News & Events – Page 2 – Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

You may not like who you’re about to become. – David Brooks

David Brooks wrote an insightful piece in the New York Times recently entitled, “Pandemics Kill Compassion, Too.” He recalls the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and how it created in many people a desire to look only after themselves and what was theirs and ignored their neighbors’ plight. He pointed out that when the pandemic was over, “people didn’t talk about it. There were very few books or plays written about it. Roughly 675,000 Americans lost their lives to the flu, compared with 53,000 in battle in World War I, and yet it left almost no conscious cultural mark. Perhaps it’s because people didn’t like who they had become. It was a shameful memory and therefore suppressed.”

Brooks continues: “Frank Snowden, the Yale historian who wrote Epidemics and Society, argues that pandemics hold up a mirror to society and force us to ask basic questions: What is possible imminent death trying to tell us? Where is God in all this? What’s our responsibility to one another?” In this current crisis those indeed are the questions people are asking. We’re all fearful. I have no doubt it’ll bring out the best and worst in us as human beings. Crises tend to do that, whether we want them to or not.

Right now, I’m no braver than the next person. Recently, all I’ve wanted to do is put on a HAZMAT suit and wait for this to be over. Yet, I’m very aware of my scared, inner child and know how selfish I’m capable of being, especially when it comes to protecting myself and those I love. We’re all tempted, if only in our thoughts, to be Social Darwinists during this time, trying to be “fitter” than the next person so we might survive (even if they don’t). While I’m washing my hands and practicing “social distancing” during this time, might I also be mindful of my fears, set them at least temporarily aside, and practice compassion for my neighbor who is just as afraid?

There’s no way to ensure that we won’t become what we don’t like, especially if we don’t keep ourselves mindful of such a danger. That’s why we must pay attention to our fears and the reactivity inside ourselves. In the fear that pervaded after September 11, 2001, we became overly vengeful. Many Arab-Americans were treated shamefully and discriminated against without warrant. At the time, I was Rector of St. Philip’s in Durham, North Carolina and heard the ugliest words come out of some of my parishioners’ mouths. One wanted to “bomb the hell out of the Arab world and let God sort them out.”

We don’t want to contract a “moral disease” that might eventually be worse than this virus, where we lose our capacity for neighbor-love as we give into our fears. I get it. We’re all scared. It’s probably good to acknowledge that. But we shouldn’t become victims of our own worse impulses. Because on the cross Jesus became the victim on our behalf, we’re liberated from being victims of our sin. He took all our shame on his shoulders. We’re free to love our neighbor even in these trying times. Let’s do that and we’ll like what we’ll become.

+Scott

June 8 2022

Idle or Idol Economy (458)

Medical anthropologist Monica Schoch-Spana has studied how the 1918 flu epidemic affected Baltimore. It overwhelmed the city’s medical system. There were reports of people desperately begging for help, even trying to bribe doctors for treatment. In one month alone, 2000 people died of the flu. Funeral homes didn’t have enough caskets and when bodies did reach cemeteries, there weren’t workers available to bury them. This all happened, with the ability of 20-20 hindsight, because there was so much pressure on business owners to remain open. People didn’t heed public health experts, which would’ve slowed the flu’s transmission. This epidemic also evidenced people at their best. People sewed medical masks and extra hospital sheets. People shared food. The epidemic also showed the worst in people. Rumors spread that German-American nurses were deliberately infecting people (some things never change) and African-Americans, this being the Jim Crow era, were denied medical treatment.

A classic episode (“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”) of The Twilight Zone popped into my head after reading about 1918 Baltimore. It plays out entirely on one block of Maple Street, a peaceful suburban enclave. When all the electricity goes out at dusk, neighbors spill into the street. Soon, a rumor spreads that aliens have invaded and taken over the power grid. Then one family’s house has their power return and they’re accused of being aliens. This being America, people go get their guns. They begin threatening one another. They all stop when someone shouts: “Who’s that?” Down the block, a lone figure walks toward them. Someone yells: “It’s an alien!” Someone then shoots the “alien.” They run to where the “alien” has fallen and discover it was just one of their neighbors coming home. A riot ensues of neighbor vs. neighbor. The camera then pans to a hill overlooking the street. Two real aliens have witnessed the mob. They have a device that’s able to manipulate the power grid. One alien says: “All we have to do mess with their lives and they’ll take care of the rest with their paranoia and panic. We can conquer Earth one neighborhood at a time that way.”

People are beginning to declare “we need to get the economy going again,” something we’d all like to see happen. But those people are using a rather unchristian philosophical ethic to justify doing so. It’s called utilitarianism, which in its most heinous application, is a form of Social Darwinism. It posits that the probable deaths of many elderly and health-compromised people are worth it in the long run; that it’s a sacrifice society needs to make for the sake of us all. Such thinking masquerades as “doing the most good for the most people,” but in reality, it’s just a distant cousin of Hitler’s Final Solution where some are deemed more socially valuable than others.

There are no aliens (Deep State or otherwise) manipulating us. God has given us all we need, and that’s one another, to love and cherish. But we can be our own worst enemies when we give into paranoia and panic. I trust we all will resist with every bone in our bodies this profoundly unchristian ethic. The economy isn’t an idol to be worshiped. Yes, waiting longer to go back to work may deepen the economic hill we must climb later, but we’ll be able to look at ourselves in the mirror without shame or guilt.

+Scott

June 8 2022

Immoral Exposure (459)

In the days ahead we’re all going to get a crash course in Philosophical Ethics 101. Universities and governmental organizations for years have engaged in simulation “games” where people are brought together and asked as a team to make decisions to address a hypothetical crisis. Years ago, I was a participant in such an exercise. The “game” laid out a grave scenario where my team had to decide about who would get aid and resources and who wouldn’t. It is what leaders do in a crisis. It doesn’t do any good to find who’s to blame for the crisis (they’ll be time for that later). As a participant in the “game,” I found my moral convictions based on my faith in God’s Good News in Jesus served me well in how I participated, but that faith also caused me a great deal more anguish than I perceived my teammates were having. Each time we were asked to ration aid we had to show preference to one group over another. We were doing what medical professionals call “triage,” which, if we’re brutally honest, asks humans to behave inhumanely to one another. That’s why it’s important to know where one stands before being thrown into such decision-making. Otherwise one is left to radically utilitarian decision methods or to simply follow whoever has the loudest voice in the room. What I learned from that exercise is that everyone has a moral code by which they make decisions (even if they don’t name it as such), but I should never be under any illusion that their code is the same as mine or that it even remotely reflects the Gospel.

In the COVID-19 crisis, we’re not just at risk for virus exposure. We’re also at risk of moral exposure, or immoral exposure, as the case may be. We’ve already seen great acts of courage and sacrifice by countless health care workers, some of whom have died, sacrificing their lives to save for others. And there are others making lesser sacrifices, but still exhibiting great courage simply by doing their jobs. We’re also being “exposed” to selfishness and greed by those who seem to care more about their personal fortunes than they do about people’s health and safety. For example, employees at a McDonald’s restaurant near San Francisco left their jobs claiming their employer wasn’t protecting their safety. Workers at a Perdue chicken factory did the same here in Georgia. And even though Instacart and Amazon said they were ensuring their employee’s safety, some of them said it wasn’t nearly enough. Some people have even been fired for raising safety concerns. And then there are dangerous crackpots like Alex Jones and Pat Robertson who seek their own personal profit by hawking “snake oil” cures for COVID-19. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror.

Unlike COVID-19, which is too small to see with the naked eye, our immoral exposure will be available for all with eyes to see. Going forward, it’ll be important that we name it when we see it, not for the purposes of shaming, but so that we don’t lose our own moral bearings in this crisis. It has been said that the first casualty of war is truth. Now more than ever, we must insist on the truth. There may be seemingly impossible choices ahead. Let’s hope they’re not like “Sofie’s Choice,” but they will still be stark and painful. Indeed, doctors and nurses in New York are already there. Pray for the moral wisdom of our leaders and our faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

+Scott

June 8 2022

Lonely Jesus (460)

One is the loneliest number – Three Dog Night

The Cross was the loneliest place in the world on Good Friday. A few people were present near the Cross, but only One was on the Cross. Jesus hung there alone. Mother Mary and a few brave souls were there keeping vigil. Everyone else fled the night before. It’s the loneliness of the Cross we should see today. It had to be that way. Humanity could not save itself. Only Jesus alone, who was fully God and fully human, could save us. Jesus took on the loneliness of the Cross so we might not have to. Because we couldn’t. We couldn’t bear it. He bore that loneliness so that we would never be alone again, left to our own devices.

And yet, people are lonely, or at least many people report they are. And apparently, it’s as deadly as COVID-19. Ezra Klein, writing in Vox, recently reported on the health outcomes of people who describe themselves as lonely. He wrote: “Social isolation has been associated with a 50% increased risk of developing dementia, a 29% increased risk of coronary heart disease, a 25% increased risk for cancer mortality, a 59% increased risk of functional decline, and a 32% increased risk of stroke.” And that doesn’t even include the mental health risks. Scientists in dozens of studies have found a “consistent relationship between social isolation and depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.” While we’re in this time of “physical distancing,” we need to look out for our neighbors, making sure they aren’t “social isolating.” Their physical and mental health depends upon it, now more than ever.

Kathy Mathea sings of going “through life parched and empty,” all the while “standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.” The vivid irony of being thirsty while standing in water should wake us up. Even during this time of physical distancing, you and I are standing knee deep in people who would care for us, if we’d let them. Are we too afraid to ask for help? Are we so fearful that others might see us as weak, if we admitted out-loud we can’t go it alone? Is having our vulnerability exposed too high a price to pay? The legendary John Prine, who died this week of COVID-19, wrote of such lonely, fearful people in his song Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrows):

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrows

Jesus became lonely so we’d never have to be alone. The “traps” we’ve created for ourselves don’t need to keep us “prisoner.” We don’t need to stay stuck in our “very own chain of sorrows.” Jesus hung on the Cross to liberate us from such deadly shackles. That’s what you and I need to share with others, rather than, as some of our fellow disciples do, lecturing them about their faults, threatening them (“You better get right with God!”), or perniciously judging them. None of that’s helpful. Never was. Never will be. No one I know is desperate for more judgment (we get plenty every day). We want to know we’re loved, that we matter. Lonely Jesus dying on the Cross was God’s eternal declaration that we’re loved, that we matter. Please share that Good News.

+Scott

June 8 2022

B.C. and A.C. (461)

Resurrection isn’t resuscitation. It isn’t returning to life from death. It’s coming into a whole new life. That’s the promise of Easter. Jesus promises us new life through resurrection, but not through a reworking of the old life we now have. It’s not just our old lives made better. What an amazing promise that is, because I don’t need my old life reworked or made a little bit better with a nip here and a tuck there. There isn’t enough “spiritual plastic surgery” Jesus could possibly do on my old embodied life to fix it up perfect. And I’m not only referring to my old football knees when writing that. I’m talking about the whole enchilada of who I am. It would take Jesus an eternity to fix all that and he still might run out of time.

So, I don’t need improvement or enlightenment. I need resurrection. And so do you. What Jesus promises us is just that: Resurrection to a whole new life. That’s a promise worth contemplating right now as we shelter-in-place. While we don’t know exactly when, the time will come for us to resume our everyday lives once again. What part of our old life do we want resuscitated? There are probably some aspects of our lives B.C. (Before COVID-19) that we’re eager to resuscitate (and should) when the time comes. We all long to hug our friends and family, to gather for worship with our sisters & brothers in Christ, and to have the opportunity once again to serve, hands on, our neighbors in need.

There are, however, other aspects of our lives that probably aren’t worthy of resuscitation. Those things need to stay dead in our tombs. As we burst forth from our physical distancing graves, what will our resurrections look like? When we rise from the grave of COVID-19, will we simply be resuscitated back to those old patterns of anger and bitterness that trapped us? Or, might we envision ourselves resurrected to a new way of being in relationship with one another that leaves buried our old resentments and fears? In this very special, unusual Eastertide, what if we trusted Jesus to pull us out of our graves to new life and not merely to a resuscitation of the same old, same old?

God makes that same offer to us as the human family. B.C. we were, as a society, buried in the grave of extremes. We’d anxiously fly back and forth between panic and neglect. We’d panic about what was happening around us, and then racing to the other extreme, we’d neglect to do anything about what was happening. For example, when there was yet another mass shooting, remember how we’d bewail the tragedy, offer our thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, and then promise to have a conversation about gun violence? We’d go into panic mode, but then when our attention spans were diverted by one thing or another, we’d neglect to change anything about that evil. As Pete Seeger sang: “When we will ever learn?”

Maybe A.C. (After COVID-19) we’ll embrace resurrection to the new life Jesus promises? Maybe we won’t settle for the mere resuscitation of our old selves? As my Mama used to say: “Wouldn’t that be somethin’?”

+Scott

June 8 2022

Drinking the Kool-Aid (462)

In 1954, research psychologists heard about a cult leader who was prophesying the end of the world on December 21^st of that year. Apparently, the cult leader had received messages from another planet that gave her a heads up for that date. So, pretending to be true believers, the researchers infiltrated the group to study how the group would respond, when, let’s say, the world didn’t end when the cult leader said it would. Their hypothesis was that the followers wouldn’t abandon their leader when she proved to be a charlatan. Rather, they’d find rationales and justifications for her mistake and afterwards they would even deepen their trust in her as their leader. And that’s what happened. They had invested their lives in her being right. They couldn’t begin to think otherwise. Later, when another cult leader, Jim Jones, went even more wrong in Guyana, the term was coined: “They drank the Kool-Aid.”

In 1960, English psychologist Peter Wason was the first to use the term “confirmation bias.” It’s a psychological condition that leads us to hold fast to false beliefs even when the overwhelming evidence indicates we shouldn’t. In the midst of “confirmation bias” we’ll not only discount evidence that contradicts our beliefs, we’ll also search out any information that confirms what we already believe. So, when we’re trapped in such bias, we’ll first discount what contradicts our beliefs and then we’ll go to great lengths to find information that undergirds what we want to believe. We drink the Kool-Aid.

And that brings us to the poor souls who recently gathered at state capitals to protest state government’s restrictions on physical distancing and businesses. Those gathered flaunted the norms put in place to protect them and their fellow citizens from viral spread. Many gathered believe the virus isn’t as deadly as scientists are saying. It’s just an excuse for the government to take away their rights. People, of course, are welcome to put their own lives in danger, but what about the people they might infect? Their right to have what they want ends when exercising that right could put other people in harm’s way. But they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Then came the tweet responding to these protests: “save your great 2^nd Amendment. It is under siege!” How does protecting public health during a pandemic threaten anyone’s 2^nd Amendment rights? The answer doesn’t matter to the Kool-Aid drinkers. It’s feeding their bias and the tweeter certainly knows that.

Expertise in infectious disease and epidemiology isn’t a matter of biased opinion. It’s science. Scientific research doesn’t always have answers, but scientists pursuing answers do so on the basis of verifiable studies, historical patterns, and tested outcomes. A man at a protest in Kansas said he wants to get business open again. He says he follows “all sides of the issue,” but he worries “in general, we are hearing the science-only side.” What other side should there be in a viral pandemic? For those who have drunk the Kool-Aid, facts don’t matter. They may “feel” a certain way about the scientific facts of this virus, but how they “feel” about those facts is immaterial. The virus just is and our opinion about it doesn’t change its ongoing infection rate and death toll. I don’t like the current situation any more than the next person, but for heaven’s sake, let’s heed the public health experts. And let’s not drink the Kool-Aid.

+Scott

June 8 2022

Lifeboat Ethics, Georgia-Style (463)

To believe in this livin’ is just hard way to go – the late, great John Prine

On this Mayday, a traditional day throughout the world for workers to celebrate their lives, their livelihoods, and their right to earn a safe, decent wage, it’s appropriate for us to reflect on the nature of work during this pandemic. Those who can telecommute (like me) and still maintain their livelihoods have had it relatively easy. It’s been frustrating and, at times, boring (“There’s no way I’m watching Tiger King, dear”), but whatever frustration and boredom we’ve experienced is hardly noble or sacrificial. Medical professionals, police officers, EMTs, grocery workers, delivery drivers, and other essential workers have been putting themselves on the line for weeks on end. And my complaints are as small-minded and petty as they seem.

In Georgia, businesses are now allowed to reopen, even those that can hardly be labeled essential to our health and safety (tattoos anyone?). We should realize the outcome of the decision to lift many pandemic restrictions won’t be evenly felt among our people. Those who have the luxury of working remotely won’t return to in-person work. As David Frum wrote in The Atlantic: “Those who can telecommute, who can shop online, or who work for health-conscious employers like public universities will be better positioned to minimize their exposure than those called back to work in factories, plants, and delivery services. The economy will be further divided along its widening class fault: those who can control their contacts with others, and those who cannot.”

As infection rates and deaths rise in the coming weeks, the Governor is gambling people either won’t notice or they’ll conclude it doesn’t personally affect them. The U.S. data shows that 27% of those killed by this virus are African American, and yet they comprise only 12% of U.S. population. The CDC reports 50% of all virus deaths in Georgia are African American even though they make up only 30% of the state’s population. Also, statistics clearly show that people who work outside their homes are getting infected at a much higher rate than those who have the luxury of sheltering-in-place. They’re also disproportionally lower income, like grocery workers. And since Georgia hasn’t expanded Medicaid coverage, many don’t have health insurance. As Georgia opens back up, CEOs will telecommute, but their secretaries and those who clean their offices won’t. Reopening before the infection rate peaks, according to the CDC, will certainly cause higher mortality in Georgia. We don’t know yet just how much higher. The Governor’s gamble isn’t with my life or the lives of people who have my privileges, but with people’s lives whose type of work gives them a higher likelihood of infection.

We’re about to see an example of what ethicists call lifeboat ethics, where some people get a place in the lifeboat and others have to swim on their own. The Governor’s decision de facto classifies some people as less worthy to be in the lifeboat than others (i.e., privileged folk like me). Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that God will judge the nations by how they treat what he calls “the least of these,” that is, the poor and the less powerful. God will judge us if this gamble with other people’s lives causes more poor and marginalized people to get sick and die.

+Scott

June 8 2022

Again? Yes, again. (464)

Ahmaud Arbery should still be alive and with his family. But he isn’t. On the afternoon of February 23 of this year he was jogging, as was his custom, in Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick. While jogging, two men approached him in a truck, believing he fit the description of someone they’d seen on a surveillance video who might have engaged in criminal behavior in the neighborhood. And here’s where we need to exercise empathy for Mr. Arbery or, to put it another way, place ourselves in his shoes. Imagine you’re jogging where you regularly jog and two men, who you don’t know, follow you in a pickup truck trying to stop you. They don’t appear friendly. They aren’t the police. And they have guns. So, you try to avoid them by jogging in the opposite direction. But they cut you off. What do you do when you have nowhere to run to get away from these strangers? My hunch is you would “stand your ground” and defend yourself, if possible.

The recently released video of the altercation shows one of the men in the bed of the pickup truck and the other outside the truck confronting Mr. Arbery. Again, put yourselves in Mr. Arbery shoes. You don’t know these men. They aren’t police officers. And they have guns. One comes at you. You have no idea what this about, but you’re a young black man and these two white men have guns. You know the history of how these encounters have gone before. Is it any wonder why Mr. Arbery “stood his ground” to defend himself when approached by strange white men with guns? The video shows Mr. Arbery struggling with one of the men trying to take away his shotgun. Shots are then fired. Mr. Arbery tries to get away, but he’s mortally wounded and falls to the ground. That’s where the video ends.

And what transpires afterward makes this tragedy all the more bizarre, but historically predictable. The police don’t even arrest the two men who were involved in the killing of Mr. Arbery, pending a full investigation of what happened. They just drop it. No arrests. But wait: The two white men were the aggressors (by their own account). They sought out and confronted Mr. Arbery. They came at him with guns. He had done nothing wrong. And now he’s dead. Due to this incident getting some attention, it now appears the local prosecutors are going to convene a grand jury to investigate. Two and a half months after the killing, they’re now going to have a criminal investigation.

To be sure, all the facts aren’t known. I’m not rushing to judgment. I’m not suggesting these two men should be convicted by any court, especially the court of public opinion. But seeing the video and reading the two men’s own account of what happened (which doesn’t align with what’s on the video) should lead anyone, especially law enforcement and prosecutors, to have serious doubts that no crime was committed against Mr. Arbery. What’s clear and indisputable is that Mr. Arbery didn’t deserve this fate. Two white men, acting as vigilantes, killed a black man they thought might be someone who looked like someone they’d seen on a surveillance video. And the authorities file no criminal charges? And some white people still wonder why black people don’t trust the justice system. This is why.

+Scott

June 8 2022

My Many Marriages (465)

In spite of ourselves, we’ll end up a’sittin’ on a rainbow Against all odds, Honey, we’re the big door prize.

– The Legendary John Prine

This past Tuesday, Kelly and I celebrated 36 years of marriage. And although we’ve been married continuously for 36 years, we’ve had many marriages during that time. No, I’m not hinting at some previously unacknowledged polygamy (although I think historically the Mormons had it backwards: In polygamy, women should be the ones with multiple spouses). All I’m noting is the reality that our marriage hasn’t been the same one during that time. Indeed, no marriage can be. When our marriage was a “baby,” we had babies. As our marriage became a “teenager,” teenagers infested our house. And now, our marriage is approaching “middle age.” We’re no longer new at this. We’re entering the mature years of our covenant together.

Anyone married for a long time knows they’re in many different marriages during their married life, because they haven’t been married to the exact same person all that time. Yes, in one respect, they have, but it’s also true the other person has matured, learned new things about themselves and their relationship with the world, and through the day in and day out of marriage, has become a new, and perhaps a better, human being as a result.

Although we have different marriages during our marriages, it’s actually an aspect of a marriage’s “sameness” that allows for the possibility of becoming better human beings. If we came home each night to a totally new spouse (a warped Ground Hog Day), then we’d never have the time or space to really know one another, and in the process, know ourselves in a more honest way. Each night, we’d have to do the dance of courtship, wondering if the other person noticed the piece of lettuce stuck in our teeth or if our underarms didn’t smell quite “fresh.” It’s the sameness of marriage that gives us the time and space to get through all that so we might become new and different.

When we first say, “I will” at the church altar, we may be ignorantly thinking “I can.” That illusion gets shattered pretty quickly when we learn how hard it is at times to live with one another. Marriage, maybe more than any other relationship, helps us learn what God intends for us through the imputation of the grace given in Jesus. By grace, we receive undeserved mercy and hopefully from that we learn how to share undeserved mercy to another soul. Mercy (which is grace operationalized to another) is a virtue that needs cultivation. Where best to cultivate it than between two sinful people who’ll at times behave in selfish, petty ways? Each time we receive mercy, God gives us an opportunity for renewal, so that we may forgive and love one another more deeply.

So, since I’m in constant need of mercy, I’m thankful to have had so many different marriages. By the grace of God, Kelly and I have been able to love ourselves through each one. I hope we have many more marriages ahead.

+Scott

June 8 2022

As I Retire (466)

If you stand out in a crowd it is only because you are standing on the shoulders of others. – Desmond Tutu

Bishops should consider in themselves not the authority of their rank but the equality of their condition. – Gregory the Great

The above quote from Bishop Tutu reminds us that our life in the Church is never about one person, even someone as important to history and the Church as he. None of us is a “lone ranger.” We’re always dependent on those who came before us and we pray we won’t mess things up for those who come after us. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re always “standing on the shoulders of others.” Bishop Gregory’s quote admonishes bishops never to exercise power for its own sake. Bishops must remember we’re “miserable offenders” (BCP 1928 Morning Prayer Confession) just like everyone else. Bishops, or anyone exercising authority in the Church, should always focus on helping others thrive in their ministry, especially when they’re unable to help themselves.

Life in the Church should teach us these truths, that is, if we’re paying attention to our lives. I’ve tried to pay attention to my life. As I have grown older, I’ve realized I’ve had to relearn those truths again and again (I’m a slow learner). You’ve helped me do that these last ten plus years as have countless other Disciples of Jesus who’ve been part of my life. John of the Cross wrote: God has so ordained things that we grow in faith only through the frail instrumentality of one another. That’s how I’ve experienced it. Our faith grows as we experience one another’s witness, even as that witness remains fragile because such fragility displays God’s power and not our own (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Verna Dozier wrote: The Bible has given me all the help it can by offering me the story of God acting in history. The Bible cannot tell me what to do on Monday morning, because the Bible tells me that there is a God who calls me to humanity, and my humanity means that I have to make decisions and live in the terror of making those decisions. I know the terror of which she writes. I’ve often wished the Bible were a rule book, but it’s not. “We see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12), St. Paul reminds us. We do the best we can, given our personal limitations and the material with which we get to work. God makes do, even when we fall short. And we often do.

There’s a tendency among bishops as they retire to say in so many words: “look how hard I’ve worked and sacrificed for you in this ministry!” Me? I’m still surprised you allowed me to do this. Yes, at times it was an “impossible vocation,” but it was always more privilege than burden. That’s not to say I don’t have some wounds from my time as bishop (I do), but as Alan Paton in Cry, the Beloved Country writes: I don’t worry about the wounds. When I go up there, which is my intention, the Bid Judge will say to me, “Where are your wounds?’ And if I say I haven’t any, He will say, ‘Was there nothing to fight for?’ I pray the wounds I incurred as bishop were for what was right in God’s eyes and, in some way, furthered your faith in Jesus, who is our only true help.

+Scott

June 8 2022

The “Patriarchess” of Evangelical Revival

FrankUncategorized Sermon

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Selina Hastings Countess of Huntingdon who funded the Bethesda Orphanage in Savannah as she guided an Evangelical movement.

The philanthropy of Countess Selina Hastings (1707–1791) made it possible for the Rev. George Whitefield (1714–1770) to found the Bethesda Orphan House in Savannah even as she was shaping the Methodist movement. Hastings was one of three daughters born to an English noble family. At 21, she married to Theophilus Hastings, the ninth earl of Huntingdon. In the next ten years, she would give birth to seven children, four of whom died quite young, which had an impact on her religious thought.

After her husband died in 1746, Hastings increasingly connected with Methodism through the Rev. John Wesley, who she met after his return from Georgia. In published letters, Wesley credited the Countess with convincing him to preach to miners in the open air, telling him “They have churches, but they never go to them! And ministers, but they seldom or never hear them! Perhaps they might hear you.” He tried her plan and found his preaching transformed.

At the time, the Church of England was not licensing evangelicals to preach and she discovered a loophole that allowed their preaching at private chapels. She would create and fund 64 such chapels, making room for thousands to hear an evangelical presentation of the Gospel.

The Countess of Huntingdon would later move on from Wesley to George Whitefield as John emphasized our need to strive for holiness in this life. She found the goal of perfection was far from the grace she had found in salvation coming through faith alone.

Whitefield had followed John Wesley as the Rector of Christ Church Savannah, serving here from 1738 until 1740. During that time, he would found Bethesda. The Countess’ financial support was vital to the orphanage.

Her views on slavery were inconsistent and her work in Savannah was part of that story. She promoted the freedom of formerly enslaved Africans and supported publication of two slave narratives, written by Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and Olaudah Equiano. Those 1700s memoirs published in England were the first time those in Britain heard of life directly from those who had been enslaved. On Whitefield’s death in 1770, she inherited his estates in Georgia and South Carolina, including the Bethesda Home for Boys and some enslaved persons who worked at the home. She then added to their number, approving the purchase of more enslaved persons to work at Bethesda. She continued to support and oversee the orphanage until the newly formed State of Georgia confiscated the property after the Revolution.

The Countess would become an increasingly influential and controversial figure. As bishops of the Church of England worked to close the loophole for private chapels, she started “the Countess of Huntington’s Connexion” which was her own denomination. When she died in 1791, she left debt rather than an estate as she spent every bit of her considerable fortune to advance the gospel. In an obituary, Horace Walpole named her a “Patriarchess” for her philanthropy especially in the funding and supervision of her chapels that led to an expansion of Methodism.

June 2 2022

We are not alone

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
St. Thomas Isle of Hope, Savannah
May 29, 2022

The Rev. Canon Loren Lasch

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, a very important day in the Church year. This principal feast, which is on par with Christmas and Easter, commemorates the day when Jesus completed his earthly ministry and ascended into heaven. It is a day of great joy, a day to celebrate the fact that our God, who lived among us, who died and rose again, has returned to a place of great glory and honor.

Two readings on Ascension Day tell the story of Jesus’ ascension. In the account from Luke’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus led the disciples “out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”

In the account from the Acts of the Apostles, we are told “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”

Personally, I feel like the account from Acts is a bit more realistic, with the disciples gazing toward heaven, probably open mouthed with confused faces, watching their Lord and teacher and friend grow smaller and smaller until they could no longer see him. Obviously we know that they didn’t just stand in the place, forever, but I imagine it took them some time before they could unroot themselves from the spot and head out into the world, not quite knowing the way without THE Way to guide them.

Jesus, of course, had told them this was going to happen. We just heard it in last week’s Gospel reading, which ended with him saying “And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” But, I wonder if they still didn’t see the Ascension coming. Maybe they just weren’t listening, or thought Jesus was speaking in metaphor when he said he was going to return to the Father. I think it’s more likely they were willfully trying to pretend it wasn’t going to happen. After all, they had already experienced a world without Jesus, and it had left them broken.

I think that’s why the account of the Ascension from Acts feels more likely to me, because I can easily imagine them standing there that day, unable to move, feeling the weight of Holy Saturday enshrouding them once more as they watched Jesus leave them forever. Leaving them utterly bereft.

That image of the disciples especially resonates with me this week, because that is how I have been feeling, as though I’ve been watching goodness and mercy and love slip away, ever since I first heard the news about the unbearably tragic killing of 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Utterly bereft.

I’ve felt other things, too, of course. Overwhelming grief. Paralyzing fear. Pounding anger. Over and over again, in turn, as more details come to light. And I’ve found myself searching for Jesus, desperately, as I’ve prayed for these families and this community. As I’ve hugged my two elementary aged children as tightly as I can. As I’ve searched for the right words, or even any words, to say after such a horrifying moment in our shared lives.

But, I will freely admit, I’ve felt like the disciples after the Ascension, like I’ve been gazing up into heaven in vain. Not because Christ isn’t there. Because of course he is. But at times it’s been almost impossible to glimpse him through the tears.

As a preacher, I’ll often go back to previous sermons about certain readings or topics, to see which ideas still speak to me. And it’s always a delight to find words previously preached which could work again, reworked to fit a different context, at a different time. But it’s almost unbearable to know that I could have looked back and found a sermon for something so horrifying, preached after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago.

I imagine I’ve not been alone this week. I imagine I’m not the only one who has wondered how, HOW to get through something like this…again, in the midst of all of the rest of the pain and sorrow in the world. I imagine I haven’t been the only one who has been, like the disciples, desperately trying to see Jesus.

Here’s the thing about the disciples, though. Bereft though they likely were, they knew, on some level, that they weren’t really alone. For starters, they were in community. They were connected by their shared experiences as followers of Jesus, shared moments of sorrow and joy, shared yearning for continued communion with Christ. The bonds they had formed didn’t cease to exist in the face of uncertainty. They could lean on each other, look to each other for comfort and guidance as they together worked out what they would do next.

But they also knew that they weren’t alone because Jesus promised that they would soon receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever.”

“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you”

This may have seemed like a nebulous promise at the time, but it was a promise, and Jesus has shown them time and again that he was trustworthy and true. So they knew that the Spirit would be coming, help would be coming, power would be coming, to move alongside them and through them as they continued to spread the Good News of God in Christ throughout a pain and sorrow-filled world. To remind them that they were not alone, would never be alone, even in the midst of the darkest of times.

And that gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God, the promise of Christ, is with us. Always. Next Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate that gift with great joy. But the Spirit is already here, will always be here, reminding us that we are not alone. In today’s Gospel reading we’ve gone back in time, and Jesus is praying to the Father, seated with his disciples at the Last Supper. He says: “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

The Holy Spirit is among us to remind us that God’s love, Incarnate in Christ, remains with us. And not only that, but we are conduits of that love. The Holy Spirit is known as many things: the Advocate, the Helper, the Sustainer, the Comforter. The Spirit is present with us in all of those ways, and many more, and enables and empowers us to be present in those same ways in the world.

That looks different at different times and for different people of course. The ways in which we advocate for and help others, the ways in which we sustain and comfort others, are unique to each of us, and our ability to do them may wax and wane. Some days we may be ready to take on all of the injustice in the world head-on. Some days we may be able to provide words of comfort and solace to someone who is utterly bereft. And some days we may only be able to offer a hand to someone as we search for Jesus together. But the power of the Holy Spirit, moving alongside us and through us, is ever-present. Even in the darkest of times, we are not alone.

No matter what, we are never alone.

June 1 2022

Saint Paul’s Church and the Founding of Augusta

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the beginning of Saint Paul’s in Augusta.

James Edward Oglethorpe sent a party up the Savannah River in 1735 to build a fort as a refuge for settlers living near the first set of rapids. Oglethorpe named Fort Augusta for the princess who would become the mother of George III. In time, the trading post prospered. In April of 1750, the people who lived and traded in this area erected a church. Noting that their friendship with the indigenous population was “sometimes precarious,” they built the church under the shelter of the Fort.

The Trustees of the Colony of Georgia meeting in London shortly thereafter sent to Augusta the Rev. Jonathan Copp, a Connecticut native and clergyman of the Church of England. He left London in 1751 with window glass, church furniture, and a deed to 300 acres of land to cultivate for his support. We are told that he arrived full of enthusiasm, “with much the same temperament as St. Mark.”

There is a letter from Lambeth Palace in Saint Paul’s founding documents as the Archbishop of Canterbury was concerned that Mr. Cobb may not get his 20 pounds per year salary as it is based on voluntary contributions. The Archbishop feared that as there were no church wardens in Augusta how could the church function and the priest get paid? They needed strong lay leaders.

The first report from Mr. Copp came six months later when he asked for a transfer to a church in South Carolina. He did say that 80-100 people a week attend divine worship and he had baptized 30 from both Georgia and South Carolina. But he added, “Here we have been under continual fears and apprehensions of being murdered and destroyed by the [native inhabitants] there being no one within 140 miles capable of lending us any assistance in times of danger—so far are we situated in the wild, uncultivated wilderness.” He was not granted the transfer for three years.

Three more clergymen would come and go by the time the Revolutionary War ended. When the dust cleared from that conflict, there was no minister, and no church, as Saint Paul’s was burned, the parish records, and silver communion set lost. It would be five years before the church lands were sold and a new Saint Paul’s Church built. Saint Paul’s was planted in Augusta 72 years before there was a Diocese of Georgia and 90 years before there was an Episcopal Bishop of Georgia.

Pictured above: The drawing of the original Saint Paul’s; Saint Paul’s after the Great Augusta fire.

May 25 2022

The faithful pastor, Bartholomew Zouberbuhler

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the Rev. Bartholomew Zouberbuhler.

Three of the greatest change agents in the history of the Church spent time in the Colony of Georgia. All three belonged to the Anglican Church in the 18th century. John Wesley and George Whitefield both served as rectors of Christ Church in Savannah, while Charles Wesley working as a non-stipendiary priest established worship on St. Simons. Whitfield changed the face of American Christianity in preaching “the great awakening,” John Wesley changed the face of American Christianity and the world with the Evangelical commitment to share the Gospel with people of other classes and colors, and Charles Wesley added greatly to our hymnody. Yet not one of these three was particularly effective in their ministry in Georgia. Bishop Henry Louttit observed, “It was Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, born of German-speaking parents, who was the first great pastor in the Anglican tradition in Georgia.”

Zouberbuhler was appointed on All Saints’ Day, 1745, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), to be pastor of Christ Church in Savannah. Bartholomew was the son of a native Swiss pastor who had originally served congregations of Swiss Protestants in the colony of South Carolina and then had become pastor of an Anglican parish there. Bartholomew, believing himself called to the ministry, made the long trip across the ocean to be ordained by the Bishop of London.

The trustees of the Colony of Georgia charged Pastor Zouberbuhler with ministering to the French and German inhabitants of Georgia in their own languages, as John Wesley had done, according to the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer. In 1748, Savannah boasted 613 inhabitants, of whom 225 were members of Christ Church and 388 were dissenters of all sorts (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Lutheran, etc.). Under Zouberbuhler’s leadership, Christ Church moved into its first building in 1750. The congregation met in the courthouse before then.

Zouberbuhler served not just in Savannah, but also led worship in outlying villages as well as at Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. He suffered from bad health and several times during his years of ministry petitioned to be replaced as the pastor for the colony. In the records of the SPG in London are letters from the vestry of Christ Church urging that he continue to serve as the congregation loved him and grew under his leadership. The roots of what would later become Episcopal worship really began to be firmly established during his tenure.

Zouberbuhler’s concern was not only for Christians of other languages and church traditions who had settled in Georgia, but for all the inhabitants, including enslaved persons from Africa. At Christ Church in 1750, he baptized the first enslaved African to be baptized in the colony. When Zouberbuhler died, he left a sizable portion of his estate as a trust to be used to employ qualified teachers “to teach Anglican Christianity to Negroes.” He is buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.

In 1999, Bishop Henry Louttit, Jr. named him a Saint of Georgia with a feast day falling on any liturgy in the week of October 22. This article was adapted from Bishop Henry Louttit’s biography of Zouberbuhler in Saints of Georgia.

Pictured above: The 1734 engraving above shows how Savannah remained a small settlement at the time Zouberbuhler became the ninth Rector of Christ Church, 12 years after the congregation’s founding in 1733; and Zouberbuhler’s grave in Bonaventure Cemetery is the second from the right. There are no pictures of the pastor.

May 18 2022

A famed evangelist left Georgia in disgrace

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember John Wesley and his exit from Georgia.

Though his legacy as the founder of the Methodist movement has born so much good fruit for almost three centuries, John Wesley’s ministry in Georgia went catastrophically wrong. Wesley arrived to a Savannah that was still a village of just two hundred houses. In less than two years, a 44-person grand jury, making up a significant percentage of the population, would approve a 10-count indictment against their idealistic minister.

John had been felled by a rigid faith and a broken heart. One colonist described John’s spiritual leadership as “religious Tyranny.” To make matters worse, John had fallen for Sophia Hopkey who he tutored in French on the ship from England and continued to see regularly. She even nursed the pastor through a fever. But John became convinced that marriage would get in the way of his ministry and he told the apparently equally infatuated 18-year old that he could not marry until he accomplished his mission to the Indians. Wesley’s words did not strike the young woman as the words of a soul mate. Sophia married William Williamson. John’s diary on the day he heard the news says only, “Could not pray. Tried to pray—lost—sunk.”

The pastor excommunicated Sophy a few months later citing “falseness and inconsistency of life,” creating a stir in the gossipy colony. Nine more charges flowed from his rigid religiosity.

Wesley wrote, “I shook off the dust of my feet, and left Georgia, having preached the Gospel there with much weakness indeed and many infirmities, not as I ought but as I was able.” He added, “This have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen short of the glory of God, that my whole heart is altogether corrupt and abominable.”

We know that in the fall of 1738, less than a year after he left Georgia in disgrace, John Wesley found his life transformed by grace. He heard someone read Martin Luther’s introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans at a meeting he had attended unwillingly. He would write that as he heard the words “describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ…I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Wesley who had afflicted others with a rigid approach to religion was surprised by the grace of a God who knew John’s heart was altogether corrupt and abominable and yet loved the imperfect parson anyway. John would go on to travel a quarter of a million miles on horseback, delivering more than 40,000 sermons, and founding the Methodist Movement boasting 541 preachers and 135,000 members in his lifetime. There are 80 million Methodists around the world today who have found their hearts warmed by the grace John Wesley experienced.

Pictured above: Frank Logue’s photo of the monument of John Wesley in Reynold Square in Savannah; John Wesley preaching on his father’s grave on June 6, 1742

May 11 2022

Coosaponakeesa, the wealthy and influential wife of a rector

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Coosaponakessa of the Wind Clan.

Coosaponakeesa of the Wind Clan was essential to the success of the Colony of Georgia. Born in 1700 in the Lower Creek Nation’s Capitol of Coweta, she was the daughter of Edward Griffin, an English trader, and a Creek woman usually referred to as Brim, which was also the name of her relative who ruled the Creek Nation. By the time of her death in 1765, she was the largest landowner and the wealthiest person in the colony.

At the age of 10, she was sent to Charles Town, South Carolina. She would spend five years living with an English family and attending school where she learned English language and customs. There she was baptized in the Church of England, taking the name Mary Griffin.

The English Colonel John Musgrove brought his son, John, with him when he traveled to Coweta to negotiate a treaty establishing a border between the Carolinas and the Creeks. The young John fell in love with Coosaponakeesa. The two married and would have four sons in the years that followed. They lived among the Creeks until 1725, when they returned to Charles Town. When the Creek Nation invited the British to build a trading post in Creek territory, they wanted a member of their nation to run the store. John and Mary Musgrove were perfect for the work as the matrilineal Creeks recognized her as one of their own, while the British trusted John. Her relative Tomo-chi-chi gave Mary the present site of Savannah. The stage was then set for James Edward Oglethorpe to “discover” the high bluff on the Savannah River suitable for a new settlement. Mary Musgrove became not just Oglethorpe’s translator, but also assisted the colony’s founder in understanding Creek customs. Her relative Tomo-chi-chi also became an important friend to Oglethorpe.

After John’s death from fever in 1735, she ran the trading post, Cowpens, alone until 1737 when she married Jacob Matthews. Throughout this time from 1733 to 1743, she remained Oglethorpe’s chief interpreter. When war broke out in Georgia and Florida between Britain and Spain, the Creeks sided with the British and the Cowpens Trading Post prospered. The Creek Nation granted Coosaponakeesa the barrier islands of St. Catherine’s, Sapelo, and Ossabaw as well as more than a thousand acres along the Savannah River. The British did not recognize her ownership. This lack of respect insulted the Creeks, led then by Coosaponakeesa’s cousin Malatchi Brim as Chief Mico.

Jacob Matthews died in 1745. With her third marriage in 1747, Mary became the wife of the Rector of Christ Church in Savannah, the Rev. Thomas Bosomworth. The two became a power couple with strong connections in both Creek and British society. They pressed their land claim in a ten-year battle, traveling to England at one point to meet with the British Board of Trade. In 1759, a compromise resolved the issue. The Board of Trade auctioned off Sapelo and Ossabaw Islands, giving the proceeds to Mary. The land sold for £2,100, which would be worth more than half a million dollars today. She was also permitted to keep St. Catherine’s Island “in consideration of services rendered by her to the province of Georgia.” Mary moved to the island in 1760 and lived her remaining five years there.

Coosaponakeesa leveraged her connections and ingenuity to become the most influential person in the Colony. She is also likely the most unique clergy spouse in our history.

Pictured above: Coosaponakeesa of the Wind Clan; Coosaponakeesa with her third husband, the Rector of Christ Church in Savannah.

May 4 2022

The Idealistic James Edward Oglethorpe

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember James Oglethorpe.

Growing up in the house next door to King George’s Whitehall Palace, James Edward Oglethorpe was the youngest of ten children born to a prominent English family. Inheriting a family estate at 26, the up-and-coming Oglethorpe ran for the House of Commons. Reports say soon after the election, Oglethorpe was already drunk when he wandered into a tavern at six o’clock in the morning. He got into a heated exchange over politics with a lamplighter and killed the man in the fight that followed. A powerful friend intervened to get Oglethorpe freed from jail.

The pugilistic politician emerged as a powerful reformer after landing a seat on the committee working with problems in debtor prisons. There he met the charismatic Sir Thomas Bray, a priest of the Church of England with a heart for the underprivileged. In five years, Oglethorpe would serve on numerous committees working to relieve problems that plagued England’s poor. He managed to secure the release of 10,000 imprisoned for their debts. Concerned that the debtors were free, but without work, Oglethorpe began raising interest in a debtor colony even as he collected funds to found it. In June of 1732, King George II signed the Charter of the Colony of Georgia.

The Anne set sail with the first colonists in late 1732, arriving in Charlestown, South Carolina, in early 1733. With a small scouting party, Oglethorpe found a trading post run by Mary and John Musgrove at the Yamacraw village on a high bluff of the Savannah River. The local chief, Tomo-chi-chi, agreed to the settlement plan and by all accounts, he and Ogelthorpe became good friends. The two later traveled together to England. Though he only ever held the title of a trustee of the colony, Oglethorpe’s role amounted to being its founding governor, a role he maintained for Georgia’s first decade. His ambitious city plan remains the design of Savannah. A devoted Anglican, he placed Christ Church on a prominent square. He also made provision for Jews, Lutheran Salzburgers, and other persecuted religious minorities to settle.

Oglethorpe was a civilian with limited military experience at the time of the colony’s founding. During a return trip to England in 1737, he was appointed to the rank of Colonel and sent back with a regiment of soldiers. In 1743, Oglethorpe was advanced to the rank of General. He successfully pushed back the Spanish in the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

Living into the motto of Georgia’s Trustees—Non sibi sed aliis (Not for self, but for others)—Oglethorpe remained a tireless idealist. He wholly opposed slavery in Georgia and kept an enlightened approach in relations with the indigenous population. (The painting above shows Tomochichi and other Yamacraw visitors, being presented to the Georgia Trustees in London by James Edward Oglethorpe in 1734.)

Back in England in 1744, he married Elizabeth Wright, a Baroness. He remained in England while continuing to serve on the Board of Trustees of Georgia. Over his strong opposition, the Trustees relaxed prohibitions against owning large tracts of land, enslaving persons, and other rules intended to reflect his Christian idealism. By 1750 he was no longer involved with what was then a royal colony. The founder lived to see the colonies gain independence. He met the U.S. ambassador, John Adams, on the future president’s first trip to England. Oglethorpe died later the same month on June 30, 1785.

April 20 2022

An Authentic History of Our Diocese

LizUncategorized Easter Sunday, Holy Week

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. Looking back on our Centennial Celebration on April 22, 1923, the tone was laudatory. The fourth Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Focke Reese (pictured here in the bishop’s chair that was in the sanctuary at Christ Church, Savannah) preached a sermon that praised his predecessors with words that made them seem so heroic as to not be real:

Speaking of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. he said, “Of distinguished lineage, with a handsome and impressive appearance, with a mind richly endowed and stored with large learning, a disposition benign and gracious, a temper patient and well poised, he was naturally a leader among his fellows, and he gave himself and all that he had without stint to the Church.”

He described Bishop John W. Beckwith saying, “He was a fatherly Bishop and meekly ruled as remembering mercy. Endowed by nature with a marvelous voice that ranged throughout the whole realm of human emotions, Bishop Beckwith’s reading was so impressive that, as I have heard people say, they crowded to hear him read the service which was to them as a benediction.”

And finally, he said of Bishop C.K. Nelson, “He came to us in the full vigor of his manhood. With robust physical health and mental vigor, a stalwart and handsome presence and a zeal and industry in service that knew no limit, he gave himself to the Church in the Diocese in missionary labors.”

Starting next Wednesday, April 27, we will offer an article each week sharing our history through the people and events that have shaped the Episcopal Church in Georgia. All history is, of course, interpretive as one selects what to tell and how. In this series, Bishop Frank Logue, will share the good and the bad, with both sometimes seen in the same person or event.

When possible, these articles will rely on quotations from contemporary accounts or the person’s own words to assist in sharing history the way those who lived it told their story. Along the way, we reveal some abiding characteristics of our Diocese, in resilience and adaptability, together with where we have changed, in seeing the image of God in all people.

April 17 2022

The Paschal Homily of Saint John Chrysostom

Is there anyone here who is a devout lover of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival.
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any now weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If they have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast!

And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he shall have sustained no loss. And if any have delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him who toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.

He accepts the work as he greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry; partake, all, of the cup of faith. Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when he descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar, because it was mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it was destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.

It is in an uproar because it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and it discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see. O death, where is your sting?

O Hades, where is your victory?

Christ is risen, and you, O death, are annihilated! Christ is risen, and the evil ones are cast down! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ, having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!

April 16 2022

The Gift of Holy Saturday

LizUncategorized Bishop, Holy Week

A reflection for Holy Saturday, April 16, 2022 by the Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue, Bishop of Georgia

Holy Saturday is a day easy to miss in the Church Year. Often the church building is bustling as the members of the altar and flower guilds replace the austerity of Good Friday, with the joy of Easter. And while that work is essential, it should not let us forget of the pain and tragedy of unimaginable loss experienced by the first followers of Jesus.

The women who traveled with Jesus and his disciples, some of whom assisted in financial support of his ministry had heard their cry out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In his humanity, Jesus felt abandoned on the cross. Then on Holy Saturday, the disciples filtered back to the Upper Room in Jerusalem where they had celebrated that last Passover. There would have been the stunned certainty of Jesus’ death. They had known he was the Messiah.

I need to be honest and say that though Jesus words, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” are so very true, every Christian can and will face times when you feel the absence of God. This is not because God has abandoned you, but because so much is weighing you down, that you can’t, in that moment, feel God’s presence in quite the same way.

I am reminded of the Anastasis, that great icon of Holy Saturday where Jesus has descended to the dead and is bringing Adam and Eve up from the grave. In iconography, the first two humans are buried there just East of Eden, which is also the foot of the cross. Christ’s glory is bound with his degradation in this place where worlds collide, the fallen and the redeemed. Jesus’ tomb will not be empty until Jesus empties Hell.

Jesus’ burial clothes are neatly folded, never to be needed again, even as Adam and Eve’s tombs are smashed and the Old Testament figures stand in awe. Shackles lie broken as Jesus tramples death under his feet. His followers are still locked away in fear, the women are waiting until closer to dawn to go to the tomb.

Holy Saturday offers the gift of hindsight, as we see how God was faithful when all seemed lost.

We humans have yet to do anything in response to Jesus’ death on the cross and God is already making all things new. God’s love is not dependent on us. God is not waiting for us to act in human history to redeem us.

A Holy Saturday faith matters as we need to be able to hold on to the love of God as found in Jesus when life unravels. I know this from sitting at the bedside of those dying in Hospice Care or more painfully standing by parents in the Emergency Room as their child’s life slips away.

Knowing we are held in God’s presence in the shadows of life is vital in times when dawn seems far away. Holy Saturday also reveals how vital Christian community is in such trials of faith. The first followers of Jesus got one another through that uncertain time from the cross to the empty tomb. In the same way, when any of us goes through times of doubt and feelings of abandonment, we need others to hold us in prayer and to be with us, not offering pat answers, but loving presence. This too is a gift. When you get to be the person sitting with someone in their grief or loss, the Holy Spirit will be with you, which will give you more strength for when the loss is your own.

April 15 2022

Holy Week 1961 – Good Friday

LizBishop, Holy Week Holy Week

A sermon by the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Bishop of Georgia given at
Washington National Cathedral

At the heart of the Church’s life is the great sacrament of Holy Communion. At the climax of this act of worship is the Prayer of Consecration in which we are reminded that we are making an Offering to God “having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, His mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.” Benefits passion and death which took place on a Cross outside Jerusalem on a Friday. Benefits which make this Friday good.

In our time, we seem to place more emphasis on the Gospel of the Sermon on the Mount than on the Gospel of the Cross. It is the teaching of Christ – not his death – that is supposed to be of the most value to mankind.

On this Good Friday here in this great cathedral raised up to glorify Him, we will not think of Jesus as Teacher, Jesus as Example, Jesus as heroic Sufferer speaking to us moving words from the Cross. Rather we will reverently bow down before Him as the Saviour of the World who by His Cross and Precious Blood has redeemed us. We will have in remembrance His blessed passion and precious death rendering thanks for some of the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.

In the Gospel record of Jesus Christ practically a third of the narrative is occupied with His death. In most biographies, the achievements and teachings of a person are given greatest attention. It is what he did that matters, not how he died.

It is not so with the record of Jesus Christ. In the early Christian writings such as the Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles there is strangely little about the teaching of Christ while references to his death and its significance are on every page. Notice too these references sound no note of sorrow or regret. There is no suggestion of how much was lost to the world by the early death of Jesus of Nazareth. No New Testament writer ever says, “If Jesus had lived longer he would have transformed the world.” Instead, the writers glory in Christ’s death. They are sure he accomplished the work he came to do and that his death was an essential part of it. He came to save mankind and he accomplished that salvation by dying on the Cross. His dying words – “It is finished” mean It is accomplished.

From the outset the Church put Christ’s death in the forefront of the Gospel. It was the central point of the whole message. St. Paul summarized the Gospel when he said, “We preach Christ crucified.” Christians sing “In the Cross of Christ I glory.” By His death he won innumerable benefits for mankind chief of which are the forgiveness of sins, spiritual power, and eternal life.

This was the good tidings which Christian Missionaries carried all over the world. It was not Christ the sublime Teacher, but Christ the Crucified Saviour who by his death won for all men forgiveness, power, and life. Let us look at these benefits.

It is easy to misunderstand the phrase “forgiveness of sins.” It generally means to us getting out of consequences, being let off from penalty and obligation or the obliteration of the difference between right and wrong. It means much more than the remission of penalty and certainly isn’t the destruction of morals. This much more is the important part of forgiveness. It is the restoration of a broken or damaged relationship.

Forgiveness included the remission of a penalty which might have been inflicted. However, when there is a definite personal relationship forgiveness means much more than this. The deeper the relationship the smaller is the part of remission of penalty and the greater the part of restoration of relationship.

Here is a young man and his father –they are on the best possible terms—the son loves and admires the father—the father loves and trust his son. The son takes his inheritance and throws it away, breaks the relationship, brings disgrace on his family. The father could say, “It doesn’t matter. Forget about it. I am not going to penalize you in any way. You’ve learned your lesson. I’ll help you get straight, but of course, I can no longer think of you as I used to do—things cannot be the same between us.” Does this satisfy the son? Can he say “Father has forgiven me and all is well?” If he really loves his father, he will say—“What’s the use of all this?” I deserve any punishment I can get. I don’t want to be let off. What I want is that father should take me back and let me be to him what I was before. This is what happened in the famous parable of our Lord. The father went out to meet the boy and cried “This my son was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.” The boy was restored to his relationship.

Man was made for sonship with God. Sin makes that relationship impossible. Jesus Christ came to bring about the impossible. By His blessed passion and precious death He restored man to fellowship with God and makes possible forgiveness of sins. Our real prayer as sinners is not “let me off” but “forgive me,” “take me back.” The Cross of Jesus Christ brings to you and to me forgiveness of our sins and restoration to God. We participate in this deliverance and restoration through repentance, confession of sin, and baptism. God of his love accepts the sinner who accepts Christ in faith. This my Son was lost and is found.

Bishop Stuart also preached this sermon on 3/27/1964 at St. Matthew’s in Savannah, 3/27/1970 at St. John’s in Savannah, and on 4/9/1971 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Augusta.

April 14 2022

Holy Week 1961 – Maundy Thursday

LizBishop, Holy Week Bishop, Holy Week

A sermon by the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Bishop of Georgia

In the beginning God in love created the world and man. It is His initiative. Man rejects the love of God and separates himself from God. God takes the initiative and seeks to restore man to the purpose of His creation. This is the long story of Moses and the prophets. Finally, God still with the initiative “Made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

The work of our redemption which the Lord Christ accomplished on the Cross this week is made available to us through His church. He established the Church for this purpose. It is a divine organism established by His love directed toward us for our salvation.

It is from God to us. We seem to get confused about this and think of the Church as our creation directed toward God. We are so accustomed to forming clubs and societies that we confuse the Church with this sort of thing. When we do, we are really saying that we can save ourselves. We think and act toward the Church just as we do toward any human club that we contract to organize. We are prior to it, create it, control it just as we do a garden club or service club. We can then determine its standards and decide who can belong to it. The sacraments become customs and sentimental traditions. Baptism is a pretty service where we dedicate our children to Christian ideals, which seems desirable but not really essential. Communion is a memorial or reminder of the historic event of the Crucifixion and, like Memorial Day when we annually remember those who died for their country, it is proper and fitting to do this once a year.

The Church is the Body of Christ into which we are incorporated by Baptism—it is an organism like the family which is prior to us. We are born into it by Baptism in which we are given new life in Christ. It is a means for present identification of our lives with Jesus Christ and His Victory over sin.

Ever since man has been conscious of God, he has longed to identify himself with God, but he has also been conscious of his sinfulness and unworthiness which has separated him from God. He has tried every conceivable kind of gift and sacrifice, including the willingness to sacrifice his own life, to bridge the gap. But always he has realized that nothing he could give could ever really be acceptable because his gift was spoiled by the very sin for which he was trying to atone. A sinful creature could never hope to give a perfect sacrifice for sin. For countless ages man has known this. When Jesus, the perfect man, died on the Cross, the perfect sacrifice was offered. At last, the way was open for man to offer the perfect sacrifice. In the Holy Communion we participate in the perfect sacrifice and the way of atonement with God is open to us. We join our imperfect offerings to Christ’s perfect offering and ours are acceptable and sufficient because of His.

“There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
He only could unlock the gate
Of Heaven to let us in.”

In our meditation on the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf we have noted that the essence of the sacrifice was the devotion of His will to God the Father manifested in the obedience of His life and the suffering of His death. From His first recorded words—“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” to the high water mark on the Cross—“Father unto Thy hands I commend my spirit”—there was complete and perfect obedience of life to the will of God. If we are to participate in that victory, this sacrifice of obedience has to be reproduced in our lives. The task of the Christian is to learn to live in the service and love of God as Christ did.

The Christian life is a life of sacrifice or self-giving to God and of obedience to His will. This has been made possible by our incorporation in the body of Christ, the Church, and by the operation of His grace through the sacraments of the Church. The Holy Communion is an act of obedience. We offer to God ourselves—“Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls, and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” Humbly we lay down beside Christ’s perfect offering our own poor imperfect offering, ourselves, that it may be accepted in Him and made sufficient by His offering. Then we receive from Him the power of His resurrection that it may be possible for us in our own lives to fulfill the meaning and promise of our offering.

Here is the link between the Christian’s worship and the Christian’s life. Our worship and our life are not two different things—they are one and the same viewed from different aspects. A Christian life is a God-ward life. It is a life of faith in God and of self-offering to God. Our worship expresses the inward principle of our life. That which is expressed in our Eucharist, the attitude of prayer and faith, and self-oblation—that is to be the attitude of our life in the world. The meaning of the Eucharist is worked out in our daily life and the meaning of our daily life is focused and expressed in the Eucharist—it is all an offering to God. We lift up before God the one, true, pure sacrifice—the life and death of Jesus Christ, perfect obedience in the service of God and man. We lay down beside this spotless offering, the stained and impure offering of ourselves that it may be accepted in Him and then we go forth and spend our lives in the service of God and man.

April 13 2022

Holy Week 1961 – Wednesday

A sermon by the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Bishop of Georgia

“There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.”

How did He by dying save us all? The Cross is a symbol of victory. What is it in the death on the Cross that makes it a victory? What is meant by saying Christ on the Cross is “the power of God unto salvation?” The Cross, we have been saying this week, is the encounter of human sin and divine love. More than that, it is the greatest victory ever won. This is a great mystery and yet we must try once more to deepen our understanding of it. How did He by dying save us? How is the Cross a victory?

Jesus’ death on the Cross was neither accidental nor unfortunate. It was a divine necessity freely and willingly undertaken. Why the necessity? Why insist that there can be no forgiveness of the sins I commit apart from the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ? After all we ourselves treat those who do us wrong with an easy-going tolerance that we expect from God—“That’s all right,” we say, “I’ll forgive you—Let’s forget about it.” In the same way many people take divine forgiveness for granted.

Let’s think about that for a moment. Whenever I do anything wrong, others besides myself are involved—my family, my school, my profession, my country, my fellow Christians. If a bank clerk forges the books and embezzles funds, the bank must express its disapproval and disown the act at once by punishing the offender—otherwise it will lose its own good name. Here lies the primary necessity for all punishment. It is the means by which a community disowns certain acts done by its members in order to vindicate and maintain its standards. When we sin, God is implicated for we are all His children and His workmanship and depend on Him for every breath we draw. Whenever we use the power He gives us wrongly and commit sin with that power God Himself is involved in our sin and responsible for it unless He disowns it by some clear and definite act of disapproval. This means that sin must be punished. It cannot be ignored by a God of righteousness if He is to remain righteous. He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity cannot just say, “That’s all right—I forgive you.” If God is to remain good, He must disown the bad we do and bad we are.

Whatever else forgiveness means it cannot mean failing to punish sin. The Cross is sin receiving its terrible punishment. There on the green hill far away we see the wrath of God against sin. It can never afterwards be said that God ignores sin or condones it. Nor can there ever afterwards be any excuse for us to ignore or make light of sin. When the last laugh about sin has died away and the last ounces of pleasure has been extracted from it, one fact still remains—the fact of Jesus hanging on the Cross.

Sin cannot be ignored by a God of righteousness. Sinners cannot be abandoned by a God of love. So, God solves the problem by coming to the rescue Himself. “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” In order to vindicate His righteousness and uphold the Standard of eternal Goodness, God wills that sin shall be punished. But He will also that He Himself shall bear the punishment. Punisher and Punished are one. We must constantly remember that the Father and the Son are one, acting with one mind and one will. He who knew no sin was “made to be sin on your behalf”. This is the bold way the New Testament expresses the trust that Jesus felt the burden of human sin as though it were His own. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows—He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities—and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Jesus deliberately accepts the suffering and the burden of human guilt, and He staggers beneath the weight of it.

There can be no forgiveness until God has been delivered from all complicity in the sin He forgives. But even then, forgiveness is impossible until the power of evil has been broken, and the poisonous infection it sets up has been cauterized and prevented from spreading. Left to itself evil breeds further evil. Whenever we do wrong, we create an evil infection which passes beyond our control. What has been the effect of my sins in other peoples’ lives? Some have been led to sin by my example. In others the wrong I did them has borne fruit in bitterness and resentment, in others it has led to cynicism and disillusionment. Suppose I have a friend who loves me very greatly and is truly good. When I do him some wrong, he will not pretend it does not matter. He hates the sinful thing in me. He accepts the pain of the injury and bears it without allowing it to embitter him or make any difference in his love to me. Then the power of evil I initiated is absorbed and neutralized and destroyed because it is brought up against something stronger than itself which it cannot overcome and on which it has no effect, and which takes away the power to do further evil.

All our sins whoever else may be involved are ultimately sins against God. Forgiveness is solely possible if we can be assured that our sins have failed to have any effect on the divine goodness by separating Him from us. This is exactly what Christ shows us on the Cross—“Forgive them, they know not what they do”. There He bears the injury we do Him in such a way that the power of evil is neutralized, absorbed, prevented from spreading further. Throughout His Passion there was never a trace of resentment, anger, or thought of revenge. “When he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.” Love went on loving in spite of all the hatred. Goodness continued to be good in spite of all the assault of evil. That is the victory of the Cross. Evil was conquered when instead of cursing His enemies He prayed for their forgiveness.

For the first time since man first sinned, evil failed to find any response in man. Never for a split second did the power of evil move the Christ one hair’s breadth from the Father’s will. The Cross is the crowning act of a life of undefeated goodness. The Cross is not a defeat needing the Resurrection to reverse it. It is a victory so decisive and permanent that the Resurrection follows inevitably to seal and confirm it. The shout of triumph from the Cross is “It is accomplished”—man’s forgiveness, restoration, salvation—accomplished.

The Christian Faith unhesitatingly asserts that as a result of the mighty work accomplished by Christ on the Cross, the relationship in which we stand to God has been radically and permanently changed. On the Cross, God who was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself found the means of forgiving us completely. This is the incredibly Good News. A general pardon, free and complete is granted to all who have sinned—not for anything we have done or could do to deserve it but simply of God’s love and at His own cost. He paid the price, and His free pardon is waiting for all who will accept it.

“There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven to let us in.”

Most ethical religions make righteousness the condition of any approach to God. There can be no divine welcome for the sinner until he has ceased to be a sinner. But the Lord Christ receives us and reconciles us first in order to reform us afterwards. He welcomes us as we are for “God commendeth his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” to transform us from sinners into Sons.

April 12 2022

Holy Week 1961 – Tuesday

LizBishop, Holy Week Bishop, Holy Week

A sermon by the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Bishop of Georgia

The Cross of Jesus Christ is a present reality and will be until human sin is no more.

“There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.”

Human sin and divine love come face to face not only once on a green hill far away. All through human history they are face to face because God is love and man is sinful.

We are fond of labelling ourselves and classifying our neighbors. We divide people into groups, classes, races, nations. The Church knows only one class – sinners by thought, word and deed. The Church takes us all in – the preacher in the pulpit, the worshipper in the pew, the man in the street 0 “there is no health in us.” If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

We are set in a space age with fast changing horizons and social patterns. Our needs are tremendous but none is so great as the need to face the reality of our sinfulness. Unless we face this need the Cross of Jesus Christ is meaningless to us.

It is not fashionable or in good taste to many today, even in the Church, to talk about sin. We find defensive rationalizations and thought patterns in psychology to dull our sense of sin and insulate us from facing this grim reality.

One of these rationalizations has to do with the relation of sin to violation of conscience. It is far from true to say that sin means going contrary to one’s conscience. Conscience is the product of training and social custom and cannot be an infallible guide. To be conscientious is not enough, for conscience depends upon the standard in which one has been trained. Phillip the Second was very conscientious when he introduced the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands. There is good reason to believe that Bloody Mary and other religious persecutors were likewise conscientious. I suppose that Hitler and his Master Race theory and his liquidation of the Jews or the fanatical prejudice that bombs a Negro home are examples of conscientiousness. To let your conscience be your guide and feel that you are living an exemplary life is dubious practice. We may be guilty of grievous sin by neglecting the plain duty of educating conscience, or we may disregard conscience so consistently that our standards may have change unconsciously, or we may have developed a selective conscience which conveniently starts and stops. A conscience to be trusted must be checked with reference to some infallible moral standard. That standard for the Christian is the mind of Jesus Christ which reveals the holy will and righteous character of Almighty God. Deliberately to do violence to the mind and spirit of Jesus Christ is sin, however we much we protest that our conscience is clear.

Another realization that blinds us to the fact of sin is the way we think of the Moral Code. The word Moral comes from a Latin root which means custom or tradition. Morals are customs which have come to be considered unbreakable. It is not necessarily sinful to defy or break custom or depart from tradition. Sometimes it may be sinful no to do. It is dangerous to identify sin with violation of the Moral Code which a particular society says ought to be obeyed. St. Paul long ago made clear that legalism alone cannot justify or condemn a man. A Moral Code is a trustworthy guide only when the principles which underlie it are based on Jesus Christ – when what it bids me to do or refrain from doing jelps me to become like Jesus Christ.

The Christian has but one means whereby he can determine beyond question whether lying, cheating, envy, malice, greed, sensuality, prejudice, and sinful. If we say they are sins because moral custom says they are, it is easy to reply that fashions in conduct are no more binding than fashions in food or dress. If we say they are sins because the conscience of man condemns them, it is easy to reply that the conscience of man once approved of human sacrifice and slavery. By means of one test only may I pass judgment – will these attitudes and practices make me such a personality as revealed in Jesus Christ. Sin is anything and every thing that prevents me or, thru me, any one else from realizing in life the holy and loving purpose of Almighty God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Another rationalization which dulls our sense of sin is the relation of sin to moral choice. I suppose all of us realize that we possess a measure of freedom and that deliberate misuse of freedom is son. But it is a mistake to confine sin to the region of free moral choice. The most fatal sins are those which lie deep in our souls to which we are not ordinarily sensitive and with which we are no longer struggling. A man may be scrupulous in what he believes to be his duty but that is not sufficient. He must believe to be his duty all that actually is his duty and that more basic question he may never have truly faced. It is sin to be disloyal to such truth as one possesses, but it is also sin to permit oneself to live in such a state of intellectual and spiritual smugness that one feels no desire to possess more and higher truth. It is sin to turn one’s back on God – it is sin also and a deeper one to live so content with the Standard of the world as to feel no need of God. To be conscious of the magnetism of goodness and to resist it is sin. It is far more subtle and greater sin to live in the presence of goodness, surrounded by goodness, undergirded by goodness and never recognize it.

You are I are sinners. This self-centeredness which is the essence of sin may not have put us in the headlines of the Press as it has some of our less fortunate brethren, but there is within each of us attitudes, habits, prejudices, antipathies, resentments, jealousies, fears which are utterly opposed to the will of holy God and the blessed mind of Christ, and there is no health in us.

Sometimes cause does not seem to produce effect. Sometimes the seed may not sprout, but the surest harvest in creation is the harvest of sin. “Sin when it has conceived bringest forth death.” We may think we are a special case but there are no special cases – “The wages of sin is death.”

The universal cry of the human heart is voice by St. Paul: “O, wretched man that I am – who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The answer to this cry of humanity, of your heart and mind is the Cross of Jesus Christ –

“Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”
“he died that we might be forgiven
He died to make us good
That we might to at last to heaven
Save by his precious blood.”

April 11 2022

Holy Week 1961 – Monday

LizBishop, Holy Week Bishop, Holy Week

A sermon by the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Bishop of Georgia

“There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.”

Ever since you learned to sing this hymn for children written over 100 years ago in Ireland to explain the Passion or Suffering of our Lord, you have wondered, I am sure, as I have about the meaning of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Every year in Passiontide the Church asks us to stop and think again upon the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, knowing that the full meaning of the Cross is beyond our reach, and yet knowing that the Cross means our salvation.

Did you ever read a biography of some famous man in which no less than a third of the space is devoted to a detailed narrative of his death? So far as I know there is only one such biography. It is the Gospel Story of Jesus Christ. In most cases we read pages of a man’s achievements and in the last chapter we have a few pages about the man’s death.

Not so with the Gospel. One third of the narrative is concerned with His death. It is obvious that from the very first Christians regarded the death of Christ as of utmost importance. In our day the world acknowledges Christ as the greatest and best teacher the world has ever known. But the early Christian writings – the Acts and the Epistles – have very little about His teaching, while there are references to His death on every page.

These references sound no note of sorrow or regret. There is no suggestion of how much was lost to the world by the early death of Jesus of Nazareth. Normally when a great personality dies we think of the loss to the world and of how much might have been accomplished if he lived longer. No New Testament writer ever implies “If Jesus had lived longer He would have transformed the world.” Instead the New Testament glories in His death – never doubts that He accomplished the work which He came to do and that His death was essential to His work. He came to save mankind and He accomplished it by dying on the Cross. His dying words “It is finished” do not mean “It is ended” but “It is accomplished”.

The whole Gospel Message centers on the Cross. St. Paul summed it up by saying “We preach Christ crucified.” Missionaries went out to the world proclaiming not Christ the teacher, but Christ the Crucified Savior. By His death He won for mankind salvation and redemption. What was it in Christ’s death that made it the power of God unto Salvation? The truth is that the full meaning of the death of Jesus cannot be explained any more than any of the great truths of the Christian religion can be completely understood or explained. We can do a lot of thinking about them and we can make some advance in grasping what they mean for us but we cannot understand them completely – How God became Man in Jesus, Son of Mary – how bread and wine becomes the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, how Christ dying on the Cross brought our redemption – these are blessed truths of the Christian religion. We can understand parts of these truths, but the whole truth us more than any human mind can grasp or express.

“We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains he had to bear
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.”

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ outside a city wall is a fact of history. It happened on a Friday some nineteen hundred and thirty years ago. It is a manifestation on earth of certain truths which are eternal. Chief among these truths are the nature of God and the nature of sin. God is love not only today but eternally. God’s love for His creatures is always poured forth as it was in the life and death of Jesus. The incarnate life was not a unique instance of Divine love. It was a unique showing forth of that love in history. When we see the love of God in Jesus we know what the love of God means always.

But the Cross reveals also the nature of sin. People talk lightly about sin as they talk lightly about the love of God. It is supposed that sin means doing evil things or at least things that cause harm and suffering. But sin is something much deeper than any outward action. It lies within ourselves. It is putting self before God. It means choosing our won way instead of God’s way. Sin is self-will. The Cross shows the real nature of sin. It shows what sun will do when brought face to face with God. Sin found Jesus standing right in its path. He would make no terms with it. So sin tried to destroy Him by nailing Him to the Cross. Sin, therefore, is something inherently hostile to God. In the Crucifixion, behind the particular sins of particular men, there was the underlying selfishness and self-will which is the essence of sin and which is rooted deep in the human heart. All the ordinary sins of ordinary men spring from this root – greed, hatred, malice, ill-will, unkindness, slander, lust, and all the rest have their source in self-will, self-pleasing, self-love. The sin that is in ordinary reputable human nature found itself face to face with the love of God in Jesus Christ and the result was the Cross.

Human sin and Divine love came face to face not once only on a green hill far away. All through human history they are face to face. And always something must happen of which the Cross is the symbol. The least part of the pain of the Cross was the physical suffering. The horror of the rejection of God’s love was the agony of the Cross. And this helps us to understand in a small way what men’s sins always mean to God. The historical fact of the Crucifixion is a symbol of what is eternally true. All men, when they sin, “crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh.” In a very real sense the Cross of Jesus Christ is a present reality and will be until human sin is no more.

“O dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too
And trust in his redeeming blood
And try His works to do.”

April 6 2022

The Diocese of Georgia Approaches Bicentennial

On February 24-28 in 1823, Saint Paul’s in Augusta hosted the First Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Georgia. Clergy and lay persons from Christ Church in Savannah and Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island joined the delegates from Augusta in forming this Diocese. We would not be able to call our first bishop until we had the six congregations required by the Canons of the Episcopal Church. That election happened in 1841, with the Bishop of South Carolina making visitations in the intervening years.

“Our history contains remarkable stories of the resilience and ingenuity of the people and congregations of this Diocese. The gift of hindsight also reveals when we missed the ways the Holy Spirit was leading us to bring the Gospel to bear against injustice as well as when we got it right,” Bishop Logue said. “The 200th anniversary of our founding offers the opportunity to look back and discover both how we have transformed over time and what remains the same for Episcopalians in Georgia,” he added.

In preparation for a Bicentennial celebration in February 2023, From the Field will have articles sharing our history appearing each week starting after Easter.

Pictured: The Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, Jr. the first Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia.

“Thus in Colonial days these three churches—Christ Church, Savannah, Christ Church, Frederica, and St. Paul’s Church, Augusta—were founded. They had been supplied with clergy, who, sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, owed their allegiance to the Crown of England. Therefore when, on July 21, 1782, British rule came to a close in Georgia, the Church, without clergy and without support, was almost annihilated. Yet the seed sown was not dead, only buried; but it was some time before a fully organized Church was developed.”

How Our Church Came to Georgia, by the Rev. Dr. Jimmy Lawrence, Morehouse Publishing.

March 22 2022

Cursillo Returns in April

Staff and Participant Applications

We are back! Cursillo 127 will be held April 21 – 24 2022 at Honey Creek. This is a wonderful opportunity to enter into a closer walk with Jesus and to meet new friends.

Cursillo (“little” or “short” course in Spanish) has a long tradition going back to Spain in the 1930s. It started out as Catholic retreat and was adapted by the Episcopal church.

Precautions have been taken to make this a safe gathering in the time of COVID. We are requiring vaccinations, testing (within 96 hours of event starting), and requiring masks indoors. Fans will also be running with window open when indoors.

We look forward to seeing you there. Remember Matthew 5: 14 “You are the light of the world”. Let us joint together in the spirit of Cursillo as we “be a friend, make a friend, and bring a friend to Christ”. Please check out the links below for more information and applications.

Cursillo in Georgia

February 6 2022

Hope for those in deep water

FrankBishop

Bishop Frank Logue preached this sermon at Christ Church Episcopal in Savannah, Georgia, on February 6, 2022.

Hope for those in deep water
Luke 5:1-11

For those who are stretched thin, stressed out, over-committed, and really struggling, there is some very Good News in our scripture readings. These texts offer a lifeline for those who are in too deep from the perspective of people who don’t wonder if they measure up, they each know they are not enough for what they face.

Here is the quick recap: The Prophet Isaiah starts us off by saying, “Woe is me! I am lost.” He finds himself in God’s presence and knows he is unworthy. Then Paul describes himself at “Unfit” for the work before him.

Simon Peter hasn’t had the best of nights either. He tells Jesus, “We have worked all night long but have caught nothing,” only to have the Rabbi Messiah-splain fishing to a guy who has done nothing else for a living. Then after a miraculous catch, he falls at Jesus’ feet saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Nothing sounded like Good News to me until I looked at the Gospel passage from below, well below the waters of the Sea of Galilee, seeing a net descending. Okay, I know, a story of nets bursting with fish may not sound like Good News for the fish, but there is something deeper going on here. I stumbled into grace and love when I realized what Jesus did not say.

I thought Jesus was going to tell the fisher folk, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” That is not what Jesus said. Instead, as Deacon Patti read, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” I looked it up in the original Greek and found that there is even more nuance in the ancient text which says, “you will be catching people alive.”

For those of us who have often heard the phrase “Fishers of men,” fear not. That is in the Bible. In telling this story, Matthew and Mark both use that same play on words, of fishing for humans. It is in the Bible. But the Gospel writer in the physician Luke and he diagnoses what is going on here differently. At the start of his Gospel he told us that others have written the story of Jesus, but he interviewed people who were there in the beginning and is writing an orderly account of Jesus’ whole life and ministry. Luke knew Jesus to be the Good Shepherd who would leave the safe and sound 99 sheep to rescue the one left out in the night alone.

Luke saw how Jesus treated the many people who had gotten themselves in too deep—from Matthew and Zaccheus who found the tax racket unfulfilling, to a woman about to be put to death for adultery, and the thief dying next to him on a Roman cross. Luke knew that Jesus went to the lepers shunned by others and prayed for them. Jesus stopped by a well in Samaria and encountered a woman seeing herself through the eyes of a judgmental community so that she would not get water when others would be there.

Luke looked ahead to the time when these followers of Jesus would be preaching and teaching long after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. He didn’t see a boat full of dying fish, but a church full of people scooped up to safety after having found themselves lost in the chaos of the deep. Luke emphasized the good news by saying the followers of Jesus would bring people up from the depths alive.

There is no us and them here—Us, the people who are okay, and them, the people who don’t have their lives in order. I used to think that there were two times in life—the times when I had my act together and the times when life was suddenly spinning out of control. But we all come to see that control is an illusion. For people who feel like they have everything under control and life is just perfect will come to the day when they can’t hold it together and that is not the end. For followers of Jesus, when our carefully maintained façade crumbles, God is there, loving the person behind the persona.

Christians, dare I say, even Episcopalians, don’t have inherently easier lives with no rough spots. Following Jesus, won’t keep us out of a car wreck or health crisis. We end up in the emergency room or ICU like anyone else. And we too can put our hope in good grades, the perfect school, the right spouse or house or car or career—not bad in themselves, actually quite good, these are still no safety net. So we can end up like Simon Peter in the Gospel who he has been working hard with nothing that lasts to show for it.

Yet, what we do have as followers of Jesus is a relationship with the God who is working to redeem our world one wild and precious life at a time. What we have is the knowledge that everything we now see and experience is not all there is. The creator of the cosmos knows you by name, has always loved you, will never give up on you, and wants better for you. We have the hope in the God who goes to the depths of human existence to love, truly love, those who see themselves as lost, unfit, and sinful. God is always offering a chance for a clean slate, a fresh start, and will never leave you to the chaos that threatens to consume you. God will send a net.

This passage of a call to follow Jesus also serves as a reminder that the love of God is not supposed to be like a pocket warmer, that keeps you warm while leaving others out in the cold. Jesus did not teach us to just love God and love ourselves, though that is two thirds of what he said. Jesus also taught us to love out neighbors as ourselves. Each one of us comes into contact with people every day who don’t know how they are going to make it through the next 24 hours, much less the week ahead. We are surrounded by people are masking deep pain with prescription drugs, alcohol, workaholism, people pleasing to the point of destroying their lives, and a host of other self-defeating behaviors.

This is why I find youth ministry to be the front lines of ministry. It is a miracle people get out of middle school and high school with any shred of self asteem and that was true before the pandemic. Most people sometime between the age of 10 and 25 pick up emotional wounds that will remain festering and seeping poison into their psyches unless they can find healing.

At 40, they remember the name of the bully in sixth grade and at 50, they recall the friend who gossiped and betrayed them. Any of us can fall into replaying tapes in our heads of the harsh and cruel things others have said and see ourselves through their eyes. If you take those messages to heart, you are not seeing yourself as God sees you. God sees you as beloved.

For hurting people, the good news of Jesus is not about getting into heaven, though it is about that. The Gospel is as much about getting people out of the hell they are in now. And we can be a part of how God accomplishes this. You and I can offer listening ear, a kind word, or even (dare I say it in pandemic), a hug. We get to be a part of stopping the cycle of pain and abuse as we share love and compassion with our friends, co-workers, and family, those we are connected with closely who find life spinning out of control.

When the Holy Spirit reaches out to those who feel lost and abandoned, God uses people like you and me to make the love of God real.

We will reaffirm in just a moment, that as baptized Christians, we all share a common call to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ as we seek and serve Christ in all persons and respect the dignity of every human being. For none of us can be truly free until we are all free. We cannot be truly at liberty while another beloved child of God is lost in the depths. Far from being a chore, showing love and compassion to someone who is hurting is how God blesses us with that same love.

Amen.

December 31 2021

Eulogy for Bishop Henry I. Louttit, Jr.

FrankBishop

The video above is set to start 38 minutes in when the liturgy begins. The sermon starts at 59:20.

A Eulogy for the funeral of the Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, Jr. offered by the Rev. Lonnie Lacy at Christ Church, Savannah, on December 29, 2021.

Isaiah 11:1-9, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:2-7, and John 14:1-6

In the Episcopal Church,
our funerals force us to find Easter—
to celebrate it,
yearn for it,
hope for it—
to declare boldly the resurrection
no matter the season or the circumstance.

Even if today were Good Friday,
still, we would pull out the gold vestments,
light up the Paschal candle,
and make our song
“Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!”
because what we know, dear friends,
is that nothing can ever or will ever
overshadow the glory of Easter
and the promise of the resurrection.

But today is not Good Friday.
Instead, we find ourselves
holding an Easter liturgy
in the middle of Christmastide.

Christmas and Easter.
Incarnation and Resurrection.
Poinsettias, the Paschal Candle,
and the Real Presence of Christ
all in one place.

This, y’all, is the liturgical jackpot . . .
and Henry Louttit would be so pleased.

Here today
between the crèche and the cross
we see the whole story of the One
who was born for us,
who died for us,
who rose for us,
and who has promised to come again
to gather us, judge us, and love us
for all eternity.

Days like today—
in all their unintended intersection
and accidental beauty—
give us a vision
of the whole of God’s plan
and of the Bridge he has built for us
between this life
and the life of the world to come.

What better day could there be
to celebrate and remember our
bishop,
priest,
husband,
father,
grandfather,
brother,
uncle,
and friend
Henry Irving Louttit, Jr.?

Of course, we are not the first
to have a mystic vision
of the fulness of God’s plan
or if that Bridge that stands
between this world and the next.

As we just heard,
Isaiah had that vision, too.
So did David.
So did John.

For Isaiah it was that old stump of Jesse
springing back to life,
pointing to a day when
the wolf will lie with the lamb,
the lion will graze with the ox,
and a little child will lead them all
in a kingdom filled with peace.

For David, it was the vision
of all creation belting out God’s glory:
from the angels of the highest heaven
to the sea-monsters of the deep,
everything pouring forth
God’s eternal praise.

And for John?
For John it was that city
sparkling in the sky:
a new Jerusalem for you and me,
adorned like a bride
coming down the aisle
to meet her beloved groom.

If this collection of readings
tells us anything,
it tells us that
to see the Kingdom of God
requires imagination,
a certain kind of whimsy,
a spiritual make-believe
or mysticism.

To see the Bridge God has made
between the world as it is
and the world as it will one day be
requires a unique kind of vision.

This was the vision
our friend Henry
carried in his heart.

* * *

I imagine if I asked today,
“When was a moment in your life
when Henry Louttit showed you
the Kingdom of God
or the Bridge between
this world and the next?”
the thought-bubbles over our heads
would astonish and delight us,
make us laugh and make us cry,
and number in the thousands.

Henry Louttit saw the Kingdom of God,
and in his unique, gentle, creative way,
he pointed us to it as often as he could.

Henry saw the Kingdom of God,
and he believed it to be a place
of gentleness and peace.

Someone recently told me
of a moment at Christ Church Valdosta
when an angry neighbor of the church
came barging into Henry’s office,
yelling about something
they believed was wrong
“because God said so!”

Henry never lost his cool,
never raised his voice,
never flinched.

He just said—quietly but firmly—
“Well, I’m glad you heard
God say that so clearly.
God has not said that to me yet, though,
so for now we’re going to keep going.”

Some have said
Henry did not like confrontation,
which may be true,
but the greater truth is that he
willingly, purposely, and repeatedly
aligned himself with
the Prince of Peace.

He also had that disarming way
of speaking in the third person.

As a young priest I would get angry
and complain about this person or that,
hoping he—as my bishop—
would take my side.

Inevitably he would sit patiently,
grin, and say, “Now now.
Henry and Lonnie have known
many wonderful human beings,
and Lonnie must remember
that God loves all his children,
even when Lonnie
is frustrated with them.”

Every time!
With gentleness and peace
the voice of God would come through,
and gentleness and peace
would win every time.

Henry saw the Kingdom of God,
and he also believed it to be a place
where everyone matters,
everyone needs each other,
and everyone has gifts to bring.

As a shy, studious introvert,
he hated church camp as a child
where everything was centered on sports,
so as an adult he helped to create
a whole new way of doing camp where
the scholars, artists, and poets among us
could also find a place,
and know themselves to be loved
and valued by the Lord Jesus
in community.

The crown jewel of his camp vision
was Camp St. Gregory,
a music camp where
kids could learn to sing
and explore their gifts for music.
The lucky ones got to take recorder lessons
with Father Louttit, and that continued
even after he became bishop.

In the 80’s and 90’s at Christ Church
he raised up women for leadership—
lay and ordained—
when others had not yet
had the courage to do so.

He cultivated teens and college students
to exercise their spiritual gifts.

As the rector of the only
Episcopal church in Valdosta,
he could have been territorial,
but instead he wholeheartedly supported
starting St. Barnabas across town,
and he welcomed with open arms
a young Stan White
and his pentecostal church
into the Episcopal fold.
And the Episcopal Church in Valdosta grew.

As our current bishop
is fond of mentioning,
when Henry became bishop
he did the unthinkable:
he put us at round tables at Convention!
With people we did not know!
And forced us to talk, and pray,
and come to know one another!

He taught us to value each other’s gifts.
He taught us to love one another.
He took what once was
a competitive ecclesiastical meeting
and turned it into our annual
diocesan family reunion.

Henry saw the Kingdom of God,
and he believed it to be a place
where worship brings
heaven and earth together
and where every altar
becomes the throne of God.

As a priest he was a phenomenal liturgist.
This is something those of you
who only ever knew him as bishop
never really got to see in full force,
but as a priest he celebrated
the fullness of the prayer book
with that characteristic whimsy of his,
putting cacti in the windows during Lent
to immerse us in the wilderness,
and baptizing people by full immersion.
(In the Episcopal Church!
Who’d’ve thought?)

He made Jesus come to life for us,
and the way he grafted the life of Jesus
onto the lives of his parishioners
permanently transformed
generations of us in Valdosta.

He taught children to hold the prayer book
and how to officiate the evening offices.

He filled dark places with candlelight
and helped us to know and believe
the mystery and majesty of God.

He gathered people together.
He truly said his prayers.
He taught us to pray, too.

And finally,
Henry saw the Kingdom of God,
and he believed it to be a place of joy.

Probably no one knew this better
than those four women
lucky enough to live with him.

We all knew Henry in one way or another,
but I suspect the most wonderful version
was the silly, joyful husband and father:

who would pretend to dance ballet
with his girls in the living room;

who once brought a bunny home
because its fur had a white band
around its neck like a clergy collar,
and taught it to use a litter box
and walk on a leash;

who played Old Maid
and wore a doily on his head
any time he lost;

who took his family on nature walks
in the mountains
and marshes
and beaches
and taught them to marvel
at God’s creation;

who instilled in Amy the librarian
his love of
literature,
learning,
and words;

in Katie the teacher
his love of
people,
empowerment,
and instruction;

and in Susan the priest
his love for the Christ’s Body the Church;

and who loved Jan:
beautiful, wonderful Jan,
who loved him back fiercely;

Jan, whom he’d encountered
plenty of times as a child
on his father’s visitations to her church
but had always been too quiet,
too shy to say hello;

Jan, whom he promised his
college friend he would “look after”
because his college friend
was dating her at the time
but had to go overseas;
(apparently Henry did an excellent job);

Jan, whom Henry adored
with a love, a gentleness, and a joy
that taught others of us
how to love our spouses, too,
and that rivaled John’s vision
of that bride and that groom
at that heavenly banquet
in the new Jerusalem.

Henry saw the Kingdom,
and he knew it to be a place
of peace and gentleness,
of unity, worship, and joy.

* * *

Somehow, ever since I was a child
I always associated Henry with C.S. Lewis.

Maybe it’s because he loved Lewis
and taught me to love him, too.

Maybe it’s because Henry’s brand
of whimsy and mysticism
often had a lot in common with Lewis’.

Or maybe it’s just because
the guy’s license plate
said “Aslan” for all those years.

But I close with a quote from the end
of Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
in which the great lion Aslan
tells Lucy and Edmund
they are now too old to return to Narnia
and must remain in our own world.

“Oh Aslan!” Lucy says.
“How can we live
never meeting you again?”

“But you shall meet me, dear one,”
said Aslan.

“Are-are you [in our world] too, Sir?”
said Edmund.

“I am,” said Aslan.
“But there I have another name.
You must learn to know me by that name.”

“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy.
“Will you tell us how
to get into your country
from our world?”

“I shall be telling you all the time,”
said Aslan.
“But I will not tell you
how long or short the way will be;
only that it lies across a river.
But do not fear that,
for I am the great Bridge Builder.”

Brothers and sisters,
we have seen and know
the great Bridge Builder.

In our world,
he is the One
between the crèche and the cross,
who was born for us,
lived for us,
died for us,
rose for us,
and will come again for us.

He is the One
who goes before us
to prepare a place for us.

We know him by his name.

He is Jesus:
the alpha and the omega,
the way,
the truth,
and the life.

He is both
the Bridge Builder
AND the Bridge.

He is the One to whom
the mystics have all been pointing
all this whole time:

Isaiah with his peaceable kingdom;
David with his joyful creation;
John with his new Jerusalem;

and Henry—our beloved Henry—
with his candles and music,
with his liturgies and prayers,
with his vision of unity and
fellowship despite our divisions,
with gentleness and joy,
with whimsy and make believe,
with faith, and hope, and love.

We know Jesus better—
we see the Bridge better
and the Kingdom more clearly—
because Henry helped
to point the way.

So on this day
as Christmas and Easter collide
and we celebrate with joy
the fullness of our redemption,
rejoice . . .

Rejoice, my friends,
for today our
bishop,
priest,
husband,
father,
grandfather,
brother,
uncle,
and friend
has crossed that Bridge
and entered into Aslan’s true country.

And looking now from that distant shore,
with saints and angels
and all the company of heaven,
he forever makes his song,
“Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

Amen.

December 22 2021

Good News in the Middle of the Night

LizBishop Christmas

A Christmas message from the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia
by the Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
December 25, 2021

In the middle of the night, fears rise and worries rule. Staring at the clock at three in the morning only to bargain with an anxious brain about how much sleep you can get if you fall back to sleep (right now!) only feeds the insomnia.

The search giant Google’s trend data on more than 3.5 billion searches every day worldwide offers illuminating insight into the concerns that disquiet our minds in the midnight hours. For example, “soulmate” was searched for globally more in 2021 than in any previous year. How to “maintain mental health” was searched for in much bigger numbers, which is not surprising as we were also Googling “What day is it?”

This window on the concerns that span the globe is most remarkable. In Malaysia, top searches this year show a longing for a return to normalcy amidst burnout and exhaustion. The search for affirmation by people needing to hear that they are worthy and loved has risen sharply, and is highest in Kazakhstan. Searches seeking body positivity have been more ubiquitous in 2021 than ever before. Some patterns abide, such as searches for the meaning of life which for years have risen on Sunday into Monday, as the work week looms, with a spike at 4 am.

Christmas is the story of human hopes and fears met in the night by the maker of heaven and earth coming to live as one of us. We invariably tell of Jesus’ birth as a night story. It need not be so as the Gospel writer Luke said of Joseph and Mary’s stay in Bethlehem for the census, “While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.” Meanwhile Matthew writes of Joseph having a dream and waking to resolve to wed Mary and that after she bore a son, he named him Jesus. At right is Bishop Logue’s graffiti-style image of The Holy Family, which he painted last weekend on plywood, using spray paint and a hand-cut stencil he designed.

The birth itself need not have come in the night. I think there is an instinct that the longings of our sleepless nights are answered by a loving creator who does not stand back as righteous judge but enters into creation to reweave from within the tattered tapestry of a world turned from God. As Zechariah proclaims after the birth of his son, who we will know as John the Baptist, “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Through the Holy Trinity that existed before time, not staying apart, but entering creation, dawn breaks for those who feel trapped in the night. This fits with Luke, who did add the detail that the shepherds were keeping their flocks by night. Angels appeared to them, sending them searching Bethlehem for a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, a feed box for livestock. I always see in the angels outside Bethlehem as God being revealed as a sentimental softy. For God loved the famously fallible King David, who tended sheep as a boy on these very same hills. Jesus is born in the City of David with the messengers of God are sent to shepherds.

I see it this way because the choice of revealing God’s plan to a group of shepherds made no sense in human terms. Shepherds were, along with tax collectors and some other occupations, regarded by the law of the time as little better than thieves. As they tended flocks well away from the owners of the herd, who could know how many lambs were born in a given year? It was not uncommon for shepherds to sell off some lambs and pocket the money. Shepherds were not permitted to appear in court as a witness as they were considered so unreliable. It was pure foolishness to give the greatest news of all to a group that the very people no one would believe.

The Apostle Paul would later write to the church in Corinth, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). God decided that becoming human meant siding with the oppressed and the outcasts and showed it by coming first to poor, lowly, and even despised people. That’s not how anyone thought a god would act. Yet God the Holy Trinity broke all the rules to fulfill a love story that was centuries in the making.

I need you to know that this is not stained glass talk from a church leader, but the reflections of a son who has spent sleepless nights this fall into winter. My Mom’s physician diagnosed her with dementia this summer. She has seen two of her seven siblings face diminishing cognitive capacity. She cared for a sister dealing with daily sundowning issues, when her sister could not recall where and when she was. I have watched how my mom bravely faces this situation she knows all too well.

I have worked with my siblings to assist our mother in keeping the life she wants as long as we can and I find myself waking in the night, worrying over the imperfect decisions and questioning the path we are on. I wonder about Google search trends as I have been among them as my own fears rise and worries try to rule my nights. I do not say this to seek sympathy as so many of us face problems we confront all day as faithfully as we can, only to find insecurities rising in the wee hours. I offer instead the empathy of a fellow worrier in the night.

What I see so clearly, even in the anxious hours, is that Christmas reveals that we are not the only ones searching in the night. In angels coming unbidden to the shepherds we see God’s longing to bring joy. Decades later, the Jewish leader Nicodemus will come to Jesus at night seeking answers. Jesus will tell him that light has come into the world and that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The great saint and teacher of the church, Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” God is the seeker who sought to save us. God is the one who is restless, literally up with us in the night, until in a kingdom yet to come, we all find our rest in God.

As the nights grow longer, as uncertainties linger, and 2021 draws to a close, we find humans still facing their fears, looking for affirmation and for meaning and purpose all around the globe. And the joyful news of Jesus’ birth is that God did not stand back as a judge seeking to condemn. God seeks us. God entered the cosmos to offer love as a vulnerable child.

We also see that as Magi—wise ones from the East—sought a sign in the night sky, they were given one. The Magi were seekers. Their methods were unorthodox from the Jewish perspective. Yet, God called out to the Magi from the heavens leading them to Jesus. God, not the Magi, initiated their quest for a destination unknown. God guided them. The Magi played their part, of course. They did not simply stay home admiring the star in the sky. Yet all of their actions came second. It was God who was the seeker. God initiated their journey. The new star shone so brightly that they were drawn to its dawning. In this we see how our longings in the night are met by the God who made us out of love for love and still longs to connect with us in the midst of sleepless nights.

The Good News of Christmas is that this same God came and lived among us in Jesus and so knows what it is to be human. God is with my Mom as sundowning brings confusion and with me and my siblings as we wonder in the night whether we are getting it right. God is with you in the anxieties you face even as God is with those seeking affirmation in Kazakhstan and a return to normalcy in Malaysia. Whether you are wondering what day it is or finding ways to maintain your mental health, the creator of the cosmos sees you as a beloved child, knows you by name, and is with you always.

December 15 2021

Funeral plans for the Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, Jr.

Clergy who plan to attend at either service are asked to RSVP by clicking this link.

Bishop Logue and the Diocesan Staff have been working with the Louttit family on plans the funeral for the Ninth Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, Jr.

The Office of the Burial of the Dead will take place on Wednesday, December 29, 2021 at 10:00 am at Christ Episcopal Church in Savannah. The service will also be livestreamed on the Diocesan Facebook Page. Clergy who attend the service in Savannah are asked to vest in cassock, surplice, and white stole.

On Thursday, December 30, 2021, there will be an outdoor Committal service at 1:00 pm at Christ Episcopal Church in Valdosta. Clergy who attend this service will not vest or process.

Offering two liturgies in two locations provides the opportunity for more people to to pay their respects to Bishop Louttit. All are welcome to attend either service.

November 24 2021

Episcopal and Lutheran bishops in Georgia respond to the verdict in the McMichaels-Bryan trial

LizNews, Updates bishop statement, bishops

The jury charged with handing down a verdict in the case of three men accused of murder for their roles in the death of Ahmaud Arbery issued its decision today finding Travis McMichael guilty of malice murder and other charges, Gregory McMichael guilty of felony murder and other charges, and Roddie Bryan guilty of felony murder and other charges. We give thanks for the dedicated work of the judge and jurors who served in a charged atmosphere with intense public scrutiny. Any verdict arrives too late to offer true justice in this case. Ahmaud Arbery is dead, and the court cannot return him to his family. Nonetheless, this moment is an important one.

We prayed for the court to bring earthly justice and the court has acted. But it took a public outcry and the release of video of the incident to force the system into action. The three men who are now convicted of crimes were initially shielded from facing their accusers in court. Until we can bring equity to the system that initially protected them, the rest of us will not have done what we can to create the just society for which we long. Our country has not dealt with the racism built into the system at its founding and perpetuated until this day. Living into our faith means addressing directly any sin we see in our lives and in our communities. Divisions around the human-made concept of race are an offense against our faith which teaches that all people are made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus taught us to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Through his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus made it clear that all are our neighbors. Any racial divide breaks the heart of God.

One bright spot of hope we have seen emerge following Ahmaud’s tragic death has been the interfaith group of clergy in Glynn County. Their clarion call for justice after the video surfaced was critical in getting attention to this case. They followed this call by engaging in candid conversations that drew them together even as other forces could have deepened divisions. Participants included clergy from all five Episcopal Churches in the county and those of many other denominations, as well as leaders of Jewish and Muslim congregations. News stories have often quoted the clergy who were consistently engaged, offering a non-anxious presence on the courthouse grounds. They have witnessed to the dream of God: all of us becoming beloved community, not divided by ethnicity, but united in our common humanity. We know that long after the cameras and reporters are gone, the clergy in Glynn County will still be working together toward that dream.

We hope not just for good to overcome evil, but for God to redeem even the worst tragedies and the gravest injustices. While the court has acted, the work of healing and justice remains. Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia offers the following resources: https://gaepiscopal.org/racialhealingresources/.

The Southern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America offers resources here: https://www.elca-ses.org/racialjustice.

The Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s resources can be found at the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing here: https://www.centerforracialhealing.org/virtuallibrary.

It does not take an evil person to do an evil act. Murder is evil. Ahmaud’s killing was evil. But we need to guard against demonizing anyone or denying their basic humanity. The accused have been convicted. They will serve their sentences and need our prayers that they may be awakened to repentance. In this, as with all of us, we pray that God will bring all who are guilty to repentance and amendment of life and give us all hope for the future. In that spirit, we offer this prayer:

Eternal God, we give thanks for the judge and jurors charged with bringing earthly justice in the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Be with the Arbery family and all in the Brunswick and Glynn County Community as they seek further healing. Be with Gregory, Travis, and Roddie and their families as they serve their sentences and work toward their own repentance. Be with all of us as we seek repentance and healing for ourselves, one another, and our communities. Give us all the grace to hunger and thirst for your righteousness that we may work together to become the beloved community to which you call us. This we ask for the sake of your Son our Savior, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns now and forever. Amen.

May God grant us grace to see the healing needed in our lives, our families, and our communities.

In Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia
The Rt. Rev. Rob C. Wright, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta
The Rev. Kevin L. Strickland, Bishop of the Southeastern Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

November 22 2021

Good Shepherd School named 2022 ‘Places of Peril’ by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation

The Georgia Trust’s Places in Peril program seeks to identify and preserve historic sites threatened by demolition, neglect, lack of maintenance, inappropriate development or insensitive public policy.

The list raises awareness about Georgia’s significant historic, archaeological and cultural resources, including buildings, structures, districts, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes. Through this program, the Trust encourages owners and individuals, organizations and communities to employ preservation tools, partnerships and resources necessary to preserve and utilize selected historic properties in peril.

“This is the Trust’s seventeenth annual Places in Peril list,” said Mark C. McDonald, president and CEO of the Trust. “To date, 95% of past Places in Peril sites are still in existence. We hope the list will continue to bring preservation solutions to Georgia’s imperiled historic resources by highlighting ten representative sites.”

The idea to apply to be put on this list originated from Dave Cranford, member of Trinity in Cochran and on the Diocesan Council, “I had the pleasure of attending Evening Prayer at Good Shepherd and touring the school. I immediately felt a strong connection to the place and all that it represents. It’s truly sacred ground and the historic structures are worthy of documentation. I heard about the list, and thought it would be a good fit for Good Shepherd and passed that on to Dwala Nobles.”

Dwala, member of Good Shepherd and part of the vestry took the project and application process head on. “This is a seminal moment for us as a community and diocese. Now a Saint in the Episcopal Church, Anna Alexander could not have imagined 122 years ago in 1899 when she graduated from St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School that her legacy would be sustained to the degree that we are witnessing today. With the assistance of her brothers, Anna built a little log church that also served as a school, later moved the building to its current site, and built a larger structure around the original. The church, made of Georgia pine logs stand strongly within the interior walls; however, the passage of time and lack of use have significantly compromised the building.”

Through Places in Peril, the Trust will encourage owners and individuals, organizations and communities to employ proven preservation tools, financial resources and partnerships in order to reuse, reinvest and revitalize historic properties that are in peril.

With the guidance of the Georgia Trust, Good Shepherd hopes to revitalize the school and offer it as a place not just for members of Good Shepherd to enjoy, but to provide a resource to the Pennick community. “Our commitment to the restoration of the schoolhouse represents our commitment to work as Anna did in the rebuilding of beloved community—in Pennick, Glynn County, the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, and beyond. When completed, the restored building will serve as the diocesan educational center for racial justice and reconciliation. It will also serve as a food bank and community center. Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Pennick, extend our gratitude to The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation for their support and training. We appreciate Frank Logue, our Bishop, and look forward to his continued guidance. Ultimately, these partnerships will improve the lives of countless citizens—just as Saint Anna did as a teacher, deaconess, and community leader,” said Dwala.

Senior Warden and former student of Deaconess Anna Alexander, Walter Holmes, shared his gladness for the project, knowing that support from the Diocese in her lifetime. He said, “She [Anna] did a pretty good job with the resources available to her to build the school, including from folks as far away as France.” He added that, “The diocese didn’t help her until they saw what she was able to accomplish on her own. So, I think it’s good that they are now trying to help.”

If you have expertise in historic preservation, architecture, non-profit grant-writing, and/or capital campaigns for churches, and you are interested in donating time and passion to this project, please contact Dwala Nobles at dwalalnobles@gmail.com.

There will be a Facebook Live presentation with Mark C. McDonald, President and CEO of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation at 1:00pm. You can find the presentation on their Facebook Page here.

For more information about the 2022 list and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, click here.

November 5 2021

God Gave the Growth – Sermon for the 200th Convention Eucharist

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue’s sermon for the Holy Eucharist of the 200th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia given on the grounds of Honey Creek to a congregation assembled in front of the chapel on Saturday, November 6, 2021.

God Gave the Growth
1 Corinthians 3:1-15

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,
but only God who gives the growth.”
-I Corinthians 3:6-7

Planting seeds. Watering the tender shoots. Harvesting the crop.

Such logical, orderly steps.

These logical, orderly steps are nothing like leading a church out of a global pandemic.

Of course, in the first days of the pandemic, the steps were clear enough. We had a declaration of a public health emergency. We saw the videos from Italy with neighbors in their windows, singing across the narrow streets. We could watch famous musicians giving a concert from their living room. So we wiped down our groceries, washed our hands, and stayed home. Churches of all denominations shuttered the doors and logged into their Facebook pages and newly created Zoom accounts. Not ideal and yet we dealt with it. We did the best we could.

By the time the Delta Variant this year spiked, the steps were less clear.

Many were vaccinated. The youngest among us could not yet be. Some preferred to wait and so it was not as easy to discern the shape of our common life.

Life can offer clear next steps: A hurricane hits. The roof is damaged. We know what to do. We get tarps to secure the roof and call the insurance company. We check on our neighbors. We clear the debris. We move on.

Or maybe the problem is more personal. The biopsy is positive. The diagnosis is cancer. We still know what to do. We schedule the appointments. We get the surgery. We go through the courses of chemo and radiation. We take time to heal.

Then there are the rest of the times in life, too many situations to name. The problem is so big, the obstacles are unfamiliar, the path is unclear. This is more like what we face in the church now. Here is the church. Here is the steeple. When we open the doors, we discover less people than before the pandemic. More than last month, but half where we were last year. What now?

As I prayed about this evening and what word of grace God has for the Diocese of Georgia in its 200th convention, I recalled another time when I was leading a church and found myself facing a wall. In this case, the wall was literal, made of brick, and in need of removal.

In founding King of Peace in Kingsland, the issue of where to meet in Kingsland was the overwhelming challenge. Schools would not permit churches to worship in them on Sunday morning, which is the most common solution. The public spaces like the Rec Center, might allow a meeting, but no ongoing congregation could worship. The hotel meeting rooms were small, but could work, yet offered no way to have a nursery.

Five months into my call, we did identify a piece of property next to Camden County High School that would put us in a spot where everyone in the county knew the location and the road was sure to get more traffic over time. We bought a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house, and began to worship in the living room. My Dad was a Civil Engineer and he sketched out a plan for how to enclose the front porch, raise the floor in the garage, take out walls, and have space under that roof for 75 or so.

On March 26, 2001, we had a workday scheduled. The plans had been drawn and approved by the building inspector, who knew what we would do, which was most of it, and what professionals would do for us, which was mostly electrical. A man I knew in St. Marys had the expertise to guide the work that day. He supervised maintenance for a couple of apartment complexes and had a broad set of skills. The rest of us would be worker bees. That is until one parishioner and I showed up only to learn that an overnight emergency with an apartment meant the expert we were relying on would not be able to work with us at all that day. We had a schedule with new people arriving through the day to keep the work going. It had taken a lot to plan and prepare for. The parishioner there with me that morning worked on the USS JFK, an aircraft carrier out of Jacksonville. A great guy, he brought no more expertise than I did. We stared at the wall. I was thinking we would to reschedule, because we could not see our way to finishing what we planned for that day. Then the parishioner said the thing that changed the day, “We are going to have to get the wood paneling off this interior wall. I know how to do that.”

And so we began. We took the molding from around the windows and peeled off the paneling. Another parishioner arrived with his Middle Schooler son. He was a sergeant with the St. Marys Police Department. He suggested the next step, “We need to get the windows out. We all know what to do there.”

As the windows were coming out another parishioner showed up. He served on a ballistic missile submarine at Submarine Base Kings Bay, the main employer in Kingsland. And once again the new arrival brought the idea for the next step with him. He knew an electrician buddy who would help. Within a couple of hours, the wiring was up in the attic and capped off. Then we all took turns sledgehammering out the brick. When we worked toward the edge where it needed a smooth line, another parishioner arrived who drew a chalk line marking the cut. We needed to cut the brick, but no one wanted to be the one to make the cut. We hoped it would match the width of a 2×4 and so we didn’t have as much room for error as we wanted. The brick could split or crack. “Not me” was everyone’s response.

Finally, it was clear that if it was going to fail, I needed to be the one to have done the deed. I put on goggles and made the cut through the brick. It didn’t split or crack.

By sunset, every bit of work scheduled for the day was done. By that Sunday, the floor on the porch had been raised, and a wall and door installed. The work for the week was done. In time, we would find our way through the expansion project together. We could never see how to get it all done, but we always figured out the part we could do next.

Bishop Rob Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta, offered me a clarifying question this year. One he honed while taking a class in Inquiry-Driven Leadership at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The professor challenged the executives in the program to craft a question appropriate for their business that would cut to the heart of the essentials for their work. Rob’s question became: What does fidelity to Jesus look like in this moment?

This centers everything I do, and I hope that we do on Jesus and holds up faithfulness as the standard. What does fidelity to Jesus look like at this moment?

Fidelity is a word used sparingly these days. The root, fides in Latin, is used commonly in Christianity for faith. In the Roman Empire which gave us the use of the word as we know it, it meant “reliability” and was essential of both parties in a relationship. Christians came to use Fides for faith as they saw that God was completely reliable and we owed that back to God. God was faithful and were to be faithful in response. So this question, “What does fidelity to Jesus look like at this moment?” Gets at the essence of a Christian response. I know that in this moment, whatever the moment is, God is living and true and so I know in my bones I can rely on God. Knowing that, what is the faithful response to God in this moment.

The same week, I learned that question from Bishop Wright, I found myself in an otherwise empty ICU waiting room. I had been in the room before and it is always full of family members. Not on that day with COVID restrictions. I met with a daughter whose siblings would arrive soon, needing to decide about removing a breathing tube for their Mom. She asked me what they should do. I said the question I had been working with seemed fitting, “What does fidelity to Jesus look like in this moment?” She said she did not know what answer she wanted to give, but in pausing, she was 100% certain what her Mom would say. The family gathered. They agreed. Fidelity to Jesus looked like removing extraordinary care that was extending her life with no chance of improving her health. The answer for that moment was to put their trust where their Mom taught them to place their hope, in Jesus.

In the Epistle reading, which gave us our convention theme of God Gave the Growth, the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Corinth in the midst of a church fight. There is great dissension about how to be the Church. One particular issue is that one family is claiming priority as they were baptized by Paul himself while another family is claiming that at least Apollos baptized their whole household. Paul sees the issue that they lost focus on the main thing, all of us are equally beloved by God and all of us matter to the reign of God. He wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

Then he added, “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

The connection here is that we are not in charge of results when it comes to our congregations. We are tasked with faithfulness, which means in the midst of uncertainty, when we are not sure what to do, we just prayerfully discern the next faithful step.

As your bishop, I need you to know that I don’t have The Plan, The Solution, or least of all the one size fits all solution for the congregations of the Diocese of Georgia.

But that is just fine as we all have Jesus Christ—The Way, The Truth, and The Life.

We don’t know exactly what to do to get to here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the door and look at the people back in our pews.

But we do know Jesus, who “sent the Holy Spirit, his own first gift for those who believe, to complete his work in the world.”

That same Spirit can assist us in determining the next faithful step. What does fidelity to Jesus look like in this moment?

For all of us that next faithful step has meant gently letting those we worshipped with and haven’t seen know that we miss them. But for some churches in this moment, the next faithful step has been returning to Morning Prayer each week led by lay persons. For others, it has meant installing a camera system so no matter what happens next, we always have an option for those who are homebound. For some of our churches it has meant tending to the deferred maintenance on our buildings. For still other congregations, this moment has meant rebuilding time of formation or ways to engage anew with service to others in Jesus’ name.

Fidelity to Jesus in a given moment looks less like a sure-fire plan and instead means discerning the next faithful step knowing that the Church is not ours, but God’s.

God gives the growth is not about us working harder, there is no Gospel, no grace in that. God giving the growth, whatever new life will look like where we serve, is about our discerning the next faithful step, knowing that we do not walk alone. We have one another and we have the same spirit bearing witness with our spirits who guided Paul and the other apostles; the same Spirit who was with the early Christians in the catacombs and the coliseums when all seemed lost; and the same Spirit who will never leave or forsake Christ’s Body, the Church.

God takes our next faithful step and blesses it and gives us the next step and the next and whatever growth looks like in our hearts, in our lives, in our churches, that is a gift from God.

Amen.

November 5 2021

Bishop’s Address to the 200th Convention

November 5, 2021 – Jekyll Island Convention Center

Beloved in Christ,

I am overjoyed to gather with so many of us in person for this convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. Since being ordained as your bishop 1 year, 5 months, and 7 days ago, I have longed for just such a meeting, time to gather as a community to see one another face to face and not just our smiling eyes. This evening at Honey Creek, while we will mask for the Eucharist itself, we will also have time outdoors to be together. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it has underscored the need all of us have for community. We may need face time with others to varying degrees, but we all long to be with others and so I am so very pleased that while some are with us online, more than 200 of us are in person at the convention center and will be at our retreat center.

My charge by the canons of our church is to share the state of the diocese with you in this address, including the work undertaken since our last convention and plans for the coming year.

Since we last met in convention online, we have had much to mourn. More lay leaders, deacons, and priests have died since our last convention than in any year of the past 20 in which I served as a priest. And our usual rituals of grief have been reduced or delayed so that Bishop Henry Louttit’s funeral in the last week of this year will fall just shy of year since he died. This evening, in our Holy Eucharist for this convention, we will name those who have died in this past year and pray for them and for all of us who grieve. You may add names to those we will remember this evening by adding them to the list on a table by registration.

It is our faith in Jesus Christ that has bound us together for 198 years and continues to draw us together even as the pandemic has made that difficult. And with the pressure of trying to return some normalcy while at the same time mitigating risk of spreading the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, tempers seem shorter and an angry response seems easier. Mask and vaccination mandates have sparked anger as have incidents of and debates over racial violence.

Yet we have an excellent example of finding unity in a divisive time with the interfaith clergy of Glynn County. The eyes of the nation are watching the trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, whose death recorded on video by one of the accused received national and international attention as Ahmaud’s killing was soon linked with the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Protests around the country and the world followed as many called for a racial reckoning in response to ongoing anti-black violence, while others said Ahmaud’s death had nothing to do with his being black. In fact, the main issue we face in addressing racism in our midst is that we can’t even agree on what racism is when we see it.

Yet we do what we can to take the next step together. Through a grant from the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Georgia contributed significantly to fund the work the clergy of Glynn County have done in the past year to come to speak with one voice as a non-anxious presence calling for peace and unity as the jury is empaneled and works toward a decision that reflects God’s justice.

This is just part of our work, and I am grateful for Racial Justice Georgia, the group leading our racial healing ministries and I support them as we focus on Becoming Beloved Community as part of how we are the Body of Christ in our unique settings. Supported by the same grant from the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Guillermo Arboleda is also working on education and advocacy. He is particularly educating clergy and lay leaders in how to engage helpfully and constructively with law enforcement officers, on whom we depend, as they seek to serve while contending with policies that have too much of society’s woes on their plates.

I was raised sensitive to people naming anything as an issue of race, convinced people named a problem as racism too readily. I was defensive as I did not want to see me or my family as bad. Yet it doesn’t take an evil person to do an evil act. In time, I have seen the deep wisdom Maya Angelou expresses, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Yet this is far from a new undertaking for our Diocese, and we are driven not by the media or a political agenda, but by our faith in Jesus. These current expressions of ongoing efforts continue the work Bishop Benhase began in racial healing, which itself continues in the same call Bishop Albert Rhett Stuart offered in the 1960s, as he helped this diocese navigate ending segregation. Our conviction is based in scripture. Genesis proclaims that every person on the planet was created in the image and likeness of God and our baptismal covenant commits us to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

This pandemic has stretched on longer than I imagined possible when on March 13, 2020, Bishop Scott Benhase suspended gathering in person for worship for the next 14 days in the congregations of the diocese. Spoiler alert: suspending in person gathering lasted longer than two weeks.

Victoria and I did continue traveling around the Diocese to record worship, which we offered online through Pentecost Sunday this year. We ended up offering worship online from 58 congregations of the Diocese of Georgia having begun that work in Pentecost 2020. Victoria and I were the entire film crew, and toward the end of this period our typical pattern was to record worship in two locations in the same day, then drop off the files with our Communications Manager Liz Williams, who assembled the final video, working with Canon Joshua Varner who oversaw the music for online worship, working with musicians, choirs, and singers, including a diocesan staff quartet, who beyond their work days for the Diocese offered their considerable gifts for singing. I am deeply grateful to Victoria who is the hardest working roadie in the Episcopal Church. She helps me stay grounded and closer to humble than I would be without her and she proved an ever patient partner when we were recording worship.

This past year has also offered windows of opportunity for in person worship and fellowship. As vaccinations permitted more in person worship and events, I have been pleased to see the creative ways you have found to be together.

From Backyard Eucharists and Mass on the grass to liturgies under a tent on the church lawn and so many other creative ways of being together outdoors showed your faithfulness and creativity.

At the diocesan level: Canon Joshua Varner did an exemplary job at taking the window offered by the vaccine and then-falling cases of COVID to creatively put together three sessions of Family Camp at Honey Creek. He had all the elements we associate with camp from silly songs and games to craft time and meaningful worship. Then in September, 55 deacons and priests gathered at Honey Creek for a clergy conference with the usual means of mitigating risk provided a chance to be with each other and to experience yet again the close bonds we share.

The work of this Diocese is primarily the worship, prayer, and work of our congregations, and as your bishop, my staff and I primarily spend our days supporting our churches. Canon Katie Easterlin has been on the road this year to assist in some unusual situations where her expertise was vital to handling a congregation’s finances. Canon Loren Lasch has been all around our territory for many in person meetings with vestries and search committees.

In speaking to the State of the Diocese, we know that the ways we worship and serve Jesus are mostly through our 69 congregations. And while we are doing better than we feared we might when sheltering in place began, no church in the Diocese is back to typical attendance. Two thirds of our congregations report that their income is better, about the same, or only slightly less than in previous years, but that means a third of us have been hit harder. We are doing pretty well, but as the Body of Christ, when any are hurting, it affects us all.

As your Bishop, my staff and I used the tools available to us to assist those congregations on the edge. The Church Pension Group allowed us to put forward a small number of clergy whose congregations would not have to pay pension assessments for up to four months while still accruing full benefits, and Canon Easterlin and I applied for and got that relief. When a $40,000 grant to diocesan operations from the Episcopal Church that went out to each diocese arrived, we saw that the money was not needed to balance our diocesan budget. Instead, we created a pandemic grant process and assisted 20 congregations with some smaller needs. Diocesan Council also approved new appeals to the Diocesan assessment in addition to previous multi-year appeals. These are typically granted to congregations experiencing significant drops in income, sometimes due to unexpected expenses caused by an issue with a building.

Even with the constraints of the pandemic, we have begun much of the work I pledged to address in the meetings leading up to my election as your bishop. While things have been going well, we know the routine review is needed to keep us on track. I worked with Diocesan Council to create Task Groups to thoroughly review our Canons and to take an end-to-end look at our process of discerning a call to ordination. The first of those groups have already been presented to convention, and the second is resulting in significant changes to improve our discernment process and how we prepare people for ordination. Everything is on the table in this work and the Task Group is doing the prayerful consideration we need to get this right. I have also appointed the Rev. Jim Said to chair a third Task Group in order to take a fresh look at our companion diocese relationship. We have benefitted so much from our work first in Guyana and then Belize and in recent years with the Diocese of the Dominican Republic. I know that discerning anew, even if it results in staying with the same companion, will assist us in that effort. I will also be naming a Commission on Worship, as found in our canons, both current and proposed. Putting the right people together to serve on our behalf, we are seeking to improve our diocesan ministries.

Recently, I ran across an indicator showing how far we have come in the Diocese of Georgia. As we will at this convention look at significant canonical revision, I was asked about when this had been done previously. Recalling work in the late 1960s, I went to convention journals and found what I was looking for and, in the process, a description of the Diocese of Georgia when few if any here saw us as a community or family. In 1968, the 146th Annual Convention met at St. Paul’s Church in Albany, Georgia. That meeting received a report from a 2-year long study of the Diocese of Georgia, which stated:

“We are operating on the principle of a loose (very loose, much of the time) confederation of some 23 separate, independent ‘parish’ congregations, plus 39 separate ‘mission’ congregations, dependent on the Bishop. There is little or no sense of ‘kinship,’ of belonging to one another, much less to a wider fellowship. Cooperation between parishes, or between parishes and missions, even in the population centers, is almost nonexistent.”

I was astounded by this statement. I know that many who attend our churches are unfamiliar with the details of the Diocese in which they are grafted into The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Yet, I do see how all of our deacons and priests and our most involved lay leaders experience a sense of community with mutual respect that I find to be a real strength for us.

I look back to the convention in 2018 and see such a profound difference in our diocese 50 years after that report. At that 2018 meeting, we considered how best to deal with the debt owed on non-secured bonds issued in 2011 to restructure $1.25 million of debt associated with the operation of Honey Creek. We were just short of unanimous and had a very strong consensus that we would all take on an additional 2% of assessment for not more than three years to clear that debt that had predated Bishop Benhase. Despite being in pandemic, we passed the halfway point of that plan at the end of the second quarter this year and we in fact had half of the funds in hand, just as planned. We are on track to eliminate that long-standing debt, because we worked together as a Diocese rather than as disconnected congregations.

Some present will have missed those earlier debates, so I will provide context. The unsecured debt was not a debt of Honey Creek alone but a debt owed by the Diocese because our Retreat Center is not a separate entity. That debt, however we looked at it, was against the operations of the Diocese. And in issuing bonds to restructure that debt, our responsibility to honor that commitment was absolute.

A note of caution is in order. The first half of our bond debt was a little easier to raise, as we had generous givers who were in a position to forgive their bonds, and we had built up some reserves toward the debt. Yet the end is in sight for this plan.

This week, Canon Katie Easterlin and our Assistant Administrator, Daniel Garrick, sent checks to every bondholder paying off the bonds in full. To do this, the Finance Committee approved a short-term loan that will be paid off as the additional 2% assessment continues to come in through the end of 2022. If every congregation could pay their assessment in full, the plan we approved in 2018 would work. But some of our churches are struggling and have appeals on their assessments that are approved by Diocesan Council. This is why, starting with my first day as Bishop, I worked with the Finance Committee and Diocesan Council to adjust the diocesan budget so that the Diocese as a whole also contributes 2% of its budget to the debt. This has us closer to our goal. If we all stay the course, we can and will fully eliminate all debt on our Retreat Center by the end of next year. But no matter what, the special 2% assessment will end after the coming budget year, and we will go back to 10% as the full assessment. If some small debt remains, we will pay it off through the diocesan budget, thanks to your faithfulness.

Faithfulness is the key. This evening, in my sermon for the Holy Eucharist on the grounds at Honey Creek, I will pick up this thought and speak to how I see God is leading us in our next step of faithfulness.

For now, I want to offer a refrain that I often used in private responses to someone as Canon to the Ordinary for the previous decade. In being thanked for something I had done or the Diocese had done, I would say truthfully, “I am just glad to be on the team.” Now as your bishop, I am so very grateful for a Diocese where I have seen so many ways you are using the considerable gifts you have been given to serve the needs of your congregations and communities, and in this call, while I am your chief priest and pastor, I find myself still just glad to be on this team.

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop of Georgia

November 5 2021

Evening Prayer Sermon for the 200th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

A Sermon by the Very Rev. Tom Purdy of Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island for the Evening Prayer service of the 200th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia on
Thursday, November 4, 2021

The Feast Day of Richard Hooker, Transferred
November 4, 2021
The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia Convention Evening Prayer
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Brunswick, GA
The Very Rev. Tom Purdy

So, I’m sitting at the coffee shop working on my sermon for tonight, and the guy next to me says, “What are you working on?”

I said, “I’m writing a sermon about Hooker.”

He gave me a funny look, furrowing his brow, before he said, “Oh! TJ Hooker – I used to like that show – 80’s, right? William Shatner is a great guy!”

I laughed and said “Agreed – Shatner is great, but no, not that Hooker.”

“Oh, Ok,” he said, cutting me off, “I guess I remember that story in the Bible of Jesus and not casting stones at the woman.”

“I think that was a story about adultery,” I admitted. “Different kind of Hooker. This one is the Protestant.”

He said, “I don’t care what you call it, that’s a strange thing to preach about. What kind of church is this, anyway?”

I said, “I’m an Episcopalian, but I think you misunderstand me I’m talking about Richard Hooker.”

He thought for a moment and said, “Richer, huh? Well, I always knew you Episcopalians were top shelf.”

I said, “Let me try to explain again, I’m not expressing myself well.”

And he said, “No, no need to buy me an espresso – I’ve already had my coffee.”

And that was the end of it. It was like we were speaking a different language…or maybe he just didn’t hear me very well.

But you all know who Richard Hooker is, right? He’s inspired countless philosophers and theologians; he inspired ZZ Top to grow their famous beards. Ok, not really, and he doesn’t look anything like William Shatner, but the guy did have style. He’s one of the Anglican theologians that most Episcopalians know about, even if they think he’s a furniture maker because when we learned about him, we learned about his three-legged stool. We’ll come back to that.

When they gave me the option to choose the readings for tonight as preacher, as I thought about transferring the feast of Richard Hooker, I realized he is perfect for this occasion. I mean, how can you not celebrate Richard Hooker at a convention in which we are taking up a major revision to our constitution and canons? Polity is his thing. I actually looked to see if there were any Richard Hooker bobble heads as patron saint gifts for our Constitution and Canons Committee, but shockingly, I couldn’t find any.

I think we need Richard Hooker right now. We need a Richard Hooker moment in the Church, and a Richard Hooker moment in this nation. Some of you are probably thinking, “What does an old, white, English dude from the 16^th Century possibly have to offer us here in Georgia in the 21^st Century?” Well, think of it this way; in Hooker’s day his country was being torn asunder by politics, a back and forth that very much pulled churchgoers and clergy into the fray for generations. He was born under the Catholic rule of Mary the First, five years after the first Book of Common Prayer was published, but grew up under Elizabeth the First, who championed moderate Protestantism.

Today, if someone comes to me and demands that I use a particular liturgy or prayer book, I’m tempted to ask, “You and what army?” In Hooker’s England, that might not have been the question to ask! The army could be just outside the door, ready to enforce use of the prayer book. Politics and religion were incredibly intertwined so that it became hard to separate what was political from what was theological and what was both. Were they going to be Catholic or Protestant? Papal or independent authority?

The shores of institutional trust were shifting sand. That sand was eroded by waves of infighting and controversy, polarization, and extremism, which were tearing things apart from within. This is the world in which Hooker trained as a priest and theologian.

Richard Hooker is credited with being able to step back and get the big picture to sift through how institutions could faithfully serve God and God’s people again. His seminal work was the eight volumes of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, although the last three volumes were published after his death and may or may not have been completely his. Regardless, while he was a defender of the authority of the monarchy, his mastery came in articulating how to live in the center of the extremes between the papacy and puritanism.

He was concerned about civil and spiritual structures. His writing articulated the elements we know today in shorthand as scripture, tradition, and reason, which make up the legs on that stool we talked about earlier. The proverbial stool the Anglican Church sits on to chart its course using the bible, the traditions of the Church before us, and the brains God gave us. Richard Hooker never really built the stool we credit him with, not in so many words. But he left the parts lying around the theological woodshop. Those who came after him pulled it all together into the teaching we have today.

Like the Caroline Divines in the next century, who took his work and were able to articulate the Via Media – the Middle Way between Catholicism and Protestantism – not as a compromise born out of weakness, but as an intentional and admittedly uncomfortable place from which to bear witness to the breadth of God’s revelation through the Church – even though the Church is so fragile and fallible. He knew institutions would be good or bad, strong or weak, depending on the season, but the faith and piety – the hearts of the people who made them up mattered most. If the people are oriented properly towards God, institutions would reflect that reality.

Hooker also knew how hard this work was during times of change and upheaval. He took what became the original classical Anglican stance of treasuring the medieval Church’s witness and practices while also recognizing a need to embrace change coming out of the Reformation. It is the grounding in the foundations of the past, he would say, that allows change and newness to be possible without the whole thing collapsing.

The Church can do a new thing without everything being new.

Friends, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in a period of upheaval and stress; some say it goes in roughly 500-year cycles[i], and you and I are fortunate to be living through one now(!). Our institutions have been decimated in so many ways, including the Church. We face an increasing pandemic of political polarization, and we haven’t done a good job of flattening the curve yet. The physical pandemic has accelerated many of these challenges, as I am reminded by looking out at a congregation wearing masks. We can’t pretend that the Church lives in one world and politics in another much longer. I’m not saying we should all become politically active, or that the Church should take political sides. On the contrary. We need to figure out how the Church – the Body of Christ – can regain its voice in a way that effectively shapes the world around us – shapes it in ways it so desperately needs as we bring the kingdom to bear on earth as it is in heaven.

Hooker noted that in the fight for reformation and change people and their institutions were drifting farther and farther apart, which leads to “strife, jealousy, discord, and bad blood.”[ii] Sound familiar? He agreed with St. Augustine and so many others[iii], who caution us against forming our institutions around what we’re against, and not what we’re for. He saw it on display in what he would call the excesses of the reform movement that, in places, staked out its position around opposition to what was before.

We need, as the theologians might say, a common object of love, not hatred, not fear – love. But listen and hear: our common life is being defined by fear and hatred, some would say contempt for one another[iv]. We’re often afraid of a changing world, or of people who are different than we are, and we lash out by diminishing one another and failing to honor the dignity of every human being. We’re being pulled apart at a time we so desperately need to be coming together. Political polarization is driving so completely through our society, it’s even taking up residence in our churches.

A recent article in The Atlantic describes the effect of politics on the Evangelical church, highlighting what happens when this unity around opposition takes root inside the Christian faith – when the faith is shaped by fear and contempt instead of metabolizing and transforming it with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One pastor admitted how common it is for congregants to leave their church because of their politics but has never heard of someone changing their politics because it didn’t match their church’s teaching[v]. I’m with him on that one.

And we know how that happens, right? The article describes the tough spot pastors are in to be faithful but not offend; a tightrope walk many of us in this room and many of my ecumenical colleagues know well. It’s not that every church is suddenly becoming more partisan as we preach the gospel. It’s no coincidence that Episcopal Churches, often seen as progressive, are seeing the exact same trends as Evangelical churches, which are often seen as conservative. Our society has become hyper partisan, which makes the Gospel seem to be political or even partisan, whether we intend it to be or not, whether we’re progressive or conservative, protestant, catholic, evangelical, or any other kind label we use.

We don’t get to control that narrative, unfortunately. One of the best lines from The Atlantic article explains, “Sermons are short. Only some churchgoers attend adult-education classes, and even fewer attend bible study and small groups. Cable news, however, is always on.”[vi] Sermons are short (this one may not be), but there’s cable news 24/7, and I would add social media to that description, with its magnifying algorithms.

Y’all, we don’t need algorithms. What we need are rhythms of prayer and repentance, word and sacrament. This was Hooker’s strategy. Focus on the hearts of the people, the piety of those who make up the institutions. We don’t need Hooker’s monarch though; we have one. And we need to look to him instead of all the usurpers who clamor and shout about their earthly plans for salvation. We have the plan – we have The Way, we just need to follow it. And him. The political intrusion into the Church is an onslaught that seeks to confine and intimidate us about how we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to push back by living out the politics of love and preaching that Gospel in word and deed.

If this were a Eucharistic service, we’d be hearing the preface for baptism tonight, in which the presider prays for God to make us all citizens of God’s kingdom. Again, we hear that civic cross-over. We know about being citizens of this world and what it entails; we engage with that citizenship easily and all too frequently. What about the citizenship of God’s kingdom? What about living into those baptismal vows many of us will recite on this All Saints Sunday? We need to heed Paul’s warning to the Corinthians about “the wisdom and rulers of this age” and instead set ourselves firmly on God’s wisdom.

Those who came before us, who have labored in God’s workshop have worked the lathe, cut, and measured, and assembled much of our theological furniture. They may not have built precisely what we need for these days in this century, but they have left us the parts to work with, and Hooker is a good place to start; after all he taught us how to assemble and build with such things. As he would say, we can meet these days without fear because we have a tradition to rest on and build up from.

We must be careful not to be so afraid of change, so afraid that we’ll abandon who we are, that we give in to the pathological fear that hastens our demise[vii], even as we pride ourselves on being a top-shelf tradition for the faithful few – those smart enough to “get it”. The Church can do a new thing without everything being new. We can keep continuity with the past and embrace the future. We must. We must pull from the breadth of tradition and scripture – there is no end to the tools we have at our disposal to shape ourselves and the world around us and to assemble the Kingdom we’re called to inherit.

We need not be a people of fear, or hatred, or contempt. We have the luxury of an abundance of love, a love which drives out all the rest of it[viii]. We must reclaim the via media, the middle way between the various polarizing and competing forces that seek to divide and destroy. This middle way is not a hiding place, nor is it an easy place, and it won’t make everyone happy. In fact, it’s more like to make people quite unhappy because they won’t find cover for the wisdom of this age to grow in their hearts unchallenged. But you know what? This was never supposed to be easy.

The Episcopal Via Media is our place of strength from which to unleash the power of God’s love. We don’t have a Richard Hooker. We don’t really need him. Because we actually have thousands of them, including the hundreds gathered here tonight. The world now, or 500 years from now, may not understand these Episcopalians who gathered in 2021 speaking some foreign language, this language of love, but I hope no matter what they say about us, they won’t be able to say they didn’t hear us.

[ix] Final Notes from the Preacher

[i] The Rt. Rev. Mark Dyer is the original source of this, although Phillis Tickle popularized it.

[ii] The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in Modern English, Davenant Press 2019, p.5.

[iii] This is articulated by Brad Littlejohn at the Davenant Institute in his article, “In Defense of Discrimination: Why Richard Hooker Still Matters, posted March 22, 2019. It is also articulated in Arthur Brooks’ book, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From The Culture of Contempt, Broadside Books, 2019.

[iv] One of Arthur Brooks’ theses in Love Your Enemies is about the culture of contempt. He also shares the common theme around the Church’s need to be based on love, something we also hear a lot about from our Presiding Bishop.

[v] “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart”, Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, October 2021.

[vi]“ The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart”.

[vii] Again, brought out by “In Defense of Discrimination.”

[viii] 1 John 4:18

[ix] Mr. Littlejohn’s and Mr. Brooks’ thoughts helped me to shape the arc of this sermon overall, in putting this moment in perspective and helping me see how Richard Hooker fits into it.

October 18 2021

A letter from Bishop Logue ahead of jury selection in State of Georgia v. Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William R. Bryan

To the Diocese of Georgia Community,

I write to ask your prayers for the people of Brunswick and Glynn County as the murder trial in the case of the slaying of Ahmaud Arbery will start October 18. Following video evidence coming to light, clergy representing all six Episcopal congregations in Glynn County, were part of a joint statement issued by a 29-member group of clergy in the area asking for action. “We join together with one voice to demand that justice be done, justice that is impartial and swift.”

Watching the video was unspeakably hard. I lament that persons of color remain at greater risk than I will ever know. I cannot imagine being a parent, relative, or friend having to see Ahmaud’s death. But without the video, we would not have arrived at this trial where the evidence will have its days in court.

I have made prayers for Ahmaud Arbery’s family and prayers for the accused killers and their families part of my daily prayers. I ask you to join me in prayer as the case comes to trial, for wisdom for the judge and jury charged with the sacred task of weighing out earthly justice. I offer this prayer for the trial:

Almighty God, whose justice alone is eternal, be present with the judge and jurors charged with bringing earthly justice in the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Give them the insight, understanding, and wisdom that come from you alone as they discern the truth and impartially administer the law. Be with the Arbery family, with the accused and their families, and all in the Brunswick and Glynn County Community. Give them your peace as they watch, listen, wait, and hope for a decision that reflects your judgment and your justice. And give us all the grace to hunger and thirst for your righteousness that we may work together to become the Beloved Community where all may know a world without suspicion, in which the only fear is fear of You, in whose image and likeness all humanity is made. This we ask for the sake of your Son our Savior, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns now and forever. Amen.

A verdict in this trial cannot bring about the Beloved Community where divisions have ceased and dignity and abundant life are enjoyed by all people who see themselves and others as beloved children of God. I am grateful to the clergy of Glynn County, Christian and Jewish alike, of many denominations, who used this tragedy to begin anew on working together toward justice. As we join them in prayer, may we join them in a witness against the sin of racism. No matter the outcome of the trial, the work of repentance and amendment of life also means doing the work to continue to grow as reconcilers, justice-makers, and healers in the name of Christ.

In Christ,
+Frank

June 27 2021

Grace for all the feral cats

Bishop Frank Logue preached this sermon at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Thomasville, Georgia on June 26, 2021.

Grace for all the feral cats
A sermon for the ordination of Susan Gage to the Sacred Order of Deacons
Acts 6:2-7

“In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”

I will say these words to Susan during The Examination in just a few minutes. The words I want to stay instead are, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the feral cats that need to find their true home.”

I use this term advisedly and knowingly as I am one who has been tamed by an actual feral cat who found her way into my home. That was real. No metaphor yet. And then I spoke to Susan about how she found her way to this day. Susan affectionately told me of how the Rev. Lee Shafer referred to her as the feral cat that came into the church.

This is not to say that Susan was a stranger to church. Not by a long shot. She was baptized at Christ Episcopal Church in Exeter, New Hampshire about two months after her birth. She stood up for her place in the church at an early age too when the Rector did not understand her wanting to be a shepherd instead of an angel as boys were shepherds and girls were angels. But she was a budding thespian and Susan knew Shepherds get to play fear, which is a way better role. She did prevail and soon after began to acolyte and in a few years was confirmed.

Yet the 18 months that followed Susan’s confirmation were a very difficult time with the tragic deaths of two friends and an aunt and her discovering her sexuality in a time and place where it was not okay. Susan continued to attend church in college and afterward moved to Tallahassee, where she was attracted to St. John’s Episcopal Church and loved a lot about it, but no one spoke to her, invited her to coffee hour, or tried to find out who she was. She did not keep attending. During those years, her work for Florida Public Radio took a turn when she served as a media witness to an execution and she covered capital punishment for years after. And in those years that followed St. John’s Church rejected the LGBTQ community in a quite public way with the clergy walking out of the church during a major principal service. The church of her childhood had come to offer her judgment, not love.

By the time years later, Susan made her way back to St. John’s, much had changed in the church and in Susan. The Rev. Lee Shafer, who served at St. John’s at that time, tells the story this way saying that she,

“was asked to visit the husband of a parishioner who was in a nursing facility with a debilitating and terminal illness. He could barely speak and his body was contorted in an awkward position but he was cognizant and able to communicate, mostly through his family members. The parishioner had told [Lee] of her daughter who had left the church angrily several years before.”

Then one day she walked into the parishioner’s room and found the angry daughter, Susan, and her partner, Isabelle, with him. Lee said,

“I drew in a deep breath expecting to be met with challenge and hostility, but was determined to be open and to not allow myself to become flustered no matter what. The daughter was pleasant but cool and I did my best to be open and welcoming, hoping to be a good representative of the church she so mistrusted.”

That meeting was good. What followed was a surprise to Mama Lee as things progressed more quickly than one might expect. This so often happens as w do not see how the Holy Spirit is already working in someone’s life. Lee told me,

“Several weeks later I saw the daughter in Church. I tried to remain cool, not to have too many expectations.” Lee likened this to building trust with a feral cat, which she had done successfully two times in the past- slowly, quietly, “let her take the lead, let her make the first move, then encourage, affirm, assure.”

She did not know that in the meantime, Susan felt herself not gently nudged to go to St. John’s Episcopal, but all but shoved by what felt like a booming voice in her head saying, “Show up!”

Susan listened to God telling her to go to church. She showed up only to find as she would later say, “I hard every single prayer, reading, and hymn, and the entire package was an unmistakable message: “You are loved. You always have been loved. And I will always love you.”

Here was the clarion call of the God who made her and who loved her just as she was and wanted better for her. “You are loved. You always have been loved. And I will always love you.” A call she has since extended to many others letting persons who not known this before in on the not so secret that God has always loved them.

This fits so well with the prayer for the consecration of a deacon which says in part, “Make her, O Lord, modest and humble, strong and constant, to observe the discipline of Christ. Let her life and teaching so reflect your commandments, that through her many may come to know you and love you. As your Son came not to be served but to serve, may this deacon share in Christ’s service…”

There are so many others who have been wounded by the church and yet wonder about Jesus. They have heard that God loves them, that God is love, and even that as our Presiding Bishop has put it, “If it is not about love, then it’s not about God.” And yet all they have experienced from the Body of Christ that is the church is judgment and shame.

Mother Lee remembers what follows as Susan sending her daily emails (or so it seems in her memory) and these were filled with questions that were running through Susan’s head rapid-fire. She added, “I know she thinks that was burdensome but it was actually one of the most pleasant times in my ministry. It was so nice to spend time talking with someone who was seriously thinking about their faith and questioning aspects of the Church that had not really taken up a lot of space in her life for a while… Susan moved from being a feral cat that I wanted to coax back to the church to a becoming much trusted friend. I know she will be a gift to the Church and will sometimes challenge us to stretch ourselves to become the folks Jesus wants us to be.”

The truth is it would not all be so smooth. Susan’s renewed and unwavering faith in Jesus has puzzled some of her friends as Susan now goes into places that are very wary of Christians.

As Susan told me as we talked about today, she sees the needs of those who are lost and left out as so large, so immense, which is why she selected our reading from Acts today. This passage comes in the midst of a fight in the early days of the Jesus Movement. Some of the Greek speaking members of the church were upset at those who had grown up Jewish. The Acts of the Apostles puts it like this:

“Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.”

Everyone agreed that the church needed to tend to this thorny problem, which was choking the growth of the early Christian community. The Sacred Order of Deacons, then, was created to tend to an issue in the church so that the apostles could focus on their particular ministry of sharing the Good News of God’s love in preaching and teaching. This bore tremendous fruit for the Gospel.

The apostles found a solution in which seven members of that early Christian community were put forward for the laying on of hands to become the first deacons. The Acts of the Apostles records, “The word of God continued to spread, the number of disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many priests became obedient to the faith.” The apostles tended to the problems in the church prayerfully and appropriately. Growth followed. The early Christians discovered the need for people whose focus is taking care of those in need.

Deacons are not to do all the work of servant ministry. Deacons are to serve as icons of servant ministry, examples to others. Where deacons thrive, we find the fruit of that ministry is that many parishioners in that congregation are called to more fully living into their own baptismal vows in caring for others as deacons both tend to the lost and the left out and call others into that ministry as well.

Susan is what we sometimes call a transitional deacon as she will likely serve barely more than six months in this order of ministry. This ordination is a challenge to Susan to find ways during this transitional period to fully live into being a deacon in word and deed and not in title only. This fits well with Susan’s own call as she has experienced the Holy Spirit not nudging her, but all but shoving her to “just go and be with the people who are in pain and in need.”

As we come to know Jesus in the Gospels, he is much more interested in those wounded by religious leaders than in those who are all holier than thou. Jesus clearly wanted to connect with those who were hurt and yet still longed to know God and to be known by God. The man living among the tombs plagued by a legion of demons, the Samaritan woman who went to the well in the middle of the day and so many others who knew too well the judgment of religion, but had yet to experience love and grace, these were the ones Jesus ministered to the most. Like feral cats who want to find a home, but fear what they have seen of humans, those injured by the church long for Jesus, but fear what they may face from his followers and those who lead them.

And this is where we should be delighted to discover the joy of sharing God’s love is not something reserved for deacons, priests, and bishops. No, the Body of Christ as a whole, all of us, are supposed to share that same love with others, loving everyone and letting God sort out the rest.

We are not ordaining Susan to share the love of God so we don’t have to do so. We are ordaining her for a role in the church that will have her serving those most in need and calling the rest of us to join her in the effort.

We all know the love of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to go after the one that is lost. In our own families, in our workplaces, and among our friends, you and I are already deployed where God needs us to be there for people we already know to play the role that Mother Lee Shafer played in Susan’s life of being the sounding board for that feral cat stage of trying to trust God and God’s church. And in this effort, the real work is that of the Holy Spirit. I see this in how the Spirit was acting in Susan’s life to draw her back in to the Body of Christ. I have experienced this in my own life. And I have seen it in others who God has put in my path, where the Holy Spirit is already with them. We just have to be a part of affirming that message is real: You are loved. You always have been loved. And God will always love you.

It is the Good News that so many people need to hear. So let us not delay any longer, but affirm our faith together and then pray for God to make Susan a deacon, knowing that the Spirit will use her and us to reach those who need that grace, mercy, and love.

Amen.

May 20 2021

Moving to Phase 2

May 19, 2021

Dear Clergy and Senior Wardens of the Diocese of Georgia,

As promised in my letter to you all last Friday, I am following up further on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stating last week that, “fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask or physically distance in any setting” and then adding some caveats. After months of following CDC recommendations, I know it looked as if I was suddenly ignoring them. The difference was that, unlike when they announced previous changes, the CDC failed to update their page with considerations for Communities of Faith last week and have yet to do so. That particular web page, together with significant input from top level experts made available to us through the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops, had been guiding our actions. I am now offering an option for Clergy and Vestries who discern that conditions in their area and in their congregation allow them to move to Phase Two Guidance. You may remain in Phase 1 indefinitely given the discernment of your vestry.

As you will see, the Phase Two option takes into account the varying contexts of our congregations. A parish with 18 people on a Sunday who all know each other well can take their congregation into account and find a way forward that may differ from that of a larger parish. Rectors or Priests-in-Charge, their wardens, and vestries will make their decision together based on the diocesan guidance, their own congregation, and its context. Once these decisions have been made, the Diocese must be informed of the congregation’s plans, using the attached Phase 2 Certification Form. Vestry votes may be collected in person or via electronic means. All of this is in keeping with the way we moved back to in-person worship last summer.

Please note that some communities in the diocese may still have mask mandates in effect and congregations in those areas must follow the law in those instances. As the context changes, more congregations can decide to move to the new guidance. The changes can be made as soon as is best for your congregation.

With these changes, we are moving toward those who are vaccinated being encouraged, but not required, to practice masking and distancing. I remain concerned that by requiring only the unvaccinated to wear masks, we single them out for decisions over which they may not have control, or we inadvertently encourage them to ‘fit in’ by not wearing a mask even though they remain unvaccinated, thereby increasing risk for everyone. I am also concerned about teens and children who are not yet fully vaccinated or can’t be, as well as for newcomers who visit our churches.

Pax et bonum,

+Frank

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue | Bishop of Georgia
Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

Phase 2 documents:
May 19, 2021 Guidance for Phase 2
Vestry Certification for Phase 2

April 7 2021

1Book1Diocese for Eastertide

Love is the Way Discussion Guide

The Diocese will read together Love is the Way by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry as the 2021 1Book1Diocese pick.

Each week is mapped out with a discussion guide that you can find here:

You can do this with your congregation, a small group, or on your own. The book can be found at any bookseller or be downloaded via Audible.

Bishop Curry will be joining us at the end of Eastertide to do a live Q&A about his book through Zoom. Look for more information in future editions of From the Field.

February 17 2021

Daily Lenten Devotions

This year the Diocese will be offering daily reflections during Lent, written by both clergy and laity throughout the Diocese. Monday through Friday will be reflections on the Daily Office Readings. Saturday reflections will be focused on a spiritual practice that you may be able to incorporate into your personal routine. On Sundays the reflections will be based on different pieces and experiences of music. These reflections may be used as a resource for your congregation or as a personal guide through Lent.

The reflections start with on Ash Wednesday and carry through to Easter Sunday. These reflections continue with the theme for this past November’s Diocesan Convention: “Thriving in the Vine.” Jesus gave this image of himself as the vine and us as the branches to his followers on the night before he died, as he knew they would face tremendous hardships and he wanted them to see how life-giving connection to him is for each of us.

The Diocese of Georgia’s social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) will post a piece of each day’s reflection, along with a link to the PDF with the full reflection.

To view and download the reflections, click here.

November 27 2020

An Advent Message

Lighting a candle in the darkness is a powerful symbol of hope. The strength of even a single candle to dispel darkness is something I learned memorably as a Boy Scout. I went caving with my troop on a handful of trips. Gathered in a room in a cave with our headlamps combining to bounce lights off the stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites slowly rising up from the cave floor, we would turn off all our lights at once and sit in silence in the darkness that seemed denser in a cavern under the earth. Not the tiniest glimmer could leak in.

The first time we did this when I twelve, I found the feeling of an abyss frightening. Surrounded by friends, I felt so completely alone. Then a leader struck a match to light a candle. That was enough. Our eyes could adjust to see so much by that one point of light.

This week, more than a billion Christians will mark the First Sunday of Advent. From the Latin word Adventus, meaning “coming,” advent is marked in the four weeks leading to Christmas. It is a time to remember that Jesus promised to come again. We look toward that Second Coming even as we prepare to celebrate his first advent in Bethlehem. Lighting a candle in an advent wreath is a way some churches mark this season, with an additional candle lit each week. A brief advent wreath service in the home is a way individuals and families can also keep this season. The hope held out by even a single flame is so needed in this year of pandemic.

Some years ago, my wife, Victoria, and I experienced worshipping in the midst of a storm in a way that revealed something important to me about the hope of this season. A storm blackened the sky as we drove to church for Sunday evening worship. As the service progressed, rain loudly pelted the metal roof of the old church. At one point, thunder boomed and the power went out. Candles already lit, worship continued without pause.

As we approached the breaking of the bread in Communion, the bulletin noted “Worshippers are invited to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer.” To my left, I reached for Victoria’s hand as I have done for more than three decades. At the altar and in the emergency room, and in a great variety of situations, we have held one another’s hands. Then I reached back and a woman I could not see readily took my hand as I reached back. Jesus’ words recited in prayer, the woman behind me squeezed my hand and then let it go. It was the smallest of touches, but her squeeze felt meaningful, important. The touch we shared as the storm beat against the church made communion all the more real.

Quite coincidentally, the next day we watched the movie Toy Story 3. In the animated film there is a scene where the toys we have come to love in the previous two films face what appears to be certain destruction. They are traveling down a conveyor belt toward a furnace. Despite bold attempts at saving themselves, no further options remain.

Facing this moment of certain annihilation with no hope of rescue no words are exchanged, however, a look a “what now” passes across the faces of the toys. Then one reaches to hold another’s hand. One by one they reach out to hold another’s hand. In that moment of holding one another’s hands in the face of uncertainty, relief comes in. Not that rescue seems more likely, but the toys know that whatever they face, they will face it together. Hope is restored like a light shining in the darkness.

When the toys reached out to hold hands, showing their love for one another in a time of great uncertainty, I remembered powerfully the feeling of holding hands in church the evening before. I knew then what the creators of Toy Story 3 showed so clearly in animating the facial expressions of the toys, when the moment of “now what” comes, the hope is in not having to face the unknown alone. Togetherness changes nothing in the problem before us and yet in bearing one another’s burdens everything is different.

We all share a longing, a need for hope. We need the word we find in John’s Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). As we journey toward Christmas, lighting candles to mark the season, the hope we see in that light dispelling darkness is that whatever we face, we do not face it alone. This is true as the God who made us and loves us is with us. And as we light candles to mark the season, we can also make calls to check in on those who are cut off because of the pandemic, to offer a hand and to share that hope. Even as we light candles, we can be that glimmer of hope for others.

November 8 2020

Thriving in the Vine: Convention 2020 Eucharist Sermon

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue’s sermon for the Holy Eucharist of the 199th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia from the St. Anna Alexander Chapel on Saturday, November 7, 2020.

Thriving in the Vine

John 15:1-11

“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing.”

Jesus describes the life of faith in this evocative image of the vine from which we get our convention theme of thriving in the vine. And yet, we know in this pandemic, that the fruit we are bearing is different than in past years and we are not all thriving. And that hurts. A lot. It feels like we really “can do nothing.”

So I want to open up Jesus’ image to hear it anew by sharing a story from when my wife, Victoria, and I hiked the Appalachian Trail in a single trek.

The offer at a hostel run by Roman Catholic monks in Hot Springs, North Carolina, was that hikers could stay for free in exchange for doing some work on the grounds. That evening a Jesuit taught us about perseverance and patience, lessons I was not expecting to be taught by a monk along the Appalachian Trail

Since we were working for our room and board, he handed us gloves and loppers and asked that we spend a while working on cutting and stacking enormous interlacing arches of photosynthesis-fueled razor wire.

This is what the monk said. “Don’t try to make to a difference.” Come again? “Don’t try to make to a difference.” “Everyone is always trying to make a difference. It just wears them out and doesn’t help,” he added.

I am sure the monk saw that workaholic gleam in my eye and recognized my sin. He knew in that glance what I felt deep in my bones—we would be the ones to work so hard that I could make a noticeable dent in the mountain of thorny vines. “It couldn’t be more than a half-acre or so, an acre at the most,” I was thinking, “I can punch a noticeable hole in that.”

“Some work requires patience,” he told us. “There is no quick solution. Working steadily without looking for immediate change can accomplish so much more. Just keep at it,” he said, then added, “Just cut for a while, stack the dead branches in the burn pile and walk away. It’s not your job to finish it.”

This was a lesson we needed to hear. We had picked a lot bigger goal than knocking back a massive patch of weeds. Victoria and I were just 270 miles into a 2,150-mile long hike along the backbone of the East Coast, a journey not just measured in miles but in patience and steadfastness.

The monk then launched into a story that we needed to hear.

He said, “During World War II, a pilot with the Flying Tigers had engine problems and parachuted out just ahead of his P-40 splashing down hard in a forgotten stretch of a Burmese river. “The Army Air Force eventually got a crew up the river to try to wrest the fighter from its muddy grave.

Try as they might, the men could not budge the plane, despite the use of cranes and other 20th century equipment. The whole time they worked, they were watched by the people of a nearby village. As the Airmen were packing to leave, they were approached by a village elder.

Speaking through an interpreter, the elder asked if the people raised the machine, would the Americans buy it back from them. The translator relayed that a deal would definitely be struck. The Flying Tigers were so in need of planes, the ground crew was perpetually patching one together with spare parts to get another fighter flying. “Get the plane up and you will be well compensated.”

The Jesuit paused for effect, he was a natural preacher and a congregation of two was just fine with him. The shadows deepened in the briar patch, he forged ahead, “With the Americans and the mechanical muscle gone, the plan was simple.

Every time a villager swam in the river, those who could, would dive down to the plane and work a short length of bamboo up into the fuselage. Everyday, little by little, bamboo was worked into the cockpit.

Once that area was packed with bamboo, they used vines to get bamboo under any part exposed above the mud. Slowly the plane lifted and more bamboo was added. In time, the P-40 was off the bottom and word was sent downriver that the Americans could fetch their fighter.”

The story was over. The lesson was ended. The Jesuit did not force the point home. He simply repeated, “Don’t try to make a difference. Just cut for a while. Put the vines in the burn pile and walk away.” We worked hard, hacking at the briars, which tore at our arms as we cut. Time passed. The sky turned dark. A very satisfying mound of vines was ready to burn. But when I looked back at the briar patch, you couldn’t really tell that any were missing. We walked away to clean up and get some dinner.

That evening’s work in Hot Springs became important to our thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. We could never plan out the hike all the way to Katahdin in the Maine wilderness. We could only look to what came next. There was no real way to hike all the way from Georgia to Maine, at least not at the practical day-by-day level. We could merely hike the next miles in front of us, as far as we could on any given day.

Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Abiding, remaining, staying, resting in God. It is out of that life that we bear fruit. We are to be faithful to following Jesus over the long haul. But the effort we take on day by day is in staying close to Jesus, the fruit we bear is a result of that faithfulness.

Perhaps you can’t see the dent you are making in the lives around you, but it’s there. Don’t let the Enemy blind you to the difference you are making.

Every phone call each of you have made to keep in contact with your parishioners while sheltering in place was just like a section of bamboo going into the plane’s fuselage. The Treasurer filing the Paycheck Protection Program paperwork while the Junior Warden tending to an empty building are part of the faithfulness of this year. The family offering Evening Prayer from their living room. The parishioners gathering masked and distanced to keep the food pantry open. Then there is the ongoing day by day, long month by long month faithfulness of the deacons and priests of this diocese to stay connected in varied ways has been heroic, yet on any given day it was another daily office from home, meeting online with the vestry and even offering Last Rites on Zoom.

None of these acts in and of themselves seems like enough. The online worship, however faithfully offered, seems too meager. The in-person options feel strange.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing.”

Faithfulness is knowing that what we are to do as Christians is to stay connected to Jesus and to one another. This year has made that so much more difficult, but God did not bring us this far to leave us.

Thriving in the Vine is the theme for this convention and yet I know that many of you feel that you are wilting on the vine, not thriving.

But thriving in the vine is a prescription not just for this pandemic, but for all the ways that our souls have been pierced by thorns that want to rent and tear, when what we are really looking for is healing and wholeness.

If we are faithful to being the Body of Christ, through our personal prayers and reading scripture and corporate worship in the ways we can, Jesus is faithful. In fact, Jesus is working toward the reconciliation of all creation with or without us. The Holy Spirit has been with you through every moment of each of these difficult days. The Holy Trinity is much more reliable, much more faithful than you and me and our feelings about how we are doing.

This is why I was reminded of the wisdom of the Jesuit monk, that evening in Hot Springs as I prayed through the scripture.

“Don’t try to make to a difference.
Everyone is always trying to make a difference.
It just wears them out and doesn’t help.”

Not trying to make a difference isn’t a fatalism about nothing changing for the better. Rather, this is the reality that if we try rely on our own abilities rather than on the God who made us and loves us our efforts will fall flat.

The Prophet Zechariah recorded the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

You and I can’t make a difference in the sense that we can’t by force of our own will, change people’s lives much less grow your church’s budget or attendance. Instead of measuring results and comparing ourselves to other churches, we just need to remain faithful, faithful to who God is calling you and me to be.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”

Faithfulness is abiding in the vine and through that we will bear much fruit, even if not always in ways we hope or expect. If you and I can keep Jesus at the center and focus less on whether we feel like what we are doing is enough and more on taking the next faithful step, God will show up. Not because of our might or power, but because the Spirit of the living God is with us doing the real heavy lifting.

We are not just going to survive, but thrive. Amen.

November 8 2020

Thriving in the Vine: Convention 2020

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue addressed the 199th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia from the Diocesan House on Friday, November 6, 2020.

Beloved in Christ,

We gather online this evening in a convention unlike any of the 198 meetings which precede us. Yet we are here to further the work of the Gospel in our corner of the vineyard just as in every single meeting of the Diocese.

My charge by the canons of our church is to share the state of the diocese with you in this address, including how I have spent my time in the months since my ordination. I will also chart the future for the months ahead before a vaccine or broad immunity permits a return to the new normal.

On March 13, Governor Brian Kemp, himself a faithful Episcopalian, said it was appropriate for faith-based organizations and other groups to consider canceling public events as he worked through the steps to declare Georgia’s first ever public health emergency. Bishop Benhase suspended gathering for worship for the next 14 days in the congregations of the diocese.

With a smartphone, a cell signal and a prayer, 8 in 10 of our congregations went online in some form within the weeks that followed. But all of our contexts are different: in some cases the immediate work was setting up phone trees to check on parishioners. In others, it was determining which faithful lay people would be willing to learn about Zoom and Facebook Live before making a move online. One priest began offering a written meditation delivered on paper under a rock by the church door, and another set up a weekly telephone conference call to help the congregation pray and worship together.

All across Central and South Georgia, you worked faithfully to stay in contact with parishioners week by week. In many places creative work kept food pantries and other critical ministries operating so that Christ’s love could continue to be felt in your communities. Two weeks of sheltering in place extended and my ordination as your bishop that seemed well in the future in mid-March came and went. We didn’t even get to give Bishop Scott and Kelly Benhase the big, loving send-off we hoped to offer for their faithful care for this diocese in more than a decade of service.

And yet, I personally found the ordination with 11 people in the nave of the church so very meaningful. With more than 100 people taking part in the online worship through processing a banner or singing and more, the liturgy came together in a way that gave me a real sense that the Holy Spirit remained as active in our midst as ever. Our God is living and real, present and powerful.

On my first full day as Bishop of Georgia, I learned from clergy of a planned protest in Savannah following George Floyd’s death. The mayor wrote to clergy, saying, “I am asking you to join me, City Council, [Police] Chief Minter and other clergy in being present in the moment and peacefully show support to communities across the country and the human family that are hurting and in pain. We can make it through this – together.” Episcopal deacons and priests and I attended training in deescalating violence that morning and then we assisted in ensuring a peaceful protest. As I will talk about later this evening, the work Bishop Benhase began in racial healing continues in the same call Bishop Stuart offered in the 1960s, as he helped this diocese navigate ending segregation. I am grateful for the group leading our racial healing ministries and I support them as we focus on Becoming Beloved Community as part of how we are the Body of Christ in our unique settings.

While the pandemic has prevented my making formal visitations, Victoria and I have been enjoying our travels across the Diocese. Thanks to a generous gift from Steve Roberts, parishioner at St. Peter’s, and his dealership Savannah Toyota, I have a new Camry Hybrid that already has 7,900 miles logged in order to lead worship from Albany, Hawkinsville, Honey Creek, Thomasville, Augusta, Swainsboro, Darien, Moultrie, Douglas, Dublin, Sandersville, Fitzgerald, Rincon, Louisville, Valdosta, St. Simons Island, Kingsland, Pennick, and Savannah. Since my ordination at the end of May, I have led worship and preached every week, but the one Sunday when I was on vacation.

And while I officiate and preach on Facebook and YouTube for the congregations that have no priest in charge, these trips have also given Victoria and me the chance to be with clergy and lay leaders around the diocese on their property, seeing and hearing first-hand about their joys and sorrows in the midst of this most unusual summer and fall. My report on the state of the Diocese of Georgia is based then not on the view from here in my office, but from being in the field.

I am blessed with an amazing team on our diocesan staff, and we all know that a diocese only matters to the degree that it keeps Jesus at the center of our common life while supporting the local church. Our congregations are where our ministry happens and lives are transformed by the Good News of Jesus. The diocese exists to support that ministry. The health of this diocese is the health of its congregations and their people.

Bishop Rob Wright and I worked closely on guidance for in person worship for Episcopalians in the whole state of Georgia that went into effect on July 1. Following that guidance first meant that a vestry needed to assess the outbreak in their region and could state they “feel a return to in-person worship following the Phase 1 guidelines is safe in our context.” By September 1, slightly more than a quarter of our churches were worshipping in person. Now more than half of congregations are doing so in some form.

The Phase 1 Guidance is going through a modest revision now. As with the initial guidance, we have drafted the document and are getting feedback from leaders and will go back to the experts to see how to balance a desire to worship in ways that feel more normal with the need to mitigate risk of transmitting the virus. I anticipate we will publish this coming Wednesday.

The slight changes are based on the science as we learn more about the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. We will describe how masks and a little more distance will allow a congregation to sing outdoors and how with testing, masks, and greater distance a soloist may sing indoors.

Having served on the bishop’s staff for a decade before becoming bishop, I am privileged to know the 69 parishes and aided parishes of the Diocese of Georgia. Wherever you worship, I am deeply concerned for your individual congregation. My call is to serve all 14,250 of our parishioners as I look toward guidance that mitigates risk for our worship.

Canon Loren Lasch and I have both heard your longings for a return to normalcy and we have spent time with the subject matter experts, physicians who not only know the latest studies on the virus, but who have also spent months treating COVID patients. Even if it is not making headlines, behaviors like singing inside a church correlate to higher cases of the virus. Tragically, church leaders and pastors have been hospitalized, put on life support, and even died.

A given congregation might not experience sickness and even death if significantly less cautious guidelines were to be put into place. But since July 1 we have experienced cases where we later learned someone worshipping with one of our churches did have COVID-19 while in worship. We have clergy and lay leaders who have done contact tracing resulting in attendees going into quarantine while waiting for test results. To date, none of these instances has resulted in a spread of the virus in the congregation as best we can know. Our carefully crafted plans cannot completely prevent the spread of the virus, but our hope is to mitigate risk as much as possible.

This pandemic is calling on each of us to think not only of our own longings for worship, but also of the needs of others. We have had dear friends, family members, fellow parishioners die from the virus. Many congregations have so far been spared that particular grief, but none of us has been left untouched. This has been demanding. Everything is more difficult.

In some cases, this difficulty extends to parish finances. 3 in 10 churches report that giving is down significantly, and when any of our congregations suffer, we all suffer, as we bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s joys. Diocesan Council considered and granted waivers in some cases to the diocesan assessment for those congregations that are most severely impacted. However, we are glad that in many cases, our parishes are faring well financially. 70% of our congregations report that their income is better, about the same, or only slightly less than in previous years.

As I look to the future, it seems very likely that the current guidance will remain in effect, with slight changes the science and experience make possible, into next year. That is why we are working now to imagine how we can offer Christmas worship with some singing. Yet as we look toward more months of some in person worship with many rightly concerned for their health and not returning to the church grounds, we need to follow Jesus in our daily lives.

I want to focus on sharing the Gospel to people outside our red doors, but a challenge we all need to work on is that a quarter to a third or more of our parishioners have not engaged with their church since mid-March. This is what has been keeping me up at night, knowing that not all of our people have been able to find ways to connect, not all of our people have been thriving during this difficult season. The life of faith in pandemic does not mean getting better at online worship or abandoning it for in person options alone. The challenge is to care for those who are hurting, and to deepen discipleship. The call is to follow Jesus through daily prayer, scripture reading, and other spiritual practices that provide solace and nurture us. I have been blessed to see the creative ways you have helped people do this in your congregations and communities over the last eight months. My prayer is that together we can provide opportunities for even more people to be nurtured by their faith in the midst of these most challenging of times.

My call as a bishop is first and foremost to stay connected to Jesus, for apart from him, I can do nothing. Everything else I do as chief pastor to support our deacons, priests, and lay leaders in every congregation flows from that. The same is true for each Christian.

The months ahead will not be easy, but we are not alone. We have each other and we have our gracious, life-giving God, who is working out the reconciliation of all creation with or without us. The grace is that we get to take part in that reconciliation. I remain hopeful, not out of some false optimism, but out of the deep conviction that God is faithful and trustworthy and will never leave us or forsake us.

When we gather at this time next year, I have no doubt that we will be able to look back and see that God has done more than we could ask for or even imagine. I am deeply grateful to be on this difficult journey with you.

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop of Georgia

October 4 2020

Simply Following Jesus

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue, Bishop of Georgia, gave this sermon for an online worship service from St. Francis of the Islands Episcopal Church on Wilmington Island, Georgia, on October 4, 2020.

Simply following Jesus
Matthew 11:25–30

Simply following Jesus. This is what transformed the life of Francis of Assisi. Simply following Jesus. And once the Holy Spirit got a hold of Francis, he went out and changed the world.

I want to share how you and I can find a more peace in the week and months ahead and in this, we have the able guide of Francis. Today is the church’s Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi and through his life, we find the way to the peace Jesus offers in today’s Gospel reading, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” First, I want to share something of the life of Francis who rose to Kardashian-level fame in his own lifetime. Okay, maybe Mother Teresa levels of respect.

Francis had been born to a life of privilege in a new Italian middle class that was coming into its own. This was a new upward mobility unknown to previous generations. Italy in the 1200s, like much of the world at that time, was divided into the nobility and the rest. The nobles were the majors, mayores, in Italian and everyone else was minores, minor. Francis’ father, Pietro de Bernadone, was a wealthy textile merchant who had moved his family from the minors to the majors. He wanted his son to take his place among the best and brightest of Assisi.

As a boy Francis had dreamed of earning glory in battle. He enlisted, along with the other young men of Assisi to fight in a feud against Perugia, a neighboring town in the Umbrian hills. In his first battle, Francis was captured and made prisoner of war. He became gravely ill while he waited for his eventual release. Defeat in battle and illness in prison caused Francis to turn away from his visions of glory.

Francis would go through a series of experiences that led to a deeper and deeper conversion of life. Rejecting the paths before him in battle and in commerce, Francis was led to simply follow Jesus. The way he set the course for the movement he would start is kind of funny from today’s perspective. Francis went into Church of Saint Nicholas in Assisi with his friend Bernard and the two opened a Gospel book three times, trusting that when the opened the pages and Francis put his finger on a random text, that the text under his finger would be a sign from God of how they should live.

This trust in God is why we read in our Gospel for today, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

Francis and Bernard had a child-like faith as they entered St. Nicholas Church. The Holy Spirit guided them to Matthew 19:21, which told them to “sell all that you have and give to the poor”; then to Luke 9:3, which said to “take nothing on the journey”; and then finally to Matthew 16:24, which said, “Follow me.”

Those three passages led to a life of simplicity focused on the poor. And the example of first Francis and Bernard and then others dropping out of the up and coming set to simply follow Jesus was compelling. More and more young men joined the movement. In time, Francis founded a religious order and he gave it the name the Order of Friars Minor. Intentionally rejecting the mayores, the majors, Francis identified with the commoner, the lost and the left out, and he wanted for himself and those around him, a minor life, grounded in humility and trusting God.

With all this in mind, I want to turn back to Jesus words in our Gospel reading, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

2020 is a weary year. Every load is heavier. Everything is more difficult.

Past those comforting words, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” we read, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.”

In preaching on this passage, the great Christian bishop and writer Augustine of Hippo said, “You are not learning from me how to refashion the fabric of the world, nor to create all things visible and invisible, nor to work miracles and raise the dead. Rather, you are simply learning of me: ‘that I am meek and lowly in heart.’”

Augustine would go on to give the example of building a great building begins with the foundation. He said, “The taller the building is to be, the deeper you will dig the foundation.” Augustine was pointing to those words, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.”

A yoke is how one puts two animals together to pull a wagon or plow. Wise animal husbandry has long shown that yoking the experienced ox with a younger one will teach the young ox how to plow while the older one bears most of the weight. Jesus offers to be right beside you, shouldering your burdens so you don’t bear them alone. The way this happens is humility. Humility is not a lack of self-esteem or beating yourself up. Humility is a right view of yourself.

Being humble means acknowledging that God is God and you are not. As Augustine put it, “I am not in charged with refashioning the fabric of the world.” This connection between humility and finding peace is not a connection made just in this one verse of scripture.

For example, in the First Letter of Peter we read, “All of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, for he cares for you.”

First clothe yourselves in humility and then cast your anxiety on Jesus, for he cares for you. This is how you let Jesus shoulder your burdens. Here is what it looks like in the week ahead for all who are weary:

Humble yourself enough to admit that you don’t have all the answers. You are not a beauty pageant contestant longing for world peace. You can’t control world events or make any of the biggest concerns go away by stewing over them. Why spend the night tossing, turning, and worrying? God is going to be awake anyway. Offer your weariness, your burdens, your anxieties, your fears to God in prayer. Pray for God’s will rather than your will. And then go to sleep. If you can do this an amazing thing will happen.

At a practical level, neuroscience reveals what God knew all along, that when you get weary and anxious, you move from thinking clearly to working out of the lowest level of your brain where fight or flight are the only options. There is nothing wrong with that response in the right circumstances. After we finished building the church building at King of Peace, when I was starting that congregation, I was pulling up the erosion control fence alongside the building. In reaching around the back side of the fencing to grab a stake, I exposed a cottonmouth moccasin who coiled back when its own primitive brain kicked in. This is one of those occasions when my body decided for flight rather than fight. It didn’t take me long to look at that snake. I jumped back, practically levitating, with my heart racing. The snake slithered away. The adrenaline that flooded my system kept me anxious after the threat had long passed. But that was just my God-given alert system keeping me ready in case of a renewed threat.

That anxious response is a gift in the right circumstances. But as a day to day way of living, being on high alert is not healthy. And when all of us go around bumping into one another as we navigate the pandemic, that sort of anxious way of dealing with life is bringing more hurt than healing. The deep wisdom already in scripture is what happens when you opt for humility. God is God and you and I are not. Thanks be to God!

Francis dug a deep foundation of humility and God did something marvelous with it.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” If you need that rest this week, just know that Jesus is already yoked with you, ready to pull the load, but you have got to let go of solving the world’s problems and even the difficulties you face at home and school and work. Turn off the TV. Stop doom scrolling the news on your computer. Stay away from Social Media. Let God be God. You get that at this point, I am preaching to myself, right? But I suspect we all need to hear this.

The point is simply that a right view of yourself helps you put our trust in God rather than in your own power or intellect. Like Francis of Assisi and all those who have simply followed Jesus, you need to know that the maker of heaven and earth knows you, loves you, and wants you to stop feeding your anxiety. If you can do this, you will find that God is faithful and will lighten your burdens and give you rest.

Amen.

October 4 2020

A Pastoral Letter

October 4, 2020 – The Feast of St. Francis Assisi

“You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
– James 2:8

Dear Followers of Jesus,

In less than a month, we will have all cast our votes for the next President of the United States. I write to call upon you to pray, to vote, and to show your love of God as found in Jesus Christ, through your words and actions, as you love your neighbor as yourselves. In these ways, we demonstrate our essential trust in the Holy Spirit as we take part in the political process.

I have heard that the soul of our nation is at stake in this presidential election. I have heard that sentiment from across the entire political spectrum, from liberals to conservatives and everyone in between. I do believe that this election is momentous because the tensions that have accrued in this unusual year may tempt us to lose sight of the mark set by Jesus to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Everything, as Jesus clearly told us, hangs on these two commandments.

This month I ask you join me in praying, voting, and loving:

Pray
Daily prayer always matters as we offer those needs in our hearts and minds. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans that even when we do not know how to pray, the “Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Forward Movement will offer a Novena, an ancient practice of nine successive days of prayer, in the week before through the day after the election. You can sign up for A Season of Prayer: For an Election online here. Whether you opt for praying the prayers offered by this Episcopal Church ministry of discipleship and evangelism or not, I hope you will join me in praying daily as we approach the election and in the days following.

Vote
As we pray faithfully for God’s will, we are also called to act. We have a duty to our country to cast our ballots as our faith and prayers lead us to vote.

Love
I so value that each of our congregations have people who disagree strongly on politics yet enjoy gathering together to worship and serve God. Even though we can’t kneel alongside others at the altar rail right now, I know that those same connections remain strong. Following Jesus isn’t easy. Even as we hold strong convictions, we must do so without demonizing those who disagree with us. Our words and actions toward those whose political choices are opposed to ours, reveals our love of God and neighbor and is our witness to the world.

Holding an election in a pandemic means we will also need to have patience as we await the results, continuing to pray as we wait.

No matter which candidate is elected, we must not lose sight of love, even if we were to gain the whole world, we could lose our own souls. Each of the candidates is a flawed human being who will fall short of the glory of God, as do we all. Neither candidate will bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. But if we respond to the neighbor whom we know with anger or hatred for their differing political views – or for any reason – we are unfaithful to Jesus’ call to love even our enemies. And it is that steadfast love that bears witness to Jesus and carries on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world – the responsibility of every Christian.

No matter who is elected, scripture calls us to pray faithfully for that person once in office. Knowing the weight of responsibility a President of the United States bears, everyone who serves in that role needs our steady prayers. And no election ends our call to remain active citizens, writing to those who represent us to advocate on behalf of causes our faith enlivens us to support. For no matter what happens, we know that long after we have voted, we will still need to pray and to love and so follow the way of Jesus.

Pax et Bonum,

+Frank

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop of Georgia

Click the link below for a PDF file of this letter:
A Pastoral Letter – The Election

September 14 2020

Forgiving From Your Heart