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This past summer, I made the journey-along with several thousand other people–to that particular expression of our tradition–General Convention which was held in Anaheim, California, the home of Disneyland and down the road from Hollywood.
As I wasn’t a deputy I had the freedom to wander the exhibit hall, hang out around the free wi-fi station and generally schmooze with people I knew  and with people I didn’t know. It was fascinating-and proved to me once again that there might just be some truth to a theory called  “six degrees of separation.”
You may be familiar with the term from a movie by that name.  The idea is that any two individuals can be connected through at most five acquaintances, thus the phrase “six degrees of separation.”   In other words, I know x, and x knows y, and y knows z, and so on, thus there is a line that runs from me to z.
The idea that the distance between two perfect strangers is shorter than you might imagine intrigues people.  Curious mathematicians have worked on algorithms that would support its validity and social scientists have developed networking experiments to see if it really works.
But the idea’s most happy result so far has been a trivia game called —“The Kevin Bacon Movie Game” also known as “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.”   Now Kevin Bacon is an actor whose career has been prolific.  He’s been steadily employed in one movie after another since the 1980s. At one point, noting how busy his career had been, he guessed that he had pretty much worked with all of the name actors in Hollywood.  Thus the game:  Name any actor that comes to mind and you can connect that actor to Kevin Bacon within the famous six degrees of separation by following a trail through the movies they’ve been in.
There’s even a web page that helps you do this. So I tried it, and for some reason-don’t ask me why–the name of Lillian Gish came to mind.  (Now for the youngsters among us she was the Julia Roberts of the 1920s, but but she continued to act as she aged and I was amazed to discover that there were only two degrees of separation between her and Kevin Bacon-TWO!–a bit player in one her later movies went on to co-star with  the ubiquitous Mr. Bacon.  Amazing.
 
Of course this should come as no surprise to Episcopalians who play this game all the time.  When two Episcopalians meet, say in the exhibit hall at General Convention, it usually takes about five minutes before they start to plot out the degrees of separation and soon they find some common point of connection-a person, event, diocese, bishop or  place.
At one point I stopped at a booth just to pick up some handouts and then made the acquaintance of an Episcopal priest who it turned out had been best friends with a Catholic priest who had brightened my life when I was in fourth grade.  Amazing.
What that encounter made me realize is that even though the idea is called six degrees of separation it is really about the chain of connection, the ways in which we are linked to one other.
So of course this being the day when we gather to remember and celebrate the life and ministry of John Hines, the question comes to mind-What is our connection to John Hines, the founder of this seminary? What is it that links us to him?
         
For some the connection is obvious.  Some people are here today because they knew him well as a father, friend and colleague.  Many more, I would guess, know him indirectly. I myself  never knew him personally but are blessed to include those who did among our friends and colleagues. Even more are connected to him because we have benefited from the institutions that grew out of his vision-like St. Stephen’s School and we are connected because we are worshipping here in this chapel of the Seminary upon which he rested his hopes for preparing a generation of ministers who would serve the Church in a changing world.
See, I’ve already veered from the kind of simple straight lines that run from one person to another to a whole complex set of people and relationships-Bishop Hines, students, faculty and supporters of this school over several decades…and then the circle gets even bigger-the Episcopal Church at large, and then even more-the people in the world around us.  What John Hines liked to call “the entire universe.”
“Six degrees of separation” begins to look like a pretty thin way to account for the ways  our lives are intertwined-and the ways in which our lives are touched –not just by the people we know but by people who may appear to us just a names on a list -the 22^nd Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, for example, or as subjects of biographies that we plan to read when we have the time.
Even the question grows larger-it’s not just how we are linked to one another but how do we trace those patterns of connection in a way that brings us closer to God and closer to fulfilling God’s intention for us as the Christian community.
 
So what glimpse of the kingdom of God does the life of John Hines give us?
John Hines was a man with a fine mind, a big heart and an outgoing personality.  He was a priest whose spirituality ran deep and energy ran high. He was a bishop with a vision and a mission and he had the courage and resilience-and the grace–to stay true to it.
When I stop and think about the world in which John Hines lived and carried out his ministry, some of what he did is truly breathtaking.
He grew up in the Piedmont of South Carolina, in a small textile and farming town, where the lines between races and classes were tightly drawn and almost impossible to cross.  His family was not rich but he had all of the advantages that would have made it so easy for him to settle into a kind of acceptability and ambition that would have kept him silent in the face of the racism that was woven into every layer of society.
But he did not remain silent-from the very beginning of his ministry as a priest, John Hines took on the role of watchman for Christ, challenging not just prevailing attitudes toward race but the very particular ways in which that sense of how things should-must-be –damaged the lives of all it touched.
John Hines is often described as the modern day equivalent of the Old Testament prophet.  There is no doubt but that today’s passage from Amos shaped the way Hines understood what God expected of the Church.  But we do him an injustice if we think that his prophetic voice was all about the words.  It was all about the action too, the action that he was able to take because he had the gifts of courage and vision and also because he had another gift that is essential to leadership-clarity about his vocation and his identity.   For him there could be no separation between words and deeds.
This is who I am and so this is what I must do.
But that didn’t make it easy.  John Hines was not naïve—he knew that whenever the fabric of creation is pulled apart by sin, by self-interest or by self-righteousness, any attempt at reweaving it would be difficult, and it was.
He knew what it meant to be on the losing side of an issue-
 
In 1948, as the new bishop coadjutor of Texas, he proposed opening vestries and diocesan council to the participation of women-it failed. 
In 1949, again as bishop in Texas, he proposed that if black and white delegates to diocesan council could not be served together at a common meal, which they could not, then the council would forego the meal-that proposal not only failed but the delegates voted to commend the hosting parish for observing the segregation laws.
Throughout the 1950s he had to fight battle after battle to integrate diocesan camps and institutions, even his beloved St. Stephen’s was not formally desegregated until 1963.
And In 1971, as presiding bishop, and amid great criticism he challenged General Motors to stop making a profit off apartheid in South Africa, this ten years before the divestment movement gained ground.
John Hines’ accomplishments came at a cost.  His leadership as a bishop and as presiding bishop was marked by criticism, resistance and conflict but also on his part, by patiently waiting upon the Lord. But I’m not even sure the word “accomplishment” was in his vocabulary.   He knew that the work of creation remains unfinished, and that racism and other forms of oppression would continue.
I think he would call the things he did simply living in witness to the Gospel.
 
And that helps us see the real source of our connection with John Hines because at the heart of that connection is our connection with the heart of Christ. When all is said and done, what connects us to Hines is simply what we share with him-baptism into the life, death and resurrection of Christ.    And sharing that– we have a shared vocation-to proclaim not ourselves, earthen vessels that we are, but Jesus Christ.
We can’t be John Hines; we shouldn’t even try.  And our ministry will not look like his because our world is not the same as his-but we do know that racism remains, that people still live under many forms of oppression-and that Jesus Christ still calls us to turn our face to a broken and hurting world– as He did looking out from Calvary.
John Hines lived his life as priest, bishop,  leader and servant in response to the call that Jesus makes to his disciples in today’s Gospel-How will you follow me? Will you pick up the cross? Will you take the risk and give your lives over to the most radical thing of all-grace.
What John Hines deeply believed is that the personal answer to those questions cannot be separated from the answer that we give as the Body of Christ, the Christian community in all its particular expressions. How do we proclaim hope; how do we persevere in trust;  how do we speak truth -not just to power-but to ourselves!-and how will we embody God’s love in our life as an institution.
How we answer those questions matters for this Seminary, for this Church and for this  world.  These are not trivial pursuits, in the same category as knowing who acted in what movie.  They are deep and sacred journeys.  Because what we do matters-not so that we can proclaim our own righteousness or try to assure our own salvation but in service to others and for the glory of God.
It matters that John Hines saw
that the church needed to include women.
It matters that St. Stephen’s
and all the places where children gather need to be a blessing for all.
It matters that he envisioned a seminary
that would take the concerns of the world seriously.
It matters that he saw a connection
between his life and the life of perfect strangers in South Africa.
May we, standing in the circle of the earth-bound round by God’s embrace-
Proclaim God’s glory and God’s grace, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
(Final prayer inspired by Hymn 540, Awake Thou Spirit of the Watchmen, Hymnal 1982; sung before the Gospel and a favorite hymn of Bishop Hines.)

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Christ Chapel– 51��Ƶ

Micah Jackson, John Hines Assistant Professor of Preaching

 
Several years ago, the United Church of Christ began an advertising campaign designed to answer what they considered to be one of the primary questions facing people wondering about the church. Their slogan was “God is still speaking.” It was a powerful campaign, and by all accounts, it was successful. And I wouldn’t want to criticize the marketing geniuses behind the United Church of Christ, but I do think that they’re asking the wrong question. If you ask me, there is a much more important question facing the Church these days. And I suspect that Bishop Hines would agree with me on this. Of course God is still speaking. The real question is this:
Are God’s prophets still speaking?
God said, “Amos, what do you see?” and Amos replied, “A plumb-line.” The plumb-line, of course, represents God’s way of building, one that is straight and true. This passage from Amos was very important to Bishop Hines, and indeed, it is the source for the beautiful sculpture in the narthex here in Christ Chapel. The sculpture shows the plumb-line coming from Heaven, to guide the people of the city toward that which is true. But it also hangs over the city as a sign of judgment, for indeed, dire consequences befall those who do not build straight to the plumb-line of the Lord. But in front of the sculpture is a stand, with a Bible on it. And inscribed on the stand are God’s words (in the Authorized Translation, of course) “Amos, what seest thou?” This is significant to me because it reveals that Bishop Hines knew that the plumb-line was important, but even more so was the vision of the prophet.
Prophets are the ones who see not only the world as it is, but also the world as God created it to be, wholly good, restored and rebuilt, as if with a plumb-line. And they can help others to see it, too. 51��Ƶ a month ago, we presented the Charles Cook award in Servant Leadership to one of our own graduates, Zane Wilemon. He is the founder of Comfort the Children International. He was honored not only for his work, but also for his vision of relationships between us here in America and the people of Kenya. But more even than his vision, he was honored for what he causes others to see. The citation for the award quoted Zane’s grandmother who wisely taught him, “Seeing your life may be as close as some people get to reading the Bible.” Zane Wilemon is a plumb-line, placed in the midst of the people, which we are invited to see.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes, they are.
Paul’s extraordinary letter to the Corinthians gives us another piece of this puzzle. He tells us how to proclaim the vision we see. For, as Christians, we do not see ourselves, or even plumb-lines. When God asks us “What seest thou” we see Christ crucified for the salvation of the world. And it is this vision that we must proclaim. And Paul knows that such a proclamation is not easy, indeed that it is very dangerous. But even if we are not simply afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, but also crushed, driven to despair, forsaken and destroyed, we follow the vision of a man who has been to all these places before, and has triumphed over them all, even death, the final fear.
Bishop Hines lived this way. He proclaimed a true Gospel–even though unpopular with some–a Gospel of social justice inflected by the particular concerns of his day, racial injustice. His work with the General Convention Special Program was criticized for his insistence that the money the program distributed be given freely, without conditions and without oversight. Some said that it was irresponsible, and that the money might be wasted, and that without oversight, there would be no way of knowing if the programs the GCSP supported, let alone the program itself, was being effective. But Hines knew that so long as people in power insisted on judging the effectiveness of things, that true change in the systems of oppression would never be possible. He disregarded this criticism and all others because he knew that proclaiming the vision he saw of a world transformed by justice was his sacred calling, his one duty, and his joy.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes. They are.
Jesus makes a difficult invitation to us this morning. Surely, following him means going where he goes, and maybe even ending up where he ended up. Jesus tells us not to be too concerned about protecting our lives. Indeed, he says that those who save their lives will lose them. Certainly, lives here could mean that our earthly existence could be demanded of us, but it could just as easily mean our metaphorical life–our safety and comfort–which is often harder to imagine surrendering. Taking up the cross daily is not easy, but it is the third piece of the prophet’s call. Not only to see the vision, nor only to proclaim it, but also to live it out in the world.
I might give another example here of one of God’s prophets, and how he or she is a living example of Christ’s call to us to take up our cross daily, but I won’t do that. I won’t do that because, frankly, I don’t want to let any one of us off the hook. If I name someone here then it might seem like all is well and I can just go on about my daily business of caring mostly about myself and paying lip service to the rest of the world. As a part of fallen humanity, I have that tendency, and maybe you recognize it in yourself, too. Instead, I’ll simply ask my question again.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes, they are.
But are you speaking? It’s not an empty question. Simply flipping on the television or tuning in the radio, even just going down to the corner store will reveal that there are plenty of unloving, uncharitable blowhards still speaking. And though many of them are Christians, you couldn’t tell it from their actions, or their message. They’re speaking all right, but it is not the kind of challenging yet life-giving prophecy God demands of us. Some of them have a plumb-line, but often it is they themselves–and not God–who is doing the measuring. There should be more vision than that. They’re speaking all right, but some of them proclaim themselves rather than Christ crucified, his life poured out for the salvation of the world. There should be better proclamation than that. They’re speaking all right, but they speak from the safety of distance–distance and safety born of wealth, and power, and privilege rather than the all-encompassing, unblinking love of God for the creation. There should be more congruence between word and life than that.
God calls out to each of us, every day, and charges us to speak–to speak of love, and justice, and understanding, and peace; to speak of strength, and power, and mercy; to speak of friendship, and joy; in other words, to speak of God. Samuel heard God’s voice and said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Today when you hear God’s voice calling out to you, you will hear it saying, “Speak, prophet, for my world is listening.”

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