The gospel accounts of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday paint a picture of a calm and centered Jesus surrounded by an anxious cast of characters running in different directions as they testify to their take on truth; much the same could be said about the Lambeth Conference during these last three days of work. The problem is discerning who plays the role of Jesus. So far it is not obvious.
The Indaba groups devoted themselves to a discussion of human sexuality on Thursday, and these same groups will take up a proposed Anglican covenant Friday and Saturday. Everyone has an opinion, tempers are sometimes short, and the presumptions made about others are often false, just as things must have been in Jerusalem as Jesus’ fate was decided.
Several Indaba groups set aside the proposed format of breaking into small groups and instead had a time for sharing opinions with the entire group, just as many of us had done in the Bible study groups that immediately preceded. We were asked two questions: “What do I need from by fellow bishops to enable me to be true to my role as leader in God’s Mission? What am I prepared to offer my fellow bishops to help them?
If anything was clear in my group, it was that the bishops from many of the African and Asian countries have an acute awareness of cultural context that many of us Westerners do not. And just as clear is that a Western seminary education does not guarantee an ability to think with theological precision and honesty.
Many Third World bishops wanted the same sort of space and freedom that some of us in the West want. As one bishop stated it, due to his cultural context we Westerners simply cannot send in teams to video the witness of gay and lesbian African Anglicans and share that video with the Western world; it is an arrogance similar to us Westerners trying to mold every nation in the form of our own elected democracies. But this same bishop said that he had been to America and had requested to go to the house of partnered gay people, where he said his eyes had been opened to the cultural and missiological context of the West.
Another bishop said that he wanted to go home with the trust of his fellow bishops, the trust that he could make the appropriate decisions in his own setting. I was a bit more specific. I asked to be able to go home with the Communion’s understanding that the Episcopal Church and I as one of its bishops can make pastoral and leadership decisions in our own church on a case by base basis as we try to see the risen Christ reflected in the individual faces and circumstances of the people in our pews and members of the clergy. The shaking of heads around the room indicated that some concurred and some did not.
It may be that one old assumption that turned out to be wrong is that in some sense the Church of England was and would continue to be the hub for the Communion. That model may be breaking down, and a wheel with some new set of spokes and connectors might emerge. Or perhaps a totally new image will find its place as a way to describe how we are connected. The archbishop’s attempt to strengthen the hub may turn out to be an old solution to a new problem that requires a different architecture.
Perhaps the calm and centered Jesus character at this conference is not a person at all, but is instead the liturgy. Each day we are called on to say the Lord’s Prayer, to gather at the table to share bread and wine, to pray for the hungers of the church and world that all might be fed. If the church keeps it focus there, then the Communion can indeed offer much a world that needs the witness of unconditional love and seen in our story of death and resurrection.
