Presiding Bishop Christmas Eve Sermon

Sorry…I need a decoder to figure out what mush she is saying. Does someone actually stake his or her soul upon these epiphanies?
Intercessor

The special aired nationwide on December 24

I would have watched it too, but my parish sponsored a steel cage grudge match on Christmas Eve between St. Nicholas and some 80 year old homeless guy who was dressed up to look like a retired Episcopal bishop.  I mean, a heretic of some kind.

The rector’s wife did a fine job and her opponent didn’t stand a chance.

But if this is all I missed . . .

Perhaps an English translation would be helpful.  Where’s Pageantmaster?  If he’s through reinterpreting Tract 90, maybe he could at least explain this part:

Jesus is born anew in human hearts every time we meet the vulnerable – which is all of us, once we awaken to the reality of our own longing.

The reality of my own longing is ready to keep hitting the snooze button until someone tells me what this means.  Although the sermon does make me feel vulnerable.

RE: “I would have watched it too, but my parish sponsored a steel cage grudge match on Christmas Eve between St. Nicholas and some 80 year old homeless guy who was dressed up to look like a retired Episcopal bishop.”

[Snicker]

This was heavily promoted with the implication that it was an equivalently traditional and inspiring service to the BBC’s traditional Lessons and Carols.  What a hoot.

If somebody had offered to make me watch a 19 hour special of the Ultimate Fighter reality show versus watching this service, I would have promptly chosen the former.  No way was I going to click on the link with all those guys up there trying to look English-choral-dignified, but instead succeeding in being entirely themselves in all their ludicrous clownish buffoonery.

You have to wonder if any of them recognize just what a mockery so many Episcopalians make of them.

Yeah, we need a new age, chr-islam to English translation for any of the ruminations that emit from the PB.

I wonder if anyone will actually realize the massive damage she’s done to TEO?

Seriously, I think the interpretation in keeping with her theology is “we are all one, and we are all Christ and if all of us would recognize our Christness like Jesus did the world would be a happier place.”

Standard issue old-timey fundamentalist-heresy.

Her 685 words was mercifully short but fatefully foggy.

Yeah it starts well, but ends up in more Universalist drivel. It’s another example of the Social Gospel getting divorced from the Supernatural Soul-Saving Gospel.

Part of it can be justified by Christ’s words “What you have done to the least of these, you have done unto me.”  But just that without including the words of John 3:16 leaves someone temporarily physically full, but permanently spiritually empty.

Her 685 words was mercifully short

That’s looking on the positive side of life

I thought the Queen’s Christmas Day address was far more theologically sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxbMbYgJ_o

But then, I have always admired the Queen, and her parents.

Who do you figure actually wrote it?  Griswold?  Douglas?  One of her “theological advisers”?

Not commenting with regard specifically to the sermon, but I frankly thought that was one of the creepiest Christmas programs I have ever seen.  Joyless and empty.

In person she is a very winning person, if you don’t pay attention…Kind of like going to Church and hearing the Bible read is very comforting, if you don’t listen too closely…

#3 by Sarah is, sadly, right on *sigh*

Amen to that, Sophy at #9.

Jesus came to this earth to save us from our sin. Yet in almost 700 words, KJ Schori fails to mention that. By contrast, the “religious” part of the Queen’s speech was about 130 words long, and it says everything needful:

“God sent into the world a unique person - neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.

In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, there’s a prayer:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin
And enter in.
Be born in us today.

It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.”

I am drawn to read her sermons just like I’m drawn to rubber-neck at accidents on the highway.  I’m not proud of it, and I always come away feeling a little bit sick and sad, in both cases.

But I her sermon doesn’t come close to the nuttiness of that of the sermon given by “Bishop” Boodie at National Cathedral in which she begins by singing a poem.

“It is peopled by the poor and the better off, by Spanish speakers and Anglos, by people from Ireland and Greece, by the wounded and the outwardly well.”

If I wasn’t depressed about our economic situation before, I am now.  Being patted on the head in a sermon by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church; compared (to our disfavour?) to a homeless young drifter?  Tell you what, I’d happily share a pew with Jesse, but when Her Primatialness starts in on the pitying, I feel like… saying something rude about her vestments.

(Sitting here shoeless in the rain and the cold, holding out her styrofoam coffee cup to beg from the nice passers-by on their way to a TEC church, happy Christmas tide and a joyous new year to you all from Martha!)
:-(

The following stood out to me:

“Angels draw our attention to the holy in our midst.  Parents, elders, and teachers…”

(these categories of individuals could be our ‘angels’)

“...steward our growing wisdom and awareness and guide us into growth toward the full stature of Christ…”

So our angels or teachers are stewards of our (Gestalt?)awareness.  By growing in ‘awareness’ (and naturally assuming her more advanced, progressive views), we thereby can attain (or progress toward) the ‘full stature of Christ.’

“...the glory of God in a human being fully alive.”

It is difficult to say if this is an attempted description of Christ, or ‘the full stature of Christ.’  If the former, then she is saying that Christ was the ‘glory of God in a human being,’ which is not necessarily the same thing as one person of the Trinity - but see Hb 1:3. 

Nevertheless, the consistent message is that we can progress or grow to the stature of Christ.  From here: 

“Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness practice (also called “mindfulness” in other clinical domains), by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be conducive to interpreting, explaining, and conceptualizing (the hermeneutics of experience).[5] This distinction between direct experience versus indirect or secondary interpretation is developed in the process of therapy. The client learns to become aware of what he or she is doing and that triggers the ability to risk a shift or change.[6]

The objective of Gestalt therapy is to enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive and to become free from the blocks and unfinished business that may diminish satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth, and to experiment with new ways of being.[7]”

She denies individual salvation but tries to explain Christ in the ueber-individualistic language of therapy?

#14—Thank goodness the Queen’s chaplain was John Stott rather than Katherine Jefferts Schori.  I suspect the Queen got rather better theological grounding and training than the PB did.

#20 But the PB was the Dean of a Divinity School… um… oh yeah…. erp….

Surely wherever two or three are gathered, with a pot of tea, pith helmet, and BCP, one can declare a seminary for training in divinity? Candy making is becoming a lost art, good for her! Our TEC seminaries need something meaningful and useful to train…

Surely wherever two or three are gathered, with a pot of tea, pith helmet, and BCP, one can declare a seminary for training in divinity?

Would you like a copy of the home study course used here in N Mich to train clergy?  Authored by KGT Forrester. No BCP actually required, since the Nicene Creed and other “historical documents” are now “optional” liturgically and theologically.
Start here, and work through the series:
the book to start with
the program
No experience or special training required. Makes seminaries a thing of the past.  And it is way less expensive.
As a rule, no pith helmet required either.  Up here, plaid hunting hat or stocking hat considered more fashionable.

TJ,

Up here, plaid hunting hat or stocking hat considered more fashionable.

I think it’s blaze orange now.

I missed the special because our CBS station aired a midnight service from a local Presbyterian church. Sounds like I shouldn’t be disappointed though.

Fr. Dale,
Da orange hat is fer huntin season.  Dis is ice fishin season, eh.  Da only guy dat wears orange outa season is da bishop in Massachusetts.
Uh course, it is also snowmobile season, since we got a few inches finely da udder day.  Dis duz lead to some confusion, as to what hat youse should wear, cause dey tell ya to wear a helmet for dat nowadays.  Too many choices.

TJ,
You gotta love those Yoopers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb9yhhflmvY. By the way, the team poster on the wall is for Green Bay which makes it authentic. Yoopers would never pull for the Lions.

#25 Kubla, don’t worry, you can catch it all here: http://news.gts.edu/?p=2339

What I find shocking is that Cathy Roskam starts out by reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to a bunch of children. Why would she read this sexist, racist garbage to an impressionable group of young children? Doesn’t she realize how it subconsciously conditions them to accept white male privilege? Ie. stereotypes that only white men are ingenious enough to devise ways of manufacturing enough toys for all the world’s children and distributing them in a single night, etc.

Creepy.  The whole thing is just creepy.

Listened to link (thanks to SJSP above) and heard Katherine say “Gooood Evenning” at the pulpit I jumped as I thought it was Vincent Price from the Dead…!It is at the 40:00 minute mark.
Intercessor

Every time I think of that woman, it gives me the creeps.  It makes my skin crawl.

You know, the Oscar Romero quote re: “an authentic Christmas” has been going around this year quite a bit.  There’s a section of her homily that makes me think she took Romero and versed it differently, along with another excerpt from his Christmas homilies. 
Would that be theological plagiarism?

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

I may be mistaken but I don’t remember that other Presiding Bishops have identified themselves as “Primate” in letters and publications before the “Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori” identified herself this way. Does anyone know if this is an innovation on her part or if other Presiding Bishops have used the title of “Presiding Bishop and Primate” in the past.

Wasn’t Allin the first designated such when the title AB was voted down? Seems like Browning used it… No one remembers or cares about Griswald - BUT I WANT TO AFFIRM HIM IN THE strongest possible way…...

There is something cold, low, and flat about her speaking style.  Her message is wrapped in the colorless, scuffed, paper and bows of Christmases past, full of the leftist’s favorite yarn; that of the poor “Jesse’s” of the world.  Jesse, through no fault of his own, has been done wrong.  We, using the vestments of the once legitimate church, must change society’s view, and the governments role, in helping all the Jesse’s of the world.  We must lobby governments, march in the streets, and advertise our political positions.  This is most important.

It seems to me that Christs message was a much more personal message.  “Render unto to Caesar” is totally morphed into “Become entwined, and have influence with Caesar”.

“Go and sin no more” becomes “We will create an agency for you, in order that you might be more comfortable in your current state.”  Christ did not call for comfort for us in our current broken state.  Rather, he wanted us all to change from the ways of the world, of which Caesar was a large part. 

Most importantly, Jesse is totally ignorant of the life giving salvation that is offered through Christ.  Surely we must feed the hungry, and shelter those who lack.  We would do this for an animal that wandered into our path.  But as Christians, we must let them know that Christ cares for them, loves them enough to have died for them, and offers hope and salvation for our life here on earth. Jesse has to be told that there is more to Christ than getting him out of the Colorado winter wind.

I am a sinner, so is Jesse.  Christ is our hope.  He was miraculously born, and we celebrate this world-changing birth, for what it can mean to all of us.

I think Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas message was briefer and more to the point!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJH53WIkLE&feature=player_embedded

34.  As far as I know, neither bishop ever used the title “Archbishop and Primate,” and it wasn’t used until Schori was elected.

“Cold, low, and flat?”  Certainly, like that of a person capable of no emotion or feeling.

The present PB does not use the title “AB and Primate.” PB was used exclusively for most of our history in TEC, until AB was voted down, and primate was added. I think, ironically, to create an even playing field on the worldwide Communion table when leaders came together, and changing the function of PB to add negotiation power as representative of the HOB…#37

I know several Anglican groups in USA do use AB as a title…

She can’t use the title “Archbishop” because she isn’t one….and I don’t think she likes not being one.  Not on a level playing field, y’know.

Actually cennydd13, I think it “ironic” because with the greater the title, the lesser the influence…Same with other Anglican groups as well… Y’know.

I wonder how it is we read the same Bible…

”...We meet that holy child in every vulnerable human being, in every one who hungers and thirsts…”

Matthew 25: 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

”...He is present with us at this table and at every table and meeting where need meets response…”

Matthew 18:20 -“For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

”...Salvation lies all around us….” 

Acts 2:21 - And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Acts 17:27b,28-  He is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.

And so it does….just saying!

Blessings

Seraph

That’s a good point Seraph: There are many biblical allusions in her speech.

But what is entirely missing from her speech is a reference to what Jesus primarily came here to do - save us from our sin.

Hmmmm.  Most interesting post here does not concern KJS.  It’s about the Yoopers!

“...But what is entirely missing from her speech is a reference to what Jesus primarily came here to do - save us from our sin…”

How perverse that at the birth of God Incarnate, an event that forever changes the created order in itself, we have to necessarily reference his death and our sin…! Maybe she can do that on good Friday, methinks!

Blessings

Seraph

Blessings to you also, Seraph.
Luke 2:11 For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

We celebrate “God with us”, the savior.  We are all remiss if we don’t remember - and remind others - that He is our Savior, and why.

“How perverse that at the birth of God Incarnate, an event that forever changes the created order in itself, we have to necessarily reference his death and our sin…! Maybe she can do that on good Friday, methinks!”

I agree, it is “perverse”, in the sense that it doesn’t make sense to our human wisdom.  The mighty act of “changing the created order” was only incidental to a higher purpose, which was to save us from our sin. The angel told Joseph:

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” [Matthew 1:21]

And St Paul tells us:

“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” [‘1 Timothy 1:15]

Thus, when the Queen linked Jesus’ coming to this earth with his saving work, she was in very good company - the best company, in fact.

Not only did Katherine Schori entirely miss the main point of Christmas in her sermon, she always seems to miss it - its difficult to find any speech or sermon where she refers to Jesus’ paying the penalty to save us from our sins. It almost seems to be something that she doesn’t want to think about.

As you say, maybe we will see her make a reference to it on Good Friday… maybe!

Here are a couple more places where the Bible drives home to us that Jesus’ main purpose in coming to this earth was to pay the price for our sins:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” [John 3:17-18]

and

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” [Luke 19:10]

and

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” [1 John 4:14]

seraph,
#42 you pull your quotes out of context and thus avoid interacting with the point of the post. nice.

#45 have you ever heard of Philippians 2?

Do you take any of this seriously at all? If not, why bother to post?