http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9077
[VirtueOnline] 25 Sep 2008--When Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori recently visited the Diocese of Georgia she got more than she bargained for when she went head to head with the orthodox rector of St. John's Church in Savannah, Georgia.
At a meeting with the clergy of the diocese, she asked them to meditate on Mark 1:11, "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased", the words spoken by "a voice from heaven" to Jesus at his baptism in Jordan.
"We were to apply this text directly to ourselves, and to ponder what it meant to be assured of God's unconditional love and approval. To judge from the responses, the assembled clergy loved this exercise, and in the discussion that followed the conventional themes of inclusiveness emerged - although a few did acknowledge a nagging sense that God might not be altogether "well-pleased" with them," wrote the Rev. Dr. Gavin G. Dunbar, rector of St. John's in his parish newsletter, under the title "Miss Congeniality."
"What no-one acknowledged was that this approach to the biblical text rested on very thin ice. It simply ignored what the text actually says: "Thou art my beloved son" - the singular, and not the plural "you" - or, as it appears in St. Matthew's gospel, "This is my beloved son" - this person, and not any others.
"That (unacknowledged) exegetical fact has critical theological implications, likewise ignored. On the one hand it means that the human race does not by nature immediately enjoy divine sonship and God's love. On the other it means that only Jesus does. And therefore our share in the love of God is not by nature but by grace, not immediate but mediated, and mediated by Jesus. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). As sole mediator of God and man, as the one through whom alone we may come to enjoy the Father's love and approval, Jesus has the right to command our faith and obedience to his word, as means and conditions for receiving the benefits of his mediation. And that opens up the whole question of what faith and obedience to him involves: in particular, the right ordering of the Church's life, and the right ordering of the human soul. And that brings us directly to the questions which Ms Jefferts Schori and her adulators dismissed as ungracious nit-picking by trouble-making conservatives. "We all believe in Jesus" she assured us, but what do we believe about Jesus? Who is this Jesus? In her account, a person of remarkably little consequence.
"When I ventured to raise this exegetical and theological problem, Ms Jefferts Schori made no answer. But other persons present were quick to refute me. One appealed to the immediacy of his feeling of God's love as proof that I was wrong about the need of mediation. Subjective experience trumped doctrine. Another dismissed the authority of Scripture and the Church's teaching as irrelevant, because, he said, (I kid you not) he had heard the voice of God when Ms Jefferts Schori spoke! An over-excited response, no doubt - but virtually the whole room then endorsed his comments with a standing ovation. Sad as it is that an officer of the Church gives so little importance to the mediating person and work of Christ, it is even more sad that so many Episcopalians see no problem there, and resent those who do.
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