One of the highlights of every Annual Conference is the Episcopal Address. The time when our chief shepherd, teacher, and overseer inspires us, convicts us, and reminds us of our identity as God’s people. As we gathered this morning in Portland as a General Church, it was not any different.
Bishop Gregory Palmer from the West Ohio Area delivered a stirring call for unity. Unity through humility, confession, and common mission. Unity through repentance, care for the other, and a common humanity. Unity through re-membering our baptism, our shared worship, and our encounter with Jesus Christ at table.
For me the key moment came when he reminded us that:
“Our credibility and integrity are suspect if we get all the words right but our behavior has little resemblance to our words.”
In his book Integrity, Dr. Henry Cloud reminds us that integrity is not just about being honest but about being a person “with integrated character.” A person whose words, actions, and intentions match one another, a person that “possesses the awareness that it is not all about him or her and the ability and willingness to make the necessary adjustments to the things that transcend him or her at any given juncture.”
As I heard Bishop Palmer speak I was convicted. I realize how often in my desire to follow my call I easily dismiss the other and how often I am unwilling to do the hard work that listening to each other and life together requires. I was convicted of how difficult it is to live a life of integrity, being aware enough to recognize that is not all about me, my personal opinions, or my personal belief system.
As we continue in conversation across our global church the call to humility and unity is a call to integrity. This call is difficult but we serve the God who calls us to be a new creation, whose Spirit lives within us, giving us what we need to live life together in ways that lead to life. A God who continually calls us to conversion.
I pray that we are open, that our body has been convicted, that we not only heard Bishop Palmer speak to those that we disagree with, that we let his words about our witness inspire us to pay attention to the ways that we live life together in these days.