by Bishop Mariann | Jun 21, 2018
Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’
Matthew 19:14
The seven Latino congregations of the Diocese of Washington gathered for their annual summer picnic last weekend. It was, in many ways, like any church picnic. There were delicious food and games for the children. Blankets and chairs were spread out on the grass, where elders sat and talked. But the mood among those who are known for their joy was subdued.
We watched the children take turns swatting a piñata until candy fell like rain. As they swarmed to collect their treasures and then began bartering among themselves, the adults assembled in a circle.
Naturally, they wanted to talk about what we’re all talking about–the families being separated at the border and the children detained alone without human embrace. Many of our people made a similar border crossing under equally traumatic circumstances, fleeing their homes not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.
The damage to individuals and families from such treatment is incalculable, and our Latino brothers and sisters are visibly shaken by this latest expression of increasingly harsh treatment of those seeking safety in the United States.
Our conversation shifted to what’s happening to our people here. We spoke at length about one family in particular—active members at Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg. The father, Fredy Diaz, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) early one morning as he was on his way to work. He and his wife have three children, who are left without his income to meet family expenses and have no means to pay for his legal defense. (See Latino Missioner Sarabeth Goodwin’s article here.)
Some of our teenagers and young adults, and many of their peers are among the Dreamers whose legal status is in jeopardy. Many of our members have lost their protected legal status in the last year–some who have lived, worked, and raised their families here for a decade or more–and they don’t know what to do. How can they possibly return to the countries where so many are desperate to flee levels of violence and poverty unimaginable to most Americans?
Such questions are not only being asked in our Latino congregations, but also in our other immigrant-rich congregations, where members of the African diaspora face the same status vulnerabilities as so many Latin American immigrants who tend to dominate national headlines. The immigration crisis affecting our country, however–and our diocese–is not limited to one demographic, but many. How are we to care for one another, as siblings in Christ?
I assured our Latino brothers and sisters that they were not alone, that across the diocese we are praying for them in love and are eager to widen the circle of support for those in need. I told them that religious and civic leaders are speaking out against current immigration policies in larger numbers than ever before, and that we would continue to do so. It is my hope and prayer, I said, that the border separations would, at last, cause sufficient public outcry to bring about a change.
Thankfully President Trump has retreated now from the policy of separating families at the border. Yet the fate of the 2,300 children already in detention is not clear, nor do we fully understand the implications of what will happen next. The executive order signed yesterday (June 20) does not solve the crisis. But those of us fighting with the immigrant community can see it as a shift that has occurred in direct response to our public outcry.
To the many in the diocese who have contacted me in the last week wanting to do more both to offer support for immigrant and refugee families and to mobilize for a more humane immigration policy: thank you. I am proud to serve as your bishop. This is not a partisan issue that divides us. It is a moral concern that unites us as Americans, as people of faith, and especially for those of us who follow Jesus.
The truth is that family separation has been happening daily far before the recent crisis at the border that detained children separate from their parents. Family separation happens each day a parent is unjustly detained by ICE for no crime other than trying to live their life faithfully in the country they’ve called home for decades. These are families like that of Fredy Diaz, and these are our siblings in Christ.
We are not powerless in the face of such pain and suffering. Christ is with us, to the end of the age, and the Holy Spirit, working in us, can do infinitely more than we could ask for or imagine. But Christ does need us–ours are the hands with which he works, ours the feet on which he moves; ours the voices with which he speaks to this world.
Here are several concrete things we can do, right now, to help ease someone’s burden or to mobilize for change.
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We are establishing an Immigrant Relief Fund at the diocesan office, to be used to help families with economic support and legal fees when someone in our diocesan community is detained. If you would like to make a contribution, go here, or mail a check to Church House with “Immigrant Relief Fund” noted in the memo line.
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As members of the Episcopal Church, we are blessed with leadership through our Office of Government Relations. Listed on their immigration action page are a number of specific actions we can take, both in response to the immediate crisis and to educate ourselves on the complex issues of immigration reform, and commit ourselves to long term solutions.
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I am proud that the diocese voted at our annual convention this past January to become a sanctuary diocese. As has previously been shared in our weekly e-news, the work of our Sanctuary Sub-committee in equipping our communities to “to serve as places of welcome and healing, and to provide other forms of material and pastoral support” to immigrants, is ongoing. If your community has not considered getting involved yet, you might want to visit our sanctuary page or contact Latino Missioner Sarabeth Goodwin about how members of our Sanctuary Sub-committee can support your community’s discernment process.
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Finally, do not underestimate the power of your prayers and the grief that God has placed on your heart. Allow God to speak to you and through you in this time, and be guided by what the Holy Spirit places in your heart.
One day our children and grandchildren will look back on this era’s treatment of refugee and immigrant children–much like we look back now on the more shameful chapters of our history. They may ask us what we did to work for change. I’m grateful to serve among so many who are speaking out, offering to help those most affected, and doing all you can to end this latest and most cruel policy of separating traumatized children from their parents. You are Christ’s love in action, his hands and feet, and compassionate heart in this world.
by Bishop Mariann | Jun 19, 2018
Washington, D.C.—The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, joined dozens of other women faith leaders outside of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters today to pray together and speak out against the Administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the borders. Following are her prepared remarks.
As women of faith, we speak on behalf of mothers and fathers, men and women. We speak on behalf of all Americans who are horrified at the way that migrant families are being forcibly separated at our borders. These adults and children have already been traumatized by life-threatening violence in their own countries, and they have made the dangerous journey to our borders in hope of refuge. Yet then when they arrive to the United States, in our name, they are forced apart–the most devastating trauma imaginable for young children and parents.
I speak today as a disciple of Jesus Christ, who taught us, by his example, to welcome children when they come to us, to welcome, not detain them. He taught us that however we treat the least among us–those most vulnerable and in need of care—is how we treat Christ himself.
Our nation’s immigration policies have been devastating for children for a very long time. The level of cruelty rises with each new policy, thus far without sufficient outrage among the American people to compel our elected officials to change course.
Now with the forced separation of children, we are at last witnessing a collective recoiling from such barbarism, as images of toddlers wrenched from their parents’ arms and hundreds of children housed in overcrowded detention centers sear our national conscience.
This is not a partisan issue that divides us as a people. This is a moral mandate that unites. Across the nation, people of faith, people of conscience, people of compassion speak with one voice to say that the forced separation of families must stop. It must stop as the first, essential step on the long road to an immigration policy that no longer brings shame upon us all.
As bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, it’s my privilege to serve as the chief pastor of all Episcopalians in our diocese, including a growing number of Latino members. I stand here as a concerned mother but also as a pastor whose own community has been victimized and traumatized by this Administration for too long. To them I would say directly:
“No están solos. Su iglesia está con ustedes en esta lucha. Y nuestro Dios está con ustedes. Dios está a su lado. Dios está del lado de la justicia. Y nosotros no vamos a parar de trabajar juntos hasta que se cambien las políticas migratorias de este país.”
[“You are not alone. Your church is with you in this fight. And our God is with you. God is on your side. God is on the side of justice. And we will not stop working together until the immigration policies of this country change.”]
One day our children and grandchildren will look back on our current treatment of migrant children in disbelief, and they will ask us, “What did we do to stop such cruelty?”
We showed up, and we spoke out, we’ll tell them.
We hear their cries. We see their parents frantic with worry. In the name of all that is decent in America; in the name of the God of compassion whose name you dared to invoke to your actions, Attorney General Sessions, stop this crime against children and reunite migrant families now.
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About Bishop Budde and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the spiritual leader of 39,000 Episcopalians in 89 congregations and 20 Episcopal schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties–Montgomery, Prince George’s, Charles and St. Mary’s. The first woman elected to this position, she also serves as the chair and president of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, which oversees the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral and three Cathedral schools. Learn more at www.edow.org.
by Bishop Mariann | Jun 17, 2018
We are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord–for we walk by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:6
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Mark 4:26-34
There are two “origin stories” when it comes to the celebration of Father’s Day in this country. In one, a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in church, decided that she wanted to help establish a similar celebration to honor fathers, because, as you might expect, her own father was an extraordinary man. He was a Civil War veteran who raised Sonora and her five siblings alone after his wife died in childbirth. So in 1916, Sonora Dodd organized a Father’s Day commemoration throughout her home city of Spokane, Washington.
But there’s also a story about a Father’s Day celebration two years earlier, in Fairmont, West Virginia. There a woman named Grace Golden Clayton suggested to the Methodist minister in town that they hold services to honor the fathers who had been killed in a deadly mine explosion that took the lives of 361 men.
While neither commemoration sparked a movement, gradually momentum grew to make Father’s Day a national holiday, as Mother’s Day had been in 1914. But it wasn’t until 1972 that Father’s Day received the same official recognition. At times in the intervening years, the idea was strongly resisted by some, and twice the U.S. Congress voted it down.
Why is that, do you suppose? Have we, as a society, underestimated the importance of fathers, relative to that of mothers, in raising children? My parents divorced when I was an infant, and in the early 1960s it was inconceivable that fathers were of equal importance as mothers in the raising of children. Yes, the father’s role was to provide financial support, but mothers were the primary source of emotional support.
Our collective understanding has changed considerably since then, and our laws are starting to reflect that, with a movement toward joint custody in cases of divorce and even paid parental leave for fathers as well as mothers. For a father’s emotional support is something we go looking for, in one form or another, in any number of relationships, no matter how present or absent, our own fathers were.
In other countries, the tradition of honoring fathers goes back to the Middle Ages. Where national holidays are influenced by Roman Catholicism, Father’s Day is typically celebrated on March 19th, the Feast of St. Joseph.
This week I’ve been thinking about Joseph, Jesus’ adopted father. We don’t know very much about him, for he disappears from biblical accounts well before Jesus begins his public ministry. In one tradition, Joseph is assumed to have been much older than Mary when they married and presumably died when Jesus was a child. In other accounts, Joseph is imagined as a young man who was perhaps killed when, in response to a peasant uprising, Romans soldiers brutally attacked the nearby town of Sepphoris, where he, as a carpenter, would have found work. There are references in the gospels that suggest Mary and Joseph had several more children after Jesus was born, but Joseph himself is rarely mentioned.
Yet in the few biblical passages where Joseph is the main character, he is portrayed as extraordinary man who, to use the imagery from St. Paul’s words to us this morning, walked by faith and not by sight. Those passages are found in one of the accounts of Jesus’ birth that we sometimes read in church in the weeks leading up to Christmas. But we don’t always read them, because we tend to focus on Mary, Jesus’ mother.
So hear them now, on Father’s Day:
When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ . . . When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
Matthew 1:18-24
Then comes the story of the wise men from the East in search of the King of the Jews, their conversations with King Herod and eventual arrival in Bethlehem where they offered him precious gifts. The story of Joseph continues:
Now after they (the Wise Men) had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’
Matthew 2:13-15
And a bit further on:
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth.
Matthew 2:19-23
That’s about all we know of Joseph. And what do these vignettes tell us about the man who raised Jesus as his son?
First, we know that Joseph was kind. No matter how devastated he was to learn that his betrothed was pregnant with a child not his own, he refused to publicly shame her, as cultural norms would have encouraged.
Second, equally important, we learn that Joseph was a man of faith–not in the sense of believing certain things about God, but in his willingness to walk through a time of great darkness and confusion according to the small bits of light that came to him. He dared to trust that the voice he heard in his dreams was of God and to live according to what he heard, no matter how little he understood.
I invite you to think back on your life, on those times when you had to trust your intuition and walk, as Joseph did, by faith and not by sight.
For most of us, those are typically times of disorientation, when we’ve lost our bearings, or when certain aspects of life no longer make sense to us. Times of grief can be like this, or whenever we’re feeling completely overwhelmed.
Hear this:
In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.
So begins the great medieval poem by Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy in which he begins a journey walking by faith and not by sight. He goes on:
It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.
It is an astonishing, miraculous truth: good can come from those dark and disorienting places. But when we’re in them, first we have to get through them, which requires us to keep going, to keep walking in the dark.
If, in those times, like Joseph, we’re blessed to hear some sort of inner guide–an intuition, a hunch, a guiding inspiration–he would encourage us to listen to it and trust it. He would tell us what follows from that act of trust can be one of the greatest experiences of intimacy with God. We wouldn’t wish the darkness on anyone, but when we’re in it, we can feel profound gratitude for the bits of insight that help us to walk by faith when our sight fails.
I heard a story on the radio yesterday, told by a young man, about one of the happiest summers of his childhood. He was six years old at the time, and he and his father were living alone, “like two bachelors in their 20s.” They were moving one city to another, traveling by car with rock music blaring. It was heaven, he said. They ate cereal for dinner whenever they wanted; they scouted out toy stores on the road, in search of action figures. They rarely took baths. It was a magical time, spent with his very best friend, his dad.
And why were they alone? Because earlier that year, his mother had died. That was the saddest memory of his childhood, so oddly contrasted with his joy he remembers now in the months that followed. As an adult, he’s now trying to understand what it was like for his father in that season of grief, who did everything he could to who ensure that his young son would have happy memories that summer.
How did he do it? His son, now himself a man, wonders. How did he stay so strong? Where in their tiny apartment, did he go to cry that his son didn’t see? While he didn’t use the language of Scripture to describe his dad, surely here was a man walking not by sight, but by whatever bits of light that lit up his darkness.
Once we’ve had this kind of experience, of walking by faith in a time of disorientation and uncertainty, when we’re received sufficient inner light to guide us, then we can help others do the same. We do so not by attempting to illuminate their path with our light, no matter how much we might want to, but rather by encouraging them to pay attention to their intuitions, their dreams, the voices that come to them in the dark.
There’s a wonderful example of this in another story in the Bible, from the ancient Jewish text known as First Samuel. It’s the story of Samuel, a young boy born blessedly and unexpectedly to an elderly couple who never thought they could have children. In thanksgiving, his mother, Hannah, brought him to be mentored by one of the wise priests in the Temple, whose name was Eli.
One night as Samuel lay sleeping, he awoke to a voice calling his name: “Samuel! Samuel!” Assuming that it was Eli, Samuel ran to him and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Eli said to him, “I didn’t call you, my son. Go back to sleep.” The same thing happened two more times. The third time Samuel came to him, Eli realized that God was speaking to the boy in the darkness. When he sent him back to bed, he said to Samuel, “The next time you hear a voice call your name, simply say, ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’ Then wait and listen for what the Lord will say to you.” (I Samuel 3:1-10)
I wonder, when Jesus was a child, growing up with Mary and Joseph, how Joseph encouraged Jesus to trust the inner voice of God speaking to him. It’s not so hard to imagine. For whatever degree we have experienced that kind of grace guiding us, we can encourage those in our circles of relationship–be they children, friends, or even our parents as the relationship between us evolves with age–to do the same. We can encourage them to walk faith and not by sight, to pay attention to the ways insight and guidance comes, not unlike the mustard seed that Jesus spoke of in the passage we read earlier. These small bits have the potential to guide us through the darker times, step by step. It’s one of the greatest gifts parents can give their children, teachers their students, anyone helping another who is coming up behind them in some area of life: the encouragement to trust their own inner intuition, where God speaks to them.
There’s much more we can glean from the story of Joseph. A pastor I admire, Adam Hamilton, dedicated an entire Advent sermon series sermon to the life of Joseph which I commend to you.
Let me close here where I began to underscore the importance of Joseph’s kindness, and of kindness in particular. When Jesus spoke of God, as his heavenly Father, he did so with an extraordinary confidence in God’s lovingkindness. Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son, as but one example, in which the father waits for the opportunity to welcome home his wayward child and gently teaches the elder brother what it means to love. Is it not likely, Hamilton suggests, that Joseph was that kind of a father to Jesus?
We were created with great capacity for kindness, as God is kind. Is that not why we are so heartbroken, outraged, even, by how children and parents are being treated at our southern borders? No matter your position on immigration policy, surely there is a higher calling for us now, rooted in the lovingkindness of God for all people.
As we go about our lives with one another, stumbling as we often do, in dark woods of our own, not sure of our way; as we seek to trust the ways God may speak to us through our intuition and dreams and the voices of friend and stranger, I hope that we all can remember to be kind–kind to ourselves and one another–as Joseph was kind.
Remember the kindnesses you have received from the fathers of your life and what they meant to you. Thank them, if you can today. Commit yourself today to similar acts of kindness, large and small, in the week ahead, remembering what a difference such kindness means to you when you are on the receiving end. From small things, Jesus reminds us, great things can happen. We never know where and when and how the seed of kindness will bear fruit. Often our kindness can help illuminate someone else’s darkness and give them courage to believe in a loving God when they must walk by faith and not by sight.
by Bishop Mariann | Jun 14, 2018
If you attend an Episcopal Church service this or any Sunday, you’ll probably hear a priest say, just before the offering plates are passed, “Walk in love as Christ loves us, and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.” It’s a biblical passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, one of his many exhortations to love.
Walking in love implies movement and assumes that we are in relationships. There’s nothing abstract about the kind of love Jesus embodies. We don’t grow in love by thinking more loving thoughts, but through concrete actions that manifest love in ways that stretch us beyond our comfort.
To illustrate this very point in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky describes a scene in which a woman seeking spiritual counsel expresses concern about her capacity to love, for she is always searching for reward and recognition. The wise counselor, Father Zosima, tells her a story about a man similarly inclined. This man emphatically declares his love for humankind in general, while acknowledging utter disdain for individual people. He dreams of sacrificing himself for others, but finds the company of those with whom he shares life endlessly irritating.
“Active love,” Father Zosima tells her, “is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, with everyone watching. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance.”
Our wondrous Presiding Bishop preached on the world stage about the power of love, and judging from the world’s response, there is an overwhelming hunger for the kind of love Jesus came to show us all. “There’s power in love to help and heal when nothing else can,” the Presiding Bishop said, “Power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. Power to show us the way to live.”
But what does that kind of love look like in action, where the rubber meets the road? It’s easy for me to think of ways I’d like others to grow in love, but what about me? What about you?
This Sunday, should you hear a priest speak St. Paul’s exhortation to walk in love, consider where you need to grow in your capacity to love. I promise that when I speak it, I will do the same. If we’re honest, the first thing we’ll need to do is go to our knees, confess the ways we fail to love, and ask for the grace to become more loving people.
If we truly want to grow in love–and desire is key–we do well to set an intention with as much specificity as possible. Often my desire to grow in love follows after a time when I have failed in love, or in response to situations that break my heart. Seasoned spiritual guides encourage us to bring this question to prayer–where is God at work in my life now, calling me to grow? Where is God calling you?
It could be an intention to be more emotionally present to someone we find difficult to love. Or, conversely, to be more firm with loving boundaries in relationships. It may an intention to offer our gifts where they are needed, or simply to show up in a painful situation. Criminal justice reformer Bryan Stevenson reminds us of the importance of proximity to the people who bear the brunt of social inequities if we hope to create a more loving and just society. Or perhaps we begin by acknowledging to God our internal emptiness and need to experience anew the love of Christ for ourselves.
After we set our intention, “with God’s help,” as the prayer book says, comes the hardest part of any growth process: actually practicing a specific way of love that stretches us, as practice always does, beyond our current capacity. In my experience, with practice comes failure and the chance to begin again, but also the joy of finding strength in spiritual muscles I didn’t know I had. In practice, we can experience a different kind of grace that meets us in our imperfect efforts.
Throughout the summer I’ll be writing about what Dostoevsky called love in action, ways we choose to grow in love. I close today with Father Zosima’s encouraging word to the woman seeking his counsel, reminding us all there God’s love is for us and at work in us, a faithful presence we can trust:
I predict that even in that very moment when you see with horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have not come nearer your goal but seem to have gotten farther from it, at that very moment, you will suddenly reach your goal and will clearly behold over you the wonder-working power of the Lord, who all the while has been loving you, and all the while has been mysteriously guiding you.
May God bless us all in our walking, and growing, in love.
