October 2019
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
VOLUME 16 ISSUE 3 FALL 2019 Highlighted this Issue: V The 151st Diocesan Convention V Bishop Love’s Convention Address V Jesus, Justice and the Holiness of God V And more… 1 Inside This Issue... Jesus, Justice and the Holiness of God – Episcopal Diocese of Albany 3 Ven. Dr. C. Brown Diocesan: The Right Reverend William H. Love “Stand Firm in the holy spirit… 6 Striving together as one” Business Office: 580 Burton Road Greenwich, NY 12834 …The 151st Diocesan Convention Phone: (518) 518-692-3350 10 Fax: (518) 692-3352 Email: [email protected] Actions of the 151st Convention Website: albanyepiscopaldiocese.org 10 Elected Offices Spiritual Life Center: 11 575 Burton Road Greenwich, New York 12834 Resolutions of the Convention Phone: 518-692-9550 11 Fax: 518-692-8777 E-mail: [email protected] Convention 2019 “As seen through the lens” Website: www.ctkcenter.org 12 The Bishop’s Address Albany Episcopalian Editor: 15 Cn. George J. Marshall [email protected] “Well done, Good and Faithful Servants” 20 …A tribute to Bishop Harold and Liz Miller Communication & Technology Officer: Meaghan Keegan [email protected] 24 Clergy In Transition 25 Upcoming Diocesan Events 26 The Beaver Cross Camp 28 The Beaver Cross Fall Edition Christ the King Upcoming Events Diocesan Updates 29 The Diocesan Update is the diocesan Bishop Love’s Visitation Schedule weekly e-mail newsletter, containing news 30 and events from around the diocese. If you’re interested in receiving the Diocesan Update, send an e-mail to: webmaster@ albanydiocese.org. Put “Subscribe” in the subject line, and include your name, address, phone number, and parish (or other diocesan affiliation) in the body of the message. 2 he earliest Christian creed Caesar is pure idolatry and a denial of emperor with the words “Tiberivs consisted of two Greek words: the lordship of Christ who had said, Caesar Divi Avgvsti filivs Avgvstvs,” kurios Iesous - “Christ is “All authority in heaven and earth has or “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of Lord.” The phrase appears frequently been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18) the Divine Augustus.” (In the image Tin the letters of the apostle Paul: “if to the below, not all words are fully you confess with your lips that Jesus To declare, “Caesar is Lord,” for spelled out.) Augustus, Rome’s first is Lord and believe in your heart Polycarp, indeed for any ordinary Emperor, had been elevated to the that God raised him from the dead, Roman citizen, was to say much more level of divinity on his death - an act you will be saved” (Romans 10:9)... than that the Emperor was simply the known as “apotheosis.” By Polycarp’s “For what we preach is not ourselves, one in charge and commanded the time in the 2nd century, the religious but Jesus Christ as Lord, (II Corinthians loyalty and obedience of all his citizens. cult of the Emperor had intensified, 4:5). The apostle Paul had said, “Let every and was assimilated into the worship person be subject to the governing of the official deities of Rome. Roman Especially interesting is 1 authorities...those that exist have authorities regarded participation in Corinthians 12:3: “no one speaking been instituted by God.” (Romans this cult as essential to the well-being by the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus 13:1). Christians were committed of the empire. Failure to do so was be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus to a principled loyalty to civic rulers. treasonous, and regarded as genuinely is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit,” But the declaration of the Lordship of harmful to the fortunes of Rome. because of the explicit contrast between Caesar asked more than that. cursing Jesus and the confession of his lordship. J.N. Kelly notes that Paul As early as the reign of Tiberius Assyria and its Divine Rulers “does not disclose the occasion on Caesar in Jesus’ lifetime, Roman I recently met a former professor which these utterances were made, coins depicted the likeness of the of both my kids, Sarah Melville, who but the context of the first, with its teaches ancient history at Clarkson reference to the alternative of saying University. She is an expert on the “cursed be Jesus” seems to suggest that Assyrians, who harried the Israelites it is an hour when a Christians loyalty in the Second Book of Kings. In her is tested.” book on Sargon II, who sent the ten “lost tribes” of Israel into exile (II The early 2nd century text, The Kings 17:5-6), she explains how the Martyrdom of Polycarp, tells of the Assyrians understood the King to be arrest and execution of the revered the mediator between the human and Bishop of Smyrna. When Polycarp is the divine. arrested, the imperial magistrate clearly has no appetite for executing the old “Unlike our society which man, and implores, “What harm is scrupulously separates the religions there in saying Caesar is Lord?” But and secular spheres, ancient Near for Polycarp, to ascribe lordship to Eastern societies did not recognize a 3 distinction but considered the earthly character to their cults of personality The Holiness of God realm a reflection of the divine one - exemplified by the massive images in “Do not come near; put off your and the king the link between the Moscow’s Red Square and in Beijing, shoes from your feet,” says the LORD two.” or the significance of Mao’s “little red to Moses from the burning bush, “for book” of quotations carried around by the place on which you are standing Think for a every citizen like a pocket Bible. moment about is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5) The the ethical When it comes to North Korea - Hebrew word, “Qadosh,” means “to implications of the identification of the ruling Kim be set apart.” The ground under Moses’ this identification family with the divine is explicit. feet is “set apart” by the presence of of the ruler with And the grandiosity of these the Holy God of Abraham, Issac and the divine. It claims is commensurate with the Jacob who is radically distinct or “set means that there savagery inflicted upon any apart” from the creation. This does is no higher dissent or hint of opposition. not mean that the LORD is physically authority - not The North Korean cult of distant; God is everywhere, as Psalm just in the political personality evokes in the 139 says, “whither shall I flee from sphere, but also ancient tradition, originating in thy presence?” Rather, the LORD is in the realm of China and adopted by neighboring set apart in the sense of His absolute ethics and divine countries, in which the Emperor perfection, freedom, and goodness – justice. It raises was known as “Tianzi” or “Son of what the Danish Philosopher, Soren the principle of Heaven,” and ruled as a “living Kierkegaard called “the infinite “might makes god.” qualitative distinction” between us and right” to the status of a theological truth. God, whose holiness lies beyond our Professor Melville quotes another Korean government propaganda grasp. taught that the current ruler’s father, ancient Middle Eastern scholar to stress Prophet Isaiah put it this way, “For that “violence and subjugation” in Kim Jong-Il, was born under a double rainbow on the holy Baekdu my thoughts are not your thoughts, this cosmology become “more than neither are your ways my ways, says the simply stratagems of power, they are Mountain. At his birth, a new star was said to appear and winter was instantly LORD. For as the heavens are higher right, good, beautiful, desirable, and than the earth, so are my ways higher sublime in their accordance of the turned to spring. One writer has said about growing up in North Korea, “to than your ways and my thoughts than particular individual with the course of your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, also the universe.” my childish eyes and to those of all my friends, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Iil Canticle 10 in the BCP). [Kim Jong-Un’s father and grandfather] Modern Versions of were perfect beings, untarnished by any Divine Rule base human function. I was convinced, As strange as this may seem to us, the as we all were, that neither of them elevation of absolute political power to urinated or defecated. Who could the level of the divine is not so distant a imagine such things of gods?” reality as we might think. Consider the While we find this troubling, even personality cults of the great twentieth shocking, we tend to think of ourselves century dictators, such as Hitler, as insulated from such absolutism by Stalin and Mao Zedong, the absolute our tradition of democratic government loyalty and unquestioned obedience and the separation between Church they commanded, and the awe and and State. But apart from these adulation they demanded from their relatively recent civic principles, the people. While these dictators did not great sign of contradiction (Luke 2:34) explicitly identify themselves with to absolutism is the Biblical revelation the divine, there was a quasi-religious of the Holiness of God. 4 The absolute distinction of divine is morally unquestionable, and the to come. As Isaiah said, “In those days holiness between God and creation suffering of the Israelites is, as the prayer and at that time I will cause a righteous precludes any identification of a book puts it, “meet and right” - just Branch to spring up for David; and he human political rulers with the divine. part of the cosmic harmony between shall execute justice and righteousness The holiness of God SECULARIZES heaven and earth.