Remarks delivered at the Post-General Convention Community Meetings
By The Rev. Susan Goff, rector, St. Christopher’s, Springfield and clerical deputy to General Convention

I voted “Yes” on consent to the ordination and consecration of Gene Robinson and on the amended resolution on gays in the life of the church. I did so based on prayer, the study of scripture, and an understanding of Christian tradition. It is not possible to summarize the theology that informed my decision in just five minutes, but I share with you one formative theme, followed by a theological reflection.

Scripture and the history of the church tell the story of Christ breaking down barriers. They tell of Christ tearing down walls that separate people – even walls that were once given authority by Scripture.

In his life and teaching on this earth, Jesus broke down barriers. He ate with outcasts, tax collectors, Gentiles, and poor people, in direct contradiction to the tradition of his time. He called women as followers and friends in a day when custom and biblical law separated women from men in public life. He spent time with those who were considered “unclean” or “contaminants” by the established religion. Jesus broke down barriers as a sign of the kingdom he proclaimed.

Christ’s action of breaking down barriers did not cease when the biblical writings were completed. The living Christ continued to break down barriers, and continues to do so even today.

Christ broke down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles, a barrier once understood to be God’s will. He broke down that barrier by the power of the Holy Spirit acting through what we now call the Council of Jerusalem, as we read in the 15th chapter of Acts.

Although slavery is condoned in scripture, Christ broke it down in this nation in the 19th century and continues to break it down even today in other parts of the world.

Christ is continuing to break down the barrier to the full inclusion of women in the life and leadership of the church. That barrier began to crumble when the Holy Spirit worked through a series of General Conventions in the lifetimes of most of us. Although that work is not yet complete, we see in the leadership of the church today a picture more like the one St. Paul envisioned in the 3rd chapter of Galatians when he wrote: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Christ is continuing that work of breaking down walls in our midst, even now. I believe that Christ is breaking down every barrier to the full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons in the life and leadership of the church. I believe that the Holy Spirit is saying to the church today – “in Christ there is no longer gay or straight, for all of us are one in Christ Jesus.” I believe that God has called us to participate in this world-changing, life-transforming work.

Participation in God’s new action is costly, the biblical witness and church history tell us. Jesus’ new vision of God’s kingdom was not received without anger and pain. Proclamation of that kingdom aroused such anger that those who opposed Jesus executed him. But we know that Jesus’ suffering and death were not the end of the story. Christ rose to new life. And the living Christ continues to raise us to new life. The risen Christ continues to work among us – and will continue breaking down even barriers that are now being erected to separate us from one another because of our responses to the actions of General Convention.

The hardest part of all this is that Christ’s work of breaking down barriers breaks us. Scripture and the history of the church tell us that when God acts in new ways, people are often brought to a time of pain and turmoil. When the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt, they entered a time of anger and of complaining in the wilderness, as we will hear again in the Old Testament reading this Sunday. The men and women who followed Jesus entered into a time of turmoil as they experienced the suffering and death of their teacher and Lord. The fledgling church lived through a time of turmoil when Peter discerned that Christ’s message was not meant only for Jews like him, but for non-Jews as well. Our church is in a time of turmoil now, a time in the wilderness where the things that once nourished some of us no longer seem available, where the sight of the Promised Land is obscured. I don’t like this wilderness. I am pained by the hurt that many people from both ends of the theological spectrum are feeling in this place. But I believe God has called us to this place, as God called our ancestors before us into the wilderness. I hold onto the Good News that in the past God did not abandon God’s people to the pain and hunger and confusion of the wilderness. God fed the Hebrews with manna and quails. God fed the disciples with the sacrament of Christ’s own body and blood. God is feeding us and nourishing us and staying with us in this turmoil, in this time which is one of rejoicing for some and weeping for others. God is with us and God will lead us, as God led us through the turmoil that followed the decision of General Convention to authorize the ordination of women, and the decision to authorize the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

I pray that we will find ways to walk through this wilderness hand in hand, depending on each other’s strengths. I pray that we will discover the good things, the unexpected surprises that God will show us here. And I pray that, in God’s own time, we will enter God’s Promised Land together.