Because we are already  “Living with a Scandalous” Gospel.  Notice I say “living with.” That does not mean we are always living it, but we are living with it; it is in our very midst.  As our homilist, Frank, said so well last evening, if we have the Bible we have the scandal among us.  And to address the question Frank raised, “so what?” – What’s the scandal?  In the words of author and preeminent preacher Peter Gomes, “The gospel is offensive and always overturns the status quo.  It’s not good news for those who wish not to be disturbed. … “

Jesus told stories and gave us images of what this overturning looked like in his day—they are in the Book—about the wedding feast where the outcasts were invited in, those who did not have the proper garments.  And many more such stories about inclusion are in the Book!

This morning I want to tell you a story about this Gospel that overturns conventional practice; practice that is not bad, but that still misses the mark.  The story is from this neighborhood; it is about a couple that lives just across the street from Paulsen House – Sandy and Smitty Myers.

About three years or so ago, Smitty, a well respected retired Dean of the Gonzaga Law School, celebrated his 90^th birthday.  A big party was held in his honor in a lovely setting – the MAC (Museum of Arts and Culture), an artistically designed structure that overlooks the river.  Being their neighbors and having become friends with them, Gloria and I were invited to attend and, as we expected, dignitaries from all of Spokane were present.  But they weren’t the only ones present.  In the mix and clearly comfortable to be there were people from all walks of life.

As we introduced ourselves and met others we learned that the men who drive the recycling truck that serves our area were there.  The local mail carrier and spouse were there.  The crew from the garbage collection truck was there; servers, waiters and waitresses, from local restaurants were there.  And the couple being honored knew them all by name.  Everyone had a great time, and no one seemed out of place.  All were, without a doubt, welcome.

The button I was given yesterday evening—pinned on me while I was talking—stirred a twinge of conscience.  It reads:  “Who isn’t here?”  At first it annoyed me a bit, because when we gather at convention, I want to celebrate, to indulge in being this extraordinary diocesan group that we are and the blessing—Frank—we are to one another, and to raise up the marvelous work that is being done by our congregations.  For it is happening and it is making a difference—even transforming our communities.  But there are those who are not here, and the scandal of the Gospel won’t let us forget it.  And what a good and right thing that is—for us all.

That scandalous Gospel reminds us at every turn that every human being is important—Jesus would leave 99 sheep to find one lost.  In the story of blind Bartimaeus, people said to him, “leave Jesus alone. ”  But Jesus stopped … looked him in the eye, blind eyes, spoke to him and healed him.  When people are treated with respect, as important, healing occurs.

There are posters here that remind us of unholy history across continents and in our own country.  The practice of slavery.  In the 1400s and for five more centuries, more than ten million slaves were shipped from Africa to the Americas.  We scandalize the Gospel when we treat anyone as less than human.

And what we do makes a difference; God has a plan and we are the plan, as our speaker reminded us last evening. The Gospel is lived out in us.

That Gospel truth hit home for me and others at the Lambeth Conference held this past summer in Canterbury.  As around 700 bishops and nearly as many spouses from around the globe gathered for three weeks together, the bishops attended a 2 ½ day retreat in Canterbury Cathedral.  Having never been to that part of the world, I was in awe of much around me and especially Canterbury Cathedral, the historic landmark for Anglicanism.

Not long after we arrived at the Cathedral I was gazing and walking through this grand, historic cathedral when I saw a placard on a great column that read:  “Mission Statement.” I quickened to read it, thinking this must be some mission statement, given this stately structure. It didn’t take long to read it.  The statement was shorter than I expected, yet it said it all.  The full mission statement was four words:   “To Show People Jesus.”  That’s it; the entire mission defined in four words—light on length; but profound in purpose.

For to live it out means striving to let the authentic Jesus show through us—the authentic Jesus, not the one we so readily domesticate  or, as one passionate preacher described him, the Jesus we dress up and slick down.  But the Jesus whose words and actions speak for themselves. As writer Phyllis Tickle encourages us, listen to the actual words of Jesus, not the narrative around them, or the commentary about them, just the words.  They can be scandalous.

We have so much to treasure and celebrate in this diocese.  The generosity of spirit all around, the wonderfully welcoming, faithful, fruitful ministries of people and congregations, already being lived out in scandalous ways.

But we have more to see and more to do.  God is continuing God’s work of revelation, unfolding new possibilities and even new emerging visions for us.  New ways of being the Church that are challenging, sometimes frightening. And we’re called to step forward in uncertain, creative ways.

Let me give you but one example.  A restart of a Church.  A new mission on an old site.  Holy Trinity, Spokane.  It is a model of what more people are referring to as the emerging church.  When I drop in there, the doors to the church are open.  Banners are flying outside, on weekdays and on Sundays.  More often than not inside the Church I hear music; usually it is the voice of Johnny Cash—and this is an Episcopal Church—being amplified by an iPod and tiny but powerful speakers in a corner.  Something just doesn’t seem right.  I’m not convinced God wants iPods in the Church.  Yet there is something about it that is very right.

In a neighborhood that only recently was characterized by poverty, meth houses, and violence, Holy Trinity is there.  And from beginning to end the mission of this congregation has been to say to the community—this is your church.  This is your Gospel, and it is being shaped to be heard by all.  There is much creativity and a great deal of flexibility.  And a congregation of six to eight people a year ago now sees sometimes 60 people in church, worshiping on Sunday.

It is not about building a church and inviting others to attend our church.  It is about saying to all, it is your church.  You are not only welcome, you are invited.  It is about striving ” To Show People Jesus.”  You won’t be surprised to hear that it is the people of Holy Trinity who are passing out buttons that ask “Who isn’t here?”

It is not enough just to welcome others when they show up; we must invite them to come.  We have congregations that do that—and do it well—one of those is St. Anne’s, Omak.  They are shameless—perhaps scandalous—in invitation.  This summer they held a big ice cream social, invited everyone in.  In the course of the event they managed to get names and addresses for all who had not been there before.  And they followed up with personal notes afterward.  When the fall schedule began, 32 people—adults and youth—showed up who were not previous attendees.

At the annual Bishop’s All Star weekend for youth, a good size group descended on the community of Oroville, hosted by Trinity Church.  The young people worked hard—cleaning and scrubbing, doing yard work, and much more to make life better for older people, for the community.  They could have been doing many other things, but they weren’t.  And we had a great time.  Maybe even in one way or another helped “to show people Jesus.”

It is happening and I haven’t even touched on all that is going on throughout the Diocese.  Time does not allow.  But we can say that we know we aren’t finished—that would be scandalous.  And we know God isn’t finished with us.  There is more to come.  And what a great gift it is to be moving into it together.

So now I want to turn to where I pray we are going in addition to what we are already doing.  The place where we are called to go looks like this—and it comes from the Mission Strategy adopted by Diocesan Council in September of 2007, which is being implemented daily in staffing and strategies.

We are going to where we will more and more be “creative and compelling witnesses to Jesus Christ in the Inland Northwest.”  That’s our vision.  To do so we are committed to building dynamic, growing communities of faith. And our guiding ethos is “openness, innovation, boldness, and risk.”  In Christ, we have great expectations—to think big and bold—innovative, open to risk, to failure as well as success.

Speaking of risk, today is St. Luke’s Day; it is the day when the Gospel tells us that Jesus went to his own home town, entered the temple, stood up, opened the scroll and read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

And he said this was being fulfilled in him—today.  A scandalous thing to say.

All were amazed at his words, impressed.  But then he said a few more things and was later driven to the edge of a cliff and almost thrown over.

It is risky to claim our calling.  The church itself must be a safe place, but in carrying out the Gospel we cannot play it safe.  And we aren’t playing it safe.  We are doing it and we are on our way to that place where the vision already stated is more and more a way of life in this diocese.

We not only do it together, we do with specific strategies and with help already well underway.  Let me name specifics.

The leadership of this diocese is committed to congregational development for every faith community.  It is a high priority, and we are staffing accordingly to assist every congregation.  We are training more than ten persons to help congregations, all  congregations, do the following:

• Invite/Include -Evangelism
• Equip/Enable – Formation (making disciples)
• Send/Support – Outreach

We have three new Commissions established over the last couple of years.

1. Young Adult, Youth, and Children’s Formation
2. Social Justice and Outreach Ministries
3. Camp Cross

We are revisioning for Camp Cross, asking what God is calling us to do with the treasure we’ve been given, something perhaps beyond summer camps and weekend conferences.  More to come.

Our Foundation is growing in service to congregations and our endowments are increasing dollars to support Church Growth and Development.

Anti-racism work and Social Justice and Outreach work continue with greater breadth and depth.

We are trying new models for leadership development—Julia, our young adult intern, is with us today.  She is the first person to serve in the WaterMark program developed in this diocese.

We are revising our Constitution & Canons to serve mission more effectively.

I am appointing two new working groups:  one for Communication, the other for Economics and Environment.  Both will review what we are doing and make recommendations to improve.

In closing, I want to challenge every congregation to think scandalously about the three basics of being a healthy, vital congregation:  1) Invite/Include, 2) Equip/Enable, and 3)  Send/Support.

I heard someone say the other day that the hope of the church is in our young people because when it comes to the church they have “a critical eye” and “a hopeful heart”

I pray that, regardless of age, we will have critical eyes and hopeful hearts to recognize and proclaim by word and example the core of the Gospel.

Having referred to St. Luke’s Day, I now want to recall another Saints’ day, St. Michael and All Angels.  On that day the Gospel reading tells us that we will “see greater things than these.”  When we more and more learn about and live out a scandalous Gospel, and help others to do the same, we will see greater things, and we ourselves will be both blessed and a blessing.

Amen.

The message of Jesus was anything but safe. It was bold and filled with risks, not because Jesus was unsafe to others personally or physically. He was not; we have story after story of his healing touch, his comforting those suffering, and his seeking out, giving hope to those who were ignored or cast out.

His message was unequivocally unsafe – at least to those who lived by religious conventions and pious propri­ety. To them Jesus’ message was not only bold, it was scandalous, offensive. Scan­dalous it was, and “Living a Scandalous Gospel” was chosen as the theme of this year’s annual diocesan convention.

We begin by recognizing that we cannot domesticate or control that which is scandalous. The dictionary tells us that to be scandalous is to be offen­sive to propriety, to be offensive against conventional rules of behavior. This can be categorically unsafe and often is. Yet, we, the church, the Diocese of Spokane, are called to a mission that defies playing it safe. As the prominent preacher Peter Gomes has written,

The gospel is offensive and always overturns the status quo. It’s not good news for those who wish not to be dis­turbed, and today our churches resound with shrill speeches of fear and exclusiv­ity or tepid retellings of a health-and-wealth gospel. (The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good about the Good News? [2007])

Our diocesan convention theme in­escapably reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus challenges us to tell each other and the world a scandalous story, a story that is contrary to many of our customs, espe­cially the ones that allow us and others to stay within controlled and comfortable boundaries.

It is time and it is right that we pledge ourselves, individuals and every congregation, to intentionally take on in the coming year new ministries con­sistent with the Gospel, and distinctly different from, perhaps offensive to, business as usual. I commend especially as a guide the three basic components of healthy congregations, which are also core elements of our diocesan Mission Imperatives adopted more than five years ago:

• Evangelism – Invite and Include
• Formation – Equip and Enable
• Outreach – Send and Support

To be the church means at mini­mum to be serious about and do all three. May God help us to do so, to risk and refuse to play it safe for the sake of the Gospel Jesus has called and empow­ered us to proclaim.

The collar does that, invites conversation. It’s one reason I wear it when traveling and the reason some clergy do not. On that day it invited a trip-long conversation about God with a person eager to tell her story. I offered an ear, which was welcomed, and later told a faith story of my own. The encounter meant something. The invitation was automatic. As I look back on it, I am thankful.

The real story of course is not about collars, but about being the Church. It is about being reminded, all of us, that the calling of every congregation, of every Christian, is to live and serve in a way that without qualification opens the door into conversation, into questions of faith, for those who already believe and for those who wish they could. No one should have to wonder whether their questions and stories are welcome and can be told. It is in consistently opening the door to the world around us, to the celebrations and to the cries, that we live out our calling.

Our Diocesan Convention theme this year is “Living a Scandalous Gospel.” It is a theme I promoted and am enthusiastic about. We will have time at Convention to flesh this out and to grapple with what is scandalous about the Gospel of Jesus, what it says to us and calls us into. For if we are not scandalized by it we may well be missing the point.

To live our faith in a way that signals to others an invitation to conversation can be inconvenient to be sure. I had other plans for my flight; i.e., an Inland article to write, a presentation to prepare. Both had to wait. The One who called himself gate, who is the true door opener, seemed to have had other plans – the kind that extend well beyond an airplane encounter to the world, to the voices calling to be heard and to the needs begging to be met.

While one cannot begin to cover the scope of what “Living a Scandalous Gospel” means, we can at least look at one way Jesus was a scandal to those around him, by caring about those others did not.

At a time when 24 hour news cycles are consumed with the style of glasses a Vice Presidential nominee wears or the hair transplants of the other V.P. nominee, it somehow seems naive, out of touch or misguided to actually care that people in India have no water to drink; that an Anglican Bishop in Sudan must walk five miles through life threatening territory to communicate to the outside world; or that a working woman in this country spoke last evening about preparing to sleep in her car for the first time and for days to come.

You and I can name the needs. In fact, not to do so and to then act on them is itself scandalous. May we challenge ourselves and each other to follow wherever Jesus leads.

With heartfelt gratitude to all who prepared for and pulled it all together so well, our host congregation, St. Luke’s, Coeur d’Alene, the Joint Committee on Arrangements, the Diocesan Staff, and the staff of Templin’s Resort in Post Falls, I am happy to note that this year’s convention was first and foremost a “Cel­ebration of Congregations.”

While the presence of guest speak­er Bonnie Anderson, with her poignant presentations reflecting the Millennium Development Goals and building on our theme of Becoming Bread for the World, was certainly a high point of the weekend, it was the program on Saturday night that seemed to capture the essence of the celebration and called forth a bois­terous and jubilant response.

Hearing the members of congre­gations throughout the Diocese report their capital and endowment campaign successes – sometimes quite surprising and always stimulating – brought the convention to its feet in wonderfully free applause and affirmation of one another.

Applause and affirmation. Cel­ebrating our congregations. Publicly ac­knowledging what God is doing within and among us – I say again, often to our own surprise! – is both good and right as we live into who we are. Doing so, keenly aware that what we were rec­ognizing with thanksgiving at the banquet, powerful as it was, was only a small seg­ment of what is happening throughout the Diocese day after day.

Are we being stretched? You bet. Are we growing in spirit and service? For sure. Do we have more to do? Certainly so.

“Becoming Bread for the World” is serious business. It is also joyful. It can only be done by walking in faith, living in love, and recognizing that our conven­tion is at its very heart a Celebration of Congregations.

May it continue to be so, and may God continue to bless that which we receive and that which we offer in the name of Christ.

Twenty-three youth came to con­vention this year, a significant increase from last year. Four of them were serving as delegates from their congregations. With seat , voice and vote, they par­ticipated in the workshops and business sessions, giving their input, initiating dialogue with other generations on chal­lenging topics such as human sexuality, and participating in discussions with Bishop Waggoner and the House of Dep­uties President Bonnie Anderson.

They also provided entertainment for the other delegates. Responding to a common complaint that business ses­sions are long and a bit dry at times, they sponsored a convention-wide coloring contest with a Camp Cross gift basket as the top prize. Dan Bozich from St. Luke’s, Wenatchee, was the winner as selected by the youth and is expected to be up at Camp Cross next summer with his $50 gift certificate. Youth also tore up the dance floor after the banquet, modeling how to have a good time for all those who joined them.

Bishop Waggoner and Bonnie Anderson sat down with the youth for a conversation about convention as well as the Church as a whole. Many tough questions were posed about the state of the Church, the fact that most resolutions at conven­tion were about changes to constitu­tion and canons, and how youth can participate more substantively in convention. Anderson challenged the youth to understand why minute changes to the constitution and can­ons are important, and to use their standing in the Church to create the substantive resolutions they want to see at convention. The youth responded with a passion to take up that challenge in the coming year, and explore how they can contribute to convention and the Church, instead of only discussing and criticizing the system.

Finally, the Youth Presence at convention owes great thanks to the many people who helped make it happen. Thanks go to Bishop Waggoner and Bonnie Anderson for their time and con­cern for the youth and their growth; the people of St. Luke’s church for welcom­ing us to stay at their church; to Gloria Lund for co-coordinating the great food and homemade cookies; to the chaper­ones, and to all those at convention who took an active interest in the Youth Pres­ence and what they had to contribute to our Diocese.

I am happy to report that this year there were no amendments to amend­ments to amendments, and that the Youth Presence was an educational and fun event for all involved. It helped the youth become comfortable with church governance, seeing participation and commitment as a norm as they grow up in the Church, and seeing the process of church governance not as a haze of rules, but a process in which to be actively engaged.