This is one of a series of tributes to Presiding Bishop Curry, as published in the May 26 edition of The Living Church.

Presiding Bishop Curry’s winsome and wise leadership in inspiring, inviting, and authentically inclusive. In a world of cynical and sour leaders, the Holy Spirit has used Bishop Michael’s innumerable gifts to turn no into yes, can’t do into can do, will never work into let’s give it try, and I would think twice before attempting that into watch this.

For the first time in a long season, we have had a Presiding Bishop whose global appeal authentically and lovingly embraced left and right, Republican, Democrat and Independent, liturgically high and low, progressive, evangelical, revisionist, conservative, and all in-betweens. Like our Lord, when many told him “not to sup with them,” he resisted the call of whitewashed tombs who reveled in divisiveness and exclusion. He instead lived the words “Do not the sick need a doctor?” (Matt. 9:12) — placing no restrictions on defining the sick and no parameters on the circles of love that he drew around each person he encountered.

While my wife, Laura, and I have shared many special moments with our Presiding Bishop, one that stands out above all occurred during what was perhaps the most public moment in my years as a priest — officiating and preaching at the state funeral for the 41st President, lifelong Episcopalian George H.W. Bush, at Washington National Cathedral. The bishop and I were waiting in line with one another to greet the former and current Presidents and First Ladies. After all the powerful leaders had greeted us and shook our hands and moved to their seats, the Presiding Bishop said, “Come with me.”

He took me a few steps away and said, “I want to pray for you.” He made the sign of the cross on my forehead, held his hands on my head and offered an earnest prayer. He said “Amen” in that deep, rich voice, and then looked me in the eyes and said, “Now go preach the gospel, my brother.” In a sense, he freed me, in that prayer, from worrying about what others might think, and instead reminded me of the primacy of honoring our Lord and our faith. It is one of the few things I remember from that extraordinary day, and I will take it to the grave.

Bishop Michael Curry has shown us throughout his entire season of leadership how to preach the gospel — both in his powerful words, and perhaps even more in his powerful ways. For that we are all indebted to him, and we should all be grateful. May God bless Bishop Michael and the love of his life, Sharon — and all whom they love, and give them great joy in the years that unfold after his retirement.

Leon Uris, author of the 1958 bestseller Exodus failed high school English three times. When Lucille Ball began studying to be an actress in 1927, she was told, “Try any other profession. Any other.”

In 1959, a Universal Pictures executive dismissed Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds at the same time — telling Burt “You have no talent,” and Clint, “You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam’s apple sticks out too far, and you talk too slow.”

In 1962, when a group of four young musicians played their first record for the Decca Recording Company, an executive told the upstart rock group, the Beatles, “We don’t like your sound… Groups of guitars are on the way out.” The list could go on.

What if we lived our entire lives through with the labels others have given us?

What if the Apostle Peter got stuck in that courtyard — forever hearing the rooster, each crow — announcing this one whom Jesus had called the “Rock,” was now the one who turned his back on his savior? The story could have ended there, but it did not, did it?

In the 21^st chapter of John’s Gospel, we are witnesses to what has been called the reinstatement of Peter. Peter had thrice denied knowing Christ on the eve of his crucifixion (John 18:15-18; 25-27). After Jesus’ resurrection, he and Peter have a reunion on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; and Jesus, thrice, asks Peter, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter says “yes.” It was likely more for Peter’s benefit than anything.

Peter no doubt was plagued with guilt, and in this intimate moment, Jesus’ three-fold question and answer session made him king of spiritual therapy — allowing Peter to release the three-fold burden not of one denial, but three. Jesus had forgiven Peter, but Peter needed to “release” the guilt with his own lips. In doing so, Jesus reinstated him. But it was more than that.

This passage is a living parable — a revelation about the nature of God’s grace and mercy and the purpose behind it. As God in Christ was with Peter, so God in Christ is with us. And so this story holds at least two lessons for us, both of which answer the question, Why were we forgiven?

First, we see in Peter’s restoration the entire purpose of the passion drama of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was all about restoring what we’ve broken by our sin.

Think of the things that keep you up at night. Once you take worry and woe about those you love off the list, is it not, for most of us, those things we wish we had done, but failed to do? Those things we did, and wish we had not? The gospel offers us freedom for these things.

I kind of hate nametags. You know, those kinds you pick up when you come into a party. One reason is that I have rather terrible handwriting. Often when we go into a party, my wife will rescue me from my own hand by writing my name on my tag so that people don’t give me that squinty eye thing with the words, “I’m sorry, what’s your name? I can’t read it…!”

What if Peter were wearing a nametag in the Courtyard of Denial? What might it say? Coward. Denier. Betrayer.

What label of shame might you feel is affixed to you? Maybe it’s something from your distant past: Abuser. Gossip. Liar. Adulterer. Maybe it’s a label someone else gave you: Failure. Loser. Joke. Maybe it is a label that was forced on you: Victim. Maybe it’s a label you’ve given yourself: Never measures up. Purposeless. Addict.

Some of you probably think that’s the label you have and the one you will always have — it was applied not with a sticky back, but with permanent glue — no matter how you pull, it will never come off.

I suspect Peter felt that way. In the scene just before his restoration, he was not out preaching the gospel; he’d gone back to fishing, and I can only imagine that when the risen Lord called out to him from the shores of Galilee, Peter wanted to just jump under the water and die.

But Jesus does not let Peter wallow in his despair. Instead, he shows up, shows grace, shows mercy, and allows Peter to claim his own forgiveness.

Notice, Jesus does not come to condemn Peter, but to transform him. He does not say to Peter, “Do you need my forgiveness?” Jesus knows he does, so instead he reminds Peter who he is called to be. Jesus’ question is not “Are you sorry?” It is “Do you love me?”

It is a reminder that Jesus had already forgiven Peter on the cross. It is a reminder that he has already forgiven you. Jesus begins to rip off those old nametags — sin, guilt, death — and replace them with new ones — loved, forgiven, redeemed. That’s what Jesus wants to do for you, for each of us.

Roasaline Goforth was a well-known missionary to China. She and her husband Jonathan enjoyed a long season of service in Asia for many years. But she came to a point in her life when she felt oppressed by a burden of sin. She felt guilty and dirty, and she nursed an inward sense of spiritual failure. Finally, one evening when all was quiet, she settled in at her desk with her Bible and concordance, determined to find out what God wanted to do with her failures and faults. She wrote at the top of the page, “What God Does with Our Sins.” Here is what she found:

1. He lays them on his Son, Jesus Christ (Isa. 53:6).
2. Christ takes them away (John 1:29).
3. They are removed an immeasurable distance, as far as east is from west, (Ps. 103:12).
4. When sought for they are not found (Jer. 50:20).
5. The Lord forgives them (Eph. 1:7).
6. He cleanses them all away by the blood of his Son (1 John 1:7).
7. He cleanses them as white as snow or wool (Isa. 1:18, Ps. 51:7).
8. He abundantly pardons them (Isa. 55:70).
9. He tramples them under foot (Mic. 7:19).
10. He remembers them no more (Heb. 10:17).
11. He casts them behind his back (Isa. 38:17).
12. He casts them into the depths of the sea (Mic. 7:19).
13. He will not impute us with sins (Rom. 4:8).
14. He covers them (Rom. 4:7).
15. He blots them out (Isa. 43:25).
16. He blots them out as a thick cloud (Isa. 44:22).
17. He blots out even the proof against us, nailing it to his Son’s cross (Col. 2:14).

God is about the business of not just healing, not just forgiving, but transforming.

You do not have to be “defined” by your past. Let Jesus take those nametags off. Look into his eyes and hear his words: “Do you love me?”

That is reason one why you were forgiven: because God loves you. God does not want you to live with that burden of sin. He wants you to be free of that. This brings us to the second reason.

When Peter says, “Yes Lord, I love you,” Jesus says not once but three times, “Feed my lambs…. Tend my sheep…. Feed my sheep.” Peter was not just forgiven to be forgiven, he was forgiven for a purpose: to join Jesus in a lifetime of serving others.

Can you imagine how Peter felt that night he denied Jesus? The moment he heard the rooster crow? Despair probably doesn’t even come close to capturing it. However relieved he felt by the end of this episode of restoration, my guess is he still had no idea what was coming.

Only fifty or so days after Peter’s great sin, forgiven and reinstated by Jesus’ grace and mercy, we see Peter as the keynote speaker on the day of Pentecost. How far he had come.

We are not just forgiven so we can feel free from the burden of sin and death. We are forgiven so that we can continue Jesus’ work.

And this brings me to the matter of the so-called “cancel culture,” which I believe is the greatest stumbling block to removing those old nametags. Don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that people should not apologize for things they have said or done in the past. Nor am I saying that criminal, unethical, moral behavior should be excused, wiped away with cheap grace that demands nothing, and ignores everything.

But I am saying that cancel culture — which demands a pound of flesh for everything done and left undone in one’s past — is completely antithetical to the atonement offered by Jesus Christ. It simply does not square with what we Christians believe and it offers no hope, not just for some offenders, but for anyone.

Late last year Ligaya Mishan wrote an article for the New York Times on cancel culture. She connected cancel culture to the ancient practice of scapegoating, writing, “The modern scapegoat performs [the] function, of uniting otherwise squabbling groups in enmity against a supposed transgressor who relieves the condemners of the burden of wrestling with their own wrongs.”

In other words, calling out others for their past deeds and sins allows us to turn our gaze from the mirror. It empowers a false narrative that what “they” did is worse than what “I” did. Jumping on the bandwagon helps us to avoid coming to terms with the ancient words: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And yet, when Jesus said, “It is finished,” he meant it. And perhaps for today’s purposes, he might as well have said, “It is cancelled.”

Yes, we are responsible for our actions, and in this world there are certain prices we have to pay. They may range from merely saying “I am sorry,” to paying restitution, and in some cases, the loss of a job, or even jail time.

But the Christian hope has a response to the endless tirades of accusations in 2021 — and it is right there in the First Epistle of John:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness…. I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 1:8-2:2)

As a priest, who believes and holds fast to the hope found in the gospel of our Lord, I am exhausted by our human attempts to try and exact atonement from others — there is absolutely no hope in that. I’d rather turn to the one who died and rose so that my sins, whether of a decade ago, a year ago, last week, or last weekend can be healed, forgiven and made whole. That’s a far better pathway out of the past than constantly looking for the next one to cancel. As far as I am concerned, it is time to “cancel” cancel culture, and turn to the hope there is in the one who says to us with his dying words, “It is finished,” and offers us the same thing he offered poor, old guilty Peter on the shores of Galilee.

The Rev Dr. Russell Levenson, Jr. and his wife, Laura, live in Houston, Texas where Russ has served as rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church for the last twelve years.  He is a father of three, grandfather of two and author of four seasonal devotionals — the recently published Bits of Heaven, (Summer);  and A Place of Shelter, (Fall); and the soon to be released Preparing Room, (Advent); and A Path to Wholeness, (Lent) – available at Church Publishing.

But is it possible, as Paul suggested to the Corinthians, to receive God’s grace in vain (2 Cor. 6:1)?  Could we, as Paul warned the Romans not to do, fall into the error of believing that just because we are made righteous by God’s gracious favor, we can “go on sinning” (Rom. 6:1)?

It seems that some of the preaching and teaching common among evangelical Christians today slip into precisely this error. Consider these examples:

• On the Sermon on the Mount: “Read it. Can you live by any of that?… Of course you can’t, no one can.”
• From the front-page article of a leading self-described orthodox Episcopal Church: “In the end, to be a righteous person passionate for doing righteous things is all very Christless…”
• A clergyperson relates on her podcast that she tires of preachers encouraging regular church attendance, because she understands getting to church is really hard these days.
• A major evangelical church’s mission statement: “we are a judgment-free zone where people can come as they are, not as they should be…”
• A sermon which concluded with the dropping of the “F-bomb.” It is not a stretch to imagine a youngster leaning over to mom and dad and whispering, “Wow, our preacher’s cool… he sounds just like late night cable!”

Now, I get the point: we are all sinners – sinners indeed (Rom. 3:23). No one is perfect. No one can fully embody the beautiful words of the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1–12); or Paul’s description of love, (1 Cor. 13); or even the commandments given to Moses, (Ex. 20:1–17).

But in the examples above we see a common pattern: grace is welcoming and non-judgmental, but no hope beyond that grace is offered or even imagined.

I recall being stymied as one young preacher ended his sermon with the rousing words, “We are a mess, but God loves us anyway.” Well, yes, but is that all we are offering the world – God without a path toward a godly life; love without any expectations; grace that inspires little more than self-indulgence?

Though he wrote the words only a short 52 years ago, one of our evangelical forbears, A.W. Tozer, offers an important corrective:

The doctrine of justification by faith – a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort – has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men [sic] from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the spirit of the receiver. The man is [sic] is “saved,” but he is not hungry or thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little…. We have been snared in the coils of a false logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.

Tozer was right to issue such a warning — and his words should sting us as well, for any teaching that says the Christian’s only duty is to receive the grace of God, full stop, is ignoring the many passages of Christian Scripture that call for so much more. Indeed we were saved by grace, but this was for a purpose: “to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). We were saved by grace, but we are all called to “grow in grace” (2 Pet. 3:18). Indeed, “What good is it … if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds” (James 2:14). And “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

It is so tempting to preach the love of God, without the call to love the holiness to which God calls us. We can be lulled into a sense of self-satisfaction when people pat us on the back for not being “that kind of preacher” that does not speak of a God who is interested in what goes on in our business practices, or bedrooms, or relationships, or personal habits. When we offer nothing but the love of God for the messes we are in, without the promise our resurrection offers for deliverance and rescue from that mess, then, frankly, we are merely proclaiming an anemic, impotent, dysfunctional religious view that is immature and self-serving.

This is precisely the point that the great evangelical John Stott made:

To be a child of God is a wonderful privilege, but it also involves obligations. Peter implied this when he wrote, ‘Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,’ (I Peter 2:2)

Our great privilege as children of God is relationship; our great responsibility is growth. Everybody loves children, but nobody in their right mind wants them to stay in the nursery. The tragedy, however, is that many Christians, genuinely born again in Christ, never grow up. Others even suffer from spiritual infantile regression. Our heavenly Father’s purpose, on the other hand, is that ‘babies in Christ’ should become mature in Christ. Our birth must be followed by growth. The once-for-all crisis of justification (our acceptance before God) must lead to the continuing process of sanctification (our growth in holiness, what Peter means by ‘growing up in our salvation’).

So there we have it: a call to conversion must be accompanied by a call to sanctification. As the old saying goes, “God loves us as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us as we are.”  If we do not offer that to those hungry for the peace and grace of Christ, then we are only doing half of our job. Those who come within our doors, and those to whom we go in the public square, need to know that God has more to offer us than a pat on the back; that beyond the warm embrace of acceptance,  there is the offer of transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Church, and her preachers and teachers, have the obligation to guide others to the ancient disciplines that foster growth in Christ — daily prayer, reading of Scripture, meditation, confession, fasting, sacrifice, service and more — and just to be clear, to call the sinner into the presence of God’s love, without also calling them to repentance, is a rejection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there is no other way around it.

Back to Stott, who noticed this same creep into evangelical circles some three decades ago:

There are many pastors today who, for fear of being branded ‘legalists,’ give their congregation no ethical teaching. How far we have strayed from the apostles!  ‘Legalism’ is the misguided attempt to earn our salvation by obedience to the law. ‘Pharisaism’ is a preoccupation with the externals and the minutiae of religious duty. To teach the standards of moral conduct which adorn the gospel is neither legalism nor pharisaism but plain apostolic Christianity.

Surely we evangelicals have more to offer the world than a weak-as-water approach to personal morality. Charles Simeon, that great evangelical father, said that the three-fold goal of every sermon should be to “Humble the sinner, exalt the Savior and promote holiness.”  It would seem that anything less would be right in line with Bonhoeffer’s assessment of the preaching of “cheap grace,” which,

is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Cheap grace is opposed to “costly grace” which is that “…treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has.”

In the end, I’m not okay and you’re not okay — and that’s not okay. It’s still okay to preach that from the pulpit, and the lectern and in the pastor’s study; because it offers hope to a world steeped in sin, and in desperate need of the transforming grace of Jesus and his cross. We call that the great evangelical hope. We call that sanctification. For God’s sake and for the sake of the world; let’s keep preaching it.

May our prayer, this Pentecost season, and all the days that follow, be that of Tozer;

O God, I have tasted thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the triune God, I want to want thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me thy glory, I pray thee, that so I may know thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’  Then give me grace to rise and follow thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Rev Dr. Russell Levenson, Jr. and his wife, Laura, live in Houston, Texas where Russ has served as rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church for the last twelve years.  He is a father of three, grandfather of two and author of four seasonal devotionals — the recently published Bits of Heaven, (Summer);  and A Place of Shelter, (Fall); and the soon to be released Preparing Room, (Advent); and A Path to Wholeness, (Lent) – available at Church Publishing.

“We pray for your holy Catholic Church… that we all may be one” (BCP, p. 387). In that prayer, we are connecting to Jesus’ final prayer before the Passion. My staff and I pray it regularly. And it arrests me.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, crying tears of blood, what was Jesus’ prayer? That his followers might choose the right liturgy? Be Roman or reformed? Green or industrialists?  Pro-life or pro-choice?  For or against same-sex marriage? No — his prayer was clear:

“I pray for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21).

This is still a prayer that, evidently, needs to come to the forefront of our much-divided branch of the Anglican Communion. Mercifully, the good Lord has brought to the helm of our Episcopal Church a Presiding Bishop who not only believes, but proclaims, the absolute necessity of the lordship and love of Jesus Christ as ground-zero in our Christian identity. However an honest assessment will show that we are still far more interested in drawing lines and fighting battles than in sharing in Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer.

For years I have claimed the mantle of a conservative evangelical. In the divisions over human sexuality in the 1990s and early 2000s, you would have found me in the “traditional” camp. As a student of the Bible and the tradition of the Church, I could not (and still cannot) affirm the decisions to support same-sex marriage, or to ordain any person who is sexually active outside of traditional marriage, regardless of their orientation. From my more liberal  and progressive friends (and they were friends), I got eye-rolls and patronizing patience, indicating that perhaps someday, with age and wisdom, I would “come around.”

Since those days, things have changed. I have gay friends. I have gay friends, some of whom are clergy. There are members of my parish who are gay and married and have brought their children along. While I still do not perform same-sex marriages, when I’m asked by gay members who desire one, I help them to find a priest and a parish who will. After their marriage, the couple are warmly recognized at our parish — for who they are, not for who they are not. I now believe that many of the gay couples I have come to know and love have found a life-partner who brings them companionship and intimacy. For those who seek — and find — the Church’s blessing in that, I can even support their decision as an alternative to my own.

What happened in my ministry when those changes became palpable? A life-long conservative clergy friend and mentor, with whom I agreed about virtually every matter on doctrine and church practice, told me that I had fallen off my rocker. Later, an internationally recognized Anglican bishop and theologian who was scheduled to preach and teach at my Church wrote me to withdraw his acceptance. Though my doctrinal positions hadn’t changed, this was not enough to change minds or encourage conversation. The message was clear. I had “made peace” with the other side. I had “drunk the Kool-aid,” and was to be shunned.

What about my liberal friends?

Before our last General Convention, I was part of a conversation with some of the deans of our Episcopal seminaries, all of whom I knew personally. A few confessed that they were exhausted by gatherings that continued to focus on divisive issues that were making our witness to the world anemic. We agreed on a step in a productive direction: that they write together a statement saying it was time to put an end to squabbles over matters upon which we may never agree, work together to support, full force, the “Jesus Movement,” and, to support this statement, publicly affirm the need to recruit more conservative seminary candidates. Many of our Churches and members are still quite conservative, and this move would allow for putting money where our mouths are. About half of the deans agreed and were ready to do so; the other half pushed back – seeing no issue at stake.  I did my best as a rector constantly seeking to bring on more conservative clergy to make the argument that it was getting harder and harder to find such clergy. Those declining to support the effort, just did not see that as a problem.

Where my liberal colleagues do see an issue at stake, I have often seen a divisive mindset as entrenched as any I have found among conservatives.

I was once interviewing a clergy person for my staff. All was going well, but when this person sat down with the canon to the ordinary, the canon made it clear that the diocese had moved on same-sex marriage and ordination of those sexually active outside of traditional marriage. They pressed the point with the candidate who did not align with that position: “You do understand… we are not going back on that.” My candidate understood, but just wanted a chance to maintain personal convictions.

Earlier this year, I was having a very good discussion with a priest of leadership in our national church. She was explaining that she was doing all she could to make inroads with other Christian faith communities — Methodists and Lutherans — as well as with other faiths — Muslim and Jews. I asked her what, if anything, she was doing to reach out to some of the groups that had broken away from the Episcopal Church — AMiA, CANA, ACNA. She looked at me as if I were asking about aliens from Mars. I suggested that our witness would have far more impact if we worked hard to clean up the mess in our own back yard. Again, she had no answer.

We also talked about women in leadership in the church. Her assumption was that this had to go hand-in-hand with a push for greater inclusivity of LGBT agenda issues. What she did not know is this: for every open post on my staff, I made it a point to add women clergy. And yet these women, who should be liberated to be fully themselves in ministry, have felt discriminated against among liberal colleagues because of their more conservative positions on LGBT matters.

So, friends, here we are again. Lambeth is around the corner, and while there is much to celebrate in our Anglican Communion (and I very much believe that) we continue to see divisions brewing. The left and right have hold of the microphones and the vast middle waits for something more, something beyond this insistence on division.

In the London Times recently, there was an article on Bishop Sarah Mullally, the relatively new Bishop of London. The article stated the facts — that London comprises different strands of Anglicanism, from Anglo-Catholic parishes to charismatic and evangelical communities, many of them from Africa or the Caribbean. It went on to note the huge potential for doctrinal disagreements between liberal Anglicans, traditionalists, and evangelicals. When asked about that challenge, Bishop Mullally simply described it as “the joy of diversity.”  Is it possible that we could ever get to that place — to really believe that our diversity is not a curse, but a blessing — in fact, a joy?

Let me go back to the Anglican bishop who refused to come to my parish. He knew that I had been mentored by one of the great evangelicals of the last century, the Rev. Dr. John R.W. Stott, who also supported a traditional Biblical understanding of marriage and ordination. And he told me that John — who had been a friend and mentor for over 20 years of my adult life — would not have approved of my new methodologies in ministry. He suggested that John would have been disappointed.

But when he wrote me that email, he was not aware that I visited with John shortly before his death in July 2011, when he was living in a retirement home just outside of London. Before leaving Dr. Stott, I said, “You know John, we’ve got terrible divisions in the American Church. A lot of our friends are leaving for other break-off Anglican groups. Do you have any counsel?” He smiled and looked at me with those wonderful twinkling eyes and said, “Don’t leave… just stay… just stay and preach the Gospel.” We prayed… we hugged… and bid farewell until we meet on that distant shore.

So that’s what I have done — or tried to do; although it would have been easier in many ways to have left — or do have “dug in” and made issues the core of my ministry, over and above the saving power of Jesus.  And I pray that my brothers and sisters will work hard to do the same, and that someday these lines in the sand we have drawn — with acronyms too many to list — will be surrendered and we will come together “as one.”  It is not a stance on the “issue of the day” that will tell the world we are Jesus’ disciples — it is in being “one.” That is what enables the world to believe in the Lord. Every day we do not work toward this goal is a day we are working against his prayer.

These words come to mind in this moment:

Hated, despised, a thing to flout
They drew a line that left me out.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took them in.

Well?

Lord help us.

Russell J. Levenson, Jr. is rector of St. Martin’s Church, Houston.

During the summer the Episcopal Church concurred with the Supreme Court in affirming that the institution of marriage now includes same-sex couples. There were cheers and tears of celebration on the floor of 78th General Convention, and the traditional perspective was voted down in a landslide.

As a conservative, evangelical, orthodox Episcopal priest, I did not agree with the decision. Fortunately, the leadership of the Episcopal Church (like that of the Presbyterian Church USA) has allowed for the discretion of bishops and individual clergy regarding same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, some of the debate at Convention included accusations of bigotry and discrimination — painful darts to throw after the tragedy in Charleston. No one wants to be labeled a bigot and clearly no one wants to side with bigots, so voting “against” the measure proved more difficult.

Most Christians I know, and those with whom I have served for more than two decades of ministry, do not support the paradigm shift in marriage, not because we are bigots but because we simply cannot find support for it in our most sacred texts. In my ordination, I pledged that “I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God” (BCP, p. 526).

Some conservatives have, for decades in this culture war, played a role in the great divide on human sexuality. Some forget C.S. Lewis’s wise counsel that the heart of Christian morality rests not with sex but the decisions and actions of the heart. On our side of the remaining gap, we would do well to find more ways to grant greater inclusion and understanding to gays and lesbians. Perhaps some of us may find our way to supporting civil unions. I do.

Nevertheless, the work of reconciliation now rests primarily with those who whole-heartedly supported the monumental shift. Why? Because, frankly, you can tell a lot about the majority by the way it includes the minority. The first task before those who have placed this decision before the greater Church is to ponder the message it sends. It is a decision that will require reconciliation — toward the greater Anglican Communion, now numbering roughly 76 million Anglicans to America’s roughly 2 million; and toward Roman Catholics, Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, Southern Baptists, Methodists, and countless other Christians for whom the decision simply does not square with what has been a bedrock of their faith. The decision will also hamper efforts by many Christian communities, like my own parish, to build relationships with Muslims and Conservative Jews who cannot support same-sex marriage.

“The ultimate triumph of sanctifying grace in our lives will occur only when we have cast off the triumphalist spirit,” writes Richard Mouw in Uncommon Decency (InterVarsity [1992], p. 179). “Humility is the only fitting attitude for creatures who are on their way to the fullness of God’s kingdom.” Both sides need a dose of humility but, again, those who have won the day carry the greater burden.

The fresh words of our newly elected presiding bishop, Michael Curry, provide glimmers of hope. In his closing sermon to the Convention he urged authentic inclusion, because the Church unites people of different races and temperaments, including traditionalists, progressives, Republicans, and Democrats.

After a generation of infighting, Americans should hope and pray that Bishop Curry’s vision comes to fruition. The Episcopal/Anglican Way has vitally advanced the cause of human dignity and excellence, and at its best has helped heal a host of wounds.

As theologian Ephraim Radner points out, the Anglican tradition has shaped what is now the world language of commerce, scholarship, and the Internet. It inspired the imaginations of writers and poets from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot, and musicians from Purcell to Benjamin Britten. It grounded and guided Francis Bacon in his scientific research, inspired Wilberforce to work for the abolition of the slave trade, gave Janani Luwum the courage to stand up to Idi Amin, and aided Archbishop Tutu in his confrontation with apartheid.

Anglicanism is a living tradition, still subject to God’s providence. What may on the surface look like dissolution may be the labor pains of a more genuine conception of what it means to be the body of Christ on earth. Our divisions may call on us, corporately and individually, to think of what it means to follow Jesus Christ.

In the last diocese I served, there were six forms of Anglican/Episcopal expression in one small county on the eastern shore of Alabama, many of which broke away from one another. I wonder what God thinks of everybody worshiping in different rooms down the street from one another. Institutional schism is a grave sin and not to be taken lightly.

The specter of denominational churches, wracked by financial and moral scandal across the oikumene, might inspire us to dismount from our competitive high horses and take seriously the body of Christ beyond our parochial bounds. No single denomination is sin-free or contains all truth. The old question remains: How to approach visible unity, beyond winning and losing?

Practicing our faith within divided Christian communities marks a tremendous witness of commitment and faithfulness. The Rev. Richard Kew has written that when opposing sides of the Church push a “non-negotiable political correctness, it stymies any chance of reconciliation. We cannot restore the Church to a pristine state, but if we are willing to set preconditions aside it is then entirely possible that something new, beautiful, and even better can be born as we allow God’s Spirit to take us into his embrace” [“Rekindling the Fire of Hope,” TLC, Jan. 16, 2011, p. 21].

New labor pains are upon us. May the Episcopal Church and its leaders have the will and the ways to live together unto unity, and perhaps bring to birth a new “Jesus Movement,” in Bishop Curry’s words, in service of the Whole.