GENEralities

This is my second day back at work after a wonderful holiday. Jude and I got to preside at our son Anthony’s wedding in Calgary at Holy Trinity, a brand-new Anglican church actively reaching out to a brand-new and rapidly growing area of the city. He is the music leader there and his new wife, Kristy, is one of their youth leaders. You’ll be seeing Forward Motion, his new worship CD, at the BookNook soon. I think it’s great, but then I’m his dad. The wedding was a true worship service. It lasted for an hour and forty minutes. The wedding party boogied down the aisle out of the church to The Happy Song. It was great and it gives me hope for the Anglican church.

On the other hand, as I write this, the Primates (the chief bishops) of the Anglican church are meeting in London to decide what to do about the election of an openly homosexual man as a bishop in New Hampshire and about whether same-sex relationships ought to be blessed by the church. Divisions are deep and passions are high. I fear for my church.

And yet, as it is in a marriage, so it is with my relationship with Jesus through the church; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish for the rest of my life according to God’s holy law. No matter what.

Still, I find it hard to re-enter the conflict, tension and extremes after such a lovely wedding and holiday. But then as Robert Runcie, past Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote “We are not here to avoid conflict, but to redeem it. At the heart of our faith is a cross and not, as in some religions, an eternal calm.”

Amen.

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