A sermon by the Rev. Douglas Travis, Dean-elect, given on April 24, 2007 in Christ Chapel

Lections

Acts 11:19-30a

Psalm 121

Revelation 5:1-10

Luke 5:1-11

<Luke 5:8> But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ <9> For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; <10> and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ <11> When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

My brother Drew is a Presbyterian pastor in Plainview, Texas. With his wife, Rhonda, he has raised six absolutely extraordinary children. One of their daughters, Jordan, is a senior at my alma mater, Trinity in San Antonio. She has a 3.97. When I asked her what her B was in (because her GPA isn’t perfect), she sheepishly said, “Ballet.”

But what impresses me most about Drew’s and Rhonda’s kids is not their intelligence or their accomplishments, but their empathy. All six of these young people feel with and for their fellow human beings, and all six of them constantly seek ways to serve. Kristen, another of Drew’s daughters, lives in San Antonio with her husband, Dan, who’s a clinical psychologist specializing in working with children. Kristen herself works with children in the foster care program, children who – for one reason or another – have been taken from their parents by the state because their parents were either utterly incompetent or abusive. What must it be like to be a three year old whose mama doesn’t love you?

I wonder whether Kristen didn’t begin to discover her ministry when as a college student she went to Rumania. As you may recall the communist leader of Rumania, Nicolae Ceausescu, had a policy of enforced fertility. The effect? Literally thousands of unwanted and abandoned children warehoused in orphanages. I remember Kristen telling the story of seeing one little girl, perhaps three, lying completely immobile on her side in a bed. One side of her skull was flattened to conform to the surface of the mattress because since infancy she had been touched only to change her diaper, which was obviously done altogether too infrequently. When Kristen lifted the little girl’s arm up and then released it, it fell promptly back down. Only the fact that the little girl’s heart continued to beat gave the lie to the appearance that she was simply dead.

Without relationship human beings die. Without relationship human beings are not human.

At the last church I served – Trinity Church in The Woodlands – above the altar we installed a forty feet high window of Andrei Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity. At the time we did it, I had no idea how important that window would be to my ministry. But it hovered over me as I preached every Sunday, and each week reminded me that to be a Christian is to be called into a pre-existing community of Persons. To be initiated into the life of God is become a friend of God. (cf., John 15:15ff) Relationship is at the heart of the Godhead. Friendship is of the essence to the Godhead. And there is no God beyond the Persons of the Trinity. Friendship, as understood by the classical Nicene tradition to which we are heirs, is of the essence to God, to salvation, to eternal life.

Now notice: I’ve just something very specific. I’ve pointed to what we should believe as Christians. We should believe in the triune God. And I’ve pointed to how we should behave as Christians. We should behave as friends. The Nicene Creed is nothing more nor less nor other than the statement of the ecumenical and universal church regarding both the interior life of God and His invitation to us to be initiated into His life. Our God is a God of friendship. To believe in God, to trust in God, is to accept the invitation to be initiated into His most intimate life in progressive degrees, as the Apostle Paul puts it, “from glory to glory” (2 nd Cor. 3:18). And to believe in God is to acknowledge and submit oneself to His charge to invite others into the same interior life. “I will make you fishers of people.”

I was deeply moved on several levels by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine several weeks ago. What most moved me, though, was her speaking, with profound kindness, as an Orthodox Jew, to me, an Orthodox Christian. Let me explain what I mean. I am scarcely an expert on contemporary Judaism, but one need not be to recognize that of the various ways of being Jewish the Orthodox is the way which most accepts and embraces the received tradition of Judaism. And let me be crystal clear on something: When I say I am an Orthodox Christian I am making no reference whatsoever to the current debates regarding sexuality. When I say I am an Orthodox Christian what I mean is, I believe the tomb was empty, I believe Jesus appeared to the disciples, I believe he is the Lord of Life. And when I recite the Nicene Creed I mean two things. First, I mean I really believe it. I believe it to be true, and I can say that without crossing my fingers! But more than that, going to the larger meaning of the Latin word credo, when I say the Nicene Creed I give my heart to it.

Now, why was I impressed by Dr. Levine? Two reasons. First, speaking as an Orthodox Jew to me, an Orthodox Christian, she declared that she thought it was appropriate for us in her presence as an Orthodox Jew to nonetheless pray in the name of Jesus. As she put it, “You’re Episcopalians! You should pray in the name of Jesus!” And she acknowledged that in our community, a Christian community, it is appropriate for the books of the Bible which precede the birth of Jesus to be called “the Old Testament”. In other words, she did not argue that in order to speak kindly to each other we needed to find some common ground upon which we could agree beyond the specificities of our respective traditions. Rather out of the depth of her own received and revealed tradition she spoke to me kindly as I stand in the depth of my own received and revealed tradition. And her words were words of love. Her words were words of friendship.

After hearing her words in chapel about the manner in which the Christian text has been used to warrant the scapegoating and persecution of Jews, I approached her and asked for a copy of her sermon. Why? I told her that to my mind the phenomenon she was describing – scapegoating and persecution – marked both sides of the current debate in the Episcopal Church. She said simply, “I agree” not once, but twice. I look forward to receiving her sermon.

Sisters and brothers, let me be very clear about something. Going back to my conversation with Dr. Levine, in my thirty years in the Episcopal Church in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Houston and in my twenty years as an ordained priest, the notion that either side in any debate has that it is automatically the morally superior one is for me very, very suspect. I have seen both the left and the right scapegoat. I have seen both the right and the left crucify. The challenge is not to be right. The challenge is to absolutely and resolutely refuse to scapegoat and to crucify. Seems to me somebody said something about that: “I say unto you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44-45) Sad, isn’t it, that we should have to apply Jesus’ words about loving our enemies to the manner in which we treat our fellow Christians.

There are few jobs in the church today more difficult than that of being the Dean of a Seminary. The Episcopal Church has more seminaries per capita than any other mainline denomination. And this . . . in a denomination that is shrinking! Which means that there’s a shrinking pool of students to go to Episcopal seminaries. Why would anybody want to be the Dean of an Episcopal seminary? Believe me, I’m not here for the sake of the prestige of the office. I’ve known far too many deans to be very impressed.

Nor am I here for the sake of the challenge. A young man or a young woman may take on a task simply to prove to themselves they’re equal to it, that they’ve got what it takes. When I was fifteen years old both bones in my left shin were broken playing football. They were rejoined with three screws, and I then spent six months in a cast. I went back and played football again to prove to myself that I had the courage to do it.

However, that is – so to speak – a young man’s game.

One of my favorite passages in all of scripture is at the end of The Gospel of John. You all know the scene. The Risen Lord has appeared on the beach and he has a conversation with Peter in which he asks him, not once, not twice, but three times, “Simon, do you love me?” Now imagine that you’re Peter hearing your Lord ask you this question. Peter must have been filled with phenomenal shame and self-loathing and guilt because just three days earlier he had proved what a coward he was and he had proved how his love for the Lord did not rise to the level of his being willing to die for him. Even so, how does he respond to his Lord’s question? Three times he says, “Lord, you know that I love you!” What does Jesus retort with? “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.” And then he says this most mysterious thing to Peter: “When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (Cf., John 21:18)

I’ve come to see this passage as an archetypal representation of the process we all go through. At 15 or 16 or 17 or at 23 or 24 proving ourselves matters. But if at 53 we’re still trying to prove ourselves, we’ve really missed the point. Quite simply the Christian life is not about proving ourselves. It’s about accepting an invitation into the interior life of God, about accepting an invitation to friendship with God, and so about accepting an invitation into friendship with each other. So long as we think we’re about proving ourselves, we’ve yet to hear the good news of God’s grace. But at some juncture we will – all of us –be knocked to the ground, as Peter was, and discover that the only way we can rise is to take His hand. When that happens, we begin to understand grace. And we begin to serve.

But grace has its price. Jesus is quite explicit about this. “If anybody would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life ( yuch ) will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24)

So why would anybody want to be the Dean of a seminary? The prestige is negligible and ersatz and I’m too old to need the challenge. But I’m not too old to submit to the call.

In reading the seminary’s literature and attempting to discern whether in fact I was called to this position, three things absolutely caught and held my attention and filled me with real enthusiasm. Remember what I said earlier, that to be a Christian – to be initiated into the life of God – is to believe certain things to be true and to behave in a certain way. If we do both we are friends with God and, through that, with each other.

If the Episcopal Church had abided by this seminary’s covenant of conversation these last thirty years we would not today be in the pickle we’re in. If abided by this covenant guarantees a safe place – a safe community – for people of all stripes, conservative as well as liberal, provided that we all take seriously the call to abide by the covenant. But notice that the covenant requires of us not simply that we honor our baptismal vows by respecting the dignity of every human being, but that in any conversation we acknowledge the possibility that we might be wrong. Without the requisite humility to acknowledge that we might be wrong the ability to listen is destroyed and community dies. (And incidentally if right now you’re thinking to yourself how difficult it is to get people on the other side of the issue to listen, you’re guilty of the very thing I’m talking about.)

The second thing in your literature that caught and held my attention was the simple declaration in your policy of academic freedom that this faculty acknowledges the “enduring authority of the historic creeds”. Part of this is nothing more than simply agreeing to abide by the law of the church to which we in fact belong. The Prayer Book specifies that either the Nicene or the Apostles’ Creed be recited at every major service on Sunday morning in all our parishes and communities. But to acknowledge the enduring authority of the historic creeds is to stand beneath the received wisdom not only of that which has been revealed but of the authority of the tradition. Brothers and sisters, with very few exceptions your parishioners will expect this of you. If you cannot in good conscience say that you truly believe and give your heart to the Truth revealed in the Creeds, I think you may well find intolerable the cognitive dissonance of standing in the pulpit to proclaim the Gospel. And thirty years of service to the church have convinced me that, even if in good conscience you can stand in the pulpit without believing the creeds, by doing so you will do grave damage to any parish you serve.

But the Covenant of Conversation and an acknowledgement of the authority of the Creeds would mean nothing . . . if your faculty did not abide by the covenant and model giving their hearts to the Creeds and the God the Creeds present. You’re not here simply to be educated. You’re here to be formed as priests. Formation involves everything we are: body, soul, spirit, emotions, and intelligence.

I have a simple charge for you today, a simple challenge: Let us together continue to commit ourselves to abiding by the Covenant of Conversation in every and all moments of our lives. And let’s commit ourselves to not only believing but giving our hearts to the historic creeds, and so together discover and experience the conversion and transformation that such believing invariably entails. When we faithfully do these things together as a community, then this seminary becomes in microcosm what the Church should be in macrocosm. What’s more as you graduate and go out from this place so transformed to be priests in parishes, you’ll begin to affect profound transformation in local communities. When that happens something else even more extraordinary will begin to happen: When we give up control of our own lives, when we cease seeking to rise to the challenge and instead simply seek to serve, then we discover what Jesus meant when he said to Peter, “When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” You see, when we truly submit to God the power which begins to work in us is not our own. When we’ve become humble enough for another power, a higher power, to find space to work in us, then we discover that we can be fishers of people and that we have food with which to feed his lambs, and we will see miracles.

Glory to God whose power working in us can do more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to him from generation to generation in His Church and in Christ Jesus forever. Amen.