We Shall Overcome
Well, good afternoon, Episcopal Church!
I have to say a word of thanks at the very beginning to President Ayala Harris for her ministry as president of the House of Deputies, but also in the months that I was in and out of hospitals trying to get my award from the American Medical Association. And I just thank her for her leadership during that time. And I want to likewise thank Mr. Secretary, my brother secretary, the executive, and this brother got more titles than anybody in The Episcopal Church, the executive officer of this church and secretary, both of them, and for members of the Executive Council, the leadership of the House of Deputies. And I’ll get to talk to House of Bishops. Excuse me, I get them confused, sort of, but I’ll get a chance to talk with them in a little while. But I want to thank those who gather and provide leadership for this convention. I want to thank the staff of The Episcopal Church. I don’t know if they’re in this room right now, but these are people who work to serve our Lord Jesus and this church, and they work hard, and thank you to them, thank you to them.
And a special thanks to the team of the General Convention Office, who work to keep interim bodies. I’ve always, now I’m getting ready to retire, I can tell you all what I really think, but that title, interim bodies, sounds like disembodied spirits floating in the regions or purgatory, one or the other. But I do want to thank the General Convention Office for helping to facilitate those important gatherings and meetings that Desmond Tutu once said, how do you know Anglicans? And he responded, we meet. We meet. And thank you to the GCO and thank you to all of the folk who by the Spirit’s agency help to make this church more than just a church—to help us truly to be the body of Christ, the people of God, participants, as my friend Ian Douglas says, in God’s mission and the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. Say that with me one more time. Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. Thank you and thank you.
Now I have to say, this will be my last time addressing the General Convention of The Episcopal Church as presiding bishop. My term comes to a conclusion, effective November 1st, when our new presiding bishop takes office officially. And I’ve been mindful of that—November 1st, I assume the canons were thinking that’s the Feast of All Saints, which makes sense.
But I don’t know that the canonists were aware that while it is meet and right, so to do that the new presiding bishop should take office on the feast of All Saints, November 1st, that the retiring presiding bishop would leave on October 31st, which is known as All Hallows Eve. But ask any 5-year-old, and they’ll tell you it is Halloween. Now I know there’s got to be a message in that somewhere, but I don’t know what it is. But this will be my last time to address you as a General Convention. And I do want to say to this entire body and to this church, it has been a great privilege. It has been an honor. I thank God that I have been able to serve as presiding bishop of this church, and I thank God.
Thank you. OK. You’re awesome. Thank you.
There were, I was really trying to figure out what to say to you and what would be helpful. And I went back to the last discourse in John’s Gospel, which is sort of the Lord’s Supper, the Last Supper. But scholars refer to it as Jesus’ last discourse where he basically. not knowing precisely what the future will hold, but trusting and hoping that he knows who would hold that future.
And in John’s Gospel–it begins chapter 13 and goes through 17—Jesus basically tells his disciples gathered what he thinks they need to know to face an uncertain, maybe ambiguous, to face an unknown future. He tells them what they need to know. He washes their feet and shows them what they need to know. What I have done to you, you must do to each other, and you must do in service, radical, selfless service, and wash the feet of this world. He tells them, Moses gave y’all 10 commandments. That’s actually what he said. It’s actually in the text. You just have to look carefully for it. But Moses gave you 10. I’ve got one more.
A new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you. Because by this, the whole world will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another, that you are people of love, that you live together in love and transform this world by the power of love. That’s at the Last Supper. Y’all need to know this, he was saying, and he did other teachings, talked about the Spirit. He’s telling them, I’m not going to be with you long, but another one’s coming, the Paraclete. I wanted y’all to know I did go to seminary and learn something. The Paraclete, the Spirit, the Spirit of the living God—that Spirit is coming. And then he says this to them, before a prays in the 17th chapter, he says this, “In this world you will have tribulation.” Don’t you expect that you’re going to, what’s the song in “The Wiz,” “Ease on down, ease on down the road.” Now don’t expect that. I’m coming to a point in a second. He says, “In this world you will have tribulation.” And then he said, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
That’s what he said at the Last Supper. He said, I can’t give you roadmaps. I won’t give you an easy way, but this much I know, in this world you will have tribulation. You hear me, Episcopal Church? Y’all read the parochial reports and then you wring your hands. Lord, what’s going to happen to us in this world? You will have tribulation. In all of the countries where we find ourselves a world in turmoil, a world where there are wars and rumors of wars, a world where the very creation that is groaning in travail in this world, you will have tribulation.
We are no longer the establishment of prayer. We just are who we are. But be of good cheer. Jesus has overcome the world. And if we are following in his footsteps, and in his way of love, then we too shall overcome. We shall overcome. Now I’m not going to be long because this isn’t a sermon. I’ll preach later tonight, but if it was a sermon, this might be a text. I’m just throwing it out there from John’s Gospel chapter 16, toward the end of Jesus’ teachings. And right before he says that great prayer in chapter 17, the high priestly prayer.
But toward the end of 16, before he says, you will overcome, he says this, and I think this may be what I can offer for The Episcopal Church after I’ve retired and gotten a puppy to drive my wife’s cat crazy. But this may be for us. And Jesus said this at the Last Supper: I still have many other things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide you into all truth. It will not speak on its own authority, but will speak by what the Spirit hears and will declare to you things that are to come. There are many other things.
Boy, I wish I could know what Jesus was talking about. What are those many other things, many other things that I could tell you? There are many other things the Spirit could tell us, Episcopal Church, but we can’t handle it right now. But this much Jesus told us, there’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place. And I know there’s a Spirit of the Lord. There is a Spirit of the living God, and God is not finished. That Spirit is not finished with this Episcopal Church yet; we’ve got work to do and a future ahead of us.
Oh, it’s a sweet, sweet Spirit. Sweet, sweet. And I’ve seen, and I’m not—how are we doing on time? How are we doing on time? Oh, all right. I tell you, I’ve seen the Spirit already at work. Phyllis Tickle, who was one of the mentors for me, in one of her last books—and she actually said it before she wrote the book. She said, we may well be living in our time in the age of the Spirit, when the old structures that we have known for so long and have served for so well may not be able to serve us going into this new future. But there is a Spirit, Jesus said, there’s a Spirit. That Spirit will lead you into all truths. That Spirit will guide you. That Spirit will show you the way even in a future that you do not understand.
May I suggest that we may have seen something of that Spirit, at work, that Spirit that Jesus was talking about during the pandemic itself. It was a horrible time. It was death over all the lands. There was weeping and wailing and hard times for so many. I want to weep for our children and our young people who were deprived of being together as children in school. And we have no idea what the long-term impact of that pandemic will be on them and on the rest of the world. It was hard times.
But in those hard times, I think I saw something of the Spirit that Jesus was talking about. I could be wrong, but I think I saw it. I saw it and heard it. I think I was in a Council of Advice meeting, I think. We were online. Look, I’m 71 years old. I don’t remember what I did. I barely remember what I just said. But anyway, I think it was a Council of Advice meeting and Bishop Kym Lucas of Colorado, in the course of the meeting or when we were just kind of saying hello to each other, told us about a little church—St. George’s in Leadville, Colorado. Colorado, y’all in the house? And she told us about this congregation that for years had been feeding 2,000 people every month in their community, every month, 2,000 people.
And when the pandemic hit, they had to figure out how could they continue making sure folk had food to eat in their community and do it in ways that were safe, do it in ways that protected, that did not spread the pandemic. And so apparently they got a bus. It was a bus? They got a bus. And I don’t know if they had a driver, I have no idea how they did it, but they got around and delivered the food and the stuff to the various areas where folk were, and then let people come outside and get, they figured out how to do it.
And now they’re back at feeding 2,000 folk every month. But I haven’t told you the best part of the story. They had a mission statement, as we all do. And the formal mission statement says, building community by welcoming, nourishing, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. That sounds so Episcopalian. But then they add this—this is actually on their website—our secret mission is this: If we have food, by God, we’ll share it. That’s it. There’s the mission.
And the amazing thing, the bishop told me this, the amazing thing is that this is a congregation of 15 people that hasn’t had a resident priest for four years. There is a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place. Oh, I am so glad, you know something, I’m so glad to be up here with you all. You have no idea how happy I am, and I’m so glad to be here in Louisville. Did I say it right, bishop? Pretty close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m glad to be here because this diocese, Bishop White, and the people of the Diocese of Kentucky, after Breonna Taylor was killed, and after this city and the rest of this nation struggled with innocent human life being taken, this diocese stood up and helped to find a nonviolent way.
The cathedral church where the bishops will go to elect our next presiding bishop was a station house for nonviolent training. It was a station house where people could go with respite. It was a place where everybody was welcome and everybody was God’s somebody. That’s the Diocese of Kentucky. Thank you, Bishop White, thank you Kentucky, thank you, Kentucky. And that was in the middle of the pandemic.
But I could go on. Let me tell you about the Quill Penn Society. It’s otherwise known as the House of Bishops. Because long after the House of Deputies had gone electronic, we finally tried. We haven’t caught up yet, but we’ve been working it a little bit. Now, the next presiding bishop will be elected, not electronically, but on paper, but we always go back to our roots. But let me tell you about the Quill Pen Society.
That group of bishops continued to do what they could to provide pastoral leadership for a church that had never gone through this quite like this before. And every Monday we would meet from 1 o’clock to 1:30. We would start on time at 1 and end on time at 1:30. It was kind of check-in, resourcing the bishops what they might need to continue to work through this long time. And they, together with the clergy and lay folk of this church, God was worshiped, sacraments were remembered, and the hungry were fed, and the poor and others were advocated for. And this church kept going. I saw this church do what I never dreamed or thought it would do. I saw The Episcopal Church go online. Now, if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is. And in the earliest days it wasn’t pretty.
I used to go around and go to Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline, and it was good that it was online, but the camera was looking at the ceiling, and you’d hear this disembodied voice speaking. But by the end of the pandemic, they figured out, oh, the camera’s supposed to be on the person who’s speaking. And we figured it out. And this church—folk kept giving their money. Remember, everybody was worried about what would happen. And I don’t know how they did it, but I saw Episcopalians turn water into wine. Oh, it wasn’t easy.
I don’t want to pretend that it was easy, but I’m here to tell you what I think we saw during the pandemic may be a parable for how we will face the future that is before us following in the footsteps of Jesus, trusting that Holy Spirit, and then bringing in the best that we can together to figure out, how do we do God’s work? How do we do God’s mission? How are we the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement in a time that we have not anticipated?
I remember Bishop Mariann Budde called or texted me early in the pandemic and said, “You should preach. We need to have you preach from the cathedral.” This is early. This may have been February in the pandemic, 2020. And we couldn’t figure out, can I go to the cathedral? How are we going to do this? And we finally figured out, it’s probably going to be best if we do a livestream.
And so I talked my wife into being the camera person. She did that for when we were doing weekly meditation. She kept on doing it. The union, the cost was high. I’m still paying for that ministry. And so she was holding, we didn’t have anything fancy—she was holding my cell phone, and we found a good spot in the dining room. This kind of corner where we could be, seemed to have the right light. So we stayed there, and I remember I said, “Now you just hold the cell phone.”
She said, “How long is this sermon going to be?” I know somebody’s saying that right now: How long is this sermon going to be? But I remember she was holding the cell phone. And so I was doing the sermon, and everything was fine until the cat came in the room.
And the cat saw her standing there and, I guess, wanted food or a treat or something and started meowing in the midst of my sermon. And if you go back and look at that tape, you’ll actually hear the cat meowing in the midst of the sermon. And that’s how we were in the pandemic. We preached the Gospel one way or another. The Gospel was proclaimed. Folk were prayed for. We figured out how to care for our sick and shut-in. And we can figure out how to continue to bear witness to God’s justice and God’s righteousness, God’s love and God’s peace in this world.
But let me bring this to a conclusion. I was, OK, see, you all are bad. OK? I was probably 8 or 9 years old, I’m guessing, when my daddy took me to Rochester; we were living in Buffalo. He had a church in Buffalo, Diocese of Western New York. They’re in here somewhere. Oh, there you are. Anyway, he took me to Rochester, which is just up the road a piece. Oh, Rochester’s here, Rochester. And we went to Rochester to hear Dr. Martin Luther King was speaking. I was maybe 8 max, I think, not that old. And all the other preachers had gotten up and were supposed to bring greetings. But those were many sermons before he ever got up.
And probably two hours later, Dr. King got up, and when he got up, I went down. I fell asleep. Never heard one word of what he said, but his influence began at that point. At that point, a seed was sown.
When I was 5, growing up in old St. Philip’s Church in Buffalo, one of our historically African American congregations that went back to 1865, just after the Civil War, I asked my daddy, who—he was the priest—I asked my daddy, I said, can I be an acolyte? And I don’t know. I’m not sure what he was really thinking. He said, well, if you memorize the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, we’ll let you be an acolyte. Now, I was 5 years old. I think he was raising that bar so high I would leave him alone for a while. But I did it.
And I remember he let me on Palm Sunday of that year, he let me be in the sacristy and to see the crosses adorned with palm branches around them. And to actually see the incense getting put into the thurible. Y’all know what I’m talking about—incense? I’m going to make sure everybody knows what I’m talking about.
And to see the smoke just arise. And so I can still see that Palm Sunday at 71 years of age. And I don’t know if something was stirring in me then, I don’t know. All I know is I’m here now. And that Easter Sunday, he let me serve on the altar. And I had a job. Lawton Thomas, who has died, but became a priest himself, was a teenager, and he was a thurifer for the incense. His brother Ronnie, who teaches in Morehouse right now, Ronnie was a little bit younger, and he was the “boat boy,” “boat person,” we’d say now, but the boat boy. And I had the incredible job, 5 years old—I was to protect the spoon. And I carried that spoon with great dignity. I was so proud of myself. And they had the solemn procession around the church, and I walked around with the spoon, just everywhere I could go.
And since that day, I’ve learned about Jesus in this church. I’ve learned about Jesus’ way of love and his call for that love to be manifest in our personal relationships, but also in our social, our political, and our economic arrangements. I learned about that in this church.
And so I’m not worried. I’m not worried about the future of The Episcopal Church. I’ve got a pension. Let us sing, “Praise God from whom…” But I’m really not worried about the future of this church because I know him in whom we have believed. I’m not worried about the future. It’s not going to be easy. It never has been easy. I’m a descendant of slaves. I’m here to tell you, Langston Hughes said in one of his poems, life for us ain’t no crystal stairway. And if you don’t believe Langston, ask Jesus. Trust me, the crucifixion was no piece of cake. The truth of the matter is, life for us has never and will never be a crystal staircase. But I’m here to tell you this, this Episcopal Church is stronger, more durable and has a future that God has decreed and that God has figured out. And I’m here to tell you, don’t you worry about this church. Don’t you weep and don’t you moan. Just roll up your sleeves and let’s get to work. That’s our future. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.
God love you; God bless you; and let’s have a good convention.
