So much of the rhetoric surrounding the controversies of the Episcopal Church is filled with acrimony and the assigning of less than pure motives. This is true on both sides. If you followed the criticisms of my paper, "The Case for Re-alignment", on the Blog "Titus One Nine" (see below) you know how nasty it can get. We need to find a way to love and respect each other through the differences. I am convinced that this is only possible when we are willing to incarnate the self sacrificing love of Christ, especially in difficult times, with those with whom we have the greatest differences. This kind of incarnational approach is painful and very costly and yet it is the model we get from Jesus who was willing to go to the cross and die for us.
I ran across this quote the other day while preparing my sermon and thought it was significant
"That the Love of God also encloses political action, that the worldly gestalt of Christian love can therefore take in the gestalt of those fighting for self-assertion, power, success, and security, can only be comprehended there where the incarnation of love is taken seriously."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance by Larry Rasmussen page 72
If you're unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer a brief biography can be found here
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/133.html
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