Katherine Jefferts Scori Quotes
Four Quotes by: Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Scori of The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop and Primate. We who practise the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Source here on the Internet. Dated: 1st August 2009.
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Christians, I'm one of them, believe that Jesus died for the whole world. Right? At the same time Jews don't claim Jesus as their Messiah. Most Jews don't anyway. But as I read the Bible God clearly made promises to the Jews that have not been broken by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God also made promises to the ancestors of people who call themselves Moslems, to Ishmael, to Hagar. Those promises we don't believe God has broken either. So clearly the other Abrahamic faiths has access to God the Father without consciously going through Jesus. I also look around at people of other faith traditions and there are some great examples out there like Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama or Tikna Harg {?} who show us what looks like the fruits of the spirit, they show us in their lives what we see as godly behaviour. If I deny that some person has access to God by the efforts I see, I think I am doing something close to the sin against the Holy Spirit. I don't know how God does that. It's not my job to figure that out. It's God's job. My job is to be the best Christian I can be, to share my understanding of good news and my experience of Jesus and to live a life which shows that to the world and to let God figure out who is going to be in the kingdom at the end of all time. I believe that the whole world has access to God, I would not be too worried about the mechanism. Yes, it does drive some Christians nuts. It does. It does. Because in some parts of Christianity we have turned Christianity into a work that you have to say I claim Jesus as my Lord and Saviour in order to be saved. That turns it into a work. It denies the possibility of grace.
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{Interviewer: Religion says that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God. Can those two perceptions ever be reconciled?} How do we come to exclusion as a sin in the eyes of God? What texts do we read? {Interviewer: Your adversaries say that to you.}Well I would have to go back to the very source of that and think about that and what the context of this passage and what was it written to address. What was going on underneath it and to what it appears to speak to. And I think we find when we do some very serious scholarship that in almost every case we are thinking about a cultural context which is nothing like the one in which we are wrestling with homosexuality today. {Interviewer: So how do you read Jonathan and David that story?} I think it got some challenging things to say to us for hundreds of years, for thousands of years that it might be appropriate for two men to love each other. {Is this a world issue for you?} It's a world issue in that part of the job of the church is to help all Christians grow up into the full stature of Christ, to help all of us lead holy lives. The question is: "What does that holy life look like?" {Interviewer: Many conservative, traditional Christians say that homosexual life is not a holy life.} They would say it's only holy if it's selfish. I think we've got more examples out of scripture to offer a challenge to them.
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The overarching connection in all these crises has to do with the great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be alone can be in right relationship with God.
Source here on the Internet. Dated: 7th July 2009.
See also Is this scriptural?
Please note: Quotes are displayed in reverse date order. Undated quotes are listed last.