominations which do not accept either LGBTI ministry or marriage. If you welcome
non-Christians as well as Christians of different understandings to a conference
but exclude certain spouses who are baptized support the work of the church but
who are LGBTI, how can you express any
sort of unity within your own gates?
It disappoints me greatly that once again LGBT
I brothers and sisters who are in stable and loving marriages cannot be
accepted as a couple because it makes others uncomfortable. Isn’t one of the
points of being a Christian is to follow the Jesus who gave clear instructions
about so many things that we seem to ignore but using the Bible as a cudgel
over something Jesus never mentioned?
So who do we
invite? Are we inviting people into our churches and our conferences to make
them comfortable or are we doing it to expand their understanding to know
better why we are doing what we do? Are we planning to live a Christlike life
or are we planning to have a nice get together with peace and harmony and love
feast going on all over the place? Or are we there to, as someone once said,
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Who should we
invite? Who would Jesus have on the guest list and why or why not? Think about
it.
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