Last year at our diocesan convention, the preacher concluded her sermon by asking: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to belong?” Her question points out an inescapable truth.
What the Rev. Sandy Casey-Martus articulated was the freedom that all of us have to let go of things that we believe are right in order to encounter some greater reality, like being in fellowship with one another. Apparently, there are times when we can be right or we can belong, but we cannot have both.
What a convicting idea. I’m not sure we realize we have this choice, which when acceptable to us can lead to a greater good.
A few months ago, the Lambeth Commission on Communion published the Windsor Report. That report did what Casey-Martus did in her sermon. It confronted all of us with a new reality of inclusion.
To some, the report about how to preserve the unity of the communion in light of its rancorous disagreements is perceived as unacceptable compromise. To others it seems a veiled attempt to skirt the real issues in the interest of some false unity.
I would like to suggest that this is not the spirit of the Windsor Report, not even the spirit of the primates’ recent decision to ask a three-year period of re-evaluation. Rather, these two bodies are asking us to take seriously the notion that our primary Christian identity is that of a body of Christ. We are being challenged, as Anglicans, to remember that our primary bond is that of relationship, first with Jesus Christ, then with one another.
In our profound belief that we must be right, we might lose something very precious: the ability to discern what is right together, as a body.
