Bishop Sisk's Address to the 235th Convention of the Diocese

January 14, 2012, Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Good morning.
 
I am delighted to welcome you at this reconvened 235th Convention of the Diocese of New York.  

As in years past I want to recall to our attention the fundamental truth that grounds everything we do, “Nothing will happen here today that is not of interest to Christ.”

Again, as has been my custom, I want to open these remarks by offering a word of thanks to those who have worked so hard to make certain that these hours together in Convention are as fruitful as possible.  In particular I want to highlight the contribution and efforts of our Secretary of Convention, James Forde, also John Osgood, the Assistant Secretaries of Convention and the members of the Convention Planning Committee.  In addition I offer special thanks to Sara Saavedra for her care and attention in organizing this large and complicated event.

Every year brings with it departures and arrivals.  Most notably this year we have said goodbye to Bishop Roskam and have the pleasure of welcoming Bishop Caldwell who will be with us for the next three months.

Additionally I want to say a warm word of welcome to Kent Tritle the new Director of Cathedral Music & Organist here at our wonderful Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

There have been other, somewhat more unusual departures and arrivals this year.  Four priests of this diocese have been elected bishops of the Church.  The three who have or are about to leave the diocese are: Scott Barker to serve as Bishop of Nebraska, Ogé Beauvior to serve as bishop suffragen of Haiti, and Greg Brewer to serve as Bishop of Central Florida.  The fourth, Andy Dietsche is, I am happy to say, not leaving the Diocese.  Canon Dietsche, the Church consenting, will be consecrated bishop coadjutor of this Diocese on March 10th, and he will, eventually serve as the 16th Bishop of New York.

I give you Canon Dietsche, Bishop-coadjutor-elect.

To say that 2011 has been an eventful year is an understatement if there ever was one.    
Speaking parochially we have had the excitement of an election for Bishop Coadjutor.  But also, and even closer to home for most parishes, there has been the continuing struggle to balance the budget.  The economy has been flat at best.  And even when giving has been generous, fixed costs have been just that, fixed, and often increasing.  Sacrifices have needed to be made, and they have been made all around.  It is times such as these that help us sort out what is important to us as a Christian community and what is less important.

We have to think, and re-think how we can best carry out the mission that is ours.  This is not a time either for dour pessimism or fanciful optimism.  It is however a time when we need to remind ourselves that our hope is set on Christ, and it is in that hope that we can work toward the future that is ours in God.  It is to that end that we are at the very earliest stages of a strategic conversation: a conversation that I have been at pains to see did not gather too much momentum before our bishop Coadjutor was on Board.  As it happens I have been remarkably successful in reaching that particular goal.  However, I do anticipate that we will be able to have a full if not final engagement with those conversations at our Convention in November.
One of the important initiatives that engage a good many of our number this year has been our participation in the Continuing Indaba Conversations.  It is because of those Conversations, which are taking place this week in Mumbai, India, that a number of folks couldn’t attend this rescheduled Convention.

Next summer our General Convention will be asked to respond to the proposed Anglican Covenant.  Over the course of this past year, under the leadership of Bishop Smith we entered into a study of that Covenant.  In the end, the conclusion of this Diocese was that, though the Anglican Communion is of enormous importance to us, and we are committed to doing all that needs to be done to stay a vital part of that Communion, yet this Covenant, as proposed, is not helpful.

This has been an eventful year both within the life of the Church and beyond it.
 
Though withdrawal of our military forces from Iraq does suggest that the sacrifice of so many has finally brought this decade long war to an end, yet the full results of that effort remain unclear.  In the meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan goes on.

We still struggle with a national leadership that seems largely incapable of, or actively rejects the idea, of a consensus building leadership that is required in a pluralistic society.  I think particularly of our total failure to address the egregious injustices of our immigration system.  The resulting vacuum in leadership has given rise in some states to the passage of vicious xenophobic anti-immigrant laws: laws that give testimony to the very worst in human nature.

However, every once in a while these larger societal movements intersect powerfully and happily with Church life.
One such movement that springs to mind, a development that is a truly happy one for many of us, is New York States’ enactment of the Marriage Equality Act.  That action gives evidence of the building momentum toward what I believe will be the righting of an ancient wrong.
 
It is my hope and prayer that our General Convention, this coming summer, will find a way to assist all of us in the Church to move toward the recognition of the sacramental nature of the marriage commitments of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.
At the opposite extreme is the ominous intertwining of the forces of economic inequity and political intransigence or incompetence: take your pick.  That is a potent brew: a brew that can justify almost anything.  Desperation is not the mother of good policy.
 
In Egypt, for example, we see the desperate struggle of both the protestors and the Generals; each side claiming to be dedicated to fulfilling the dream of a free, peaceful and prosperous Egypt.  

Closer to home a desperate search for jobs seems to justify anything: cruelty toward immigrants, a refusal to ask the wealthiest among us to sacrifice proportionate to their wealth.  Or, alarmingly, and sadly, Governor Cuomo’s apparent decision to rush to judgment about the wisdom of hydro-fracking in the name of creating up-state jobs even when crucial long term safety issues are still clearly unresolved.

And perhaps closest to home of all is the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in this City.  I understand that the original core concern of the movement, and its continuing real thrust, is the rapidly accelerating and wildly disparate holdings of wealth in this nation.  There are some disturbing facts that cannot be denied: middle-class income levels have been stagnant for nearly half a century; the proportion of the nation that can claim for itself middle-class economic status has shrunk in size; the proportion of wealth of this nation controlled by a tiny fraction of our people has been increasing rapidly; and upward mobility from the more impoverished of us has become much more difficult.  These things cannot be denied.

Because this has been a long term trend it is clearly not the “fault,” it is not the “doing” of one political party or the other.  Instead it represents a long term, and I believe deeply dangerous, distortion of our basic values as a nation.  It is deeply dangerous for two reasons.  First, because unbridled acquisitiveness coupled with a loss of the sense of the public good, distorts our soul: our soul as a nation, and our individual souls as people of this nation.  Second, but no less important, the emergence of individual gain as the ultimate national good, as over against the notion of the common good, carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  Societies that are sharply stratified are societies that ultimately collapse.  And that collapse, as we can see so easily in the experience of the Arab Spring, is often violent.  As history testifies so vividly the veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin.

Therefore, to my mind, the very importance of what I take to be the issue behind Occupy Wall Street demands that its high goals always be pursued by means that are themselves equally beyond reproach.

Through the dubious benefits of the 24 hour news cycle we find ourselves saturated with news about 2012 Presidential election, even though that election itself is still much the better part of a year away.

Sadly, there is nothing on the political horizon that suggests other than that this will be a bitter campaign.  As Christians who live within this great nation, and for all its faults, are protected by its liberties, it is incumbent upon us to be deeply involved in this elector process but, at the same time, not to allow ourselves to be caught up in the vitriol that will so envelope us.

This is a time for us to witness to the power of God to come upon us and to bring peace.  We in the Episcopal Church know what it is to disagree.  We know the pain of disagreement.  But we know as well that, supported by the abiding Love of God a way can be found through disagreement to new life.

Let us bear witness to that new life in all that we do; not only in how we treat each other, but above all, in how we treat those with whom we disagree.  All, all, all of them, and all of us, are children of God.  May we in our lives give testimony to that abiding truth.  God is with, today, tomorrow, and unto the ages of ages. Let us get on now with the work that we have been given to do.