Remarks delivered at the Post-General Convention Community Meetings
By The Rev. Sue Eaves, rector, St. Thomas’, Richmond and clerical deputy to General Convention

Voting in favor of the resolution to consecrate Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire and the resolution concerning the blessing of same sex unions was, for me, a decision made in prayer and faith. And I would like to share with you some of the reasons I voted as I did.

While I affirm that scripture contains all things necessary for salvation I do not, and neither does the Anglican tradition, understand that all things in scripture are required for my salvation. To take all things in scripture as necessary is to take me into the territory of forbidding divorce, stoning women taken in adultery, regarding mental illness as demonic possession, to always cover my head and be silent in church, to approve slavery, and many other things clearly outside the essential qualities of the Christian life.

However, and with every breath I take, I regard the scriptural witness to God’s love, passion for justice, generous mercy, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the reconciliation of the world to God, and God’s all encompassing grace to be the foundation of my own life and witness.

I spent a lot of time at Convention reflecting on Acts 10-11. You will recall this is the account of Peter and Cornelius - Peter, the Jew and follower of Christ, forbidden to associate with gentiles like Cornelius, who was considered unclean under the law. Peter prayed and in a trance saw a multitude of birds, reptiles, and animals forbidden for consumption lowered on a sheet from heaven. Being faithful to God he refused to eat of any of them even though he was hungry. Finally God admonished him for his attitude. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” These words were repeated three times. Immediately afterwards Peter encounters Cornelius, his household and compatriots who are all “unclean” by Jewish standards. He discovers they, like him, long for God. Peter suddenly understands that nothing created by God can be considered defiling because God has created all things from love and named them good. Peter baptized those gentiles in a radical departure from the theological tradition, cultural context, and institutional practices of his own day. He risked separating himself from his fellow Christians by acting outside understood religious norms, he could well have been wrong, been rejected by the church, and cut off from the household of God. Instead, when he recounted the events to the Jerusalem church they accepted that a new insight had been given by the Holy Spirit and the church went on to greater strength.

As a lifelong Anglican I hold fast to faith in the living Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit to lead the church into new life. I worship not a book but a who, I am faithful to a tradition constantly and gradually evolving, and I am respectful of the church’s honoring of new knowledge that cannot have been known to previous generations. Whether we like it or not, Jesus’ world and context were different from our own and that, I believe is why he was careful to lead by example, providing few words and laws but offering radical love.

As the incarnate word Jesus was necessarily love incarnate. The gospels witness to a crucifixion brought about by the radical nature of that love for the Father in heaven and the persons whom God has made. There was no one who was excluded or unwelcome at Jesus’ table, not even the one who intended to murder him. The only people not at the table were those who decided to exclude themselves. And it cost Jesus his life.

It seems it is not God who struggles with the diversity of creation but we - who cannot imagine or comprehend the breadth and depth of God’s creative love.

Those who vilified Jesus were the devout followers of God, but they succumbed to the temptation, to which all institutions are in danger of succumbing, which is to imagine they have all the information they need – that they fully understand the mind of God. Our own church’s history is littered with devotion distorted into fanaticism. The Inquisition, slavery, racism, oppression of women, and anti-Semitism have led us down terrible paths that attempt to deny the freedom of God to include all people in the kingdom.

While I know some fear for the consequences of these decisions in terms of our relationship with the Anglican Communion Anglicanism has never stood for uniformity. Instead it has clung to oneness, unity, in Christ binding us together in friendship and common life. This diversity leads to both richness and disagreement. Yes, we are asking our brothers and sisters in Christ to stretch to the limits of our friendship as we have to do in different ways for them. That, after all, is what friendship and common ties are about.

It is the Anglican tradition of which I am a child that has taught me to stand fast in the midst of God’s diverse creation. The via media is not about agreeing with each other it is about loving each other. It is not about uniformity but unity, all the while keeping our eyes fixed on Christ while all things are being made new.