Strain, stresses, and challenges

I appeal to you, again, for your prayers for the Lambeth Conference. As we enter the final days of this gathering there are considerable pressures from without and from within to produce a certain outcome. Many of the bishops have given voice to their frustration with our slowness to engage our differences over homosexuality and to come to a clear decision. I, and many others like me, are very concerned that what some seem to want — by way of a clear decision — will present a message to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters that they are no longer welcome in this Church. Still others (among them several bishops from India who have spoken in plenary) have made it known that their priorities lie elsewhere and that they are looking to the Conference to make clear the commitment of our worldwide fellowship to address the needs of the poor and the outcast.

Even with those tensions, however, I am impressed with the generally positive tone of these discussions and with the overall commitment of most everyone to find ways to maintain and expand respectful and life-giving connections that keep us in Communion with each other for the glory of God and for the sake of a suffering world.

In the midst of all of these strains and stresses and challenges, Archbishop Williams has charged us to find our center in the heart of God, in the eternal generosity that we see revealed in Jesus Christ. And we need to speak to each other from that center; speaking life to each other across our disagreements and differences, rather than threatening death. As someone said yesterday, in the course of a tense and difficult Indaba discussion, we need to turn our frustration into words of life.

Wednesday was another hot day in Canterbury. So many bishops in one place for so long; in often oppressively hot venues; now tired from over two weeks of program; with three days left to come to some agreement about what to say, together, about the most contentious issues in Christendom . . .  Is this "the perfect storm"? Or, is this the place where God can work through our weakness and make His glory known?

Our Bible study worked very well with the assigned passage, John 11:1-44, the story of the death of Lazarus and Jesus' raising him up and setting him free. We did a group exegesis and, as has been the case consistently over these weeks, the Word was so alive and exciting. I wish I could meet with these bishops every Saturday night for their help with my preparations for preaching on Sunday. We have developed deep bonds of affection and have reached across our disagreements to laugh and cry, to challenge and to encourage one another. I shall miss this fellowship more than anything else.

My Indaba group wrestled with the proposed agenda for yesterday's meeting and, rejecting the schedule that was suggested to us, chose, instead, to engage one another directly on the issues of human sexuality that divide us. I supported that move. It was exceedingly difficult to listen to some of what some bishops had to say. I chose to practice listening to the voices of those with whom I am in profound disagreement. As is always the case, I think better when I am with those with whom I disagree.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, plenary sessions are scheduled for "Conference Reflections." All of us are gathered in one venue and there are two microphones open for any of the bishops to speak for up to three minutes on the successive drafts of a statement to come out from this Conference. The wide spectrum of views are heard and noted by the group (themselves selected from the broad diversity of the Communion, including Bishop Neil Alexander of Atlanta and Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island) who are at work to craft that statement. Next to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, perhaps these bishops stand most in need of our prayers.

Yesterday I also had the privilege of attending a lecture by N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham and renowned biblical scholar. He spoke on the topic, "The Bible and Tomorrow's World." It was a stimulating and challenging presentation that called the bishops to a much more serious engagement with Scripture than has often been the case in some discussions, especially in The Episcopal Church.

There is much more to say, but too little time. We are all blessed by your prayers. Keep them coming, please.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

+George