The Pastoral Address of
The Right Reverend Michael B. Curry
The 192nd Annual Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina
On January 18, 2008

Not a Revival, a New Church

The year 2017 will mark the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Diocese of North Carolina. On April 24th, 1817 a small group of nine met in New Bern, North Carolina and organized what they called “The Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina.” Their action was more than a moment in institutional history, it marked the transition from a failing past into a new missionary future.

After the Revolutionary War the Episcopal Church in North Carolina experienced a dramatic decline and, quite frankly, nearly ceased to exist. The Reverend Dr. Sarah McCulloh Lemmon, of blessed memory, in an essay on the decline of the Church in North Carolina in this period, concludes her essay with these words. “The lack of continuity in the growth and development of the Church in North Carolina is striking. It is as if the Church ceased to breathe in 1776 and slowly died. When the Diocese was organized in 1817, it was not a revival; it was a new Church.” That’s what I want to talk about in this address, not a revival but a new Church. Allow me to lift a text from the 12th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. … Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:20-23, 31-32) Not a Revival, a New Church!

I
Only a few days after saying these words Jesus was arrested, tried and executed. Thus, this text occurs in the context of the cross. And it is in the shadow of the cross that John, telling the story, says that, “Some Greeks,” came searching for Jesus with the words, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

In telling this story John appears to go to great length to make sure the reader doesn’t miss the Greek presence in the story. For example, John makes sure we know that the disciple these Greeks went to with the request, was Philip, who’s name is Greek. And John makes sure that we know that Philip was from Bethsaida, which happened to be in northern Palestine near the Greek city of Decapolis.

It was the coming of these Greeks, now in the shadow of the cross, which inspired Jesus to interpret the meaning of his death; claim the purpose for which he came into the world and for which he was willing to sacrifice his life. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

So who were these Greeks and what is their significance? The late Professor Raymond Brown in his commentary on John’s Gospel says that the term “Greeks” in this and other similar passages in John refers, “to the pagan Gentiles of the Roman Empire who were influenced by Greek culture.”

“Greek” here is really pointing in the direction of those who are not Jews. For the 1st century Palestinian Jew, “Greek” meant Gentile. Greek meant stranger. Greek meant alien. Greek meant uncircumcised, beyond the covenant, one not chosen. Greek meant heathen, barbarian, and pagan. Greek meant, “not one of us”, other, outsider, and sometimes outcast. Some Greeks came searching for Jesus, in the context of the shadow of the cross. And Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw al people to myself.”

This stunning passage is nothing less than the mind of God made plain and the heart of God open wide. God’s deep desire and dream, God’s plan and mission is that: to draw all people, to invite, to welcome, to include all within the embrace of those arms that were stretched out “on the hard wood of the cross.” And in drawing us closer to God, to draw them closer to each other. The Epistle to the Ephesians says that in Jesus Christ God has now, “made known to us the mystery of his will, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him.” “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

You can see this drawing together, this gathering, this inviting, this welcoming mission of God being carried out over time in the grand sweep of the Bible itself. You can see it implied in the vision of the 2nd chapter of Isaiah in which the prophet sees diverse and varied peoples and nations coming to God’s holy mountain to hear and learn of God’s will and ways until God’s way leads them to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

You can see this drawing, gathering, inviting, welcoming mission of God being carried out in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew where Matthew makes a point of noting that in the thoroughly Jewish lineage of Jesus there were Gentiles, Rahab of Jericho and Ruth, the grandmother of David.

You can see this drawing, gathering, inviting work of God in the Epiphany story in the coming of Gentile Magi or Wise men to offer their lives to the new born Jewish Messiah. You can hear it when Jesus says, in the 11th chapter of Matthew, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” You can hear it in John when Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd takes care of is sheep, but I have other sheep who are not of this fold, I must bring them also, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

This is the driving energy behind the Great Commission of Matthew 28, “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations.” You can see it on the Day of Pentecost, when people from many nations and peoples all share the same Spirit and hear the same Gospel. You can see it in the 10th chapter of Acts where Peter good Jew that he was, learned that God’s dream and plan is bigger than the best laid plans of mice and mortals. For now Gentiles as well as Jews are in the plan of salvation. You can see it when St. Paul says that among those baptized into Christ, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

In John’s telling of the crucifixion of Jesus there is an incredible moment which only John tells about. Jesus is now in the final stages of death. And in one last moment of consciousness he sees through blood, sweat and his own tears, he sees his mother and near her, one of the other disciples sometimes just called “the beloved disciple.” And, summoning one final moment of strength, speaks to his mother, probably angling his head in the direction of the disciple near by, “woman, behold your son.” And to the disciple he says, “Behold, your mother.” And the Gospel then says, “And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” In that moment a new human community, family was formed. And John says that Jesus now knew that “all was now finished,” soon said aloud, “It is finished,” the work I came to do is done. “And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

When we are truly drawn closer to God, we draw closer to each other, for we are all children of the one God who created us all. And when we are drawn closer by God, the Acts of the Apostles calls that, “Pentecost”. The tradition sees Pentecost as the day when the Church was born. St. Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation.” And Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Not a revival, a new Church!

II
A few weeks ago I think I caught a brief glimpse of what the Day of Pentecost was like in the Bible. On December 9, 2007 I joined with many of you here for the ordination of the Reverend Christy Laborda as priest at El Buen Pastor in Durham. It was Pentecost in December.

Oh, to be sure, the liturgy was bilingual. The preacher was wonderful, preaching the Gospel in Spanish and English. But the language was but the outward sign of the deeper and invisible work that God had been doing among us for a while. I saw Pentecost in December on that day.

Over the course of the last year the people of El Buen Pastor joined hands with the members of the Advisory Committee, chaired by the Rev. Anne Hodges Copple, with Deacon Evelyn Morales who served as consultant to the congregation, with several clergy in the area who provided Sunday-by-Sunday services, with Canon Michael Hunn of the diocesan staff, with the clergy and leaders of many of the churches of the Durham Convocation, with the faculty of the Virginia Theological Seminary, with the Diocese of Pennsylvania, with Christy’s home church and family. We joined hands and we put our hands in God’s unchanging hand, as my grandmother would say, and the result was something beautiful for God. A new Pentecost. A New Church!

What would happen if here in the Diocese of North Carolina that kind of relationship, support and shared ministry between clergy, congregations, diocesan staff was the norm? Imagine! As that old hymn says, “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do.” Imagine! That in fact is precisely what we are working to realize among us. It’s becoming clearer to me that that is what the Mission Action Plan and the creation of three regions in the diocese is about. Fostering and nurturing relationships of mutual support and shared ministry between us, connecting us to each other in Christ so that the whole body grows and develops and witnesses and serves the world in the Name of Jesus. We are fortunate to have someone of Bishop Gregg’s theological, analytical and organizational skill and insight to lead us in this and to have oversight of this. Something is happening. I’m not talking about revival, I’m talking about the way to a new Church.

But there is a paradox here. The new Church I’m talking about is not new because it is disconnected from what has gone before. This new church is not created ex nihilo! NO. This new church is, as Verna Dozier taught us, “a call to return,” a reclaiming of the apostolic roots of Pentecost that gave birth to the Church in the first place. This is who and what we say we are when we declare our loyalty to the faith in the words of the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

To be a Christian in the catholic tradition of Anglicanism is to be “baptized into Christ,” as St. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 12, and thus incorporated into his body and therefore a part of the whole body of Christ that is cosmic and universal, spanning the globe today and reaching back in ages past to the community of saints now in the nearer presence of the Lord they served. To be Christian in the catholic tradition of Anglicanism is to be connected, it is to be in relationship, it is to be in communion and community in the body of Christ.

We are not self-actualized individuals, individualized sectarians, or autonomous congregations. We are one Church, the body of Christ in the Episcopal tradition in our portion of North Carolina, the local expression of the body of Christ dispersed throughout the world. We are not 120 parishes and missions, we are one Church living in 120 missionary communities. We are not 7 chaplaincies, but one Church with 7 missionary communities on college and school campuses. We are not 48,000 individual Christians but 48,000 disciples of Christ in the Christian community of the Episcopal Church. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. “One Lord, One faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of all who is above all and in all and through all.” That’s who we are. And reclaiming that is not revival, that’s a new Church.

That’s why I went to Costa Rica accompanied by the Rev. Sarah Hollar, Canon Marlene Weigert and the Rev. Al and Ernstein Moore this past November to be with Bishop Monterosso and the good people of the Diocese of Costa Rica. I reaffirmed our commitment to our continuing companion diocese relationship. “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.” That’s why in September I traveled with the Rev. Dr. Murdock Smith, Diane Steinhaus, the Rev. Dr. Leon Spencer to be with Bishop Musonda Trevor Mwamba and the good people of the Diocese of Botswana. That’s why we are blessed and honored that he, Professor Amanze and Mrs. Alexander are our honored guests at this convention to celebrate with the birth of a new companion relationship between the peoples of our two dioceses. “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. A new Church.” And that’s why Bishop Mwamba, Bishop Monterosso, Bishop Gregg, Bishop Marble and I will be, by God’s grace, together in Lambeth this summer.

And it must be said that this drawing together which God is at work on, is uncomfortable for us. Sometimes it is more comfortable when we are farther apart. We are more comfortable with those like us, or those we agree with. But the outstretched arms of God on the cross aren’t reaching out to some, but to all, to the whole creation.

The Second Vatican Council said that part of the vocation of the Church is to be a sign to the world of what God dreams for the world and creation. There seems to be an ecumenical consensus on this view of the Church. And this means that God’s dream does not stop at the door of the church. Therefore, a very real part of our calling is also to join hands with other people of good will and of other faiths to work to build a social and global order that is reflective of God’s dream and vision for us all.

That is another reason our commitment to the abolition of poverty and the work of the Millennium Development Goals is so important. Hunger knows no religion. Suffering knows no color. Injustice and oppression are ubiquitous. Poverty submits to no creed. All blood is red. All pain hurts. We all breathe the same oxygen.

As the prophet Malachi said, we are children of the one God who created us all. We and all creatures and the environment in which we all live are part of the family of God called creation. Therefore, the work of ending poverty, the work of ending hunger, the work of cleaning our environment, the work of the Millennium Development Goals is the work of God drawing God’s creation closer.

I am thankful for the public witness of the Rev. Michael Moulden and the good people of St. Francis, Greensboro. In February they are hosting the authors of the book The Faith Club – A Muslim. A Christian. A Jew. Three Women Search for Understanding. And they have joined hands with the Jewish and Muslim communities in Greensboro to do it.

I am thankful for the roughly 25 congregations of our diocese who have answered the invitation of Bishop Marble and the Anti-Racism Committee to join in partnership for mission with a congregation of a different ethnic group, different denomination or a different faith to share in God’s work in the world. Your bishops with the leadership of Bishop Marble have hosted two gatherings of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in our state to work toward ways our faith communities might build a more just, compassionate and humane social order more closely resembling God’s vision and dream.

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung once said that there will be no peace unless there is peace between religions. We who are disciples of Jesus follow in the footsteps of the one who is “Prince of Peace.” We are not just talking about mere revival, but a new Church, indeed, a new creation.


III
During my sabbatical this past year, I rested, spent time with my family, and spent time studying the Sermon on the Mount. I did something I had long wanted to do. I haven’t a musical bone in my body, but I have long wanted to learn to play the violin. So on sabbatical I began taking violin lessons. It was indeed a time of real blessing, and I thank you and, as in all things, thank God.

It created the space and time to step back. I was ordained a priest in Winston Salem in December of 1978. Twenty two of those years as a parish priest, and now approaching eight years as bishop. I have been truly blessed and am profoundly privileged to have so served. I love our Lord. I love this Church. I love this diocese.

So this sabbatical was an important way station on my journey. It created some space and some time to, as that great hymn says, “ponder anew what the Almighty can do.” To, “have a little talk with Jesus”, as my grandmother use to sing. It created space to imagine.

I found myself pondering questions that just kept coming back in various ways. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, “when the roll is called up yonder,” what really matters? Not what game are you playing, but what life are you living? What’s the Gospel really about? Is Church just a game we play, or is there something really important going on here? Michael, what’s in your heart? What do you believe, as that song says, “deep down” in your heart?

Deep in my heart I believe that when Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people,” he really meant it (Mk. 11:17, Isaiah 56:7). When Jesus spoke these words he was quoting the 56th chapter of Isaiah, a portion of Scripture that dreams for the day when those who have long be excluded will be included and those long cast out will be brought in y the God who created all. The Church is meant to be a house of prayer for all, fully, truly, equally, completely, all. ---the theologically conservative and theologically liberal, -- all; the politically red and politically blue, --all; Latino, Native, Anglo, Asian, African, -- all; gay, lesbian, and straight, -- all; the poor, the wealthy and the in between, -all; the Bishop of New Hampshire and the Bishop of Nigeria. All of us! “My house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL people.”

That to me is a biblical vision of God. That to me is the catholic vision of the Church as the body of Christ reaching as far and wide as the outstretched arms of Jesus. As a child of God, as a baptized disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, as a human being, as a descendant of slaves in North Carolina and Alabama, as a father and grandfather, as your bishop and as your brother, this I believe, deep in my heart! “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”

So what might this mean for us? I would like to invite us to a unique observance of the 200th anniversary of the Diocese which will be in 2017. I would like to invite this convention and our entire diocese to commit to working to make the face of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina truly reflective of the face of the peoples of North Carolina in all of our God given variety and diversity.

How do you do that? I think this is a deeper step in the walk of discipleship. Jesus said, ”A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the servant like the master.” Discipleship is about following in the way of Jesus, loving as Jesus loves, giving as Jesus gives, forgiving as Jesus forgives, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly, inviting, welcoming and embracing as Jesus who says, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself.” It means us as individual disciples and as churches growing as the welcoming people and presence of Jesus in the world.

As a first step I would like to invite us as a diocese to read, study and discuss a book called Radical Welcome by the Reverend Stephanie Spellars. In this book she discusses aspects of what it might take to grow as communities and people living into the radical welcome of God that we discover in Jesus.
Both in the book and through online resources she provides some really practical ways to grow into this. I’m inviting us as a diocese to spend the next year or so reflecting on how to grow more deeply as a people characterized by the radical welcome and radical hospitality of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ. And we grow in that as individuals and as churches, I dare say that over time we will find the face of the Episcopal Church here resembling the face of the peoples of North Carolina. This may be our way of evangelism, not compulsion, not thumping the Bible but living the word through a welcome that is the welcome of Christ.

So what might the face of North Carolina look like by the year 2017? The population of the state of North Carolina is projected to grow 30% by the year 2025. But that growth will be in some new ways. The ethnic and racial demographic of our state is changing dramatically. For example, we all know the Latino population is growing, but did you know that even the conservative figures of the U.S. Census Bureau estimate that there will be a 50% increase in the Latino population alone in the next 12 years. My grandma’s North Carolina was pretty much native, black and white. North Carolina today and tomorrow is and will be a technicolor rainbow of the people of God.

At our fall clergy conference I shared this dream of the face of our church reflecting the face of North Carolina with the clergy. After the sermon in which I talked about this the Rev. Dr. Brooks Graebner, the historiographer of the Diocese, came up to me and said, “Bishop Atkinson, the third Bishop of North Carolina, called this diocese to much the same mission and vocation just before the Civil War.” He then gave me a copy of Bishop Atkinson’s Pastoral Address, then called “Primary Charge to the Diocese.” The year was 1855, ten years before the Civil War. Allow me to share a portion of that address with you.

“Every true branch of the Church of Christ must aim at carrying the Gospel to all men within the territory which is its appointed field of labor, and of all men, especially to the poor, for, as has been often remarked, our Savior cites this as one sign of His mission, that “to the poor the Gospel is preached.”

Just so far then as a Church fails to reach the mass of society, and especially the poor, it fails in its mission as the continuator of the personal work of Christ, and it ceases to answer the purpose for which God gave it existence and authority. Is this in any degree our case, and if so at all, in what degree is it so?

Concerning this, there has been going on of late among us a good deal of warm, and sometimes even acrimonious discussion. Perhaps the statements sometimes made in the affirmative of these questions are too sweeping and peremptory. There is an admixture of the poor in almost all our congregations, and there are some of them of which this class constitutes the bulk. But surely no candid man can well deny, that on the whole our Church has not reached and leavened the mass of society any where in this country. In cities, villages or rural districts, if you enter an Episcopal Church, you find the congregation composed of nearly the same materials. There are professional men, merchants in the more extensive lines of business, the larger land-holders, the retired men of fortune, official persons: these and their families well dressed, well mannered, and according to the standard of their neighborhood, well instructed, these attend the services of the Episcopal Church. But where are the mechanics, where are the petty shop-keepers, where are the small farmers, where, at the South, are the overseers, where at the North, are the manufacturing operatives and the farm laborers, where, among us, alas! Too frequently, are our own slaves?”
(Primary Charge of the Rt. Rev. Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina to the Clergy delivered at the Convention at Warrenton, May, 1855.)

What an incredible, stunning, daring, courageous vision, in 1855. To be sure, Bishop Atkinson was a product of his life and times and culture, as we all are. But he was looking beyond what was, and dared to dream what might be. And in so doing to contemplate what might be God’s new possibility, and not just the same old probabilities. He did so not because he was particularly courageous, but because he believed the words of Jesus he read in his Bible.

Could it be that our 200th anniversary affords us the opportunity to live God’s new possibility in which the face of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina reflects the face of the peoples of North Carolina in all our God given variety and diversity. That is not just a revival, that’s Pentecost, that’s a new Church.

Conclusion

It is probably not that well known but the House of Bishops of our Church has continued some venerable and time honored traditions. One is the manner of the roll call upon the occasion of our assembly together. It is the tradition that when the roll is called it is called in order of consecration, from the most seasoned to the newly minted. In addition, Bishops in active service are not called by their Christian name but by office and the people thereby present in the person of the Bishop. When the roll is called, the answer is given. The Bishop of North Carolina?... Present! The Bishop of Virginia, the Bishop Suffragan of……

During the Civil War, when the House of Bishops was in session the roll continued to be called, bishop by bishop. The Bishop of Virginia? And there was no answer. The Bishop of North Carolina? Silence. The Bishop of Mississippi? Silence. South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama? Silence.

In 1865 when the sounds of muskets were silenced and the Civil War came to an end, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church convened in Philadelphia. The Presiding Bishop, John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, had invited the bishops of the south, who had constituted the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States to assume their seats in the House of Bishops. None, save one, answered the call, frankly for fear that they would be rebuffed as members of the Congress from the south had been rebuffed on Capitol Hill. Only one, the Bishop of North Carolina, Thomas Atkinson, was in the room at the time.

That day when the roll was called there was one answer. The Bishop of North Carolina? And from the balcony a voice replied, “present” and Thomas Atkinson, the 3rd Bishop of North Carolina, walked down the steps, up the church aisle, and took his seat in the House of Bishops. Within a few days other bishops from the south took their seats, and a schism in the body of Christ was averted.

At the memorial service for Bishop Atkinson the preacher, Bishop Robert Strange said in the homily: “To him more than to any single man is due the fact that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States is today one, knowing no north and south, no east and west.”

The Diocese of North Carolina has been used powerfully of God before. So let it be again.
Join hands disciples of the faith, what-e’er your race may be!
Who serves my Father as his child, is surely kin to me.
In Christ there is no east or West, in him no South or North,
But one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.