The Order of Melchizedek?

Last Sunday, the Episcopal parish church which I once served as warden held its annual meeting. This was the first annual meeting since the parish was demoted to mission status, thereby conferring on the bishop, not only title to the building (worth millions), but the right to select the congregation's priest-celebrant. The decline from struggling parish to barely-on-life-support mission can be traced to the selection three-and-a-half years ago of a woman who hit the trifecta of disabling characteristics to serve as an Episcopal clergyperson: divorced, former Roman Catholic, former lawyer. Lord knows how many years of penance or seminary training are necessary to overcome those disqualifiers, and predictably, her legalistic outlook on life, ingrained works-based-salvation theology, and anthrophobia infected her dealings with the parish, and parishioners fled the pews. The bishop's canon (read personnel director) could not mediate the dispute, and the parish let her go. The bargain was that the bishop, who has been paying the bills by selling off the assets of defunct parishes, short-circuited any effort to revitalize this congregation, which lies in a diverse and gentrifying section of the city, by, for instance, having an evangelical or orthodox priest serve the altar and pulpit.

The bishop solved one problem by creating another. He placed a partnered homosexual as the weekly celebrant, even giving some funds toward that end. Other parishioners, whose judgment I respect, had lauded his preaching, and to give him a fair hearing, I listened to his sermon. Perhaps because I have been spoiled by two of the great preachers in the Episcopal Church (Tom Bowers and Fleming Rutledge), I found the congratulatory tone of the sermon, pegged to the story of Jesus' changing water into wine at the wedding at Cana, off-putting. Basing his message on Jesus' "it is not my time" rebuke of His mother, he seemed to imply that it was time for the mission to move forward. Was this an implicit injunction to accept homosexual clergy? To push for more aid to Haiti or "social justice"? Whatever the subtext of the sermon, it was not focused on God's grace and mercy, without which we are all lost in a pit of our own making.

This former parish cannot support itself without new members and new money. One ministry that got short-shrift at the annual meeting was a weekly Bible study that once attracted some 12-15 people and and even brought a few newcomers to the Sunday pews. May that mission not forget that the role of the Church, any church, is to preach the good news that in Christ all is made whole, and all truth revealed, not that the popular culture is to be celebrated, even idolized.