Owning our Idolatry

I have been troubled of late. That would certainly not be a surprise with all that is going on. There is a lot to be troubled about. I actually wrote this line and this blog before George Floyd was murdered and the world changed yet again. And I held this blog for that far more important thing. But, I thought now, I might resume. The viral pandemic has revealed so many good things to us, and it has exposed some of our failings as well. The pandemic of racism has finally, I pray, been exposed in a way that we cannot collectively deny or shove underground again.


One thing that has troubled me, in our church, and in our life in it, is our almost singular focus on the lack of bread and wine, the lack of physical Eucharist the pandemic has required of us. We were not even a few weeks into this reality before we were hearing all kinds of “fixes” for this, and for this time. I appreciate them, and have some empathy with them as well. I actually believe I might be able to evolve on the distance blessing can have efficacy, and other issues crying out for attention. But, I have resisted, not only because I am a bishop, called to “guard the unity of the faith,” but more so because I believe our rush to provide a “technical fix” to this sentiment, this mourning, this loss will only prolong the lack of formation that got us here in the first place. We probably, to a degree, can blame ourselves, Our over arching focus on Eucharist, as central, created this issue in a way. I get that too, cop to it even. But now that we are here, and we have been offered this moment, perhaps we would do well, before we start applying all the fixes, to instead enter into some reflection on just what it says about our union, our oneness, if it absolutely requires bread and wine to be complete. I have been regaled by lay and clergy alike around this issue with sentiments like, “if there is no bread and wine, there is no Church”. And even one saying “not having bread and wine makes God absent!” Really? Perhaps we need to let God into THAT conversation. Nothing I see in Scripture, nor even intuitively believe about God, suggests this is true.


I know this will make many bristle, but I think we would do well to own our idolatry. To look deeply at the way we sometimes worship our worship, instead of our God. It is even more troubling to me when I share my belief that these pandemics have revealed, even in the midst of it being more necessary and more visible than ever in most of our lifetimes, the truth that true communion, true Eucharist is us, all of us, together, bound together in battling these viruses, COVID-19 and Racism, as we are bound together by our God, a God that loves us, is with us, whether we ever share bread and wine ever again. We are really at a serious crossroads. The great desire to be together in order to receive bread and wine, has run head long into the real “communion” of this moment, the real “Eucharist” we are called to, being apart, for the virus, and being together on racism.


This blog is not about resisting the opening for change in the church and in our worship that is at our doorstep, but instead, that this hope also come with a plea, that we do not rush to the technical fixes, soothing our loss at the expense of a very serious theological, ecclesiastical, and communal conversation that we need to have. For whatever failures in those these pandemics have revealed to us, it has also surely revealed some of the shallowness in the things we cherish, shined a light on our priorities, our addictions, and our idolatries when it comes to our worship. I don’t know where we will arrive in that discussion. I actually don’t have a desire, or a hidden agenda, except one, that we have it....the discussion that is, and that we don’t miss the chance for it by simply answering the somewhat selfish call to “make everything right again.” I guess I am hoping to assert that everything was “not right” before, and we would do well to acknowledge some of that too.


If you told me that by agreeing to not partake of bread and wine, to not have baptismal fonts filled for the foreseeable future, that by agreeing to all of those, many less will die, and and we will come out, all of us, better at whatever “end” we might be able to discern some day, I would do it in a heartbeat, and it would be the sweetest communion I have ever partaken in. That is exactly the communion we have been offered this past 85 days. I, for one, am filled, thankful, and more than willing to keep sharing communion this way, so that this hope, for a better “end” might be true, and some new beginnings a real possibility.