Come dear Christ and be among us, helping us to heed your invitation to draw near to you and receive your healing touch. Amen.
Diocese of Olympia, you made it! After the resignation of Bishop Greg Rickel over two years ago, being shepherded by Provisional Bishop Melissa Skelton over 18 months, conducting an intentional and Spirit-led 14 month search process followed by a quick 4 months between election and consecration, and now with 42 days since Holy Cross Day—but really, who’s counting?—it’s finally all done! We’ve made it!
One of the first questions I was asked when I arrived at D-House in early August concerned the theme for this Convention. The pre-planning team suggested hearing from Isaiah 43: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Not a bad guess at all given the beginning of this new era of ministry. But I had spent the previous month packing boxes, sorting through kitchen gadgets, purging books, and saying goodbye to a congregation that I deeply loved. And I had just arrived after a 6 day road trip of over 3000 miles with my son Noah from Boston to Seattle on America’s longest interstate all while having a dog in tow. When I was asked, I wasn’t even sure what timezone my body was in. “What about Jesus saying, ‘Come to me and I will give you rest?’” I said, not fully comprehending yet that when a bishop suggests something, it’s pretty much taken as a final response. And so here we are, with this lesson from Matthew’s gospel front and center and a call from your new bishop that focuses less on boisterously singing “Come labor on,” and more on hitting the pause button and taking a deep breath.
Because we need it. It’s been a whirlwind, friends. And not just since Greg resigned. We’ve been in the vortex since at least Friday, March 13, 2020 when the world shut down for Covid. 241 weeks and 1 day ago, for those of you keeping score at home. So can we just stop for 10 seconds right now and in silence take a couple of deep breaths?
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says to his disciples and to us. If I were to ask right now what those heavy burdens might be I’d hear things like the stress of running a parish post-Covid or financial realities or the rising anxiety in our kids or the ongoing conflicts in the Holy Land and Ukraine or not having enough volunteers to run a Sunday morning or racial distress or the climate crisis or a presidential election that can’t come soon enough except for what we fear might happen after. We’re bone-tired and the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and we really don’t know how it’s all going to play out, but it doesn’t look good.
A report came out last week from the Hartford Institute of Research which detailed how many of the clergy in America are burned out. It’s titled, “I’m exhausted all the time.” This was not necessarily news to me as a clergy person in America, but rather confirmation that we need rest and healing due to the ongoing stress in our world. And not just those of us who are ordained, mind you, but lay folk too. We’re all constantly connected to our work, available on cell phones and email 24/7, and we’re trying to run our parishes like we always have. It’s all a bit much.
“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.” Jesus invites us to follow him. To learn from him. To become his disciples. But we have to respond to him. If I were to name the most significant issue for us as the Church, it’s that we’ve become too familiar with the way of Christendom—of the Church of the Empire—and not familiar enough with the way of Jesus. In Christendom, we’ve connected the values of our world with how we understand success within our congregations. In this framework, when two or three are gathered together, we’re considering how to shutter the building and make better use of the land. As such, we’ve created a culture that believes congregational development is simply a way to get young families through the front doors so they can pledge and help out with the Christmas Fair. We’ve established a polity that links vitality to budgets and Sunday attendance, rather than asking about discipleship. We’ve grown accustomed to maintaining the status quo rather than expecting to address the ways in which are lives might need to change to become more aligned with the gospel.
Friends, the way of Jesus is a way of transformation. Of saying to our 24/7 culture that we will make time for regular sabbath rest. Of laying aside our rampant consumerism in order to generously offer gifts for the spread of Christ’s realm. Of refusing to believe that our self worth is inherently linked to the things that we get done. Of coming each week to the table so that we can receive Christ’s body and blood and find renewal and restoration and hope. That’s what the Church is really about. Of letting go of our idols of security and power, and casting our lot with the One who had no place to lay his head, dined with the outcasts and the marginalized, and ultimately died because the Empire deemed him a threat. “Come to me and I will give you rest,” he says to us. “For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” That’s the Church we long to be.
But we must be honest that the Church has not always been a place where all people could find rest. I’ve only been in this Diocese a short time, and already I’ve heard stories of how we’ve not always been receptive of others, never mind the larger history of Christianity. Historically, we Christians have determined who’s in and who’s out based on some poor misreading of Scripture or wanting to remain in favor with the powers that be. These past weeks I’ve heard how leaders in our Diocese chose to close historically Black churches during the Civil Rights Era because they somehow weren’t diverse enough. There’s a painful reality of the Japanese internment in Western Washington, and how we never reestablished the mission of St. Paul’s in the Kent Valley after that time. While we’ve not yet found evidence of our Diocese establishing indigenous boarding schools, we know full well that many of those who were in the majority at that time saw such schools as a good and proper way to assimilate indigenous children to become more anglo in their lives and beliefs through means of control, abuse, and fear. LGBTQ folk have a long history of being traumatized by the Church and of not finding a place of welcome even in our own denomination. Women have been told that they are too emotional or too je ne sais quoi to be in ordained ministry, and even now within our denomination they are paid less than their male colleagues while doing similar work. While we don’t officially track such things here that I know of, I’d not be surprised by similar results. Finally, BIPOC clergy often experience micro- and macro- aggressions within their own congregations by people who might mean well but remain somewhat naive to this all.
Which is a lot to take in, I know, but we cannot begin to find rest for ourselves if we do not name with honesty and integrity what has been and what remains true for beloved people in our midst. So let me as your bishop say this to those who have been impacted: I am sorry. We were wrong. We harmed you, your forebears, or people who were like you in such a way that rest and healing were never really an option. Those who preceded me in this office did not always fully offer the love and care of Jesus, and my own efforts will be lacking too due to the sad reality that white supremacy is baked into the system. It’s in the DNA of how we have done church in this country for centuries, and how we do it still. And it is a sin. So please forgive me and this Diocese of ours as we try our best to pattern our common life after the way of Jesus. And please know that this is not just a way for me to quickly pivot and move on to other things, but rather to begin an era of listening and hearing hard truths and seeking repentance and an establishment of relationships in a new way, so that all of God’s children might fully experience the rest and care offered by Jesus through the ministries and congregations of our Diocese.
We heard this morning of the call to engage in a weekly sabbath as part of the Ten Commandments. The Israelites were to remember that they had once been enslaved by oppressors who required a 7 day work culture in Egypt, demanding that they never rest. God wanted them to not forget that God had delivered them from that culture of excessive work and so in their new life no one in their community—not even any of their animals—should be engaged in production on the sabbath. Frequently in the Torah, a similar injunction was given of resting croplands and fields every 7th year. After 6 years of planting, the field was to lay fallow for the sabbath year, allowing whatever would naturally spring up to feed both humans and animals. Taking a rest would be good both for human beings and animals one day each week, and for the land every seventh year.
Within the past month, two major hurricanes struck the Southeastern United States, causing at least $130 billion of damage and killing more than 260 people. Both were deemed “storms of the century,” while striking barely two weeks apart. Clean up work will take years, and recent reports detail that some in the mountains are still without power and clean water. The root cause of these storms is climate change, with warmer water temperatures causing quicker storm development, while also causing the atmosphere to hold more moisture. There are other consequences of the climate crisis—wildfires, loss of species, increased drought, excessive heat domes, mudslides and flooding—and the impact has been and will be greater on the poor, and especially those in the developing world.
When I met last month with Bishop Ernie Moral of the Episcopal Diocese of the Southern Philippines, we discussed our Carbon Offset Cooperative Mission partnership. In this program, we here in Olympia are encouraged to send funds to that Diocese so church members there in the Philippines can plant trees on our behalf to mitigate our use of fossil fuels. The congregations there have made planting trees a sacred event, connected with different seasons and liturgies throughout the year. It’s an amazing program, but I was struck by one question from Bishop Ernie. He asked if we were doing anything as a Diocese to curb our use of fossil fuels beyond switching out light bulbs, or perhaps installing solar panels. Were we limiting our consumption in any way, or were we just sending them money when we remembered to do so as an act of assuaging our guilt?
It was not an easy question for me to answer, because it doesn’t seem to me that we are doing enough. We’ve not engaged in consistent ways to limit our carbon use nor are we seeking to collectively become carbon neutral within a certain timeframe on our own. Bishop Ernie reminded me that the rise in sea level and increase in storms is having an immediate and lasting impact on their lives causing much harm and destruction. And yet, he remains hopeful for the future of the church.
The founder of the Green Sabbath Project, Jonathan Schorsch suggests that we intertwine the call for Sabbath rest and the need for climate justice. He seeks to encourage all people—and especially those of us of the Abrahamic faiths—to observe a weekly sabbath and minimize our impact on the environment. The call of his organization is simple: don’t drive, don’t shop, and don’t build during one day each week. It’s the easiest way to reduce carbon use by 14% without any scientific, economic, or technological solutions. It’s simply behavioral, and one that is mandated in Scripture.
On the Green Sabbath website, they display a quote from James Gustave Speth, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He declares, “I used to think that the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with thirty years of good science we could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.” We need to offer rest for our world by changing our hearts and consuming less and resting from our labors one day each week, and we can do so simply by modifying our behavior. By changing our ways.
When it comes down to it, that really is what our lesson from Matthew is about. Jesus tells us to come to him in order to lay down the heavy burdens we’ve been carrying so we might find rest. And then subsequently, we are to take his yoke upon us as we learn from him. Yokes are not something we see much in our industrialized and technologically centered world. Often they appear in photos of an agricultural-focused community with two oxen joined together by a wooden crosspiece as they prepare a field for planting or pull a load. The animals work in unison, able to accomplish much more together than they ever could have alone as they are bound to one another and directed by the one who cares for them. When we bind ourselves to Jesus, our ways of doing things, of looking out for ourselves, of satiating the desires to consume more, all of it comes under his direction and care so that we might choose a better way.
Jesus says that his yoke is easy and the burden we will pull is light. It doesn’t require much of us, but it does require something. He asks that we commit to his way of love and become connected both to one another and to him. That we recognize that what we do in our own lives matters to others and to our world. That the call to discipleship—to following him—will both revive our weary souls and also come with a cost.
And frankly, I think we long to take on that costly discipleship. To follow the way of Jesus and to make a significant impact in our communities and in our world. Christendom is in fact dying, and its downfall is being reported all over. It’s hard for some of us to imagine any other way of being church and so the fear of survival sets in. Yet Jesus is offering us a different way. To come and find healing from him. To restore our souls, and address the brokenness in our relationships with others and with our world.
And that is work we in the Diocese of Olympia are deeply committed to. I am very happy to announce this morning that we have received a substantial gift allowing us to acquire Harmony Hill, the retreat center located adjacent to our own St. Andrew’s House in Union on the Hood Canal. Harmony Hill has long offered programing and retreats for those impacted by cancer to find healing and wholeness. This new ministry of our Diocese will be called The Sacred Waters Center providing healing for ourselves, for our divisions, and for Creation itself. Dan Oberg, the director of St. Andrew’s House, will be our interim director of Sacred Waters. His steady hand will allow us to continue the work at St. Andrew’s as a place for renewal, while also allowing the programs offered by Harmony Hill to continue, and so we might begin to dream with both our Canon for Multicultural Ministries Carla Robinson and our Multicultural Ministries Coordinator Adrienne Elliott and a host of others from the Circles about what the future holds. As you might imagine, this did not just materialize in the last couple of weeks when I became your bishop. As such, my deepest gratitude goes to Archbishop Melissa Skelton, Bishop Provisional, along with many others who worked over the past many months to make Sacred Waters a reality. It will be a place of refuge, healing, and hope in the years ahead.
Finally, we need the support of each other in the midst of our world. One of the first things I plan to do as your bishop is to more fully establish our 10 regions as places of connection and shared ministry. With many of our parishes being led by a single clergy person, it is important for the clergy in each region to gather regularly for conversation, prayer, and support. Additionally, leaders of our congregations both lay and ordained can benefit and learn from each other in order to help us more faithfully become disciples of Jesus. Relationships are key in all of our endeavors, providing us with companions on the way, and people who can help us shoulder the load. Jesus’ yoke is one that we share with one another as we journey through the chances and changes of this life. That way is often marked by difficulty and pain, and so we can help each other remember that Jesus calls us to come to him.
Because we need that healing touch from Jesus. We need to draw near to him in order to find renewal, because we’re carrying a lot, and we’re bone-tired. So on this day I invite us to come to one another for prayers of healing and to this table to be fed by Jesus. In doing so, we stake our lives on the truth that he came so that we—and our world—might have hope and joy and renewal and peace and life. He came so that we might find rest for our souls, both now and in the age to come. May it be so.
