Faithbook: Exception to the Rules - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

Exception to the Rules

I was in Washington D.C. with my family for a wedding this weekend. When we're on vacation we usually take the weekend off church but when we found out that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was preaching at the National Cathedral we couldn't miss it. Even though we had heard her preach once before in our church in Iowa, listening to the presiding bishop read the liturgy in her official seat, was definitely worth getting up for on a vacation Sunday.

I've never heard anyone make mixed metaphors sound so good. Schori preached on the gospel, which was the parable from Matthew about the landowner who leases his vineyard to untrustworthy tenants, the passage that culminates in, "The stone that the builders rejected had become the chief cornerstone." She first picked up the vineyard metaphor and spoke about the perfect conditions needed for grapes to ripen properly. Then she related the reliance on deceitful tenants to the recent fiscal irresponsibility of mortgage lenders and landowner's to the general downturn of the American economy. The tenants' greed provided a warning that possessions can, in turn, possess their owners. The cornerstone became a stone Christians must hit their shins against in the journey toward spiritual betterment and also a tool to help crush the grapes into wine. Somehow, she wove the images of grapes, greed, rocks and wine into a cohesive spiritual message about the trials of earth and the rewards of heaven. I think even my staunchest English teacher would have made exception for Schori's artful abuse of this rule.

I realized the actual building of the National Cathedral breaks rules, too. I'm usually uneasy about any mixing of church and state. But, the images of Paul Revere, WWII paratroopers under Moses, and Martin Luther at Wittenberg seemed to fit perfectly in the stained glass window dedicated to the US armed forces. The space-themed stained glass window with the moon rock and the cross made from remnants of the Pentagon attack on 9/11 somehow wasn't anachronistic in the Gothic cathedral. A statue of George Washington in a church would usually irk me. But, somehow, in the commemoration of one aspect of our nation's religious history, in the celebration of the uniquely American Episcopal church--it all works. I felt so fortunate to hear Katharine Jefferts Schori for a second time, in a setting that celebrated the church's and the nation's history so well. As the first female presiding bishop, she represents the egalitarian mission of our nation and the Episcopal church so well. And as a twenty-year-old female layperson sitting in this enormous testament to the power of religion, I was captured by her brilliant mixed metaphors, even on a vacation Sunday.

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Exception to the Rules

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