Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

Thank you to the Bishop and people of Dallas for the great privilege of participating in the election leading to the selection of the next bishop suffragan. My wife and I were treated with great courtesy and grace. It is always wonderful to get to meet other Christians and to have a chance to talk about the deep things of the faith, the ministry and our common life in Christ.

Congratulations to Canon Lambert. My prayers are with the Diocese of Dallas for a speedy confirmation of this election and for joy in the service of our Lord.

Here is a copy of the remarks that I gave at the recent election in Dallas.

Opening Remarks

Election of a Bishop Suffragan

Diocese of Dallas

My name is Leander Harding. I am in my 27^th year of ordained ministry. For most of that time I have been a parish priest. For the last three years I have been teaching Sacramental Theology, Pastoral Leadership and Pastoral Care at a seminary. I am also Head of Chapel and on Sunday I help out at one of the local parishes.

I am here because three of your clergy were at a conference where I was the chaplain. They heard me give a homily on the Christian virtue of patience and stopped me on the way out of the service to ask me if they could put my name forward for this election. I don’t think they walked into the church that evening thinking to ask me that question and it certainly hit me as a great surprise. We had dinner and talked and I promised to read the profile, talk with my wife and pray. Ultimately the whole thing, the profile, the words of your bishop and the way this request came to me in an atmosphere of prayer, touched my heart and made me wonder if it might be the Lord and I thought I had better do my part to find out. So thank you for the great privilege of being part of this moment of discernment.

I want to tell you something of my understanding of the ministry of a bishop. I believe the bishop is first and foremost a teacher of the faith. I have a personal mission statement which is to speak of the basic things of the Christian faith in a simple way. I see persistent, consistent teaching of the basics of the apostolic faith as the essence of the episcopacy. The bishops certainly do this in their preaching and teaching ministry in the course of the normal visitations. I hope it might be possible from time to time to gather together the clergy and people in a part of the diocese and have a time for building each other up in the faith. The bishops could teach, the clergy could teach, lay people with a gift of teaching could teach and we could share stories of what God has done in our lives. Some of these might be quite spectacular and some more humble and simple but no less a witness to the work of God in His people. This would be the kind of thing that could encourage us all and to which we could bring people who were curious about the faith with confidence that they would find grace, a gentle spirit and a winsome introduction to life in Christ.

I think a bishop is a pastor to the clergy and to the families of the clergy. I hope the suffragan could put a lot of focus here and really be a backstop for the diocesan. With a diocesan and suffragan I hope that this could be a truly personal and pastoral ministry. I hope it might be possible to meet with the clergy in groups small enough to have real conversation and often enough to build real community. I hope we might read the Bible together, share our faith and hope, pray and in this context deal together with the shared challenges of parish ministry and the life of the diocese and wider church.

I know that a particular challenge for the new suffragan is the care of the rural parishes. I spent the first ten years of my ordained ministry in small and struggling parishes. I have a soft spot for this kind of ministry. There are a lot of things that look different from the inside looking out than they do from the outside looking in and rural ministry and small church ministry is one of them. It would be a joy for me to get to know the people and clergy of these parishes one by one and work with them one by one to find the way forward for their ministries.

Let me close by saying one of the things that I am not good at. I am not good at finding someone to blame. Often when the ministry is not going smoothly our natural instinct is to find someone to blame. It’s the rector or the vicar or the vestry or the bishop or the national church. Surely we all make mistakes and there are certainly from time to time very serious incidents which require enforcing the discipline of the church. But more often when there is a problem and things are not working well my prejudice is that 85% has to do with the way we have set things up, with our system and method and our process. I am very interested in understanding the set up and working with others to make it less a burden, more workable, more likely to support success and effectiveness. That will usually take care of 85% of problem. For the other 15%, what a wonderful opportunity to practice Christian forbearance and charity.

You know that hymn text, “Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I constrained to be.” This is what I want to be a daily witness to the undeserved grace and love of God which has been made known to us in Jesus Christ.” Thank you for letting me make my witness here tonight.

 These are some thoughts on the office of bishop that I developed some time ago. 

There is a standard form of the argument about the significance of episcopacy for the order of the church. Is episcopacy of the esse, bene esse, or plene esse of the church? That is, is episcopacy of the essence of the order of the church, so that without bishops in apostolic succession there is no church, or is episcopacy essential for the good order of the church but not absolutely necessary, or is episcopacy for the fullness of the order of the church, meaning that a church can be a valid church without bishops but that to be the fullness of the apostolic church demands the fullness of the apostolic order. The center of Anglican witness has been in the last two positions with a minority Anglo-Catholic report holding out for the first position. The great book about all of this is Michael Ramsey’s The Gospel and the Catholic Church. Ramsey’s argument fits perhaps best into the category of plene esse. Churches without bishops are certainly valid members of the body of Christ, but there is something about the fullness of the apostolic witness and unity that is lacking and toward which the churches should press with full vigor for the sake of a fuller and more adequate witness to the crucified and risen Lord. Ramsey’s book convinced the Reformed pastor and missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin, of the significance of the catholic order of the church for the sake of Gospel mission, and made it possible for Newbigin to embrace a call to be one of the first bishops of the Church of South India. Ramsey’s book remains a classic and breaks open stale arguments by arguing for the evangelical and missionary significance of the catholic order of the church. It is a travesty that the book is out of print. If you ever see a used copy, buy it.

The moment of foment and crisis that we are enduring in the Anglican world brings to the fore the significance of the office of bishop. All the old questions about how or whether bishops are of the esse of the church are bound to arise anew. But at the same time let us pause to ask what is of the esse of this order? What is essential to the office and ministry of the bishop? Ramsey argued that the bishop had an evangelical significance, for the bishop like the apostles from which the office derived was a living witness to the dependence of the whole body upon its one head and therefore upon the actual historical events of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord. The bishop was to hand on the tradition of the Apostles which was a witness to the life, death and resurrection of the Lord.

A full answer to the question of what is of the esse of the episcopacy would take many pages. But a quick answer can be given here. Two things at least, that are completely interrelated and interdependent, are essential to the office of the bishop, one is the stewardship of apostolic doctrine. John Spong has written somewhere of the bishop as an “apostolic pioneer.” Such a phrase is an oxymoron. Paul is quintessentially apostolic and laying out the essence of the apostolic order which the episcopacy must maintain if it is indeed to be an apostolic succession, when he says to the Corinthians, “ I pass on to you that which I received, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. . .” To be a successor to the apostles is to hand on a witness which is primarily a report of things which God has done. To be a bishop is to be a sacred historian and the teller of a true witness and a true story. My word for this is to say that the bishop must be a faithful steward of apostolic doctrine. It is this witness which creates the one body utterly dependent on its one head and on the actual death and resurrection of the Lord.

Related to the stewardship of apostolic doctrine is the ministry of guarding the unity of the church. This is a unity in faith which is a response to the one witness, now mediated by the succession of teachers, to the one saviour. The bishop is a visible link with the college of apostolic witnesses. The original twelve have a common witness, and witness to each other and the church and the waiting world that their witness is authentic and true just because it is a common witness. The apostles and their successors in the apostolic ministry of bishops are to build up the one church in unity for the sake of its mission of bringing all the nations to the worship of the one true and living God within the body of Christ. It is of the essence of the episcopal office that the bishop cultivates and guards the unity of the church. This places a heavy responsibility on those in episcopal office to keep faith with the apostolic teachers that have preceded them and to be servants of ecumenical solidarity. Thus the bishops are to be living sacraments of the unity of the body of Christ.

For The Life Of The World, by Alexander Schmemann. This is a set of lectures that the late dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York gave to a Student Christian Movement gathering in the 1960’s. It is real Russian writing, full of passion and profound theological and spiritual wisdom in lucid prose studded with sparkling aphorisms.

I Heard The Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven. A short simple novel about a young Anglican priest working with Native Americans in British Columbia.

The Brother’s Karamazov, by Fydor Dostovesky. A classic of Christian literature. I am especially moved by Fr. Zosima’s remarks to his brothers in the monastery as he lies dying.

The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology, Michael Ramsey. This book on the resurrection was life changing for me. Ramsey brings forward a long line of English exegesis on the resurrection which has found its latest advocate in N.T. Wright.

The Gospel and The Catholic Church, Michael Ramsey, This is out of print but is well worth getting when you can find it. It is a defense of catholic church order on the basis of its evangelical significance.

Romans In A Week, N.T. Wright. This is a CD of lectures that Wright gave at Regent and is available through their bookstore. The ideas presented here can be found elsewhere such as the Abingdon commentary on Romans. This is a very accessible way to get the information. Probably the biggest influence on my presentation of the Gospel in the last ten years.

The Gospel In A Pluralistic Age, Leslie Newbigin. Anything by this author is good. This is the classic statement by the late great missionary bishop.

Christianity Rediscovered, Vincent J. Donovan. A classic text and dramatic story about initial evangelization.

The Religious Potential Of The Child, by Sofia Cavalletti, A moving book by a pioneer in the religious education of children.

For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence, Alice Miller.  Not a book on theology but a very sobering and serious critique of some religiously inspired methods of child-rearing.

Against The Protestant Gnostics, Phillip J. Lee. A sometimes overstated but very searching important critique of Gnostic tendencies in North American Protestantism.

A SERMON PREACHED ON EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 2005

IN ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

BY

THE REV. DR. LEANDER S. HARDING

Christ is Risen! This is the Christian Gospel. He lives and because He lives, we shall live; this is the good news which is the life of the church and which the church has to share with the world. That God raised Jesus from the dead and that there is new life in His name, a life which begins now and which the grave cannot hold is the precious message which the Apostles have entrusted to us and which is our joy and privilege to pass on to you. The church exists for no other reason than to communicate this message, the Christ, the Saviour, is risen. But we proclaim not only that God in Christ has triumphed over sin, evil and death but, the church says, this triumph is for you, this life is for you. Come and stretch out your hands and receive this life. Come and take this cup and drink deeply of this life. This life of love and sacrifice, of holiness and righteousness, this life poured out toward God and poured out toward brothers and sisters, this life which conquers all the enemies of our human nature, sin, evil and death, this life, the life of the Lord, the life of the Saviour, this life is for you that you may live in Him and He may live in you.

The proclamation of the church is that this Risen Lord comes to us as we gather together and that the life that is in Him, He breathes into us as we hear His words in the scriptures, share in the sacraments, serve each other and the world in His name. For He has said,”Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst.” And He has said, “Lo I am with you always even to the end of the ages.” The great theme of the Gospel according to St. John is Life, abundant life,”For this reason I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” St. John teaches us about the eternal life that was in the Saviour and which has come into the world. This life that was in Him is most certainly and surely a promise of life eternal with the Father but it is also a new kind of life, which begins now, a new relationship with God and with each other. St. John speaks of this life as light. Humankind is living in darkness. We know much about darkness. A world in which we are forced to choose between war and passivity in the face of evil is a dark world. St. John says, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness overcomes it not.” On the cross of Calvary love meets hate, righteousness meets sin, holiness meets evil. Light meets darkness and the darkness does not overcome Light. The light of the resurrection breaks forth from the grave. The purpose of the church is to carry and convey this life and this light. All about us this light shines with rays of the Resurrection. The vestments, the flowers, the music, the light coming through the stained glass, the best offering of art and architecture, our prayers, praises and adoration are all testimony to the Resurrection, all a way of saying with Mary Magdalene,”I have seen the Lord.” All of these things are visible witnesses to this invisible life at the heart of the church, which is the secret life at the heart of the world. Here the life of this world is beginning to shine with the life of the world to come. Here the creation and our human nature, which have become darkened by evil and sin, are being transfigured by the light of Christ. Therefore, St. Paul says, “Let us put away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only a past event; it is also a present reality and a future hope. We believe in the Resurrection because of the trustworthy testimony of the original witnesses but also because when they speak we know what they are speaking of. We live by, with and through that love and that life. We have died with Him to sin that we might live with Him unto God. Therefore, St. Paul says,”You have died and your life is hid with God in Christ.” From the first Easter day until the Ascension the Lord revealed to his disciples the nature of the risen life, which He continues to give to the world. Here in this Gospel this morning a very important aspect of the nature of this life is brought out to us. That is that the Resurrection is a resurrection of the body for the tomb is empty.

In the Apostle’s Creed we say that we believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the life of the world to come. We believe that the Lord was raised bodily. The Resurrection does not proclaim that some part of Jesus, his spirit or soul, survived death but that God raised Him up. What was raised was not a part of Him but all of Him. When God raises us up it is not a part of us that God shall raise but all of us. “Behold,” St. Paul says, “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all die but we shall all be changed.” St. John says, “It does not yet appear what we shall be but when He appears we shall be like Him.” And what is He like? He is completely changed and yet completely the same. There is an awesome strangeness about the Risen Lord. But He calls His sheep by name and they hear Him and know Him and there is nothing lacking, nothing left behind, all is transfigured. When He raises luminous hands in blessing they bear the marks of the nails. Everything He bore in His body has been raised, even the suffering. The wounds are not erased, forgotten but raised, changed, transfigured, glorified. The prints of the nails are the tokens of his victory.

The Resurrection of the Body, that when He appears we shall be like Him, is our hope for the life of the world to come. The Resurrection of the Body also speaks to us of the kind of life the Risen Lord offers to us now in this life. When He was raised, everything pertaining to our humanity was raised with Him and that Risen Life is being offered to us now, communicated to us now. St. Paul says that we are being given an arabon which means a preview, a down payment, a first installment of the life of the world to come. We are members of the body of the Risen Lord and the life of His Risen Body flows into us through the Word and sacraments.

We must think for a moment what the body is. Our body is intimately connected to our personality, to our individuality. We know the footsteps of our loved ones. That the body is raised means that everything which makes you, you will be raised. Your uniqueness as an individual is of eternal significance. We will recognize those we love and they will recognize us. God intends you to grow from glory to glory in the life of the resurrection and become more and more yourself as you grow in the love of God and in the fellowship of all the saints. But you do not have to wait to begin to become truly yourself. God now wants to give you the glorified humanity of His Son. God wants you to grow now in his love and service and in fellowship with all the saints. You were never meant to be scarred by sin, your own sins or the sins of others. If we turn to God with repentance, if we turn to God for healing, God will give us the new humanity of His Son which will be embodied in us in a way which is eternally unique and you will already begin to become more you than you have ever been. You will certainly begin to change on the inside and you may even look different on the outside.

The body is the means through which we process information and through which we come to knowledge. Even the knowledge we have of spiritual things comes to us through the body. When we begin to understand something we say that we have “come to our senses.” In heaven we shall truly come to our senses and we shall know even as we are known. But we do not have to wait begin to know the truth that will set us free. We do not need to wait to open our eyes and see and open our ears and hear and be believing and not doubting. We are invited even now to handle and touch holy things.

The body is the instrument through which we receive and express feeling and emotion. When we are embarrassed we blush. We burn with shame or with anger, we are sick with love or grief. It is not for nothing that we speak of “gut feeling.” The Resurrection life will be a life full of feeling, full of joy and peace. This joy and peace will not be a forgetfulness of this life but our sadness and grief transposed to a new key. The depth of suffering will by the transfiguring mystery of Christ’s suffering be the depth of joy. But we do not have to wait to begin to feel the life of the Resurrection. When we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness, our suffering turns to joy. When the hurts that others have done us are brought to Christ’s cross and seen in the light of how we have hurt Him, anger and hate begin now to turn to forgiveness and compassion. His love for the Father and His love for brothers and sisters is offered to us now, and here and now we begin to feel the life of heaven.

Our bodies are the means by which we worship and by which we serve. We bow our heads and bend our knees, or we stiffen our necks and turn away. We stretch out our hands in worship to God and in service to each other, or we use our hands to steal from God and from each other. In the life of the Resurrection we shall be able to perfectly express worship to God and perfectly love and serve each other. But God does not want us to wait to begin to taste of that life. Even now He wants to give us the hands of His Son, hands of sacrificial service and loving adoration.

Our bodies were given to us that we might know and love God and love and serve each other. Our bodies were given to us that we might know love, peace, joy and the abundance of God’s blessing and God’s creation. Our bodies were created fair and pure. Our bodies were created for righteousness and holiness. Our bodies, our memories and emotions have become marked and scarred by sin and evil. We are scarred by what we have done to others and what they have done to us. Our poor frail bodies are impotent in the face of death. He has died our death and offers us His life. He has clothed Himself with our body of sin that He might clothe us with His body of righteousness; now in this life imperfectly but really and truly, and in the life of the world to come completely and perfectly. If we come to Him now and to His church now, hungry for this life that He brings up out of the grave and which He is breathing into us now, we shall find a confidence in saying, we believe in the Resurrection of the Body. For we shall know however through a glass darkly the sort of thing of which the creed speaks. We will know because we will have already received new eyes and new ears, new heart and new hands, a new character and a new expression, a fuller communion with God and a richer fellowship with each other. We shall be fitted for a new life in the new heaven and new earth that Risen Lord will bring to pass when He returns to bring all things to their perfection. And when at last we come to die, then shall this saying have come to pass,”O grave where is thy victory, O death where is thy sting.” ‘Then shall this corruption put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality.” Let it be so. Amen.

The Diocese of Dallas asked in their questionnaire, “What is your passion for ministry?” This picture which was originally purchased in the bazaar in Tehran by a member of my last parish, figured prominently in my answer which is below. The man who left me this in his will was a Liberian diplomat who was exiled by the famous Sargent Doe coup. He was a profound Christian man. When I first saw this image I did not imagine it would become so important to me. 

I was given a rug with a picture of Jesus woven somewhat in the style of the velvet paintings you can buy at a county fair. Jesus stands looking out with very big eyes that seem to follow you, and he has his cloak pulled open with one hand and with an in-turned finger of that hand is pointing to his heart. His heart is on fire, on fire with love for God and with love for his brothers and sisters. There is a cross over his heart, for whenever this heart on fire with love of God and neighbor appears in this world it is a crucified heart. His heart is circled with thorns, a tourniquet of our thorny resistance to the love of God. He is pointing to his heart with one finger and with the index finger of an outstretched hand he is pointing at us. He says, I think, “I have come to give you this heart which is on fire with love for God and love for your brothers and sisters and which is crucified and which nevertheless beats against all resistance so that you might give it to others.” My passion for mission and ministry is that people might fall in love with God, and have formed in them the heart of Jesus Christ.

I have been nominated for suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Dallas. Here are some thoughts about the episcopal office that I wrote some time ago.

Godly Bishops

By

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

In what follows I am going to take it as established that the historic episcopacy is a continuation of the apostolic ministry which has evolved in the church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and that therefore an episcopacy which has integrity and authenticity will be self-consciously seeking an ever greater conformity with the ministry of the first Apostles. One way of speaking about godliness in the episcopacy would be to enumerate all the virtues that would go into a truly consecrated character. So we would speak of prayerfulness, learning, humility, the spirit of service, zeal for souls and so on. But how might a bishop find a way into these virtues? How can the motivation to grow in real godliness be sustained? I think by dwelling on the originating encounter with the crucified and risen Lord which propels the Apostles into their ministry. Essential to the ministry of the first Apostles is that they are witnesses to the resurrection and it is in the resurrection encounters that we should expect to find the distinctive shape and power of the apostolic ministry

Three locations dominate my thinking, meditation and prayer about the apostolic office. First there is John 20:19-23. The apostles are really cowering behind closed doors and the crucified and risen one appears to them. He shows them his hands and his side. They are glad when they see the Lord and he then says to them, “Peace be with you, As the Father has sent me even so I send you.” Then the Lord breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” To be an Apostle is to be one who is sent. Jesus is the Apostle of the Father and in his turn the crucified and risen one sends out his own apostles whose mission is to create by their witness a community of witness to the crucified and risen Lord and to the presence of his Spirit. At the heart of this witness is the extension of the reconciliation which has been offered to them. That the Apostles are given the authority to proclaim the reality of reconciliation and to distinguish false from true reconciliation is not some arbitrary power but a personal authority and knowledge that comes from their own actual personal redemption and what they have learned from welcoming and embracing the one who comes to breathe into them God’s peace.

The apostolic ministry originates in a personal encounter with the saviour. There is no way for these original witnesses to claim their vocation without looking upon the one whom they have betrayed and abandoned. They cannot be reconciled to him who holds out his wounded and glorified hands without embracing their own faithlessness and sinfulness. This dynamic is portrayed even more starkly in the encounter between Jesus and Peter on the beach in the twenty first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Peter rushes to the beach where the Lord meets him over a charcoal fire and asks those excruciating questions, “Peter, do you love me?” There by that charcoal fire Peter must think of another interrogation and of his betrayal of the Lord. Peter can only answer the call to go and gather and feed the sheep by embracing the fire of his own sin. The connection between a personal confession of sin and the reception of the call to gather in and feed the flock of Christ that is being driven home to Peter on the beach in Galilee is there as well behind those closed doors in Jerusalem. The reception of the crucified and risen one’s commission to go and tell the nations begins necessarily with a personal sense of sinfulness and failure which is provoked by the sudden breaking in of the undeserved forgiveness of God. I am not speaking so much of a particular type of conversion experience but of the reality of knowing oneself as a betrayer and crucifier of the Lord and knowing oneself as the recipient of an undeserved and costly forgiveness. There is a place where shame and joy grow together, where a growing consciousness of the enormity of human sin and rebellion and a consciousness of the astonishing goodness of the seeking, searching, sacrificial love of God grow together. In this place which is at once a place of deep humiliation and deep peace, the words of the Lord “even so I send you,” can be rightly heard and when heard are an irresistible invitation to return love for love. Here the human race is being remade by a new genesis, a new inspiration of God’s Spirit. From this place the forgiveness of sins can be declared and the lost sheep of the Father gathered in. Here is the wellspring of godliness in the ministry of bishop and shepherd. The way into this place is the way of humility, of lowliness and of deepening repentance.

The third scriptural location I propose is suggested to me by Lesslie Newbigin. It is Paul’s encounter with the crucified and risen Lord on the road to Damascus, recorded in Acts 9. Paul is a persecutor of the church of God and is thrown from his horse by his encounter with the Lord. Lying in the dust he hears the Lord say to him, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Here we have the same revelation of sinfulness and of utterly undeserved love and forgiveness which strips Paul of any righteousness of his own. The disciples in Jerusalem, Peter on the beach and Paul on the road all share in the same humiliation which is at once an exaltation, in the same death which is at once life. In Paul’s circumstance an aspect of this originating apostolic encounter is made especially clear. In order to embrace his call to be an apostle, Paul must not only confess himself as God’s enemy but in order to grasp the wounded and glorified hand stretched out to him, Paul must also grasp the hands of those he has persecuted. Paul must recognize the nascent church as the body of Christ. Paul cannot be reconciled to God without being reconciled to God’s people. Paul recognizes that God is building a new people which shall be marked off not by the works of the law but by faith in the crucified and risen Messiah. Paul recognizes that God’s promise to recreate humanity, to reconcile the nations in a renewed Israel is coming true in and through Jesus. In Paul’s call we learn that to be a witness to the resurrection is to be at one and the same time a witness to the reality of the new Israel which is the body of the Christ.

Just these few encounters we have considered point us to elements that are at the heart of the ministry of episcopacy and which if they are held fast set a person on the same road toward holiness and godliness trod by the first Apostles. We learn that the apostolic ministry begins with a deep and personal apprehension of the forgiveness of sins by the crucified and risen Lord. That included in this forgiveness and reconciliation with God is the fact of the church and the body of Christ and that the new human life that comes in this encounter by the gift of the Spirit propels one into the life of mission, evangelization and witness.

The witness and authority of the original Apostles is intensely personal. They stand before the world as men personally convicted and personally redeemed by their encounters with the crucified and risen Lord. It is possible for us to distinguish between the evangelical concern for personal faith and the catholic concern for the body of Christ and for the apostolic ministry as a vital organ in the body of Christ, but these elements are encountered in the Bible always simultaneously as inextricably intertwined. The first Apostles are living proof and a sacramental sign of the forgiveness of sins, the reconciliation with God and the reality of the one body dependent on its one head, by their very presence. The message authenticates the person and the person authenticates the message.( It is of course possible for those who succeed in this office for this relationship between person and message to be impaired and this is perhaps the source of ungodliness in episcopal ministry.)

We come to our encounter with the crucified and risen one through the testimony of these original witnesses as that testimony is transmitted to us through the Word of God and through the succession of apostolic teaching and witness. The challenge for the contemporary bishop who wishes to stand in the shoes of the original Apostles is to dwell in and upon the Word of God in such a way that this originating apostolic encounter becomes real and personal and having once found this originating moment of encounter to return to it again and again and let it be the engine of the bishop’s teaching, preaching and witness. This call to return again and again to epicenter of the apostolic earthquake is a call to prayer and contemplation. It is a call to a life of study of the Bible and of the faithful teachers who by God’s grace make a faithful succession to the Apostles possible. It is call to mission, to evangelization, to invite others into this encounter (which is bound to come in different ways for different people) with the crucified and risen Lord.

This call is also a call to guarding the unity of the church. The new life with God which the saviour comes to bring us at so great a price is a new life with each other no less than with God. It is the restoration of God’s plan that he should be our Father and we should be his children and loving brothers and sisters of each other. At the center of the apostolic experience of forgiveness is the reality of the one people of God and the body of Christ. The Apostles witness to the reality of the forgiveness of sins not just as an idea, as a teaching of the master, but as something which he has accomplished by his costly work and which has now through the power of the resurrection and the gift of the Spirit appeared. The unity of the college of the apostles in witness and in love is part of the Gospel which they proclaim. The Bible already tells the sad story that this testimony can be marred by a lack of unity and by attempts to find the center of the church in anything other than the forgiveness of sins brought by the death and resurrection of the Lord. If the secret of godliness in the episcopacy is dwelling upon the personal invitation to confession and the personal offer of redemption given by the outstretched, wounded and glorified hand of the risen one, then the bishop seeking godliness will want to lead the whole church back to this one cornerstone that it might be built up in unity and by the Spirit of love which is breathed by Christ into his church at just this point. There must be an impatience with anything which would seek to define the church on any other basis and there must be a resolute resistance to any attempt to draw the church away from utter dependence on the actual death and resurrection of her Lord. A godly bishop is one who stands in the center of the church as an authentic and personal sign of the reality of forgiveness and new life with God and among people which comes through the utter dependence of the whole church upon its one head and upon the actual events of the death and resurrection of the Lord.

W. Edwards Deming is the management thinker behind the quality revolution in Japanese industry after World War II. Many business thinkers attribute the success of companies like Honda and Toyota to the Japanese willingness to adopt the principles of this prophet without honor in his own country. I have been interested in his work for years and recently won a scholarship to a Deming Seminar. Part of the homework was to summarize Deming’s main message. Below is my attempt.

Dr. Deming’s work is as much a moral philosophy of management as it is a science of management. There is a vision of human dignity that is foundational to his work. Deming understands that the inherent dignity of human nature is honored when it is possible for people to make a contribution of intrinsic value to the common good. What Deming calls “pride in workmanship” satisfies a deep human need to be really and effectually of service to their fellow human beings and to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Deming recognizes that this intrinsic orientation toward mutuality and cooperation is a far more fundamental and dependable source of motivation toward achievement and excellence than is any scheme of carrot and stick extrinsic motivation. The job of leadership and management is to make it possible for people to participate “with pride of workmanship” in an enterprise that produces products and services that are inherently valuable and provide a positive contribution to the common good.

This requires a clear aim and the identification, development and optimization of systems of service and production that can be improved continuously and forever. Most failures in the development of quality products and services are due to problems with the system of production. Understanding and managing the system is a key management task.  The cooperative participation of workers, managers, customers and suppliers in the process of continuous improvement fulfills the inherent need for human dignity and promotes the conditions in which civil society and culture can flourish. These fundamental principles are as applicable to the government and the not-for-profit world as they are to traditional business enterprises.

Continued reliance on competition and extrinsic motivation robs people of pride in workmanship, destroys systems and leads to products and services of unsatisfactory quality. This leads to a declining quality of life that undermines civil society and culture.

The future vitality and adaptability of our civilization and society depend upon leaders of business, government and the not-for-profit world learning a new approach to leadership and management based upon this vision of human dignity and cooperation.

Mere Anglicanism/ Evensong/ January 31, 2008 The Rev. Dr. Leander Harding

Psalm 84:12 O Lord of hosts, happy are they who put their trust in You.

John 5:40 You will not come to me that you might have life.

Faith has two elements — it has the element of belief and it has the element of trust. They are dynamically related. Belief leads to trust, and trust confirms and deepens belief. Some years ago, when my three sons were small, we built a plywood skiff — a little rowing and sailing boat. We built it very simply in our garage out of lumberyard materials with a view to getting out on Long Island Sound which was nearby. We put a lot of study into our project and we believed, we had faith that we could accomplish it. Our neighbors had grave doubts and were sure our little boat would not float. We persisted. We believed. There came a day of truth and we launched our boat, piled in and had a lovely time rowing around the yacht basin. Some of our neighbors were on hand and they had now come to grudging belief. We four had gone from belief to trust. We trusted our little boat because we knew that it would hold us up. We had put our belief to the test and we had found the boat trustworthy.

For faith to grow, it must be put into action. Belief must issue in an act of trust — which makes possible a growing conviction of the trustworthiness of Him in whom we have believed.

In the Bible, the crisis of faith and trust revolves around God’s providence — God has rescued, redeemed and upheld them in the past. But what about today, and what about tomorrow? This is the moment when again and again they lose confidence, falter, and put their trust elsewhere, in chariots and horses, in over-clever alliances, in the false gods of the land — in things that are inherently untrustworthy, which can never hold them up. Especially, it seems to me, the faith and trust of Israel falter when the act of trust which is required is faithful waiting — when God has not acted in the way they want, on the schedule they want, they become anxious, lose faith, and put their trust elsewhere. All our liturgy is an act of remembrance that we might renew our trust in the Lord.

I am finding it difficult in this moment, and I suspect many of you find it difficult, to trust in God’s providence for our churches — the Anglican world is in a mess; the situation in North America is very chaotic — it is very hard to see how it might all work out — and easy to believe that the whole ship might sink. There are moments when here and there is some decisive action which seems meet and right to take — but for most faithful clergy and most of the laity, it is as they say in the Army, “Hurry up and wait.” We get anxious and impatient.

Here is my prayer for those of us who are waiting and find the waiting hard and a trial and temptation to our faith. It is possible to err by doing the right thing at the wrong time. It is possible to err by doing the right thing at the right time but in the wrong way, and that is impatiently. Good judgment requires patience, and patience is a fruit of the Spirit — a fruit of trust in the Lord. Patience is not passivity; it is waiting on the Lord — acting on His timing and as He leads. Here is my prayer: I pray that God will give us a renewed sense of His trustworthiness and that the Christian virtue of patience which is the fruit of trust in the Lord for His providence will grow in us. That all our actions and decisions individually or corporately will be sober, reverent and deliberate, and will be animated not by impatience, distrust and fear but by confidence in the Lord who will surely hold us up if we put our trust in Him.

Mere Anglicanism, 1-31-08 Evensong Chaplain: The Rev. Dr. Leander Harding

A Sermon Preached on January 19, 2008
at the Wedding of Sally Yuan-Ting Kao and Sean McClaren Jackson
in St. John’s Episcopal Church, Stamford, Connecticut
by The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

There has been an argument in the churches since the time of the Reformation about the number of sacraments. Traditional Roman Catholic theology had said there were seven — the Reformers, only two: Baptism and Eucharist. If a sacrament is something commanded by the Lord Himself, then there are two. If a sacrament is a liturgical rite performed by the church as an outer and effectual sign of God’s gift of an inner and transforming grace, there are at least the traditional seven. Anglicans have spoken of two dominical sacraments and five sacramental rites. I am an unabashed proponent of understanding Holy Matrimony sacramentally. There are other understandings that are possible. Perhaps the one that is most common in contemporary society is that marriage is a contract between two consenting adults for their mutual benefit and fulfillment, including the fulfilling experience of getting and raising children. The corollary is that when the marriage is perceived by one of the parties to be no longer beneficial and fulfilling, the terms of the contract have not been honored and it is permissible and even in a way necessary to withdraw. Hence the culture of divorce, which, humanly speaking, in terms of the span of human history and cultures, is not unusual.

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