Cathedral Day Sermon

Well, I’m delighted and excited to be back, overcome with nostalgia. So don’t pull the trap door to the pulpit too soon. I want to thank my dear sisters, Provost Jan Cope, and the Canon Precentor, Director of Worship Rose Duncan, for their gracious carrying out of the Dean’s invitation for me to share on this day. And I am most grateful, most grateful. I also want to acknowledge my friends who have joined me from the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and some other churches that are ecumenical. And I’m just so glad that just my support, I’m just delighted. I’m gonna say, would you stand wherever you are? Would you just stand so we can acknowledge Central Pennsylvania Friends of the Cathedral? And I acknowledge Mary Ellen Walker Baxter, who has been partner in ministry and in life. The love of my life. Thank you for a lifetime of friendship and 55 years of marriage and forgiveness.

Let us pray. Gracious God, we gather again in this house of prayer for all people. We thank you for the vision of those who, 117 years ago and more, envisioned that this nation would have a great federal church for prayer and charity and learning. Be with us this day, as we celebrate, and grant that what is said may please you and touch the hearts of those of us who wait upon your word. Amen.

Healthy and living institutions, including this great cathedral, are living organisms which vision and expression of its core mission is ever changing, evolving, expanding, responding to the complex needs and realities of the world that God so loves. You know, this is also true of Christians. If we are what we were 10 years ago, seeing the world the same way, then we have not been paying attention to God’s call and claim on our lives. Christianity and Christian faith is dynamic and the Holy Spirit is ever moving, creating, revealing, and calling us to the core mission of making the love of God in Jesus Christ known to the world. This cathedral has embraced the complexity, the complexity of what it means to committed to the narrow gate.  From its beginning its call to be a house of prayer for all people, a great church for national purpose and the chief mission Church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

But I think the most telling factor about this cathedral and the mission that it has embraced, and the calling it has accepted, can be found in its decision to choose Patron saints, Saint Paul, St. Peter.  St. Peter supported the Christians who believed the true Christianity required adherence to Judaism. Thus Gentiles needed to first become God fearers, Jewish converts.  For Jesus was indeed the Jewish Messiah. And Paul, on the other hand, as cantankerous as he was, was an evangelist throughout the Roman empire for Gentiles.  Paul taught them that they only needed to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord to be a Christian. Conservatism of tradition to which Peter held and honoring the call to live by the ever expanding vision of the Holy Spirit, such as Paul held. And of course we know in Acts that there was the Council of Jerusalem, and Peter and Paul work together with their constituencies to find a way to honor both the church as it becomes a living stone.

I believe this represents the mission that this cathedral has taken on. It is taken on that hard work of trying to enrich the life of ministry with those things that are at core of our faith. And at the same time, straining, struggling, to be responsive to the new day that God is calling.  In my ministry I have found both are essential.  The conservative ask, ‘What is there in our life history and experience important to conserve the fundamentals and the integrity of who we are?’ The progressive ask, ‘Is there a new and yet fateful way to show God’s love to the marginalized, to the issues we never thought about? What boundaries might the Holy Spirit be calling us to make known beyond the good news of Jesus Christ?’ And I am glad that Peter and Paul, with their differences wrestled. You know, the liturgy of the church, the portion that’s the Liturgy of the Word, is almost exactly stolen from the Jewish prayer book and worship. And if you have ever attended a synagogue worship, you’ll see things including the bearing of the Torah as they walk amidst the people, the narrow way of true Christian nature and spirit. We have to continually, as we embrace the richness of ancient Christianity and the fundamentals of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must constantly also ask, ‘where in our national discourse is there need for hope? Where is the political discourse lost in tribalism and the disrespect of human dignity? How in our time with our moral currency and cultural legacy as a great cathedral, do we contribute to reconciliation? How do we contribute to social and spiritual healing? To that sacred call of E pluribus unum, to welcome the stranger, the foreigner, and the queer?   To honor the concurring truths of God in Christ, in the revelation of other great faiths?’

Many of you will remember the 9/11 service of prayer and remembrance. There’s a little backstory to this I’d like to share. When the Cathedral team went to the White House to meet with the White House planning team, there was disagreement on what would be exercised as public anger, fear, and outrage to invite a Muslim minister, an imam from the American Muslim community, to share in the leadership of the prayers. So my planning team would meet with the White House planning team, and the White House was adamant. American Muslim leader should not be participants with other religious ministers in prayer. Then present, but not speak was the decision they could be present but not speak or recite peace verses from the Quran. So when the team came back, I said, ‘you know, guys, let’s talk about this.  Because if we’re gonna be exclusive in this way, maybe they should have the service somewhere else.’  Well, it was decided that a Muslim voice could be present, but they were concerned that it would affirm the fear and the hate and the blind blanketed blame on all Muslim neighbors, including Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhist, and Baha’i, who were being beaten in the streets because we were so ignorant about what was going on. So the message came back, the White House has found a Christian Imam.  Canon Gene Sutton, retired Bishop now of Maryland, he came in. He was heading the delegation, and he came in and he said, “Now Nathan, sit down. Don’t get excited, but I just need to report to you that they said they found a Christian Imam.”  And I started thinking. He says, “No, just sit. We know where we’re going. Just wanted you to know.” And so we then decided if they want to have it here, we are going to the American Islamic societies and asked for recommendations.

In doing so, the White House shared in the selection and the voice of the Quran ascending to God and witnessing to the world of peace, as did the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the prayers of Cardinals, evangelical Chaplain of the Senate, the Protestant Council of Churches. And if you remember that powerful sermon by Billy Graham, a pastor of America. Grounded in our core faith and our baptismal covenant is what undergirds the understanding of ministry and calling for this cathedral.  It asks in our Baptismal Covenant, ‘Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?’ And the response is not, ‘Yes.’ It is, ‘I will, with God’s help.’  It ain’t easy. It is a narrow gate. It asks, ‘Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?’ And again, we groan and say, ‘Well, I will, but I need God’s help.’ The Holy Gospel, Jesus tells us, ‘Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction.  To destruction of human dignity, of moral rights, of respect for one another.

And there are many who take it, for the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.  And does not our nation need a renewal of life, living, loving, finding bridges and building bridges? But that requires what we are taught by Jesus and throughout scripture.  It requires love, love.  The word ‘agape’, which the early writers of the scripture looked for a word that would describe and be unique as an expression of love other than the ongoing Greek terms. And they chose this archaic term. But what it means in essence, it is to have a divine respect for the human dignity of all. If God, not excusing our sins and our failures and the places where we need to grow, but yes says, ‘you are my child and I have created you and said it is good.’ So we can disagree with what God loves, but we cannot disrespect the dignity of what God loves. In all we do, we are called to do so in ways which do not disrespect the human dignity of others.

That’s different than what we think of as love, philios or amorous love. Just some folks I just don’t wanna skip down the aisle with. But my faith calls me to never lose respect for their human dignity. I do not have to agree or aver to the position of the other. But in my engagement with my interlocutor, my soul depends on how much I look into the eyes of that person and say, ‘but this is God’s child and what I say and do, if my purpose is to destroy them, then I am not living faithful to my calling.’  The world needs to hear that. It’s a hard way, it’s a narrow way, to live in that tension of the concerns for justice, rightly so. And yet at the same time to understand that in my witness, I am called to respect human dignity. So often I have seen those who have been consumed by the passion, the fire of their passion. God calls us to speak truth, but always speak it with a godly respect for the human interlocutor.

I know this is not a wedding. Paul wrote these words though to the church, and I want you to hear them in this context. First Corinthians 13: ‘If I speak in the tongues of human and angels’, oh, there are some charismatic people there who can talk your money out of your pocket. ‘But’ I do not have a godly respect. ‘I do not have love’ for them. I am simply a noisy gong and a clanging symbol’. The cacophony in our times in our society, over the radio at rallies, so on, they’re like noisy gongs and clanging symbols. We, we don’t know what to do with it. And then he said, ‘If I have prophetic powers and I understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I do not have the love of God for my neighbor, I am nothing.’ Nothing. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘More than being my brother’s keeper, I must be my brother’s brother, my sister’s sister.’ That’s a spiritual stretch.  It’s a little bit more complicated than giving a piece of bread or throwing paper towels to others. No, it requires more. And then I love this piece here.

It says, ‘If I give my body to be burned’ as a total commitment witness to my cause, ‘but I do not have love, it profited nothing.’ Nothing. It is hard. The narrow way is a hard way to live, especially in a world that’s filled with cynicism and hate and arrogance. And when the gospel is being proclaimed based on Christian Nationalism, on prosperity gospel, in a way in which we have a sense that the gospel is always against the foreigner or the one who sees God in another way, we are dying for the need to be reclaimed and to reclaim, the love of God in our lives, in our spirits, so that we are prepared to do the mission. Jesus talks about that rock. He said, ‘If we build our lives and our faith and we build our church and this cathedral on the rock, it shall stand.’ What is the rock? Well, I believe the rock is John 3:16, and I want you to say it with me. I’m going to use the King James version that Jesus used. And if you would just say it with, because this is the rock:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

All the hate and the bitterness, the uncertainty, the sense of hopelessness. It is causing us to perish. Our spirits are perishing. Our communities are perishing. Our politics is perishing. Our religions are perishing. But if we recognize how much God loves the world and gives us power to respect our human brothers, sisters, and siblings in the work and the witness of ministry, he said we would not perish but have everlasting life. And what is everlasting life?

Heaven’s my home, but I ain’t homesick. But I do know that everlasting life is life with the everlasting. I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I close my eyes in death. Got a lot of hopes, but I don’t know. But because in this life I am blessed to walk with the everlasting one, to receive the grace and the love and the comfort, to feel the urgent call to do the work of God, to feel the warm embrace that I am loved, even as I make my mistakes. This is life with the everlasting. And so therefore, I am seeking to share the witness of God’s love with the world that God loves, understanding that we can know God in this life, and therefore trust God for the life to come. My mama used to sing ‘Many things about tomorrow that I do not understand, but I know who holds tomorrow and I know who holds my hand.’ This is the narrow way.

Jesus reminded us that this is a house of prayer for all people. He saw it in the great temple, and he made the witness through Isaiah and Jeremiah, whom he quoted, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer.’  It’s only when we pray in our individual lives, have a life of prayer. Not just pray but have a life of prayer in our personal lives, and then in our corporate lives, that we are able to live, relate and witness through the narrow gate. Sherwood Eddy once said, ‘Prayer does not always change things, but it does change us.’ It does change us. When I first was Dean here at the Cathedral and looking around trying to figure out which way was up, an old priest of the diocese, Father Richard Cornish Martin, came by to visit me, was standing here in the nave. And he said to me, ‘Keep the witness and rhythm of private prayer and public prayer alive for the prayer gets in the stones and people can feel it as they enter believers or not.’ ‘That’, he said, ‘is the most important witness of a house of prayer is that it prays.’  This cathedral has continued to pray since its founding.  From the beginning to this day, this is a house and witness built on prayer. Our prayers here are spoken. They are silent. They are sung Anglican and gospel. They are danced. They are found in the stone and the wood, carved and fitted, the stained glass, cut and fitted, is a prayer.  Wrought iron, needle point, floral arrangements and designs, the garden and the grounds are all acts of prayer.

You know, we all see the great momentous moments of prayer through national television and so on. But two things that convinced me, Father Martin was right. One day I was watching the tour groups come in and there was like a high school tour group. And as they came in, I noticed one fellow that was lagging behind them and he stayed out in that northern part of the cathedral. His pants were sagging down. His baseball cap was backwards. He was looking down. After everybody had moved, he decided to come in. He walked in and as I watched him, ‘Awesome man, Awesome.’ That’s adolescent language for ‘hallelujah’. For hallelujah.

In the nineties we were doing work around the AIDS Quilt and Canon Bruce Jenneker, who handled worship, we were working to invite the leaders to come for a special prayer service here at the cathedral of the LGBTQ plus community. It was a time of grieving represented in the fabric art of the quilts.  And so as we were planning with the communities, we heard from Act Up, ‘We’d like to have something to say at the service.’ Bruce looked at me, I looked at him. Act Up was a just that, a very, very difficult group. They were militant. They were militant. So we decided rather than to have them ‘act up’ outside the tent, let’s bring them into the tent. Well, as the service went on, it was so beautiful. Gay Men’s Choir was singing. It was just magnificent. The prayers that Bruce had written, it was just a marvelous, marvelous service. And then the time came for the Act Up representative to speak. And he went up into that lectern there. And I noticed he was a little slow. I was expecting him to come out on fire and he was a little slow. And then in halting terms, he spoke and he spoke his truth. And then I noticed as he came down the podium, there were tears in his eyes.  And he said something to one of the canons. So I asked later that canon, ‘What did he say?’ He said, ‘Dean, he says, ‘I now know there is a place for spirituality in the struggle.’  The prayer in the stones. It makes a different, if the living stones, you and I continue to pray, these stones will be filled with that gift.

Well, I think of Annie Lamont, one of my favorite authors.  In her book, Traveling Mercies, she tells the story of a little girl who had grown up with her pastor.  Who was very rambunctious and curious and adventuresome, but they weren’t allowed to leave the neighborhood. But she decided one day she was going to see what’s out there in the world. And so she left and she walked and she went downtown and she saw the lights and the horns blaring and all the people and the windows, with all of the goods in them. And she was amazed until she realized she didn’t know how to get home. And she stood confused, looking around for a landmark, and she couldn’t find any. And a police officer drove up and saw her, and he said, ‘Are you all right?’ She says, ‘I’m, I’m lost, and I don’t know how to get back home.’ So he said, ‘Well, get in and we’ll drive around and see if you see anything that looks familiar’. So he drove her around and suddenly she says, ‘Stop. There’s my church. I can always find my way home from there.’ The National Cathedral is one of those rare beacons, which I believe can help America find its way home. May God continue to bless those who minister, who support and who pray for this ministry, for indeed America, America needs the witness of our national cathedral. May it be so.