Joyful as this feast day may be, I would be remiss, I think, not to mention the sense of loss that hovers over this celebration. The preacher who was originally scheduled for this morning wa s the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and a friend to this parish and this diocese, the Most Reverend Frank Griswold. As many of you know, Bishop Griswold died on March 5. I want to take a moment to remember him today, not because I knew him well, but because he was truly an important figure for the church, for our church, the Episcopal Church, for our recent history and our particular gifts and our struggles and our witness.
We aren’t perfect, and our witness isn’t perfect. We don’t bear Christ in the world with the kind of absolute purity that Mary did. But if this feast day means anything for us, it means that we are like Mary in some measure. As the church, we are the Christ-bearers. The Angel Gabriel is speaking to us as he speaks to her, and our willingness to body forth Jesus is rooted in and patterned after hers. I’d go further to say that if Jesus isn’t here with us now, present in the church and living in our lives, then this whole story about Mary and the angel is just a pretty picture we conjure up for ourselves. The church is grounded in the belief that Jesus is still here, and the bodies that are filled with the Holy Spirit and the presence of Christ are our bodies.
So let’s think about Bishop Griswold for a moment this morning, and about Mary, and about ourselves, and about the institutional church. Let’s think about our shared calling as bearers of Christ in this complex, troubled world.
In addition to serving as a parish priest in this diocese for many years, Bishop Griswold went on to become Bishop of Chicago and then Presiding Bishop, a role in which he served from 1996 to 2005. After 2005 he could be found lifting up innumerable ministries throughout the church in a more informal way. He came here several times, once conducting a wonderful quiet day for the staff. He was known both for his institutional commitment and leadership, and for his quiet, learned, deep spirituality.
Bishop Griswold authored several books. One of them is a lovely collection of prayers and devotions, called Praying Our Days. In the introduction to that book, he writes about the moment in which he was confirmed as an Episcopalian, and I want to read that passage to you now because I think it helps us think about this feast day, as well as about Bishop Griswold himself. Here’s what he writes about being confirmed as a teenager:
I must admit I was in a state of uncertainty about what was happening, or what confirmation might ultimately mean. It never occurred to me as I knelt before Bishop Hall that such a seemingly innocent ritual act would become an unexpected doorway through which I would pass to encounters with other bishops as they laid their hands upon me, ordaining me as a deacon, a priest, and a bishop. Now it is I who have found myself laying my hands on the heads of those equally unsuspecting, wondering what the Holy Spirit might have in store for them in the days ahead. Over the years I have learned that what may appear to be a prescribed ritual moment can lead far beyond itself. Hands are laid upon your head, and you find yourself in an open space of continual growth and discovery you never imagined or anticipated.
In this description of a life lived in the church, in ritual community, Bishop Griswold gives us a vivid picture of the work of the Holy Spirit, drawing us to one another, even if only for a moment’s ritual action, for the laying on of hands at confirmation. He names for us the experience, the feeling, of being present in the world to connect with one another and to be part of the action of God in another’s life.
There is no angel named here, but the sense of the Holy Spirit at work is palpable. It’s both personal and institutional. Bishop Griswold is telling us how it feels, sometimes, to live a life that serves the church, that commits to its structures and its people. And he is also, crucially, feeling the Spirit at work, and naming the presence of the Spirit. Over time, in ritual and prayer and connection and wonder, his soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
A few years before he wrote these words, Bishop Griswold had served as the chief consecrator of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. He had good reason to reflect on the action of God in the laying on of hands, the transmission and deepening and sharing of the Spirit that reaches out through the years and across our most painful divisions. His own hands were vehicles for one of the most consequential acts in the history of our denomination. I’d go so far as to say that that specific laying on of hands, the consecration of Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop, is an active reason that our own community can flourish in the present moment. We aren’t only about being gay, not at all, and we don’t all believe the same things about gender and sexuality. But I think it’s just true to say that our bearing forth of Christ in the world is immensely enriched by the quality of honesty and trust and openness that that specific consecration bodies forth. Controversy notwithstanding.
One person’s yes to God, one person’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit, one person’s wonder and prayer, creates an “open space of continual growth and discovery” in which other lives will be filled with the presence of Jesus. Most of us will not become bishops, but we are all, whether we know it or not, living in that open space that Bishop Griswold describes.
We are doing the ongoing work of Mary, the ongoing work of the Church, the ongoing work of Jesus in the redemption of the world. When you serve at the altar or at coffee hour or at the Saturday Soup Bowl, when you come here and join your prayers with ours, when you look to the Church for hope, when you honor the witness of the Gospel in this place by living out your vocation here, you are joined with Mary in bodying forth the savior.
We all know how hard that is. We all know what forces are arrayed within us and against us. If you look around you will notice that this is not a triumphant period in the history of the Church. I don’t think that much of Mary’s life can have felt triumphant or easy, either. She was perplexed when the angel spoke. But here we are all these centuries later, living in the open space that she entered and helped to make when she said yes to an angel as a teenaged girl.
I’d like to close this morning, if you’ll indulge me, with one more passage from Bishop Griswold’s little book of devotions. He closes the book with this passage from the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Knowing that these words meant a lot to Bishop Griswold, I offer them as he did, in hopes that they will help all of us to welcome the Holy Spirit like Mary did:
Above all, [he quotes Chardin] trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally in everything impatient to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new […]
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
Only God can say what this new Spirit forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Mary was perplexed when the angel spoke. But nothing will be impossible with God. “Here am I,” she said, “the servant of the Lord.” And here are we. Let it be with us according to God’s word.
Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
March 25, 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia