Dean's Letter

February 2008

From The Very Reverend David Bird, Ph.D., Dean and Rector

Lenten Meditation

Lent, rightly understood, is a season of hope. It is a time of self-examination and repentance. Traditionally, it was also a time when notorious sinners, who had been separated from the church, were restored to full communion or membership. In so acting, the church reminded everyone of the message of hope and salvation which God brings to us all.

The deeper an ordained minister reaches into the heart of ministry, the more that minister sees a need for a message of hope, and for reassurance that God’s will is that we all be restored to “The Ground of our Being”—God.

Restored to God, we are much more ready to enter into relationship with our fel- low human beings and more able to understand them. We then in turn become connected. In a healthy relationship, what we do for others is a response to the connectedness we already feel for them. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we remind ourselves when we see others struggling. Yet knowing God loves us, we are the more able to help and identify with other people and share with them the values and vision which transform our lives.

One of the books that I am currently reading, “God at Work” by Ken Costa, has an instructive chapter on how we make moral decisions and, by implication, ex- amine our lives. Costa presents four helpful ways of making ethical decisions: first, our relationship with God, which leads us to the moral teaching of the Bible; secondly, our God-given gist of reasoning; thirdly, our conscience--“a kind of silent clamor of truth ringing inside” us that is the Spirit of God prodding us in a God-ward direction; and fourthly, the consequences of our moral decisions for others as well as ourselves.

For most of us it is the fourth component, assessing the consequences of our actions which proves most difficult. Some Christians, of course, hide behind biblical or moral fundamentalism. “This is what the Bible says,” is a very comforting sentence for those who would absolve them- selves from moral responsibility for their actions and their consequences. “Don’t steal,” warns the commandment. Yet, the most famous theologian of all time argues that it is our duty to steal in extreme circumstances when other- wise someone would starve to death. Saving human life has always taken precedence over rules in Episcopalian and Catholic teaching. Faithful Christians are called to deal in consequences and responsibility.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that conse- quences are all that matter. Sometimes, however, conse- quences become a factor which demands that we conscien- tiously reexamine our moral positions.

In these circumstances, I have chosen to live by what we call “virtually exception-less rules.” “Don’t kill is almost always the appropriate rule but there are extreme situations where we decide we just have to break the “don’t kill” rule. “ Don’t commit adultery,” we argue, and yet in very extreme cases people have done precisely that to save the life of a spouse or a child.

One of the key issues is that we consider the consequences for others and not just ourselves. This is where the Bible really kicks in. We cannot read the story of Jesus of Naz- areth without seeing that truly this was “a man for others.”

During Lent, I recommend that we each reread at least one of the Gospels and compare our Lord’s life with our own. If it does nothing else, it will reinforce the need for a moral compass to our lives grounded in first, our relation- ship with God, which leads us to the moral teaching of the Bible; secondly, our God-given gist of reasoning; thirdly, our conscience--“a kind of silent clamor of truth ringing inside” us that is the Spirit of God prodding us in a God- ward direction; and fourthly, the consequences of our moral decisions for others as well as ourselves.

May I wish you a good and holy Lent.

— David

who we are . worship services . iglesia de guadalupe . ministries . children & families
calendar . news . sermons & ideas . join us . sitemap . home

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
81 North Second Street, San Jose, California 95113 . 408-293-7953
trinicat@pacbell.net . www.trinitysj.org