A Note from the Rector: A Reflection from Bishop Marty Stebbins
A Note from the Rector:
A Reflection from Bishop Marty Stebbins that she requested be shared with all parishioners:
In light of SCOTUS’s multiple actions this week and their likely vote on the separation of church and state next week:
I protest! I am wailing as the women of our ancestors did as injustice was forced upon them. And it is not just the women, but all the people whose voices are considered less than. I mourn for the myth of freedom and justice for which I thought the country of my birth strived for almost 250 years. Many of my ancestors fled England for their lives because their Christianity did not meet the definition of the state majority, and the state was more than willing to remove any rights from them to the point of torture and death. I cry out as the women who saw a Jesus that recognized them as people be tortured for his beliefs and be murdered on the cross with the collusion of state and church. It does not surprise me that people have fled religious organizations when I witness what I am seeing now. The Jesus that I know has been distorted into an instrument of hatred and exclusion. A political system that fretted about the possibility of sharia law being used within its sphere of influence is in the process of creating exactly that, except with the name Christian attached to it. My own mother church in England had both an ecclesiastical court and a state court in its early days. If you were arrested, you prayed that you would not fall into the hands of the former, for there was no mercy to be found there. When the rule of law is being administered with without mercy and without empathy, there is no justice.
I mourn for an Earth that will survive me, but whose climate change will be corrective as so much life will be lost in starvation, heat stress and disease. I mourn for a country that gave me birth and raised me with the concept of “Duty, Honor, Country” but has always been willing to deny me access to that. I mourn for my loss of innocence.
I mourn for those who are ignorant of their rights. I mourn for those who know their rights but have them denied. I mourn for those whose lives will be forever changed by human violence. I mourn for those whose hubris causes them to do evil in the sight of God. I mourn for the child born into a world that valued its life before birth but places a monetary value on it as soon as it takes its first breath. I mourn for that child who may never know unconditional love and learns that all life is transactional and that God is vengeful and full of hatred of any human frailty. I mourn for those who may fall into the hands of such a child that grows up with that. The darkness that falls on such would wish us to be silenced and to acquiesce in fear.
As I mourn, I know that I am to have no fear, for Christ is alive. And in Christ nothing is lost. But I am still attached to those I love and fear to lose. I have hope in the resurrection to eternal life. I know that all are offered reconciliation at all times. I know that prayer is our most powerful tool of transformation and transcendence. I know that the Holy Spirit resides in all the faithful in Christ. Hope is our tool. Prayer is our action. Our voices will never cease praising God. God does not forsake us and is always with us.
Jesus said, in response to those who called him a demon, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matt 10:25b-28
~ Bishop Marty Stebbins