A Midsummer letter to the people and clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Florida from their Bishop, The Rt. Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard

July 24, 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings at midsummer! I hope you are finding time this summer for holidays and family gatherings, for catching up with old friends and for taking at least one good, long break from the frantic pace of “school year” life. One of the things I enjoy most in the summertime is heading to the beach with a good book…usually a mystery novel of some sort. There’s nothing better sometimes than simply escaping into the narrative of a great mystery story and, with the waves lapping in the background, and a cool iced tea by your side, escaping the thoughts, worries and cares of the world around you.

But when you find yourself drawn into a great mystery novel, have you ever stepped back and asked yourself just why you’re so entertained? Why you’re so enthralled? I think there is a deep and fundamental dynamic at play. The human attraction to mystery and the inner human need for escape, are both powerful. And while these qualities are effectively exploited by the best writers, they were not invented by Clive James or even Arthur Conan Doyle. I think both capacities — a love of mystery, of the unsolved, of the hidden and the desire to escape — to escape our problems, our cares, our difficulties — are deeply ingrained and intractable facets of the human soul. They are part of the fabric unique to humanity.

I recently began to re-read a great and massively important book which sheds great light on these concepts, and which spurred me to think of them in new ways. St. Augustine’s The City of God was written in the early 5th century AD in the immediate aftermath of the first sacking of Imperial Rome by barbarian Goths. It seeks to explain just how God could allow the greatest city on earth – Rome – to be destroyed. It also seeks to tell the story of a different city, a City of God, which stands above and beyond all that can be contained or seen, much less come to ruin, in the world which you and I inhabit.

The City of God, as you might suspect, is not typical beach reading. Yet, more than any novel you or I will read this summer, St. Augustine gets to the crux of the matter: Life is mysterious, but, St. Augustine suggests, the mystery does not lie where most of us look for it. It is common and understandable that people ask, “Why does God allow good people to suffer?” or “Why would a loving God allow terror and destruction to occur at all?” But Augustine turns these age-old questions on their heads. The greater mystery is not, Augustine contends, why war, destruction or pestilence would enter into a fallen world, but why, despite the sin each of us carries, a loving and merciful God would still provide grace and mercy in the context of that brokenness. For even as the barbarians sacked Rome, they showed mercy to the Christian Romans taking refuge in Christian temples. This sort of mercy, Augustine notes, was unprecedented in recorded warfare. This was the truly novel thing, the new and exciting thing. This was the unusual, the mysterious thing. This was God at work, even in the midst of the worst that humankind could inflict upon itself.

The renowned thinker, priest and monk Thomas Merton wrote a marvelous introduction to my volume of The City of God. He writes of the Christian worldview as St. Augustine saw it: “It is more than a belief,” Merton writes, it is a life. That is to say, it is a belief that is lived and expressed in action. The action in which it is expressed, experienced and lived is called a mystery. The mystery is the sacred drama which keeps ever present in history the Sacrifice that was consummated by Christ on Calvary. In plain words—if you can accept them as plain—Christianity is the life and death and resurrection of Christ going on day after day in the souls of individual men and in the heart of society.

The great sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a mystery—it is, on some level, forever beyond our imagining, beyond our comprehension. Sometimes the impact of God’s love is not immediate…but this is because we have not escaped the bounds of our typical thinking, our temporal loves and desires, our old questions—particularly our old complaints against God himself. We have not, in other words, transcended the “earthly city” of which St. Augustine writes. This is the city “ruled,” in Augustine’s words, “by its lust of rule.” The city of earth knows as its terms only power and control. When we lose power, or have no control, when we see our lives “sacked” by the invasion of any multitude of problems, we seek escape. And we should do so. But we often seek to escape the wrong way. We seek to heal ourselves. We seek to regain control, to exert power over ourselves or others. But God calls us instead to escape to the foot of the cross, to leave the city of earthen wares behind and to approach the City of God, a place of freely-given mercy, of unalterable love. This process, this approach to God—enacted as it is so imperfectly day after day across the world in the hearts of Jesus’ followers—this is Christianity. This is the great mystery. This is the great escape—not a turn merely away from our problems, but a turn towards our Savior.

The great news, the truly great news for you and for me today, is that the City of God is not some far, distant place to which we must travel. No, perhaps the greatest mystery of our escape is this: The City of God is here, now, however blind we may sometimes be to it. Our diocese’s cathedral, St. John’s Cathedral here in Jacksonville describes itself in a way which I think captures Merton’s notion of Christianity lived out in the “heart of society.” Our Cathedral calls itself “A Church in the heart of the city, with the city at its heart.” That city, of course, is Jacksonville, Florida, and it is the city, town or community in which you live. But it is also the City of God. It is that City to which you and I aspire. We are fragile, earthly creatures living in earthly communities with earthly problems; but we are also magnificent embodiments of God’s creative will. We live on earth, but we do not have to die to know the majesty of God’s kingdom. As a matter of fact, as we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves, as we give of ourselves, as we work in the earthly communities in which we have each been placed, we actually transcend earthly boundaries…we actually, miraculously, catch glimpses, perhaps in the darkest slum or the most crime-infested alley, perhaps in the poorest rural area or in the midst of the dispossessed and despised, of the City of God! We catch these glimpses not as we seek to buttress ourselves, or to feel better about ourselves or to “escape” a sense of guilt we may harbor because of our own privileges. These visions of God’s City are instead products of God’s will working through us; they are manifest products of His abiding mercy and love.

In the City of God, you cannot earn your own way. You cannot make enough money, go to enough good schools or work hard enough to achieve success. We are called to good works, yet even those, on their own, will not suffice. No, it by God’s grace alone that we take our seats as citizens of His shining city; it is by His great love alone that we escape the bonds of our brokenness to enter into perfect communion with Him.

I, for one, cannot think of a greater mystery, or a more wondrous story, than this: That while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

With warmest wishes,