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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.

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.

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

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.

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

Forgiving From Your Heart

Bishop Frank Logue preached this sermon for a virtual visitation to
St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Tifton, Georgia on September 13, 2020. 

 

Matthew 18:21-35

Forgiving others can be so difficult and yet the only thing harder than forgiving someone is continuing to nurture the injury in your heart so the unforgiveness remains. I want to share with you how to begin a journey of forgiveness, but to do so I need to tell a story from my family history that shows the stark difference between forgiving and not being able to let go. That story will begin with a mule kicking a cow and by the time the story is done, eight people will be dead.

But I need to fill you in on what came before. Some years before our story, my great grandfather, Joe Frank Logue, was stabbed three times and shot. In the trial that followed his death, my great grandmother Annie Logue testified that her husband was a big man and the man who killed him was only defending himself. No good could come, she said, from punishing his killer and so depriving another family of their father. That was one story. Now the mule and the cow.

In September of 1940, Davis Timmerman’s mule got into his neighbor Wallace Logue’s yard in Edgefield County, South Carolina. It was not the first time and Wallace had warned Davis. The mule was given to kicking. The milk cow was a necessity. On this day, my grandfather’s Uncle Wallace came home to find the mule had kicked the cow in the head and the cow had to be put down. He was mad. Davis Timmerman offered Wallace $20 for the cow. Wallace stewed and then went to Timmerman’s Store to get more money. Davis Timmerman was slight while Wallace was 6’3”. Wallace demanded $40 for the cow and then took out an axe handle from a sales rack when Davis refused. He got in a good hit before Davis pulled a gun hidden behind the counter. He shot twice. Wallace fell to the floor and bled out. Timmerman drove to the Sheriff’s Office and turned himself in.

In the trial that followed, the jury ruled the killing had been in self-defense Davis Timmerman went free. Wallace’s wife Sue and his brother George couldn’t sit still with forgiving Davis. They were all faithful members of Little Stevens Creek Baptist Church, but this lesson had not gotten through uniformly.

Sue and George gave $500 to their nephew, also named Joe Frank Logue, to get him to hire a gunman to kill Davis Timmerman. Joe Frank, an officer with the Spartanburg Police Department, hired an out-of-work plasterer named Clarence Bagwell to take vengeance for them. A year after Davis Timmerman killed Wallace Logue, Joe Frank hid in the floorboard of a car while Bagwell went into Timmerman’s Store and shot five times in rapid succession with .38 caliber pistol. The two then went and threw the pistol in a lake. The matter was done.

Bagwell later talked when drunk and the woman he told notified the police. They picked up Joe Frank Logue at work, but news reached the Logues that newly elected Sheriff Wad Allen and Deputy ‘Doc’ Clark were on the way to arrest Sue and George. My grandparents and my dad were in the house. They left. Fred Dorn, a sharecropper on Sue Logue’s land showed up and he and George and Sue prepared to make a stand.

In short order Sheriff Allen was shot in the head and killed, and Deputy Clark was severely wounded in the stomach and arm. Although wounded, Clark managed to shoot both Dorn and George Logue. Clark then left the house and staggered to Hwy. 378 where a passing motorist picked him up.

Law officers surrounded the house, but they also asked the local circuit court judge to appeal to the Logues and Dorn to turn themselves in. Judge Strom Thurmond (who later became Governor and Senator Thurmond) walked unarmed into the home and came out with the Logues. Dorn died the next day, and Deputy Clark the day after that.

Four months later George Logue, Sue Logue, and Clarence Bagwell sat through the three-day trial. In two hours, the jury came back with the death penalty for all three. A later trial for Joe Frank Logue reached the same verdict.

Sue, George, and Clarence went to the electric chair on January 15, 1943 all within an hour of one another. Joe Frank Logue, who had hired Bagwell for the Timmerman killing, was sentenced to die on January 23, 1944. After eating his final meal, he was prepped for the electric chair. Governor Olin D. Johnston arrived at the prison shortly after midnight to visit Joe Frank, and soon commuted his sentence to life.

In all eight people died as a result of a mule kicking a cow: Wallace Logue, Davis Timmerman, Sheriff Wad Allen, Deputy W. L. Clark, Fred Dorn, Sue Logue, George Logue, and Clarence Bagwell.

In the first story, my great grandmother spoke up for forgiveness and understanding when her husband was killed. In the second, her brother and sister in law and nephew couldn’t let it go. Joe Frank was, by the way, transformed and eventually went free. I recall fondly going hunting with my great uncle and his sons when I was growing up.

I know this story is a little extreme. But the body count for not forgiving is very high. Resentment and anger lead to heart issues, cancer, and basically increased risk for whatever might ail you if your immune system is low. If the cost of forgiving someone seems high, you haven’t totaled the cost of not forgiving.

If unhealed emotional wounds could be seen, the way a fresh deep cut can be seen, then our stores, churches and ball fields would look more like the site of a plane crash. The walking wounded stumbling around in shock, not realizing how life-threatening the wounds truly are.

Don’t deal with your Dad’s alcoholism. Never bring it up to him or anyone else. Instead, just ignore your Dad. Cut him out of your life. Then take every opportunity to make your Mom suffer for allowing that man into your childhood home. Never mention why you act like you do. Just get your revenge slowly by slowly. And when the old pain from the times he hit you or the words he said in drunken anger resurface, just stop by the liquor store on the way home. You’ll be fine.

If you act like nothing happened. Or if you heal just the surface, you will leave the hard work of healing undone. Not forgiving is like drinking poison every day hoping that it will kill the person you don’t want to forgive.

So how do we get to real healing? It takes true, lasting forgiveness. Forgiveness of big hurts takes a process in which you come to see what needs to be forgiven, you come to see the person who hurt you as God sees them, you give up on revenge and you let go of the hurt. What you don’t do is ignore the problem.

Please know that forgiving someone does not mean forgetting, or staying in a place where the person can continue to hurt you. You can forgive someone of abuse even as you move away from him or her.

In forgiving someone who has mistreated you, it is best to start by remembering that person is as human as you are. To take but one example, imagine that your father treated you roughly when you were growing up. You can start by recalling that while he tough on you, he treated you as badly as he himself was treated by his own father. By forgiving your father for the wrongs he did to you, you may break the cycle that began generations earlier.

This forgiveness you offer is an act of the will first. The name that first came to mind may be a person that you have trouble imagining how you can forgive. Try it anyway.

The short prayer I found to assist with this is Bless ____, Change Me. Pray for God to bless the person who hurt you. Pray for God to change you. Saying the words has power. For in the end, it is not through your own force of will that the healing power of forgiveness comes. That healing comes from God’s love, which you can begin to release more fully by saying those words. If you can only say the words and not really believe them, don’t fret. Try it again later. Keep coming back to those words of forgiveness. There is power in releasing the other person from that debt they owe you for the suffering he or she caused.

Here is one last truth about forgiveness. The hardest person to forgive is not the one who caused you the greatest hurt. The hardest person to forgive is your self. Seeing others as God sees them, means also seeing yourself as God sees you.

I promise that I have not said all that needs to be said. What you need is to talk to a priest or therapist. You need to lay the hurts out to someone who can help you sort out how you can begin the process of forgiveness. Then you need to take the steps to let go of the hurts.

Here’s how you’ll know you have succeeded in forgiving others from the heart as Jesus teaches in our Gospel reading. If you truly forgive someone, when the old wound resurfaces, you won’t have the anger, the resentment, the negative energy rise up like it does now. You will remember the pain. You will see how you have grown from finding the lasting healing for yourself. Then you will know you have truly forgiven and you are free.

Amen.

Phase 1 Re-Opening Guidance

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An update from Bishop Logue on re-opening churches for in-person worship

Last week, I announced Phase 1 guidance that will permit rectors (and priests-in-charge) and vestries to make a decision for whether some in-person worship following strict guidance is right for their community at this time. In-person worship may last no longer than 40 minutes. There will be no singing, and all participants must wear masks at all times, and keep more than six feet away from persons not in their own household. As of today, July 1, Phase 1 guidance is now in effect.

You will recall that on March 13, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued a statement in advance of declaring Georgia’s first public health emergency saying it is appropriate for faith-based organizations to consider canceling public events. Though not an order, the request by the governor led Bishop Benhase to suspend gathering for worship. Since then, our clergy and lay leaders have responded faithfully to stay in touch with their parishioners, to find ways to still serve their communities and to offer new options for worship online. We have kept Jesus at the center of our common life while experiencing very different ways of being a community.

What Changed?
Suspending in-person gathering began with a request from the governor’s office; however, that guidance changed in late April. Bishop Benhase and I had worked together on guidelines stating “the number of new COVID-19 cases must have declined for at least 14 straight days” before we would return to in-person worship in any form. This approach was shared with other denominations and may still provide a basis for a congregational decision.

While many areas in the Diocese of Georgia are experiencing a troubling rise in cases and deaths, this is not equally true in every community. Beginning in late May, other denominations in Georgia and elsewhere began a return to in-person worship following strict guidelines. After discussing such a return with other bishops and subject-matter experts, I see that a shift in our practice could allow some churches to gather under new restrictions.

Subsidiarity
The Anglican Communion is organized using the principle of subsidiarity, rather than a strict hierarchy. The principle of subsidiarity emphasizes that many decisions should be handled at diocesan or congregational levels rather than as church-wide matters. One result of this principle is that the Episcopal Church as a whole did not choose to end worship across the Church, leaving such decisions to individual dioceses. In Georgia, our Phase 1 guidance shifts the decisions about whether to offer some smaller gatherings to individual congregations who, through their canonical leadership, will make the best decision for their local circumstances, within the context of the Diocesan guidance. No church must resume in-person worship now, and for many congregations, the situation is such that the safest route will be to continue online worship exclusively. This choice also has my full support.

What your bishop will do
Other than Ordinations, I will not lead in-person worship in July and August. My travel schedule could otherwise make me a vector for spreading the virus if I contract it. I will record and stream worship from churches around the Diocese as I have done in recent weeks from Albany, Hawkinsville, and Thomasville. I will be in smaller congregations that have for the most part not been able to offer many online worships from their church. In this way, your Diocese will offer an option for the many Episcopalians in the Diocese who cannot return to worship for the sake of their health.

Each day I remember our parishioners, lay leaders, and clergy in my prayers. I continue to stay in contact with colleagues in order to learn from other dioceses. And I seek to remain faithful in the spiritual disciplines that feed me, as we are all taxed by these unprecedented times.  

Pax et Bonum,
+Frank

Summer Camp 2020 Update

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Dear Friends,

In May we announced that we would not hold summer camp sessions in June, but we held out hope for some sort of gathering in July. Unfortunately, it has become clear that holding large in-person gatherings of youth from across the Diocese still creates too great a health risk for our young people and those with whom they are in contact. We are sad to announce that there will be no in-person camp in July 2020. 

One of the things that campers routinely name when asked about their favorite parts of camp is the chance to be with one another. While we cannot do so in-person this summer, we are working on a few virtual gatherings in July. If you or your youth are interested in being part of putting this program together, please contact me at jvarner@gaepiscopal.org.

God’s Peace,
Rev. Joshua Varner
Canon for Children & Youth

Injustice and Faithfulness

Habakkuk 2:9–14

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue preached this sermon on June 3, 2020, for a livestream Evening Prayer liturgy from the Diocese of Georgia.

I want to speak this evening from my heart about matters I would rather not disclose in my first week as Bishop of Georgia. But with protests are raging around the country this week following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, we all could use to let some of our own stuff surfaces and let God work on it. I want to be vulnerable with you for a few minutes and share something of my story. 

I grew up saying that my family never owned slaves, so racial unrest is not my problem. I have come to see this quite differently over time. But the truth is whether you think issues of racism is your problem or not, our house is on fire and we are all going to have to work together. I share not to make anyone feel bad, but because this is the best way I know to name how Jesus can bring the reconciliation we all need.

I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1963. It was a divided city in a fractured time and while I did not understand, that context is the one in which I came to learn about race, without even knowing I was being taught. I am old enough to recall seeing water fountains and bathrooms marked “colored” and I never wondered about why that was so. Just as I never wondered why I started school at a Methodist Church when my grandmother ran the school lunchroom at a nearby public school. 

I was taught to use the word colored and never heard my parents saying racial epithets, though that was all around. But my dad did buy and play for us Reb Rebel Records, a racist record label that is best not looked up by those who haven’t heard of it. They were the sort of thing one would find at a Klan Rally and other white supremacist gatherings. I think my father thought they were funny. I don’t know. They were horrifying. They were part of my childhood. I never asked him about the records or why he played them for us. I just know that embedded in my childhood were messages of not sharing pools with colored children and I learned that there was a taint, a stain that I was to avoid. And it would take many years before I ever examined the implicit messages I received. 

I came to see that the theological truth that every human is a child of God and that our differences are a gift, and no one is cursed. But by the time I considered and rejected the underlying premise that different ethnicities make some people inherently better than others, I had a lot of words, phrases, jokes, and songs implanted in my mind. The ideas of race that had been hard-wired into me were in the way if I wanted to love my neighbor as myself. They were separating me from God. And that my friends is sin. Racism was an important founding sin for this nation as we built great cities on the backs of enslaved workers and to do enslave people, the enslaver needed the enslaved to be inferior. Otherwise, how could we treat equals so cruelly?

In our reading from the Habakkuk, the Prophet cries out, “Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed, and found a city on iniquity!” That strikes home in Savannah, which was built on the rising price of and market for cotton. It is well documented that I was consecrated Bishop of Georgia in a church paid for at least in large part by money made from the slave trade and from cotton. The seal of the Diocese on my ring was the personal seal of our first bishop, whose wealth came from generations of enslaved workers. We have a constant reminder in our midst of how painfully wrong people of goodwill can be when they benefit from getting the Gospel wrong. We can also work to get it right. The actual ring was worn by Bishop Stuart as he championed integration in the 1950s and received death threats for it.

Habakkuk is one of those books of the Bible you didn’t get as a child in Sunday Schol. He is what you get when you cross a more traditional prophet like Amos or Isaiah with the not-afraid-to-complain-about-God-to-God’s-face character of Job. Like Amos or Isaiah, Habakkuk is righteously indignant about the moral decay of the world in which he lives. Habakkuk looks at the utter unfairness and sometimes downright evilness he sees all around him and he cries out to God with words that sound like they come from one of David’s Psalms of lament. The prophet says, 

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.”

Habakkuk’s cry seems so very like cries rising in our own nation this week. We were reeling from the COVID-19 crisis and in the midst of that rising unrest at restrictions, three more killings added new names to the list of black and brown people who have been killed while doing things that would not put my life in danger. We should not be surprised when injustice repeats in predictable ways that cries of How long? can take some past to the breaking point.

If you were to read further in Habakkuk, you would learn of a greater vision of justice still coming. We have to wait for true justice. In the meantime, the righteous are to live by faith. But the translation faith is not completely right. If you look it up in a New International Version or New Revised Standard Version of the Bible you’ll see a text note suggesting faithfulness as another translation. Faith is an agreement to a belief. Faithfulness is the practice of being faithful. More than just head knowledge, faithfulness comes with action. God tells Habakkuk that while we await God’s justice, we are to put the love of God into action against the injustice we see. We certainly can do this with outward action, but I have to tell you that I have learned to begin with the injustice I find in my own heart.

There is an image I have of the work I need to do and it is one close to home for me, as it is a vine in my own backyard. My wife, Victoria, and I bought a lovely 1925 bungalow in 2014. Everything inside was perfect. The yard was another story. The family and then the couple that lived there for the forty years took less and less care of the yard as they aged.

Trees grew close to the house and the garage and vines grew everywhere. The thick thorny vines were the worst. The roots had likely grown stronger over the years as the trees and vines put more energy into root systems as the plants got cut off above ground.

In my struggle, I soon found that one can’t just cut the vine. That seems to make the plant happy, or at least no angrier than the grass when it gets cut. You have to dig up the roots. For a single vine, I usually have to dig six inches deep in an area two to four feet out. Underground I find interconnected sweet potato-like tubers. When I dig up the roots, if I don’t get all of it, the root will grow back. Like a sweet potato coming back from a smaller piece potato planted in the garden, so the vines can regenerate from a part of its root system left in the fertile soil. I spent the first several years-worth of Mondays off from work, dirty, covered with sweat, and with what looks like a bushel of sweet potatoes out by the road for the City to pick up. 

When I look at those vines, I realize that stopping sinful actions without addressing the roots of the sin, won’t bring healing. For the soil within me is fertile for sin. If I just cut off the vine, without working to remove the roots, the sin remains, growing and biding its time.

If you were to ask me if I am a racist, I would swear that I don’t have a racist fiber in my being and I want to mean it. I think I have rooted this out of my being and then through my reaction to some event, I recognize my response as arising out of those messages planted deep inside. How is that still part of who I am? Once conscious of my response, I look to root out more of the messages I took in. This isn’t just about issues of race. 

We see something like this in 12 Step Programs that begin with someone admitting that he or she is powerless against their addiction and then turning over the problem to a Higher Power. We know the truth of this and that the Higher Power is Jesus. Even with the Holy Trinity on our side, the struggle is one that is fought day by day, even hour by hour. The roots of the addiction grow so deep and get so entangled in our very core, that this is no easy fight.

I have been on a years-long project to rewire my thinking. Reading books has opened my eyes to see the world through others. I make sure that at least half of the books I read are by persons of color, women, and people living in very different cultures. When not in a pandemic that has made it hard to concentrate, I average a book a week. That steady diet of seeing the world through the eyes of writers like the theologian Kelly Brown Douglas or the searing words of Ta-Nehisi Coates has helped me see the world anew. Mostly, they have given me new ears through which to hear scripture and new eyes to see injustice around me. 

There is so much more that could and should be said about the specific issues in the three killings that caused anger to boil over anew. We must dismantle the system that offers unequal safety and fails too often to render justice. But before I was ready to read Kelly Brown Douglas’ book Stand Your Ground and hear her reflecting on being a black mother in a world far more dangerous for her children than for my girl, I needed to start with the roots of what was implanted in me. 

I don’t know what the struggle is for you. But I know each of us has roots within us that we have left below the surface. We have worked on the outer facade, yet inside the sin remains. In Christ, we have a way forward, for Jesus is the Good Gardener. This means that our connection to God can give us the safe space to do that inner work, to weed out the nasty within that we try to keep hidden. Don’t worry about what may be revealed as we look within for God already knows the content of your heart and loves you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work on some more weeding.

God gave Habakkuk the answer, the righteous are to live by faithfulness. And so day by day I read the Bible and pray. Since Ahmaud Arbery’s killing, I have prayed not just for his family, but also for the father and son who killed him as well as for the man who recorded the video and his family. And Praying for them all daily has become significant to me. Prayer is what I can do. Praying for all involved is what faithfulness looks like for me as I genuinely want Jesus to take the evil done and weave together for the good. 

Somehow, despite the fact that I will always need to root out sin from within, God still gives me the gift of his presence and the power in that work. Grace abounds as the work within me is the work of the Holy Spirit, not something I have to do by force of my own will. For God is both active in the world and present in our hearts. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a role to play in bringing more of the reconciliation for which all creation longs. God’s ongoing action means that the work is not ours alone, and this is Good News in a troubled and troubling week. Amen.

Fasten Your Seatbelts

Acts 2:1-21 and 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue preached this sermon for the Diocese of Georgia livestream on the Feast of Pentecost, May 31, 2020.

Fasten your seatbelts we are in for a wild and wonderful ride. 

We are off the map—out in uncharted territory—
but fear not for God is with us and it is gonna be fun.

Yesterday, I was consecrated as Bishop of Georgia, in the first ordination of a bishop with the congregation taking part almost exclusively through livestream. There was no guide on how to make that liturgy work. Yet the ordination came together beautifully. 

Canon Joshua Varner guided the virtual choirs in three very different hymns. Then there were the congregations getting banner bearers filmed and sent in so that you could see your church in the liturgy. All together more than 100 people were part of the ordination that had just 10 of us taking part in the nave of Christ Church, Savannah, with a livestream crew and organist Tim Hall and Joshua up in the balcony. 

I offer this little look back to yesterday because it demonstrates clearly how when we seek to faithfully follow Jesus in this strange time we are living through, the Holy Spirit shows up and we discover gifts we never knew we had. 

Christians have lived through unprecedented times before and Christ has never left his church or failed his followers. That first Feast of Pentecost, those gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem had no idea what was coming next. They were gathering daily and devoting themselves to prayer trusting God to show up.

In looking at one came next, I turn to our readings. It’s funny how a new context can cause you to see scripture in a new light. In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus breathes on the disciples. 

I never saw that act as risky before. Inspiring, yes, but didn’t Jesus know that while he might have wanted his Movement to go viral, it shouldn’t be taken so literally? And the image of the disciples packed into a room in Jerusalem also struck me as unsafe in a way it never had before. 

The truth is that gathering for worship has always been intimate. We join our voices together. We hug. We share a common cup. These acts connect us more closely with each other even as we draw closer to God. 

We Christians have always been an odd lot. Romans didn’t know what to do with us. The Empire didn’t mind if we had our own God. They just needed us to also worship the Empire. Early Christians would sing hymns praising God and pray for those killing them when they were dragged into the Coliseums and threatened with death if they would not deny Jesus and worship the emperor. In every time, in every culture, Christians at their best have provided a leaven of love. Like the yeast that transforms the bread dough, that love has been transformative. 

We the Diocese of Georgia embark on this new episcopacy in a time unlike any other. For while we faced pandemic in 1918 that shuttered out churches as the Spanish Flu raged, we now have the ability to stay connected in ways unimaginable a century ago. This is challenging I know. I am concerned about those who can’t take part in our online worship, and even for those of us who do, as wonderful as it can be, this way of worshipping is still not the same as our familiar gatherings. 

But I see this is a very fruitful time, for I know that the same Spirit that hovered over creation turned Jesus’ not exactly all-star team of fisherfolk, a tax collector, and the like into witnesses who changed the world. That same Spirit was with us yesterday in the ordination and consecration. 

The Reverend Julia Sierra Reyes brought the word as told me that the Bishop is to keep the main thing the main thing, knowing that the main thing is love that we put in action. She was so very right that my becoming Bishop of Georgia is not about me.

One of the things I discovered from the election until now, is that though three bishops laid hands on me, bishops do not make a bishop. You chose to make me a bishop through an election. Parishioners of the diocese, represented through their delegates and clergy at the convention, trusted that they were doing God’s will in voting for me to become your bishop. Those votes endorsed by the whole church in a consent process are why I am preaching to you online this Pentecost. Yes, the sacrament yesterday mattered as the Bishops asked God to make me a Bishop and the Holy Spirit showed up. Like every sacrament, ordination is not something we do, but something we ask God to do for us and God is faithful.

Paul in writing about the Body of Christ captures a theological truth that is central to how I see leadership. God never ever gives the answer to one person. Not once. As we are created to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, we were literally made for each other, even as we were made for God. And so I am not the one with all the answers. Leading the church is not about that sort of omnicompetent expertise. Instead, we as a body have what we need and as new people are drawn to follow Jesus alongside us, they will bring new gifts. 

Nothing has taught me that we don’t know what lies ahead like the changes that we have faced in these first months of 2020. And nothing has taught me about God’s faithfulness like the ways the Spirit has shown up again and again in these months. 

I don’t have a carefully crafted plan to roll out. I just have a deep commitment to following Jesus ever more faithfully. And I know that together, the challenges we face are not insurmountable because we are keeping Jesus at the center. 

I want you to know that I do not aspire to being a great bishop. The church has suffered enough from those who sought greatness in this call. I intend to follow Sierra’s counsel yesterday to be a faithful bishop. And as a faithful bishop it can’t be about me and it can’t even be about you. 

For if we get loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves right, then what we do together will be for the sake of those who are still stumbling around in the dark needing the light of the love of God shining in the hearts of ordinary people like me and you. Just like on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is ready to turn followers of Jesus into people who make the love of God real, putting love in action. I can’t wait to see what God does with our faithfulness to transform lives and communities. 

We are off the map—out in uncharted territory—
but fear not for God is with us and it is gonna be fun.

Fasten your seatbelts we are in for a wild and wonderful ride. 

Being a Faithful Bishop

The Reverend J. Sierra Reyes preached this sermon via video for the livestreamed ordination and consecration of Frank Sullivan Logue as the 11th Bishop of Georgia.  The Rev. Reyes is Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Denver, CO.

It is an absolute joy to preach on this occasion. 

Before we engage with today’s text and the call before us in Frank Logue as the 11th Bishop of Georgia, I ask for a point of personal privilege. 

I want to acknowledge two people whose faithful witness has brought us to this moment in time. 

First, I want to offer gratitude to the 9th Bishop of Georgia, Henry Louttit, and his wife Jan. Bishop Louttit not only had a vision for an Episcopal church in Kingsland, GA, but provided loving oversight and pastoral care to the church’s founding priest, Frank Logue. Church planting is difficult work. And yet Frank and the people of King of Peace benefited from Bishop Louttit’s leadership. We are here today reaping the fruits of your service among us, Bishop Louttit. As your father did before as Bishop, you have mentored an entire generation of clergy. Thank you.

Next, I want to offer gratitude for the 10th Bishop of Georgia Scott Benhase and his wife, Kelly. On behalf of the Church in Georgia, thank you for your faithfulness as our Bishop over the past decade. You, also, have mentored a generation of clergy, and I am grateful to be among the clergy ordained by your hands. Thank you for equipping us with the tools of congregational leadership and development. Thank you for being a model of courage leadership. And at every turn, teaching us the importance and the necessity of grace. Thank you. 

Georgia is a good strong, and healthy Diocese because of these two Bishops and their predecessors and because of you, the people of God in the Diocese of Georgia. To God be the glory. Thank you. 

And now to Bishop-elect Frank Sullivan Logue. 

Let’s start by stating the obvious.
This is not how I imagined your ordination as Bishop. 
It is beautiful to see how many people are participating in today’s liturgy from every corner of our church. 
But I believe we were all supposed to be physically together to witness this historic day. 

The church would have descended upon Savannah in droves. 

This entire ordination weekend would have been filled of amazing people gathered around tables of hospitality and good Southern food. 

I don’t live in the South anymore, so I was so eager about the food – when I heard Chef John Benhase was cooking, I wanted to look up what was the allowed size of Tupperware one could take upon an airplane, because oh, I was bringing a plate back to Colorado. 

The food would have been that good. 

But that is not how today unfolded. Instead, we huddled over our computer screens and phones to be a witness to God’s work in the church—and the calling forth of Frank Logue as the newest Bishop in Christendom. 

But I’m left with a lingering question. 

I am curious with myself about the emotion that I’m feeling on this day. 

And it hit me. 

I am feeling confident sadness. 
A double consciousness of grief and the healing power of God’s love. Sadness when people or circumstances disappoint us 
and hope in a God that restores, redeems, and renews. 

Confident sadness. 
And this emotion is familiar. 

My childhood summers are marked with the feelings felt leaving Honey Creek.
The sadness at the loss of security, radical acceptance. And not knowing when it would be the next time I’ll see those people circled around the bell tower, sing these songs of joy. 

But the sadness was always accompanied by a sense of hope and anticipatory joy for when I would return to the Creek.  

And confident sadness is where we find the disciples in our Gospel text from the final chapter of the Gospel of Luke. 

Before you dive into any passage from Luke, you have to remember two things:
First, Jesus was poor. Luke more than any other Gospel makes a point of unfolding the origin story of Jesus – that he was born in a manger and that his parents couldn’t afford the suggested animal sacrifice – and qualified for the temple’s equivalent for temporary assistance for needy families. 

And the second thing you need to know about the Lucan Jesus is that his message from day one is that God loves all people – even those who are deemed inferior because of the status quo. 

In Luke, we have an emphasis of Jesus’ ministry being to those who are oppressed, excluded, living on thin ice – those who are on the margins of society. 

Luke describes a God in Jesus Christ that is found in the very places and among the very people who were deemed outside of God’s love and favor. It is as though Luke is saying, “Imagine the farthest place you would expect to find holiness or beauty or power, and there is where Jesus is to be found.”

My favorite verse in all of scripture – is verse 41 found in our Gospel – while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”

That’s my Jesus. Keeping the main thing the main thing. Focusing the disciples.
The disciples were getting all caught up in their joy and disbelief that they needed to be reminded of hospitality, generosity and service. 

We can easily get caught up in the sadness of this time, 
but Jesus needs us to focus on the main thing. 

And this is where our Bishop comes in because the role of Bishop is that focusing leadership. In ensuring that we as the church, keep the main thing the main thing. 

And the main thing is love. 
Love not just a feeling – but love in action.
An action that gives us the strength and courage to continue the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, 
to preserve in resisting evil and asking for repentance when we turn away from God, 
to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. 
To seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself. 
To strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. 

It could be somewhat intimidating preaching the ordination sermon of someone notorious for their ability to preach on such occasions. 
Frank served as the preacher for my ordination to the diaconate and priesthood, 
and as the preacher of my marriage. 
Preaching is a gift God has given Frank.
And there is a generation of clergy who have had Frank preach at their ordinations, 
including his incoming Canon to the Ordinary. 

And what Frank reminds us at every sermon is what I will remind him. Frank, this is not about you. 

We are not here because of your charisma and ability to connect with people from various walks of life. 
Today is not about you. 
This day is about a world in desperate need of hearing the Good News, the life-saving Gospel – the redemptive power of God found in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

All that we do and say and pray and sing during this service and beyond as the Church – 
This is not about Frank, or about us, but what God is doing.

And that is why my sadness is grounded in the confidence of God. 

Bishop-Elect Frank—here is my prayer. 

I pray that you receive the power of the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel boldly. 
Using words when necessary. 
I pray that the same grace you preach for others, you receive for yourself. That you come to know that your worth and value to God is not tied to your position in the church. 
I pray that you enjoy this calling. 
Take pleasure in this next chapter and delight in God’s presence. 
And I pray for the same delight for Victoria and Griffin to experience.

The funny thing Frank is if all these prayers are answered,
 I don’t know if you’ll be a good Bishop. Whatever that means. 
So, my prayer isn’t that you are a good Bishop. 
But that you’ll be a faithful bishop. 

And a being a faithful Bishop is the calling the people of God in South Georgia have affirmed in you. Thank you for saying yes. 

Amen. 

SBA Reporting and Guidance Webinar

Canon Easterlin conducted a webinar for those churches who have received the Paycheck Protection Plan funding. Easterlin was a review of the policy along with advice and guidance on next steps to prepare for the forgiveness of the loan.

To review the PowerPoint presentation with links, click here.

To hear Canon Easterlin’s voiceover for the presentation, click here.

For any additional questions, contact Canon Easterlin.

The Rev. Canon Loren Lasch Named Canon to the Ordinary

Bishop-Elect Frank Logue is pleased to announce the Rev. Canon Loren Lasch has accepted the call to serve the Diocese of Georgia as Canon to the Ordinary.

Logue states, “The process was not an easy one as we considered excellent candidates who could have served well in this role. Each priest considered was someone who I respected highly as the Canon to the Ordinary is the bishop’s deputy, acting on behalf of the bishop in many situations. 

Loren brings a deep love of the Diocese of Georgia together with the fresh perspective of having worked in two other dioceses since she last served here. Loren and I worked together 15 years ago when she interned at King of Peace, Kingsland. I discovered then that she has a heart for serving Jesus matched with an array of gifts that have made her a fine priest. In the years since, she has added experiences that make her perfect to serve as my chief counselor and the number two person in leading our Diocese.”

The Rev. Canon Loren Lasch grew up an Episcopalian in the small town of Gordonsville in central Virginia. In high school she moved to Savannah, where she attended the Collegiate Church of St. Paul the Apostle and was very active in Youth Programs in the Diocese of Georgia. She first felt her call to the priesthood as a Candidate at Happening #52, and her time in Youth Programs and serving as a camp counselor at Honey Creek was incredibly formative. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!), where she was active with the Episcopal campus ministry.  Sponsored and supported by St. Paul’s, Savannah, she received her MDiv from the Virginia Theological Seminary and was ordained a priest by Bishop Louttit in 2008. She then spent five years serving at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Augusta, Georgia, during which time she met and married her husband, Ian. They moved to Northern Virginia a few years later, where Loren served at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC while Ian attended the Virginia Theological Seminary (sponsored by St. Augustine’s, Augusta). From there they moved to Missouri, where Loren has been serving in the Offices of the Bishop since 2016, first as Youth Missioner and then as Canon for Christian Formation.  Loren and Ian have two adorable sons, Elias (5) and Ezra (3).  

“I am thrilled to be returning home to the Diocese of Georgia!  So much of my formation has taken place among the wonderful people of this diocese, and I am so thankful to be able to be in ministry with you all as Canon to the Ordinary.  I am really looking forward to working with Bishop-elect Logue and the incredible team at Diocesan House, and my husband, Ian, is so excited to serve as Rector of St. Francis of the Islands. My family and I can’t wait to join you all very soon!”  

Canon Lasch starts her new call on July 1, 2020. 

A Different Kind of Summer

,

The Rev. Joshua Varner, Canon Missioner for Children and Youth

Way back a long time ago, in March, I remember wishing that by April things would be back to normal and we could forge ahead and hold our beloved Summer Camp at Honey Creek, just like always!  

But as we have learned more and more about this particular virus, including the need for social distancing, the current scarcity of safe and reliable testing, and about how dangerous the virus can be, it has become clear that we cannot safely hold summer camp the way it has always been. In order to get ready for camp to begin in early June we would need to know now that the capacity for testing would definitely be in place and that we would not need to maintain social distancing, to name just two things. Right now, we just can’t promise that.  

Therefore, we are announcing that the Diocese of Georgia will not hold any in-person camps in June 2020. In addition, if it is possible to meet in-person in July 2020, those sessions will look very different from any camp the Diocese of Georgia has ever offered. In the meantime, we are looking at what can be offered in virtual space to foster connections between campers and with Honey Creek. We are trying to think creatively, and hope that you will join us!  

As we move forward we will be asking for feedback from parents about what conditions would need to be in place, both in the outside world and at Honey Creek itself, to help them feel comfortable sending their children to camp. This survey will come out in multiple venues, so be on the lookout starting next week.  

Honey Creek and Diocesan staff will be in direct contact with families who have already registered their children for camp regarding refunds.   

Honey Creek holds a special place in the heart of this Diocese in part because it is a safe place for our children. This decision about camp has been made with that safety in mind. Please know that every current and former and future camper is in our prayers now and in the weeks and months to come. We are all “waiting with eager longing” (Romans 8:19) for the time when we can gather together in person.  

Please contact me at  jvarner@gaepiscopal.org with your questions. 

God’s Vision – A Sermon for March 29

Bishop-Elect Frank Logue gave this sermon for a liturgy from his home live-streamed on March 29, 2020.

Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 11:1-45

The hand of the Lord came upon the Prophet Ezekiel. And by the spirit, he finds himself in a valley filled with dry bones. It is as if he is set down by God at the site of a great and terrible battle, years after the fighting ended. Everywhere he looks are the long lifeless corpses of the fallen. God asks, “Mortal, can these bones live?” The prophet says, “O Lord God, you know.”

It is as if he says, I know that with you all things are possible, but this looks bleak. It is a gruesome scene ready-made for movie special effects as God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. Ezekiel does as God commands and he hears suddenly, a noise, a rattling, as bones come together bone to its bone, each finding its accustomed mate as sinews join them together and flesh comes upon them. But there is no breath in them. Then God urges and Ezekiel prophesies again saying, “Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon this slain, that they may live.” And he prophesied as God commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

And as Ezekiel looks over a vast multitude of living breathing humans who had been but dried bones minutes earlier, God tells him the meaning of the vision: “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”

We need to recall the context of God’s vision offered to Ezekiel. The prophet writes around 622 years before Jesus. Decades earlier the Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Israel with its ten of the twelve clans of Israel. As Ezekiel takes up the mantel of prophet five years after the Babylonians took Judah’s king, Jehoiachin, into exile. This is the beginning of perhaps the greatest saga of the Hebrew Bible not to make it into the greatest hits collection. Children’s story Bibles don’t usually set the stage for us. But all of Jewish and Christian history and tradition are marked by this cataclysmic event. Ezekiel and the Prophet Jeremiah will spend years crying out for Israel to turn back to God and live, but the rulers will put their trust in a political alliance with Egypt and remain faithless.

Then 587 years before Christ, Jerusalem falls in a siege. The Babylonians destroy the Temple, leaving only a heap of ruins. Most of the people are taken in exile to Babylon. A remnant of the poor is left in the land, but the nation of Israel is vanquished.

Ezekiel’s dry bones coming to life is God’s vision for people who have lost hope. He shows this impossible scene of long desiccated bodies coming back to life as a sign that God can and will bring his people back to the land of Israel. God says, “O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

This prophecy of the dry bones came to be so significant in Judaism not because the prophet offered a vision of what God might do, but because the miracle happened. Decades more passed and the Persian king Cyrus the Great ruled over what had been Babylon. And 539 before Jesus, the foreign ruler sent the exiles back. Ezra builds the second temple in Jerusalem. The very Temple where Jesus teaches and turns over the tables of the money changers is itself a vast sign that nothing is impossible with God.

Israel had been conquered. When the Babylonians destroyed a country, there was no coming back. But the dry bones did live, the people were born anew and lived on their own soil once more. I can’t overstate the importance of Israel’s defeat and later return. The historical fact that Jerusalem fell and the people in exile came back to rebuild the Temple was a central part of the identity and hopes of Israel in Jesus’ lifetime.

Our readings place this powerful vision alongside Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. There is no coming back from the grave. Everyone knows that. And yet, like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, we know Lazarus too did rise.

Jesus cries, “Lazarus, come out!” and the dead man came out from his tomb, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

This reading comes the Sunday before Palm Sunday as John’s Gospel shows that this miracle was one too many for those in leadership. John’s Gospel describes the scene a week later when Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha of Bethany with their brother Lazarus,

“When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.” (John 12:9-11)

The plot to kill Jesus gets serious with the miracle of bringing Lazarus back to life.

Both of these readings offer us God’s vision, the way the Holy Trinity views the world. The way God looks at the world, resurrection is always possible. The wind, breath, spirit of God can always flow through our hearts, offering us hope and healing and new life. Our current situation is not so impossible as that faced captive Israel in Babylon or Lazarus entombed for four days.

Sheltering in place, unable to gather in-person to worship in our churches is not easy. I don’t know about you, but March has been the longest decades I have lived through. Yet, though you and I might not have planned for how we would respond to a pandemic, our faith in Jesus has long prepared us well. We are, after all, a people who have praised God even at the grave at every funeral I have attended. We are an Easter people, even in Lent. But we have never been an Easter people in anything but a Good Friday world. We have always been in a world where hope can be hard to hang on to if what you can see is all there is.

Sheltering in place reveals that what is seen is temporary while what is unseen is eternal. I have watched as lay people in our congregations have supported one another by phone and Facebook alike. I have seen the faithful responses of our deacons, priest, and the bishop as we have found ways to be the Body of Christ even while unable to gather in large groups. I have been overjoyed to see the creative ways we have still offered food to the hungry and hope to the hopeless.

When I was doing the groundwork that would lead to founding King of Peace Episcopal Church, I wanted an image that would illustrate what sort of peace we are talking about when we declare Jesus to be the King of Peace. The swirls in the cross represent the very real chaos in the world, even in our own lives. If you were as small as a period at the end of a sentence on typed page and you were placed in the center of that cross at right, you would swear that everything was out of control. Chaos would be all you could see. But looking at the cross from a distance, you see that none of that chaos extends beyond the outline of the cross. 

The design of the cross looks like that to show what is declared in the Bible and proved by life experience. No matter how bad it gets; your life will not get beyond God. In all situations and circumstances, you are not too far gone for God. You are always in God’s easy reach. Nothing in this world is beyond the love of God as revealed through Jesus’ death on the cross. No, this world does not seem peaceful, but yes, Jesus is the King of Peace. The king of a peace which passes all understanding. Nothing in your life is beyond God’s redeeming, not because you earn or deserve grace, but because God loves you. Everything that needs to be done, God has done.

As we gather online, we show that not only can nothing separate us from the love of God as found in Jesus, but Christian community is real and binding, even when we can’t be together. Yesterday, I gathered online and by phone with a group from Christ Church in Dublin, Georgia. They had a parishioner dying in an assisted living facility and through concerns of spreading the virus, they could not be with her physically. But we knew that God was with her and was with us as we prayed. So we prayed the Litany at the Time of Death. Often called Last Rites, this is a prayer not just for a priest to pray, but any of us can pray it for someone near death. And as we prayed together, each of us in our own homes, but united in prayer, what we experienced was the very real presence of the Triune God who brought back Israel from exile in Babylon, who raised Lazarus to new life, and who never gave up on loving us even when the cost of that love was death on a cross.

Jesus taught us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are staying in our own homes out of that love for the most vulnerable among us. We are showing love by slowing the spread of this virus out of concern for the heroes in scrubs who are placing their own health at risk in order to alleviate the suffering of those who have contracted the virus. But our physical separation has not closed our churches. The church is the people of God, and the people of God are gonna be fine.

So, wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Pray for those who are sick and for those caring for them. But be not afraid, for the Spirit that can give life to dry bones will still breathe new life into you and me giving us a peace beyond understanding.

Amen.

Injustice and Faithfulness

The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue preached this sermon on June 3, 2020 for a livestream Evening Prayer liturgy from the Diocese of Georgia.

I want to speak this evening from my heart about matters I would rather not disclose in my first week as Bishop of Georgia. But with protests are raging around the country this week following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, we all could use to let some of our own stuff surface and let God work on it. I want to be vulnerable with you for a few minutes and share something of my story. 

I grew up saying that my family never owned slaves, so racial unrest is not my problem. I have come to see this quite differently over time. But the truth is whether you think issues of racism is your problem or not, our house is on fire and we are all going to have to work together. I share not to make anyone feel bad, but because this is the best way I know to name how Jesus can bring the reconciliation we all need.

I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1963. It was a divided city in a fractured time and while I did not understand, that context is the one in which I came to learn about race, without even knowing I was being taught. I am old enough to recall seeing water fountains and bathrooms marked “colored” and I never wondered about why that was so. Just as I never wondered why I started school at a Methodist Church when my grandmother ran the school lunchroom at a nearby public school. 

I was taught to use the word colored and never heard my parents saying racial epithets, though that was all around. But my dad did buy and play for us Reb Rebel Records, a racist record label that is best not looked up by those who haven’t heard of it. They were the sort of thing one would find at a Klan Rally and other white supremacist gatherings. I think my father thought they were funny. I don’t know. They were horrifying. They were part of my childhood. I never asked him about the records or why he played them for us. I just know that embedded in my childhood were messages of not sharing pools with colored children and I learned that there was a taint, a stain that I was to avoid. And it would take many years before I ever examined the implicit messages I received. 

I came to see that the theological truth that every human is a child of God and that our differences are a gift, and no one is cursed. But by the time I considered and rejected the underlying premise that different ethnicities make some people inherently better than others, I had a lot of words, phrases, jokes, and songs implanted in my mind. The ideas of race that had been hard-wired into me were in the way if I wanted to love my neighbor as myself. They were separating me from God. And that my friends is sin. Racism was an important founding sin for this nation as we built great cities on the backs of enslaved workers and to do enslave people, the enslaver needed the enslaved to be inferior. Otherwise, how could we treat equals so cruelly?

In our reading from the Habakkuk, the Prophet cries out, ““Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed, and found a city on iniquity!” That strikes home in Savannah, which was built on the rising price of and market for cotton. It is well documented that I was consecrated Bishop of Georgia in a church paid for at least in large part by money made from the slave trade and from cotton. The seal of the Diocese on my ring was the personal seal of our first bishop, whose wealth came from generations of enslaved workers. We have a constant reminder in our midst of how painfully wrong people of good will can be when they benefit from getting the Gospel wrong. We can also work to get it right. The actual ring was worn by Bishop Stuart as he championed integration in the 1950s and received death threats for it.

Habakkuk is one of those books of the Bible you didn’t get as a child in Sunday Schol. He is what you get when you cross a more traditional prophet like Amos or Isaiah with the not-afraid-to-complain-about-God-to-God’s-face character of Job. Like Amos or Isaiah, Habakkuk is righteously indignant about the moral decay of the world in which he lives. Habakkuk looks at the utter unfairness and sometimes downright evilness he sees all around him and he cries out to God with words that sound like they come from one of David’s Psalms of lament. The prophet says, 

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.”

Habakkuk’s cry seems so very like cries rising in our own nation this week. We were reeling from the COVID-19 crisis and in the midst of that rising unrest at restrictions three more killings added new names to the list of black and brown people who have been killed while doing things that would not put my life in danger. We should not be surprised when injustice repeats in predictable ways that cries of How long? can take some past to the breaking point.

If you were to read further in Habakkuk, you would learn of a greater vision of justice still coming. We have to wait for the true justice. In the meantime, the righteous are to live by faith. But the translation faith is not completely right. If you look it up in a New International Version or New Revised Standard Version of the Bible you’ll see a text note suggesting faithfulness as another translation. Faith is agreement to a belief. Faithfulness is the practice of being faithful. More than just head knowledge, faithfulness comes with action. God tells Habakkuk that while we await God’s justice, we are to put love of God into action against the injustice we see. We certainly can do this with outward action, but I have to tell you that I have learned to begin with the injustice I find in my own heart.

There is an image I have of the work I need to do and it is one close to home for me, as it is a vine in my own backyard. My wife, Victoria, and I bought a lovely 1925 bungalow in 2014. Everything inside was perfect. The yard was another story. The family and then couple that lived there for the forty years took less and less care of the yard as they aged.

Trees grew close to the house and garage and vines grew everywhere. The thick thorny vines were the worst. The roots had likely grown stronger over the years as the trees and vines put more energy into root systems as the plants got cut off above ground.

In my struggle, I soon found that one can’t just cut the vine. That seems to make the plant happy, or at least no angrier than the grass when it gets cut. You have to dig up the roots. For a single vine, I usually have to dig six inches deep in an area two to four feet out. Underground I find interconnected sweet potato like tubers. When I dig up the roots, if I don’t get all of it, the root will grow back. Like a sweet potato coming back from a smaller piece potato planted in the garden, so the vines can regenerate from a part of its root system left in the fertile soil. I spent the first several years-worth of Mondays off from work, dirty, covered with sweat, and with what looks like a bushel of sweet potatoes out by the road for the City to pick up. 

When I look at those vines, I realize that stopping sinful actions without addressing the roots of the sin, won’t bring healing. For the soil within me is fertile for sin. If I just cut off the vine, without working to remove the roots, the sin remains, growing and biding its time.

If you were to ask me if I am a racist, I would swear that I don’t have a racist fiber in my being and I want to mean it. I think I have rooted this out of my being and then through my reaction to some event, I recognize my response as arising out of those messages planted deep inside. How is that still part of who I am? Once conscious of my response, I look to root out more of the messages I took in. This isn’t just about issues of race. 

We see something like this in 12 Step Programs that begin with someone admitting that he or she is powerless against their addiction and then turning over the problem to a Higher Power. We know the truth of this and that the Higher Power is Jesus. Even with the Holy Trinity on our side, the struggle is one that is fought day by day, even hour by hour. The roots of the addiction grow so deep and get so entangled in our very core, that this is no easy fight.

I have been on a years long project to rewire my thinking. Reading books has opened my eyes to seeing the world through others. I make sure that at least half of the books I read are by persons of color, women, and people living in very different cultures. When not in a pandemic that has made it hard to concentrate, I average a book a week. That steady diet of seeing the world through the eyes of writers like the theologian Kelly Brown Douglas or the searing words of Ta-Nehisi Coates have helped me see the world anew. Mostly, they have given me new ears through which to hear scripture and new eyes to see injustice around me. 

There is so much more that could and should be said about the specific issues in the three killings that caused anger to boil over anew. We must dismantle the system that offers unequal safety and fails too often to render justice. But before I was ready to read Kelly Brown Douglas’ book Stand Your Ground and hear her reflecting on being a black mother in a world far more dangerous for her children than for my girl, I needed to start with the roots of what was implanted in me. 

I don’t know what the struggle is for you. But I know each of us has roots within us that we have left below the surface. We have worked on the outer facade, yet inside the sin remains. In Christ we have a way forward, for Jesus is the Good Gardener. This means that our connection to God can give us the safe space to do that inner work, to weed out the nasty within that we try to keep hidden. Don’t worry about what may be revealed as we look within for God already knows the content of your heart and loves you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work on some more weeding.

God gave Habakkuk the answer, the righteous are to live by faithfulness. And so day by day I read the Bible and pray. Since Ahmaud Arbery’s killing, I have prayed not just for his family, but also for the father and son who killed him as well as for the man who recorded the video and his family. And Praying for them all daily has become significant to me. Prayer is what I can do. Praying for all involved is what faithfulness looks like for me as I genuinely want Jesus to take the evil done and weave together for the good. 

Somehow, despite the fact that I will always need to root out sin from within, God still gives me the gift of his presence and the power in that work. Grace abounds as the work within me is the work of the Holy Spirit, not something I have to do by force of my own will. For God is both active in the world and present in our hearts. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a role to play in bringing more of the reconciliation for which all creation longs. God’s ongoing action means that the work is not ours alone, and this is Good News in a troubled and troubling week. Amen.