Good morning,

A am delighted to have been asked to speak to you this morning about my trip to England in July to attend the decennial meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world, the Lambeth conference.

I am particularly delighted because this gives me the opportunity to thank you all for your support. Thank you for your interest when you first heard of these plans, thank you for your encouragement and for your prayers. Many of you contributed financially to our travel fund. Thank you.

Five members of Integrity Canada traveled to Canterbury as part of the first-ever international delegation of gay, lesbian and trangendered Anglicans to a Lambeth Conference. Others traveled from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and the United States of America. We were hosted by two British groups, Changing Attitudes, which has a mandate very much like that of Integrity, and Inclusive Church, a broadly based group championing the ministry of women and other marginalized groups. We all worked together as the Inclusive Church Network. I even got the tee-shirt!

It will not be possible to fully describe what happened this summer in Canterbury in a few short minutes. Perhaps those of you with questions can gather with me in the chapel after the 10:15 worship service for more conversation. On Wednesday evening at 7:00, I will be offering a kind of travelogue, sharing pictures of the things we saw and the people we met.

But let me offer a few general impressions.

This was the most controlled Lambeth Conference in living memory. Archbishop Rowan Williams made it very clear, when issuing invitations to the conference, that there would be no resolutions of any kind; nor would there be any re-opening of the infamous Resolution 1.10 passed in 1998, the resolution which declared homosexual activity to be "incompatible with Scripture".

This kind of control, bordering on paranoia, was in evidence everywhere. The plenary meetings of the bishops were held in a high-tech tent at the centre of the campus of the University of Kent. It was surrounded by a fence and access controlled by security guards, with the police stationed nearby. Even access to the Fringe events was to be restricted to invited guests. At all of our Inclusive Network Fringe events, we told the security patrols that we had no invitation list, that everyone was welcome. This is to say, potential opponents or hecklers were as welcome as everybody else.

There were two parallel processes at work throughout the conference. The bishops met daily, assigned to small groups for Bible study and for discussions on specific topics. This was referred to as the Indaba process. Indaba is a Zulu word describing a village meeting of friends and adversaries, who will agree to talk through their disputes, taking all the time needed to find some kind of compromise everyone could live with. Anyone with experience with the aboriginal peoples of North America is familiar with this process.

This Indaba process wasn't a runaway success (because of time constraints and shifting agenda items), but it worked. Slowly, over the two-and-a-half weeks they were gathered, initial feelings of distrust and fear gave way to more respectful relationships, even though large differences of opinion remained.

Alongside this Indaba process was a parallel process strictly controlled by the Communion Office. Every second or third day there would be an announcement coming from the Windsor Continuation Group, a group of six bishops and archbishops appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in February. First, they announced a proposal to develop a core of canon law for the Communion. Then, a couple of days later, the Group proposed creating a Pastoral Council which, depending on your perspective, looked like either a traveling Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or an Anglican Inquisition. As the conference ended, a group of officials picked by the Communion Office issued a summary of the Indaba group discussions, claiming that the vast majority of bishops supported the development of an Anglican Covenant, as well as extending the moratoria on (1) blessing same-sex relationships, (2) consecrating bishops in a same-sex relationship, and (3) border-crossing by bishops.

That conclusion may or may not be true. There was no show of hands. But the Archbishop of Canterbury in his final address to the bishops on August 2 made it clear that this is his expectation. He is to call a meeting of the Primates for early next year to seek agreement on next steps, followed by a meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council next spring.

The Archbishop of Canterbury must be pleased. The conference was a success. There was some healing of relationships broken by the disastrous conference held ten years ago. And schism, for the moment, has been avoided.

But I wish to be very clear on this point. The Anglican Communion is in grave peril. The peril comes not from gay, lesbian or trangendered persons. We are simply the scapegoats in this nasty scrap.

The question is whether the spirit of Anglicanism can be preserved, the Anglicanism which maintains the dynamic tension between its Protestant and its Catholic elements, an Anglicanism in which bishops, clergy and laity minister together as co-equals, an Anglicanism flexible enough to engage societies and cultures that are very different from each other in different parts of the globe. At moments like this, and just as we of the Inclusive Church Network did in Canterbury, it is good to turn to Holy Scripture for guidance and reflection.

Our gospel reading this morning includes a quite radical story. In fact, it includes three remarkable stories, but I will focus only on the first two.

The reading begins with Jesus' call to Matthew, to whom the Gospel according to St Matthew is attributed. Matthew was a Jew, and a tax collector. He was, in other words, both a collaborator with the foreign occupier, and a collaborator with the pagans. And he dines with this apostate, as well as other "sinners" (although their sins are not enumerated).

And Jesus is criticized for doing so by the usual suspects, the Pharisees. But did you notice that in the second story, a different group comes to Jesus to criticize him for feasting rather than fasting. These are the disciples of John the Baptist.

It is widely acknowledged that Jesus in his early adulthood was a disciple of John the Baptist. John not only ministered through the baptismal rite, the symbolic death by drowning and rebirth into new spiritual life. He drew people through the Jordon to the anticipated Promised Land, the Day of the Lord. While waiting for the end of the world, they separated themselves from the multitudes, engaged in fasting and acts of piety, keeping themselves a holy people for the Day of Judgement

Jesus obviously had a falling out with John. His ministry focused on healing broken relationships, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, so that God's spirit could find a home in this world.

While these two theologies do not precisely mirror the factions tearing at the Communion today, they are analogous. There is a group calling for maintaining the traditions of the Church and "the faith once delivered by the Apostles" (although many of them seem, in my opinion, not so intent as preserving the message of the Apostles so much as preserving the message of 19th century missionaries sent from England). And there is another group, the majority of the Anglican Church of Canada it would seem, anxious to engage in the world in deal with our culture - not to be ruled by the culture, but to be engaged with society rather than calcify into some kind of holy anachronism.

Many of Canada's bishops said to me and the others in our group that they felt unjustly maligned in Canterbury. The policy our Canadian House of Bishops has adopted on the issue of sexuality is one that is open and transparent, based on full and complete theological debate, and which has been supported by diocesan and general synods. And some of the criticism was coming from countries where same-sex blessings and ordinations occur routinely, though not officially recognized by the episcopacy.

More than one Canadian bishop told me that, at this Lambeth Conference, for the first time in his life he felt what it was like to be a marginalized person.

Perhaps this was one of the better outcomes of the Lambeth Conference, after all. Several bishops told me that they were clear about one thing - that while the way ahead for the Canadian Church was not clear, there will, in their words, be "no moving backward".

There is much to be done over the next year or two, during which the future of the Anglican Church of Canada and of the Communion will be charted. Now is the time to be calm, confident and clear. It is up to us, all of us, to make known how we feel the gospel should be proclaimed in this part of the world, and to hold our episcopal leaders to account.

When questioned by the Pharisees in the gospel we read this morning, Jesus says: Go and learn what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Jesus is echoing the words of the great Jewish prophets, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, of Hosea and Amos. But let me close with this passage from the Book of Micah, at its sixth chapter. This is my prayer for this parish, this diocese, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Communion.

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Amen.