The Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, Episcopal bishop New York City, guest preacher
Washington National Cathedral
Advent II
December 5, 2004

Good Morning.

It is wonderful to be with you this today and to have this chance to bring you greetings from the people of New York and especially of the Diocese of New York; my joy in having this opportunity is not only official, as it were, it is also quite personal. This great Cathedral Church has a very special place in my life and in my heart.

I remember Sunday visits here when I was a child and the nave was yet to be completed. To this day my sister volunteers in the Herb Shop and helps arrange flowers. I was a candidate for ordination from this diocese and was ordained deacon by Bishop Creighton, right here in the great crossing.

Therefore, I am grateful to your vicar, Bishop Eastman for this invitation to speak. In addition, I want also to take this opportunity to congratulate you on the selection of your new dean, Sam Lloyd. I have known him for many years, in fact since his days in Chicago. He will be simply splendid.

By the coincidence of geography and history the Episcopal Church in New York and the Episcopal Church in Washington share a prominence that lays upon us the privilege of responsibility.

In both cities the Episcopal Church has a great cathedral, a cathedral that serves far more than our own constituency, narrowly defined, as Episcopalians. This Cathedral, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul intentionally and quite self-consciously identifies itself, and is by charter The National Cathedral. In New York, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has, as part of its founding Charter, the mandate to be a house of prayer for all people.

Not only do we two great Cathedral communities share a similar founding vision, each of us, to the best of our respective abilities, lives out that vocation with focused commitment. Further, we each bear our witness in cities that have their own distinct and unique prominence. The city of Washington is the seat of government of the most powerful nation that the world has ever known. Within these city limits reside people who, quite literally, control, or at least have an enormous influence upon the future course of human history. Or, should they make the wrong choices their decisions could end human history, as we know it. New York City is, for its part, the economic heart of this most powerful nation. The decisions made by those who live there have consequences that touch not only governments around the world, but reach into even the most remote villages in forgotten backwaters of countries we hardly knew even existed.

As a consequence of that prominence we find our selves in peculiarly important yet, at the same time, decidedly perilous positions. As our reading from St. Matthew so vividly reminds us,

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

And then a few lines further, speaking to those who had come out into the wilderness to hear him, John adds ominously,

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fires.

From where, precisely, did this voice of terrifying hope come? Where, exactly, was this warning voice to be heard? It came from, and is to be heard in, the wilderness. It came from the very edge of the civilized world: a place deserted, barely touched by human hands, a worthless uninhabited place. The voice came from a place furthest from the seat of power.

None of that is accidental.

Later in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus himself makes dramatically clear the importance of vast distinction between the centers of political and economic power, on the one hand, and the voices of the periphery, on the other. He does this as he draws the listening crowd into a deeper understanding of John the Baptist’s role in God’s self-revelation. The device Jesus uses is a series of rhetorical questions. He asks his listeners,

What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.

The challenge for us in this is that we, as a community of proclamation, do not live in the wilderness: anything but. We live in the very midst of those who wear soft robes and live in royal palaces. In fact it is not too much to say that we are the people who wear those soft robes and live in palaces, royal or otherwise. So how is it possible for us to proclaim hope, a hope that is real and grounded in the reality of the world? How is it possible for us to be a place where the truth can be heard and spoken, even if it is a very hard truth? How can we avoid the seductive temptation of offering comfortable reassurance of the virtues of our own vices?

The answer, it seems to me, is simple. We need to listen to voices crying in the wilderness. We need to listen to voices at the periphery of society.

We who inhabit the centers of power of this world have a very special vocation. It is to listen to those others, those that so many would prefer to dismiss as being of no account. We need to listen to those at the edges not because they have a monopoly on the truth. Not because they are always right. Not because they have some automatic claim to prophetic truth. That’s romantic nonsense.

However, we do need to listen to them. We need to listen to them for the simple reason that they are our brothers and sisters. What’s more, through Christ, we know that they have a perspective on the truth that is unique to them. That grasp of the truth belongs to them, not to us. It is only by listening to them, and sharing their vision that we might hope to glimpse the truth that God has revealed uniquely to them.

But right here there is a problem. All too often when we say, “listen to,” what we really mean is “agree with.” How often have we heard someone say, “You’re not listening to me!” when you know what they really mean is, “You’re not agreeing with me!”

When I say listen, I mean something quite different than simple agreement. I mean: engage—take seriously—encounter the other. All too often we operate as though there were just two options to choose from: agreement or disagreement.

Far too rarely do we take seriously the notion that by listening we might actually be changed. Perhaps just a little. But by listening we come out of the encounter at a new place. Nothing in life is really as simple as agreement and disagreement.

The mortal danger which faces this great Cathedral, and my own, is the danger of falling prey to the seductive glory of the power of kings’ houses rather than the glory of the power that is God’s love made flesh and blood in human lives.

But we need to do more than listen – hear – and understand. We need also to proclaim. To use the bully pulpits we have been provided to give voice to the voiceless – not in a mechanical or reflexive way, but rather with a clarity and conviction that comes from having wrestled with the truths, half-truths and downright errors that mark the understandings and convictions experienced by all people everywhere.

As central as this insight is in terms of the vocation that we have as Cathedral communities and church communities everywhere – there is a further dimension of the claim of the desert on each and all of us. It is this. We need to listen to those voices that come at the edge of our own lives to discover there what treasures of insight await us – if we will but take the time to listen – to engage – to encounter – the other just because they are our neighbors, our sisters and brothers.

One of the truly startling things in life is that where one person sees only a barren desert that they would never dream of entering voluntarily – another sees the comfort of the familiar. I am convinced that the promise and the challenge of the wilderness, the wilderness from which John the Baptist first declared his message of saving repentance, nestles closely at the edge of the life that each and all of us live. It is a wilderness that is to be found in the interior of our souls as well as in the society within which we live and move and have our being. God has given each of us our own custom fitted wilderness – right at hand. The question is, will we have the courage to enter, to encounter and to listen.

Earlier this week I heard a friend talk about how much he had learned during the course of a lifetime working with and listening to prisoners who had been jailed for all sorts of horrendous crimes. As he worked with them over the years, as he listened to their stories of struggle and failure and glimmers of hope, he heard them not as a disinterested observer but as a fellow traveler on a common journey. It was this deep listening that opened to him a glimpse of God’s goodness not only in their lives but his own as well.

The challenge that Advent always places before us is that of facing into and embracing the hope that comes to us from the desert places in our world and in our lives.

May it be that God will give us the courage to listen with such intensity and to speak with such clarity that his promise of hope will live in us, for the benefit all God’s children, today, tomorrow and unto the ages of ages.