Author Archive
Written by: The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner
Friday, June 6th, 2008
I heard recently that my teacher of New Testament in university, Krister Stendahl, died- though I came to disagree with him on several counts, I am grateful and appreciative of him. He was a scholar’s scholar; after a serious auto accident, he was asked whether he wanted his back fused straight up or at a 45% angle, to which he responded: “give me the slanted one, I read a lot.” He also had his 10 commandments for preachers, prominent among them being “don’t preach on love,” which I find easy to obey. Harder is the following mitzvah: you are responsible not for what you say, but for what they hear! Ouch. And here, my brothers and sisters, is what they hear in this pervasively, tolerant and pluralist and relativist age of ours: Christian words and symbols are powerful and evocative, and lead Christians toward the divine, and yet God is, at the end of the day bigger and greater, and so room remains, for other words and symbols. And there is a way in which of course our God is too small, and a way in which there is value in other orbits of symbol, and there are ways in which the Trinity itself is made to pull freight to make these points in our time. And more importantly for our work, there is a yet greater way in which the Trinity is the prime barricade against this escape route. Still, the tolerant and pluralist and relativist air we breathe makes it hard for ordinary ears in the pews or on the streets to hear. How do we know? Who’s to say? Modern worries, our worries these. In other words, we can be confident that our talk about immanent and economic, about revelation and authority, however rarified it may seem, collides with a deep prejudice of our time. Maybe the 11th law of preaching is gratitude when we hear the sound of impact between stone of stumbling and furniture.
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June 06 2008 | Articles
Written by: The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner
Friday, June 6th, 2008
It was a moment of clarity, and I convey it to you with permission. I was a tagalong at a meeting of Windsor bishops in Texas a year and a half ago, and it was the turn of Bishop Mark McDonald, then of Alaska, now of indigenous Canada, (and I would proudly add, a Wycliffe College graduate), to speak. He began by telling us that, during debates on the same-sex issue, Gwitchen Anglicans would sometimes whisper to one another “white people are crazy.” He went on to explain why. The Gwitchen want to say three things, actually. First of all, in the village we have ways to make room for those who are unusual. Second, the male and the female are the two tentpoles God put up to support his creation. And thirdly, in the frozen western Arctic, to leave is to die. And I would add, editorially, the genius of the quotation is in saying all three at once.
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June 06 2008 | Articles
Written by: The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
This being Christmas Eve Eve, my question for you is this: back in your childhood, when Christmas had a numinous glow, what was the most memorable present you ever received? Several come to mind for me. There was a doll of my hero, Popeye, which I received on my 5th Christmas and dragged happily around the house all morning, only to discover to my horror later in the afternoon that my sister had performed surgery on him (we were surgeon’s kids) and the surgery had gone very very wrong…not sure I have forgiven her yet. A couple of years later, in my militaristic phase, I found under the tree two beautiful uniforms, of Union and Confederate soldiers, handsewn by my grandmother, one of which I have to this day. But the one I want to focus on this morning was actually given to my older brother: a see-through antfarm. There they were, working industriously within, digging, dragging, building, quite oblivious to the staring eyes of us, far larger beings taking in their predicament and their efforts. The antfarm: what strikes us when we watch is how industrious they are, but when one gets older one stops to think why? For they are equally unaware of themselves, and willing to be trampled by their comrades if it furthers the cause. It is all for the Farm, and down with the Ant, the individual anyway, a far cry from each wondering what there is for me under that tree. The great selfless one, in which we are but worker ants: it is strange, attractive, and awful to us as we look in on the plastic window.
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December 26 2007 | Articles