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Presiding Bishop Katharine
Jefferts Schori preached the homily at her Formal Seating Ceremony November
5 at
the Washington National Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul.
The text of Jefferts Schori's homily follows:
 Good
morning. I read a fascinating editorial last weekend anticipating All
Saints Day -- and in a secular newspaper, no less! The Roman Catholic
church is apparently considering sainthood for a man who was executed in
1957. Jacques Fesch was accused, found guilty, and eventually guillotined
for killing a police officer in the course of a robbery three years
earlier. A year after his conviction, while he was in prison, he underwent
a profound conversion that began a season of radical amendment to his
life. He spoke of his experience by saying, "the spirit of the Lord seized
me by the throat." The archbishop of Paris began the canonization process
twenty years ago, and there is some hope that one day this man will be
named a saint.
Saints - the holy ones, the elect, the baptized, the heroes of our faith -
they are understood in a variety of ways. Basil the Great said about them
in the fourth century: "The Spirit is the dwelling place of the saints,
and the Saints are a place for the Spirit to dwell, as in a home, since
they offer themselves as a dwelling place for God and are called God's
temple."
We might say that saints are those who find a home "on the way," in the
course of following Jesus. And sometimes the encounter is very much like
being seized by the throat. It must have seemed that way to Lazarus, and
probably to the people standing around as he emerged from the tomb:
"unbind him, and let him go!" Jesus' own experience was no less shocking,
even though the words in translation seem a bit tame: Jesus was deeply
moved. He was greatly disturbed. He began to weep. In the Greek it says
something more like he was "gut-wrenched." Jesus was in breath-stopping
agony at the death of his friend and the grief of his sisters.
Saints are those who are vulnerable to the gut-wrenching pain of this
world. Some of us have to be seized by the throat or thrown into the tomb
before we can begin to find that depth of compassion. And perhaps unless
we are, we won't leave our comfortable narrow lives - or our remarkably
nasty ones - to wake up and begin to answer that pain.
In the early church, baptism was meant to be that kind of life-altering
encounter. New saints spent three years in the readying, and then were
taken in the dead of night into the crypt, stripped naked, and drowned -
only to emerge filled with new breath, doused with sweet-smelling oil, and
given a new white robe. What you and I do on Sunday mornings today
sometimes seems a pale imitation, yet it can have every bit the same
effect. Two weeks ago I met a 40-something man I baptized and confirmed
two years ago whose life has taken a remarkable turn - from ordinary daily
dullness toward meaning and deep compassion and an awareness of God in
every part of his life, and the willingness to change his community into
something that looks a good deal more like the dream of God. When we
remember our baptisms in the sprinkling in a few minutes most of us will
probably cringe. We don't like to get wet. But I hope and pray that you
and I can welcome those surprising drops as a tiny reminder of what is
meant to happen to us, over and over again, day after day after day. Die
to the old, be unbound, come out into abundant life in service to the
world. Wake up, and notice the suffering around us.
It is the willingness to experience that pain which more than anything
else marks us as saints. The pain of the whole world - those who agree
with us and those who might be called enemies. The pain of creation,
abused for our pleasure. The pain of a six-year old child in Ghana, sold
into slavery, to bail a fishing canoe and repair nets for 100 hours a week
so that his parents might eat. When Wisdom insists that souls of the
righteous are at peace, it can only be in a world where those divisions
and evils are ended. It is a dream of shalom, when all peoples and all
creatures have come home at last. But it is also a dream that can be at
least partially realized in our own day. Whenever two children make peace
on the playground, the saints can rejoice. Whenever two or three
fish-slaves are set free, shalom abounds. The hope of the saints is
without bounds, for it insists that shalom is possible in this life, and
not only at the end of all things. There is a fascinating line in the
midst of that Wisdom reading that says, "in the time of their visitation
they will shine forth and run like sparks through the stubble."
In the time of their visitation - is this the visit of God among the
righteous? Or is it an occasion when the saints show up? The word that's
translated as visitation might also be translated oversight, or realm of
service. In Greek, it is episkopeis. When the saints turn up, or when the
Spirit makes a home in the saints, then the saints begin to burn and set
the world alight. Their oversight, their ministry, their ability to see
and influence and pastor the world, is set afire. All the saints are meant
to run like sparks through the stubble, through that dead and no longer
fruitful stuff, the dross of this world. You and I are supposed to get lit
and set that flame to burning by our willingness to be vulnerable to the
suffering around us. In western Oregon for decades the usual way to clean
up the fields after a crop of grass seed was harvested was to set the
stubble afire. Clouds of noxious smoke filled the skies, and often drifted
for dozens of miles. Air quality issues have led to other ways of
controlling the smoke output, but burning is still the very best way to
sanitize the fields and get rid of the stubble. What do you think? Can we
make holy smoke? The episkopeis of the saints, their ministry, cleans the
fields of that which cannot survive in God's dream of shalom, it burns
away whatever limits that dream or cannot contribute to it. The ministry
of governance, whether in the legislature, the polling booth, or in
raising a child, is meant to prepare the ground for a new and abundant
crop of life. Most of us here this morning will have an opportunity to
exercise that kind of ministry on Tuesday. Will you consider your vote as
an act of "running through the stubble?" Would that we might all be able
to answer, "I will, with God's help." Let the pain of this world seize us
by the throat. Listen for Jesus calling us all out of our tombs of despair
and apathy. May the shock of baptismal dying once more set us afire. This
place we call home is meant to be a new heaven, a new earth, a holy city,
a new Jerusalem. It is the sparks in the stubble that will make it so.
Turn inward for a moment and greet the spirit planted within you. When we
come to the peace, turn to your neighbors and greet the saints, the
fire-lighters in this field. Welcome, saint! Burn brightly and transform
this world into God's field for life, full measure, pressed down
and overflowing, meant for all humanity and all creation. Burn!
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
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Formal
Seating Ceremony
Homily