Farewell to The Episcopal Church -- and to the America I Have Known

Recently, I learned that my journey of almost 40 years with The Episcopal Church is coming to a conclusion.  After 4 years of suspended ministry, during which I undertook the work of restitution and therapeutic treatment, I have been informed that I am to be removed as a priest of The Episcopal Church.

There is much that I could say about that decision, but I find that I am in a place where I am no longer willing to invest energy in tilting at this particular windmill.    I have done my best to walk the path of repentance and amendment of life, and it apparently was not enough.  Perhaps there was never any possibility that it could be enough.   I respect The Episcopal Church’s right to make this decision just as I recognize that the path of the sacred and the spirit of the Holy One is far larger than any one particular community.

While I will no longer be an Episcopal priest, my priesthood will nonetheless continue in new ways.   The grace of ordination is never removed, though the permission to exercise it in the context or in the name of The Episcopal Church is being withdrawn.    While my journey these past few years has been long and painful, it has also included amazing grace for which I am deeply grateful.   I have known myself throughout to be accompanied by the Divine Love, and that has truly been humbling.   In many ways, that grace and love has been passed to me through people who have shown up in my life when I needed them most.   Several of them would not interpret the role they played in these sacred terms — and yet, we are all part of the mysterious life-network which can connect us in surprising, unlikely, and life-saving ways, regardless of the lens through which we view it or the names we invoke to describe it.

Perhaps this is what priesthood is most fundamentally about: noticing the meaningful ties that bind us together, appreciating the mystery and the wonder of that, and encouraging others to entrust themselves to the awe that this can inspire in us.   In that respect, priesthood is open to all who would pay attention in this way.

It is ironic that I share this news today, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent in the Christian calendar, when the appointed reading from the gospel for today is the parable of the prodigal son.   Jesus tells this parable in response to the legal-minded Pharisees and scribes who are offended that Jesus would keep company with “sinners”, wrong-doers and undesirables of various kinds.   In the story, the son who has squandered his gifts and reduced himself to something unrecognizable “came to himself”, and realized that he had abandoned his better, most authentic self and gotten lost far from home.    He returns with no expectation that he should be given back his prior standing — he is content simply to be home and to be treated as a worker rather than a member of the family.    Yet his father is overjoyed at his return, runs out to meet him, and throws a party.

His brother, who did everything right, resents this celebration — even though the celebration and his brother’s return take nothing away from him, as his father points out.   But, his father said, whenever the lost come to themselves and return to their authentic home, how can we not celebrate?   

The spirit of our age right now is very far from this radical, open-armed welcome and celebration of those who have gotten lost.    We live in an age where empathy is considered sin, where compassion is considered weakness.   We live in an age where vengeance, retribution and punishment are celebrated rather than forgiveness and mercy.   Rather than welcoming the prodigal home, the America of today would kick him in the nuts — and laugh about it.   

In that, we as a people have become the prodigal.  We are squandering our gifts and our resources on petty foolishness, grinding the poor and defenseless into the dirt and exalting the super wealthy.   We are lost.

As I scan the news and find increasingly that I don’t recognize the country I thought I had known, I wonder with no small amount of trepidation what our collective wake up call will be.   When will we come to ourselves and realize what we have lost?   How will be come back home to our authentic identity as a people?

I don’t know that answer.  None of us does.  Yet, I think that the healing of a nation begins with the healing of those who comprise it.  And our healing as individuals begins as each of us both comes home to ourselves and begins to practice the radical, open-armed generosity to which Jesus points in the story of the prodigal.

It really does not cost us much to practice mercy and kindness and to walk humbly upon the earth and among our sisters and brothers in the world.   But it turns out that not doing that ends up costing us our very soul.

My journey now is to be a Priest-at-Large in the world, trying my best to bring the fruits of my journey from self-imposed crucifixion to unmerited resurrection to those in my corner of humanity in the hope that maybe I can bring someone else just a fraction of the grace that I have found on the road back home. My spiritual citizenship -- our spiritual citizenship -- needs to live in a context larger than the particular community in which it may be anchored (or used to be anchored). And my citizenship as a human being -- our citizenship as human beings -- needs to live in a context larger than one particular country.