When I was in seminary many years ago, one day at the end of a two hour class in systematic theology I approached Canon Forbes with a heavy heart, "How", I asked him, "could a good God, the Creator of the universe, the Ground of Being, permit evil to exist and not merely exist, but often to thrive in this world?". Given the often wretched heartbreaks to which humanity is heir, whether one is Job, or merely witnesses Job’s sad lot, mine was not a novel question, to be sure. But it was, and always is, a question needful of an answer for all of that. But the answer I received owed much to the matrix in which it was fashioned and person of William Forbes.

Forbes methodology as a teacher cured his students of the notion that there were any easy answers to complex questions. He avoided the standard lecture system, preferring to assign readings from often turgid theologians whose dense vocabulary did little to clarify the course’s text. When we arrived in class, we discovered that nothing we had read ( or ought to have read) prepared us for what Forbes’ had in store for us. Our sessions were skull throbbing events in which we participated in Forbes’ version of a Socratic discussion of the assigned topic. In the course of any given day we became fully cognizant of our manifold weaknesses, our intellectual shortcomings and our unhappy state of incomprehension regarding the meaning of subject assigned. Instead of the standard lecture system what Forbes added to the Socratic method was silence. The class could just as well have been labeled a course in systematic theological counseling.

Forbes would pose a question allegedly related to the assigned readings, but always quite at variance with the general drift of what the author of our text had to say It was not until the end of the year that I discovered why. Forbes questions seemed peculiarly unaligned to the textbook. The book had been chosen by another member of the faculty who had thereafter moved on to a more rewarding benefice, thus creating a vacancy which Forbes had obligingly filled. But Forbes had not read the text, did not read the text as he subsequently admitted, and he innocently assumed that there was not much room for innovation in presenting classic Christian theology so that one text was pretty much like any other. In this he was mistaken. Our text was one of those profoundly post modern treatments of theology in which innovation combined with convoluted sentence structure and an arcane vocabulary offered ample opportunity for any student to come to some remarkably un-classical conclusions. Forbes handled remarkable conclusions diplomatically. He ignored them. And he pressed past them because his was the theology of Richard Hooker and the Caroline Divines.

In any case Forbes would direct his initial query to one chosen at random and then wait patiently for an answer. The unlucky seminarian would then begin to blather about, trying to say appropriate things, hopefully tying them together, praying to God that they might actually make sense. When the hapless student had emptied his threadbare bag of ideas Forbes would then contemplate the student’s answer. A long period of deadly silence ensued. For a few seconds the remainder of the class could take that odd pleasure derived from witnessing the discomfort of other students, particularly those who fancied that they were exceptionally gifted. But watching the silent Forbes inwardly digest our classmate’s response quickly unnerved us all.

We who had been spared being the honor of being the first chosen to respond, we all reviewed our fellow student’s answer. Each of us recognized the anguish of the individual whose recent answer hung over the classroom like a wispy ill smelling odor, its inadequacies and omissions, contradictions and fallacies, now clearly recognized. One by one we attempted to rescue our classmate as each in turn added to and amplified, revised and edited our hapless colleague’s answer - and each of his classmate’s sequentially feebly offered amendment in the vain hope of finally resolving the tension in the room. But each response merited only Forbe’s consecutive contemplative silences until every member of the class had weighed in. Then he synthesized what we had tried to articulate and we realized that we had, much to our astonishment, come to a general understanding of the original question. Without further ado he then dropped the next question on some poor soul and our anxiety level returned to its previous level of near panic.

It was some years later that I came to realize that my after class inquiry was truly Forbesian in its own way. Why would a good God allow evil to exist? My question provoked a symmetrical silence during which Forbes contemplated his answer. After what seemed to be a minute or two, he offered the following.

"The problem of good and evil is essentially insolvable. I can only tell you that those people who are essentially good, even though they may often do things which are not good, all have a problem with the existence of evil in the world. And I can also tell you that people who are essentially evil, even though they may accidentally do some things that are good, are just as perplexed by the existence of good in the world. They are as astonished that people would expect God to allow good things to happen as good people are upset that God chooses to allow evil things to happen.

"If we could only do that which is good, or only do that which is evil, neither term would have any meaning. Life itself would be meaningless because we would have no choice in the matter. All choices reflect the differences that separate a decision for the best, from one to choose the better, or from the good, or from the not really bad. Or to choose, the bad rather than the awful and the awful as opposed to that which is totally evil. It is precisely because we cannot always tell what is good, cannot always do that which is better, sometimes do that which is bad or create something quite evil while trying to achieve something we think is good, that our lives are meaningful. Our choices are meaningful. And we must struggle to decide what to do.

"God could have created a world in which only good existed, but in that sort of universe we would be unable to recognize the good when we saw it. Good would have no meaning. He created a universe in which what we do, what we allow to be done, is filled with possibilities, not all of them good. So, in a strange way, we share with God in the very process of creation.

"So as long as you are troubled by the existence of evil in a universe created by a good God you probably are all right. And I don’t think God is offended by your impertinence in questioning his judgment. It might just be an indication that you might be useful."

It was both a wholly unsatisfactory answer and easily the most satisfactory answer to any theological question I ever asked. And it frames my thoughts regarding the Church, the sorry state of the Christian religion in these difficult times.

We humans have a propensity to err. We do a lot of things well but we do some things terribly badly. Why should we suppose that the Church, in all its forms and all of its fractured denominations, be exempt from our individual tendency to err? We expect of the Church and its officers that it and they are removed from temptation – or at least, can rise above temptation. When the Church fails to do so, when bishops, priest, deacons and lay officials demonstrate their untoward capacity to behave badly, we are quite understandably upset. We expect more of them. Once when my wife and I were quarrelling I said something in anger, probably an explicative, and she said, "How can you say that? You are supposed to be holy!" "No," I replied, "only God is holy. I am merely religious." And there it is, you see, despite our best professions of faith, we are not holy and we often stand in need of forgiveness for our actions. It is very difficult - sometimes impossible - for us to forgive each other for our errors of omission or commission. But for God, forgiveness is not difficult, probably never impossible. It is a gift given, not earned, not deserved, as an act of love.

"’This day have I put before you life and death; therefore, choose life’ says the Lord" It is in the choosing between and among good, better, best, poor, bad and evil that we choose life. Sometimes our choices lie only between nasty and awful, occasionally between better and best, and only infrequently between good and evil And even when we dither, uncertain about what to do, choosing not to choose, our abstinence from choosing becomes a choice .Even when we think we can accurately predict whether some choice will result in producing a good outcome it is only after we have made our choice that we can we actually discover the effect of our decision. Every decision has unanticipated unintended consequences. In what, then, can we have faith? In this oddly uncertain world, what can we trust? In a word, God.

God has allowed us to choose, allowed us to have meaning, and accepts the challenge that are inherent in that context. It is highly probable that some of our choices will be disastrous, many will be ill considered, and only a few will be really quite inspired. We are creatures whose brains reach maturity much later than our bodies and some people have the misfortune of arriving at great age of body with incredibly immature minds. People do some extraordinary silly things, wicked things. But God, like a loving parent, stands ready to forgive us, his children, when we err. Pick us up, dust us off, and bid us try again.

So I bid you pray that each of us may be given the gift of grace to forgive the Church, society in general , and specific particularly vexing fellow human beings for their individual and collective lapses of judgment, errors of commission or omission and their sins great and small – and for the strength to do better, to do good and not evil in coming days. We are not – any of us – holy, either individually or collectively. We may all only be religious. But we must strive to become forgiving. It is not only the essence but the existential proof of our capacity to love. And absent our willingness to forgive, our claim even to be religious is called into question.

And do not be dismayed when you pray if God seems not to be listening and your prayer seems to be followed only by silence. William Forbes taught me that in the silence every question receives its due consideration; from God if not from human teachers. God knows that there are no questions that are undeserving of an answer – and not just a short, swift, answer, but one fully thought out, well rounded, tested, and subject to infinite process of patient and loving revision. But God has eternity and we think we only have this brief and uncertain life. In point of fact we also have eternity. What we lack is patience and faith. Oh, not faith in God, faith in ourselves, in the power of our prayers. Because we know that we are merely religious and not holy, we think God will listen less to our petitions for redress than to those we think of as saints. But God hears everyone’s prayers clearly and acts – not only judiciously, but mercifully and not because of our merit but because of the love God bears for his creation explicit in the Grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ and made manifest through the Holy Spirit..

Trust, therefore, in the Goodness of the Lord.. May the peace of God be with you.

    I am often embarrassed by my chequered history – and sometimes I am embarrassed that I am embarrassed, while at other times I am simply amazed that I am not embarrassed at what, in retrospect, ought to have caused a mental spasm of regret when recalled to mind. I frequently wake up at night wanting to apologize to people I knew (or know) to whom I offered offense. They are, I think, legion. But one learns that what was done cannot be undone; that what was an awful breach of manners a half century past is over and gone. Mistakes of one’s youth, ones majority, one’s seeming maturity, one’s old age simply lie there like boundary stones along a rural lane. They are immovable. But you can walk around them and you must if you are going to go forward.

   But remembrance of unpleasantness past is not without some compensations. It offers a sobering vision of a reality with which one must deal and must deal honestly. In recent days I found myself moderately amused while reading the annual report offered the delegates to a sister denomination’s synod meeting. It was a fine, up-beat summation of the group’s achievements in times past in general and in the year ended specifically. However, it glossed over several poignant chapters of the denomination’s history, times of duress, trial, sadness and failure. There is a tendency in all denominations to concentrate on the successes, the survival of the entity, and to ignore dealing with precisely what it was that the denomination survived. We would all prefer not to discuss in public the daft great-aunt who lives in the attic. And that is exactly why the Church – in all its manifestations and forms – periodically finds itself in a mess.

   Several years ago I started writing an unscholarly history of Anglicanism. Footnotes were forgotten and objectivity muted because my aim was to attempt to make sense of our present condition of schism and separation. What I was doing, you see, was trying to explain to myself how the Anglican Communion came to be in such a doleful state. I am a slow learner. When I was a seminarian I was invited to give a series of talks at a parish church on the history of the Church and I told the first session that I planned to talk about the Church, "warts and all." After the initial session the rector’s wife accosted me and demanded, "When are going to show us something besides the warts?" Well, I tried to explain to the irate distaff of the rectory, the difference between a wart and a beauty mark is often in the eye of the beholder.

    As one who has had a life long love affair with the Church, I prize the Church’s warts fully as much as its classic beauty. It seems to me that the inability or unwillingness to see its failures betokens a lack of faith in God. It is his Church, not ours. We are merely its caretakers, its door keepers. And sometimes we forget that our job is to keep the doors open. Its rock, Peter, denied Christ three times but he went on to be Christ’s Vicar at Rome and suffer death for his faith. If we knew only the latter Peter we would be unable to relate to him because we deny Christ frequently and still must hope for his pardon – and thank God we are not Christ’s Vicar at Rome or likely to be a martyr.

    I think I understand how the Church got into this pickle. It has always had trouble admitting the obvious fact that it is composed of human beings and we all make mistakes. Worse, when we do err, we try to blame somebody else: the devil made me do it. Maybe he cheered me on but it was my willful act that did the deed; my decision that led to that outcome. What I did or chose not to do, that was my decision. Mostly. At present groups of God’s men (and women) are engaged in the ungodly sport of politicizing the Church with all the ruthlessness of secular partisans. I find the spectacle a bloody bore. "Bloody" by the way, is an excellent British expletive, a contraction for "By Our Lady" – that is, the Virgin Mary. And as the bickering over who controls the Body of Christ, the Church, goes on, Mary weeps. Was it for this that she bore her son, raised him up, watched him die on the cross, and found his body gone – resurrected to be sure, but what a shock! Here is the Body of Christ, crucified again. What greater shock can there be but to find the sacrifice of mother and son the sordid stuff of ecclesiastical politics.

    In these days of turmoil it is essential that we keep our wits about us and do not fall into the easy snare of assuming that God loves us more than others. We have the testimony of the Apostles that, "Christ came into the world to save sinners." And in the Communion Service we affirm that Jesus was the full, complete and sufficient sacrifice and oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Well, then, rejoice! Lift up your hearts! The Church may be filled with rascals – indeed it ought to be and the tragedy is that there is still room in the pews and the pulpits for more. Where are they? We are here, to be sure, but there is plenty of room for others. None of us is called to be the judge of others, that is God’s job, and He has already found us guilty. But He has also paid our fine, served our time, and expunged our record.

    We may not approve of how others live their lives. We may disapprove of their sins. But we are challenged to announce that their sins, and ours, are forgiven – provided that we and they acknowledge our transgressions to God. For those who believe, probably quite honestly, that they do no sin, well, may the mercies of God be with them. I would like to believe that of myself but unfortunately I know me too well.

   This time of ecclesiastical madness will eventually pass. That is the good news. The bad news is that it will be followed by a season of ecclesiastical insanity of a different stripe but one no less vexing to the survivors of this era. We are, God help us, all too human. St. Augustine believed that all humans were born with what he called Original Sin – the sin of Adam and Eve. His protagonist, Pelagius, thought that babies were born without sin but that they managed to figure out how to sin rather quickly. Among my many sins is that I tend to agree more with Pelagius than St. Augustine.

   The problem of Original Sin is that it argues that we have inherited sin as if it were a part of our DNA. If it is an intrinsic part of our nature, an unavoidable inheritance like a predisposition to diabetes, we can hardly be held accountable for our sins any more than we can be held responsible for our pancreas when it fails to produce sufficient insulin. We may have inherited a capacity to sin, just as we may have inherited the possibility of developing diabetes, but that only makes us responsible for what we will to do, or would like to do if we were more brave and fool hardy, whether we do it or not. The current tumult in the Church presumes that one of two propositions must be true. (a) Mankind is absolved of sin – although it may have the capacity to sin – because God is so forgiving that nothing we do can so totally outrage our Creator that we must fear damnation. Since few of us are learned in Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and none of these languages may be translated into English with exactly equivalent terms, we cannot rely on the premise that what the Bible says is what God means. Ethics, therefore, are all situational and judgments are all merely an ill informed opinion or an unfortunate expression of prejudice. The alternative, (b), suggests that mankind is depraved by nature and is under sentence of damnation by virtue of the sins of Adam and Eve, rescued only by the saving Grace of Jesus Christ. The Bible is the infallible guide to the mind of God and understood best, perhaps only, by an elite few whose religious orthodoxy and righteousness is validated by the self same elite few. Ethical relationships are judged by a standard fixed and unyielding established by reference to Scripture, and the ancient teaching of the early Church Fathers.

   If religious reality consisted of either (a) or (b) then a good case could be made for an alternate choice, probably a heresy: (c). That is, our lives are lived largely in what Field Marshal Karl von Clausewitz called the murky world of "the fog of battle". Engaged in the struggle of life our horizon line becomes easily lost and friends and foes are not easily distinguished. (Oddly, the word foe is derived from a Latin phrase that described non-Roman frontier people with whom Rome had a military alliance. They were allies. Not wholly trusted, mind you, but then, even now, yesterday’s enemies become today’s allies and vise versa.) We are neither entirely depraved or wholly sinless nor are we paragons of virtue and candidates for sainthood. Our relationships, our value structures, our moral judgments are a combination of circumstances and standards. What we would do when we would do good sometimes turns out to be untoward and occasionally our lapse of good judgment and our actions that are simply bad end up producing a holy situation. Like Job of old, we demand of God a justification for our predicament. That we are at least the partial authors of our circumstances aside, we hold God responsible. How could He let this happen? He ought to have known better. He undoubtedly did but had he intervened would we not have complained that we were, then, mere puppets, the objects of unnecessary suffering? We seek justice but we would be better advised to settle for mercy.

    In short, then, the present turmoil is an all too human folly.

So what shall we do? What can we do? We can pray for those who are ill, lonely, destitute, fearful, over tasked, dealing with poverty or a scarcity of money, in prison, facing death, in danger of body or of soul – and that is, I think, just about all of us. We are the Church. We are a part of the whole Church. We are a part of the Church that says we most certainly are not a part of their Church just as much as the group that say we most assuredly are a part of theirs. We are a part of its glorious achievements and its inglorious failures. There is only one Church. Regardless of its political divisions, Christ is in the Church, and through His imperfect Church, reaches out to tell us over and over again that we are in the hands of God. We are imperfect but we are not awful. And God’s peace washes away our anger and frustration that the Church sometimes wounds the very people it is supposed to heal.

   Be, therefore, at peace, often in prayer and ever grateful to God for His tender mercy extended to us all. And be patient. Forgive the Church for its humanness. God already has.

Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, was written in French in 1949 but not produced on stage until 1953. Only subsequently translated into English, Waiting for Godot is an enigmatic study of the plight of two characters, Estragon and Valdimir, who await the arrival of a person named Godot. As one learns in Act One neither Estragon nor Valdimir has ever actually met Godot, they do not know what he looks like, and they seem unsure what Godot will do when he comes – if he comes. Valdimir hints that they wait like the two thieves crucified with Christ and that they should repent. Estragon inquires absent mindedly of what should they repent? Valdimir replies that it does not matter what they repent of, everyone has something of which they ought to repent. Then Valdimir has an interesting thought; he observes that only one of the thieves was saved. Saved from what, inquires Estragon, death? Well, yes, says Valdimir, death but what he was offered was not a continuation of this life but that he would not go to Hell. Estragon has some doubts about the existence of Hell. But neither has any doubts about the existence of Godot – although they have rather different expectations regarding who Godot is and what Godot is about..

The Anglican Communion has developed two personnas very much like Estragon and Valdimir: Lambeth and GAFCON. GAFCON’s bishops have called upon Lambeth’s bishops to repent, to which the Archbishop of Canterbury has replied that we are all sinners, the implication being that since sin is implicit in the human condition it cannot matter very much of what the sin consists, and, therefore, sin, as such, should be ignored. Hell, obviously, does not weigh heavily on the mind of Lambeth’s Anglicans but it appears to have a singularly tangible existence for GAFCON’s Anglicans. And while both Lambeth and GAFCON assume that only one of the twain will be spared the fires of Hell, if there is a Hell, each confidently expects the other to be consumed, and not with passion for the Gospel.

In point of fact, however, we do not know that only one of the two thieves – the one that repented - was spared the trials of Hell. One of the charming additions to Christian thinking during the early part of the Middle Ages was the concept of the Harrowing of Hell. Jesus, it was decided, had descended into Hell and had brought Salvation to those who would repent and accept the compassionate offer of reconciliation with God. The assumption was that just as the harrow turned over and broke down the clumps turned up by the plow, so Christ made Hell’s residents ready for the planting of the seeds of life eternal. Jesus descended into Hell, not because the inhabitants of Hell deserved God’s mercy, but because God is merciful. Jesus came into the world, after all, not because some of mankind deserved life eternal, but because left to our own devices we were all quite likely to choose damnation over salvation nine times out of ten. He came, in the words of the book of Common Prayer " …to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world…"

But the lads of Lambeth and the guys of GAFCON behave as if Jesus came just for them. Well, both would agree that Jesus could stretch out his hand to the other if only the other would adopt the world view of the favored thief (without pleading guilty to the charge of sin implicit in being a thief ). But each assumes, as Anglicans tend to do, that Jesus is too well bred, too well mannered, too civilized to behave in such a universalist way. The Anglican Communion may have adopted the Chicago Quadrilateral which speaks of a universal Church of which the Anglican Communion is only a part, but despite its overtures to the Lutherans and the Methodists, the Anglican Communion is certain that it represents the best part of that universal Church. And neither the Lambeth lads nor the GAFCON guys seem to believe that the other fellows are really Anglicans, perhaps not even Christians. And they both may be right.

In Waiting for Godot, the tree, which in Act I was barren but suitable, they thought, for a suicide by hanging – except that it would have left only one of them to greet Godot – in Act II has sprouted leaves. In the futile winter of their bleak existence the tree has found a spring of hope . I like the tree. Or at least the symbolism of the tree. Jesus was crucified on a tree, or at least the remnants of a tree. And this tree, in Act II, is alive, unlike the protagonists who are looking for meaning in every place excerpt where it most self evidently exists.

Once, when I was in seminary, Canon Forbes told us a story which seemed to have little to do with theology but a great deal to do with our perception of reality. One morning a woman, not a member of his congregation, called him up on the telephone and asked him to take her to the local insane asylum. "Are you sure that is what you want to do?" he asked her. She replied that she was convinced that she must be crazy. And if she was not crazy she ought to be dead. Which did he think would be the best choice, the asylum or the river? So he put on his coat and hat and drove to the woman’s home and then drove her to the nearby mental hospital. She went in alone, telling him not to wait for her but he did. Several hours later she emerged and got in the car. "They said I was depressed but that I wasn’t crazy enough to be admitted. Now what do I do?"

Forbes said he did not know what to say so he said nothing. For what seemed a long time they sat there in the gathering dusk on a rainy afternoon parked on the tree lined oval drive that led from the county road to the hospital. "That is an interesting tree over there," Forbes said finally. "Which one?" she asked. "That one over there with the broken branch. It has an unusual shape and its leaves are quite distinctive." Again there was a long silence. At last she said, "That tree has a right to be there, doesn’t it." It was not a question so much as a statement. "Yes," said Forbes, "It has a right to be there." "And I have a right to be, too." she said. "Yes," Forbes agreed, "you have as much right to be wherever you are as that tree does." "All right, said the woman, "you can take me home. I will be all right now." And she was. Her epiphany consisted of recognizing that she was a creature not unlike the tree, battered, broken in part, but worthy of existing for all of that.

We all have a right to be wherever we have been planted, in the form agreeable to our nature and the providence of this universe. Some of us have broken branches, some have distinctive leaves, some are of a peculiar shape, none of us is a native species. But we have an obligation – one not found or emulated in raw nature – not to block the growth of our fellow inhabitants of this earth. That is a hard lesson to learn. And as applied to the Church – the universal Church – I realize that my desire for unity among its many members, and in particular among its Anglican components, may be as little likely to be realized as that poor woman’s desire for the peace and serenity of the asylum. In an earlier time, not so many centuries back, she might have sought respite in a convent. But whether in an asylum or a convent, in the universal Church or the Anglican Communion, we take the world in with us when we go. We are unable to escape what we are. We are part of the natural world and the natural world is full of imperfections.

When I first read Waiting for Godot I found it tedious and boring, its characters seemed unrealistic and improbable. But that was nearly a half century ago and although I still find the play tedious and boring I can no longer view Estergon and Valdimir as unrealistic and improbable. They are, to the nines, Lambeth and GAFCON.

A boy tells Estragon and Valdimir that Godot will not come today but that he will come tomorrow. The play continues along its theme of the emptiness of life and its banal physical and spiritual substance. Foiled in their earlier intent to commit suicide because of a broken belt, they resolve to kill themselves tomorrow if Godot does not come then. In the end, Valdimir asks Estragon, "Shall we go?" and Estragon replies, "Yes, let us go." But neither gets up, neither actor moves, and the curtain falls. The play is over.

It is time for the partisans of Lambeth and GAFCON to leave, one to exit stage right and the other stage left, and go their separate ways. Each has little in common with his nemesis except for their joint contempt for the sense of reality that guides the other. They are a house irreconcilably divided; theirs is a poisonous relationship which saps the vitality of both. If either were reasonable or susceptible to reason, they would agree on an equitable division of their community property and enjoy the fruits of an amicable divorce. Separate and distinct, they might each flourish except that each feels entitled to the whole patrimony of acquired under their family name : Anglican. Each envisions the suicide of the other but each sits on the world stage waiting for the other to find enough rope or the gumption to get up and leave. At least at this point in time, neither has the courage of its prejudices and neither can find enough charity to forgive the other its sinful arrogance.

Two thieves were crucified on either side of Jesus and I believe that in God’s tender mercy both were saved. And the two self crucified churches that hang now in the chill wind of s unbelief in their mutual resurrection will one day awaken to the mystery of God’s merciful pardon. But not today. Pray, therefore, that we may all be forgiven and that we may forgive one another. We do not wait for Godot, we wait for Jesus. Come, Lord; the Lord comes.