Kendall Harmon has posted a letter from the Bishop of Arizona regarding the recent House of Bishops meeting which has again raised the issue of what true repentance would look like. The following is a FICTIONAL (As in not a real speech from a real person) proposal that I thought some would find interesting:

I greet you in the name of our victorious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who in conquering death, freed us from bondage to sin, restoring the possibility of fellowship with God our Father; and who, if we accept and seek His Will, brings us into perfect communion with the Almighty through the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we gather here today under the shadow of judgment. The actions we have taken as a body over the past several years, the arrogance and lack of regard exhibited for our Anglican family–indeed our lack of fortitude and failure to administer godly admonition to our errant brothers and sisters who have strayed from the cause of Christ–all of these stand under the judgment not only of our fellow Anglicans in Africa, Asia, South America and elsewhere, but our ecumenical partners, and the entire Church of Christ, but also–and most importantly–under the judgment of God himself.

I stand before you today as one who had no official role in the action, which served as a presenting cause for the conflict and pain, which has wracked the body of our global communion. There are also those of you who have stood as a loyal opposition to the actions taken by the national Church. Yet we ALL stand under judgment. These actions were not the actions of a few only, but of our Church corporately, and it is as a body that we must bear responsibility. We have indeed sinned in thought, in word and in deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. Clearly we have not loved God with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, for who among us would knowingly lead someone we loved to take actions which would imperil their lives. Yet as a Church we have taken actions; actions which have not only imperiled our relationships with other Churches, imperiled the lives of some among us who see affirmation as license, but we have imperiled the very souls of those in our care, To whom we have been sent to lead from darkness to light. We have done this. We are ALL guilty and we stand here today so that we might kneel tomorrow, seeking that humility which is the basis of truthful and sincere repentance, humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Pet. 5:6).

But we protest. We protest because we desire to preserve freedom of conscience, we hesitate because we don’t want the role–the burden, the responsibility, and the hard task–of telling someone we love that the road upon which they walk leads to destruction and pain–in this life, and in the next.

So let us consider freedom Brothers and Sisters. Certainly ours is a faith that testifies to freedom. Freedom from sin and death, freedom from bondage and addiction, freedom from former allegiances, freedom from all but Christ. And that’s the difficulty brothers and sisters, because we are not completely free. Do we allow freedom of conscience, freedom of dissent? Certainly. But we must first recognize that freedom which is within the purview of every Christian: the freedom to will what God wills. We are free, in all times and in all places to sin. But we are not free to claim that the sin we desire is the will of Christ or of Christ’s Church. Individuals are free to sin, the Church is free to proclaim the will of God. We know, in part by our present situation, though we recognized it before hand, and set it out in our founding documents, that councils of the church can and have, erred. We accept that; error has and does exist. Even in the church, even in the body of Christ; even in our own hearts. Human beings are free to sin, and so, as sinners, they make up the councils of the Church and sometimes err. Yet, we believe and attest, because of Holy Scripture, that the Holy Spirit can work through sinful, prideful and self-righteous men. Councils can err, it is true, but we have to trust that through time, as the Holy Spirit is operative within the hearts of men that we will be brought, both individually and corporately, ever more into conformity with the mind of Christ so that at the last day the Church, the Bride of Christ, may be Holy and Pure as she awaits her bridegroom.

Because of this, we must always be humble. It is never the right nor should it ever be the expectation that any person or group of persons can universalize their will or their opinion and impose it upon the Church–the Church’s will must always be formed in subjection to the Holy Spirit; and where our individual, fallible and sinful will and opinions differ from the faith as received and the mind of the Church as expressed through the broad sweep of history we must be ready, at the very least, to admit our own inadequacy to dictate doctrine or to direct the Church�s actions. In other words my friends, we are bound to wait for the Holy Spirit to lead us. There are those among us who believe the Holy Spirit was moving our former actions. Yet, what do we know of the fruits of the Spirit? The catechism presents us this summary:

Q. How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

A. We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.

And secondly,

Q. How do we recognize the truths taught by the Holy Spirit?

A. We recognize truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in accord with the Scriptures.

Who among us has experienced the consequences of living in conformity with the Holy Spirit because of our former decisions? Have not the effects been quite the opposite. Rather than Love they have sown anger, rather than harmony, discord and rather than harmonizing with scripture, our decisions simply disregarded it.

Therefore I say of Christian freedom: certainly you are free to disagree. You are free to be right alone or wrong alone, you are free to be virtuous or to sin, but you are not free to take upon yourself the mantle of authority to speak the mind of the Church in a manner differing from what the Church herself has said. And in matters of faith, one portion of the Church does not have the ability to take such a mantle upon itself, which is what we sought, being rebuffed.

And so, I reiterate, we are ALL under the judgment of God for what we have done and for what we have left undone: for affirming sin, for neglecting evangelism, for denying the gospel, for teaching a false gospel, for hating rather than loving and for deceiving rather than revealing. And we as Bishops, as shepherds, would do well to heed the words of the prophet crying out:

“‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ declares the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: ‘You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:1-2)

And for those who have lost faith, who no longer trust their Bishops or their priests I ask that you consider again the prophet’s cry:

Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:3-4)

My fellow Shepherds, we have scattered the flock, we have set wolves upon them, we have fostered confusion, we have spoken falsely, we have forgotten our first call, we have abused them, we have neglected them. We need to repent of our failures to God�s people and ask for strength and discernment to lead�and individually we need to ask God�s will as to whether we really ought to be leading, or if we should abdicate for other shepherds.

And so, friends, what is it that we must do. I have spoken of repentance, but what would it look like for us, for our church, to repent in these latter days where repentance has all but been forgotten, within the church as without?

I reiterate that this is a repentance of the whole church, not just of those who voted to approve the titular Bishop of New Hampshire. Nor is it only for those who have consented to or actively went forward with either same sex unions or the ordination of sexually active homosexuals. This is a time of repentance for us all, for our failures, for our neglect of Christ and his message, for our failure to serve Christ, to serve others, to set our face and stay the course.

As such, I want to suggest that, from a period determined (either Advent or Lent, depending on the time of year), we as the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church USA, determine and state that we will hereby abstain from either partaking in or celebrating ALL sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, except in cases of extreme illness or imminent death.

We do this recognizing that the Eucharist is not a gift of grace only, but a gift of judgment and discernment for the people of God. Just as the Lord warned the Israelites while in the wilderness to maintain the appropriate boundaries lest he �break out against them,� so too does the Eucharist have boundaries, established by our Lord, evidenced in the fate of Judas, explained by St. Paul, that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink judgment or damnation upon themselves. Not only will we as Bishops abstain from the sacraments, but we heartily encourage all our Priests to abstain as well (except in those cases where pastoral necessity may require. i.e. baptism, marriage, moments of death and funerals), and to explain such abstention, its reasons and symbolism to their parishioners. We will compel no one outside the house of Bishops to maintain this abstention, but we recommend that it be a sign of repentance for the whole Episcopal Church.

We will maintain this abstention from communion as a sign of our unworthiness and repentance and as a sign of the communion which has been shattered with our fellow Christians around the world. At the designated time (Appropriately Easter or The Nativity of our Lord), a select foreign Bishop appointed either by ballot at the Primates meeting or selected by the Archbishop of Canterbury, will admit one designated Bishop of the Episcopal Church back into the Communion through a Eucharistic service of repentance and reconciliation.

That Episcopal Bishop will then, the following Sunday or major feast, admit another ECUSA Bishop back into communion, the order (beyond the first who will be picked by the primates) having been designated by ballot in the House of Bishops. Each Sunday or major feast following, those Bishops who have been readmitted to communion will do the same for another ECUSA Bishop, the number growing exponentially.

Should any Bishop of the Church refuse to participate in this process of ongoing repentance and reconciliation, or should it be discovered they have in some way violated this agreement, their see will be considered vacant until such a time as a successor can take office.

At the conclusion of this process of reclamation, there will be a special convention of the Episcopal Church called in order to address structural and canonical issues related to our juridical bodies, canonical procedures, structure, and affirmation of the Anglican Covenant. Additionally, this convention will lay the foundation for a renewed evangelical mission for the Church, as well as a financial and institutional restructuring which will enable us to better live into our designation as the “Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society,” including those fragments of the Anglican diaspora who may wish to move toward a full corporate unity.

A body of theologians, liturgists and literary figures (poets, authors, literary historians) including representatives of the international Anglican Communion and Anglican groups previously estranged from the communion will be convened, and will seek to establish accepted patterns of liturgical expression with an eventual goal of revising the Book of Common Prayer in a way that is theologically sound, linguistically beautiful and representative of the best of the Prayer book tradition. For those churches desiring additional resources or variation, this committee will also be in charge of drafting alternative or expanded service resources, but these will be used only with the permission of the Bishop and all liturgies used must have been previously approved by the aforementioned committee on worship, as well as General Convention.

In Christ,

Bishop Theophilus Fictitious

Diocese of Nowhere