Dear friends:
In his book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, Peter Gomes, the late minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard, describes sitting in an Episcopal Church in Virginia, where he was invited to be the preacher for the church's 150th anniversary. The planners of the festivities had decided that the liturgy would be the same Morning Prayer used in that parish 150 years earlier. The liturgy included the General Supplication "Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers."
Gomes looked up to see George Washington in a stained glass window above the altar. "It was not difficult to remember who the forefathers and foremothers were in this place, nor to imagine that at least one of their conspicuous sins was the belief that it was not wrong for Christians to hold other human beings, even fellow Christians, in chattel bondage."
Gomes says he took perverse pleasure asking God to forgive the sins of those particular forefathers and mothers. He was reminded that the ancestors often got it wrong -- that "we, too, can, and often do, get it wrong: that someday someone will pray to God to forgive us." That is why, he says, "the most profound of all religious sentiments should not be certainty, which inevitably leads to arrogance, but modesty, which because of a generous God, leads to mercy and forgiveness."
This weekend, we'll continue our sermon series "Partial Truths: Faith Beyond Cliché'" by looking at the commonly expressed sentiment "Love the Sinner and Hate the Sin." At best, it's a complicated sentiment, routed in certainty if not arrogance. We'll consider it in light of this haunting parable, which I encourage you to read ahead of time.
All services will enjoy great music. We'll celebrate a baptism at the chapel service, welcome new members, reaffirm ties that bind, and strengthen faith to live as God's faithful people in this world.
Come, and bring a friend.
