Jefforts Schori sighting

The new Presiding Bishop was at a nearby church this morning (only a couple of miles away!), and I just found out about it this evening, or I’d have gone. A friend who went called to tell me about it. My friend was very pleased and positively impressed by Jefforts Schori, who preached. And she got to meet her after the service, and reported Jefferts Schori to be warm and authentic (my friend has pretty good radar for that).

The following, which sums up better than I could do from my friend’s report, is from the Episcopal News Service e-newsletter:

Earlier Sunday, council members and Church Center staff traveled to All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Chicago for Eucharist. The service took place under strings of multi-colored paper cutouts or “papel picado” strung across the nave for All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day, made in remembrance of members and friends of the congregation. Parishioners, church school children and neighbors had also made “ofrendas”—traditional Day of the Dead “shrines” paying tribute to lost loved ones. The ofrendas were placed among candles on tables along the walls of the nave.

Jefferts Schori, during her sermon, noted Jesus’ admonition from the morning’s gospel (Mark 12:38-44) to “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”

Holding her cope out from her sides, Jefferts Schori said “Ouch.”

“Surely that can’t have anything to do with us,” she added, smiling.

She noted the Old Testament story (1 Kings 17:8-16) of Elijah asking a starving widow for food and promising her that if she shared her last bread with him, God would replenish her grain and oil until the killing drought was over.

He was, Jefferts Schori said, asking the woman to make the “remarkable gamble” of trusting a stranger and the stranger’s God.

The gospel reading also included Jesus’ observation of the widow’s contribution to the temple treasury, noting that she had given out of her poverty, not her abundance. Jefferts Schori told the congregation that the word “poverty” in the gospel was translated from a Greek word—hustereseos—associated both with the word “hysteria” and with a woman’s womb.

The widow whom Elijah encountered was “hysterical” because the fruit of her womb, her children, were in danger, she said.

“The desperation of the terribly poor knows no gender,” Jefferts Schori said. However, she noted that widows and mothers of children are more likely to find themselves in such desperation.

This desperation is what makes some people buy lottery tickets, enter every sweepstakes offer that comes in the mail, and otherwise gamble away their paychecks, she said. And it makes others bet that “even a God they haven’t met will provide.”

“You and I must be foolish enough” to believe that God will provide, Jefferts Schori said. “We have to bet it all.”

Making such a bet is hard for most people, she added. “We’re much more interested in playing it safe that in betting it all.”

Today’s “long-robed ones” can point fingers and calculate percentages of giving, Jefferts Schori said, “or we can figure out how to cure the hysterical desperation of poverty.”

“Be merciful, join the hysterical and companion the friendless,” she said.

After the post-communion prayer, co-warden Joey Sylvester presented Jefferts Schori and Anderson with rolls of duct tape—because “for years, All Saints has used duct tape to hold this place together. For us, it is an outward and visible sign of God’s grace and longing for unity.”

Sylvester added that the tape also symbolized the parish’s prayers for them, and the parish’s pledge to “stick by and stick with you as you shape and lead our church in the day ahead to respond to God’s call for a more compassionate, just and peace-filled world.”

All Saints, whose building is the oldest wood-frame church still in use in Chicago, is in the midst of a multi-phase capital campaign whose first phase of interior work was recently completed.

All Saints’ rector is Bonnie Perry, who truly deserves the credit for the parish’s tremendous vitality and outreach, coming back from near-mission status, if I recall correctly.