Sinners in the Church
6 September 2008 - 7 אלול 5768 by Huw
Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
E HAVE BEEN HAVING A curious discussion on an earlier post. I think today’s readings in the RCL (Proper 18: The Sunday closest to September 7) speak to us on the very topic.
I refer you to the entire discussion and you may take any side (or none) that you choose. I don’t intend to use this meditation as a chance to get one up on the Commentators to that post. Instead I want to go into something I mentioned in a comment there: the story of Ellen Cooke.
During the time I worked at the National Offices of the Episcopal Church (aka “815″), Ed Browning was the Presiding Bishop and Ellen Cooke was the Treasurer. Diane Porter was in charge of Programme and my own boss, Patrick Mauney, was in charge of World Mission. Browning was a terribly hands-off sort of guy. He didn’t want to be bothered with a lot of details. He was the sort of Bishop who smiles and nods a lot when you tell him how things are going in your office but gets really up-close and personal when it was your birthday. And he trusted - profoundly - everyone to the point that he never checked up on them. And if you dared to question any one of them: he lost faith in you rather than them.
The actual running of the church was left to the people under him: Diane, Ellen, Pat. Once I wrote a letter to the Bishop on a matter that was terribly important to me. My own boss wrote the reply for the PB to sign. In fact, if this event had happened at a later date, it would have been me typing it myself for my boss to read and the Bishop to sign. And, meanwhile, much of the work issues of 815 in those days were managed by tiptoeing around the actual causes of the problem (usually Ellen and Diane) and never actually saying what the problem was. Because once you named it, the PB turned on you.
So when news broke that Ellen had embezzled $2.2 million dollars while laying off a lot of my friends (and me, I might add, for about 13 months) because we were short on funds… well, the basic attitude was “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!” The head of one of the charities came to Ed - who was in shock - and said, “How many times may I say, ‘I told you so’?” And Ed gave him permission to say it once in public - and once in writing. The rest of us rejoiced in the downfall of someone so evil.
So much so, that more than a decade later I’m rather gleeful blogging about it.
I’ve never quite forgiven Ellen - or Ed, or Diane (who was also later fired for other reasons). I’m rather bitter, in fact.
When my parish was visited in San Francisco by members of the parish where Ellen’s husband had been rector, I was furious. I would welcome anyone… but not these people. And my friends at St Gregory’s got to listen to a rant that I’m sure some of the visitors heard.
And so… I couldn’t let go. And even now…
Notice in all the directions Jesus never says “turn ‘em over to the law.” In fact, a revolutionary thing about Jesus was that he said “render unto God what is God’s” and *then* said, “Give Caesar what’s left over…” And then look at what Jesus says, “Treat them like a Gentile and a Tax Collector…”
And how did Jesus treat those folks? With forgiveness, with love, with hospitality. In other words: if your words of corrections don’r fix ‘em, then love them into the right path.
Ah, how extraordinarily difficult is Jesus’ Path of Love!
