Increasingly distressed as I read of disagreements about money, sexual orientation and that particular piece of nonsense about the gospels being "fiction," your story about McVickar [“How blind I was,” April] restored to me a sense of grounding and reality about what is of real value ... "seeing," and loving, people. 

Thank you. 

McVickar reminded me of Sam, who attended the parish in which I grew up.  He was known for crossing himself pretty flamboyantly, arms swinging widely as he passed the cross.

One day as his arms flew, crossing head, heart, shoulder, heart again, shoulder again, etc., he suddenly extended both hands, shrugged, looked at the cross, heaved a mighty sigh and said, "Peace, Buddy!"  Wow!  What a relationship!  To look at Jesus and wish him, your buddy, peace.  Sam may have been developmentally challenged, but he wasn't God-challenged.

I have lived in two towns of equal size a thousand miles apart. In both instances the architecture of the Episcopal Church was more enchanting than any other building in town, but few knew what, if anything, was going on in there. 

My attention was jogged as I drove by a small-town Episcopal church a couple of weeks ago.  Above the otherwise-empty parking lot was a purple banner:

“You Saw the ‘Passion of Christ’ movie!  Now Come Hear the Word! The Episcopal Church Welcomes You!”

Well, it’s a start, although such seems a trifle tasteless and condescending.  But I think it’s time the church developed an image of some sort -- understanding, commitment and intellectual curiosity might just be a few of the elements devoutly to be sought.

Some image is better than none at all.

[About “Rev. MacDonald Jean discusses Haiti’s political realities, hopes,” May]. Thank you for this marvelous conversation and the reporting of it. 

I was privileged to visit the parish of Ste. Croix  [Holy Cross] and the Rev. Jean Jacques Deravil last November, representing the outreach committee at St. John in the Wilderness (Episcopal) Church in Flat Rock, N.C.  We are partnering with this parish, at present in a small way, but we hope to grow in our contributions as time goes by.  Articles such as this are an immense help to those of us spreading the word.

I have never seen such hardworking priests in my life and the ability of the Haitian people to do so much with so little.  It was a profound experience in my life, and I am hoping to return yearly.  I was able to visit five missions of this parish and to see the schools in action.  What a blessing to realize that we have these (our) brothers and sisters on our doorstep and the opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of these deserving people.

Again, thank you for this informative article.

Thank you for publishing the story of the families that are still waiting for the remains of their loved ones from the Fresh Kills, N.Y., landfill [“Never to forget,” February].  I immediately signed the petition and hope others will do the same.

Joyce Walters
Renton, Wash.

Many of the points in Maryjane Wilke’s column (“Don’t just tinker:  Let’s encourage writing harmonious, meaningful hymns,” April) are indeed accurate and appropriate. She has written some things that many of us have simply thought.

I am a published poet. One of my poems is in the Easter Day issue of The Living Church.  I was awarded the George Washington Honor Medal of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for my poetry, and it was selected by a publisher here in North Carolina three or four Christmas seasons in a row. 

I also have something of a history in music. I have written hymn after hymn.  The words reflect degrees from two different Episcopal seminaries along with an earned doctorate and half a century of ordained service. The music is not technically perfect, but the intentions are clear and the tunes singable.  Not a single one of them over the years has arrived at first base. Why? Simple.  I am neither a politically minded cleric nor the organist or the choirmaster of a major cathedral or choir school, nor do I happen to have a formal degree in music. 

There is an a priori assumption that anyone not a professional musician cannot have a tune in his head, nor the faintest idea how to teach or to communicate the holy catholic faith once delivered to the saints. If you are not in the inner circle, you cannot break those barriers. 

With regard to “Don’t just tinker,” there are already many modern hymns around (including "Praise" songs) if we look outside our prescribed hymnbook. Let's! 

However, I think there is nothing so wonderful as old hymns, such as those written by the wonderful Fanny Crosby, for example.  Let's rediscover these old treasures.
Thank you for the article.

Thank you for publishing Dr. Leila Richard's painfully informative letter "Working for Peace. Palestinians, Israelis join in protesting Israel's dividing wall" [April].

The Holy Land and its people (including the few remaining Palestinian Christians) has been in deep crisis for years, and things just go from bad to worse. Silence is complicity:  We simply cannot just passively allow hate-mongering propaganda and misinformation to keep closing American hearts and minds to the very real plight of the Palestinians.

Massive amounts of American money, weapons and political support have been empowering Israel's cruel racist war on the indigenous population of the Holy Land. Now is not the time for peace advocates to use limp platitudes. We must firmly and clearly condemn modern manmade Israel's many racist anti-Palestinian laws and walls. We should be insisting that Israel fully respect international law and the Palestinians’ basic human rights, with the highest priority given to the full implementation of U.N. Resolution 194 from 1948, on the Palestinian refugees inalienable right of return.

The Palestinian refugees’ right of return is the real key to peace and the only key to peace ... a just and lasting peace.  It is the key to reconciliation, coexistence, respect and understanding and real hope for a decent future for all God's children.

How very much I enjoyed the articles "Rabbi in residence," "Experiencing Jesus' Jewishness" and "Jewish-Christian relations" (April).

I was introduced very early by my wise mother to some wonderful Jewish traditions, as my brother and I shared in Hanukah with our neighbors across the street, and they joined us around the Christmas tree. 

As a graduate student in the days of religious preference cards, the scholarly Episcopalian chaplain at Michigan State University told us that the only way an Episcopalian could complete the card was to check "yes" for all of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant.  My family and I celebrated a Seder with my best friend of 30+ years, Maxine Slipsky, and her children and grandchildren.  Then she participated in, as a family member and "honorary grandmother,” each of my daughter's ordinations to the Episcopal diaconate and priesthood in 1998, and again in each of the ordinations of my son-in-law to the Episcopal diaconate and priesthood in 2003.  She called me just this Good Friday to tell me she was thinking of me on that day sacred to me.  We each respect the religious traditions of the other, with joy and love.  Would that all could be as blessed in friendship as we two are.

The articles on business ("Taking care of business," April cover story) fail to deal adequately with the interests of workers.  General Convention has spoken clearly on this subject, recognizing the rights of workers to bargain collectively and to be paid a living (not minimum) wage.  Yet corporate America does everything it can, legally and illegally, to prevent unionization and ships jobs overseas and from one Third World country to another to find workers who will accept the lowest wages. 

In my diocese, the management of our Episcopal Church Home fought unionization efforts and expressed great pleasure when the union narrowly lost a representation election.  When even an Episcopal employer ignores the social policy teachings of our church, how can we expect the CEOs in our pews to do differently?

Good as it is, there are some real gaps in the cover story "Taking care of business."

First, it is so limited in the number of people it can reach.  What about the many more of the baptized who are in "business" but for whom nothing is offered? 

Means are at hand to help all the members of a congregation who are in business to discern what God wants them to do. The Incarnation tells us God is already at work in every place of business to make it more loving and/or more just.  We need only ask where love and justice are needed in our workplace, and that is where God wants us to work – to join in with what God is already working on there. Resources already are in use to help each member to do so: www.episcopalchurch.org/mdl/,  http://www.membermissionpress.org/.  They may be primitive in being first tries, but they are there and in use.

Second, what about such places as skilled trades, organized labor, health, education, volunteer organizations and school for students?  Daily work is much wider than business. Every member of every congregation at every age has – or needs – some kind of daily work.  I suggest offering them some of the resources already on hand to discern their present "mission" in their workplaces.

The Rev. Scott-Hamblen argues that we must not even risk the possibility that parishioners will misunderstand our discussion of tithing and think "that we are more interested in their money than we are about their holiness" (“Obsessed with money,” April).  I fear even more the reality of Episcopalians who refuse their holy calling to follow Christ Jesus through their generous and sacrificial giving of their time, skill and effort -- and even their money! -- for the work of God on earth.

I believe that Scott-Hamblen has created a false dichotomy between inviting faithful stewardship of our wealth and seeking a faithful sacrifice of one's heart to God.  How can one truly give one's heart to God and still want to keep back one's money for things that do not give life?  If they are willing, parish clergy and their parishioners can discuss the faithful use of wealth in ways that are sensitive and that treat individuals as valued children of God -- yes, valued enough to be asked to follow Jesus, who held nothing back for our sake!

I agree that the church is “Obsessed with money” (April). However, I believe that the church should be more obsessed with it and speak more about money, not less!

Christ spoke more often about money than any other single subject. Nearly one-sixth of his recorded statements concern the subject of money, and almost one third of his parables are about money.  How the church usually talks about money, however, is considerably different from how Christ talked about money.

What turns people off when the church (clergy) talks about money is that the objective is often to get faithful Christians to give more money to the church.  The often-preached reason to give is because the church needs money. Thus, the church becomes yet another entity that wants our money and even holds a trump card with its unique ability to dispense guilt to those who don’t give enough.

Giving to the church is an important part of our stewardship of money, but only a part.  What about the role that money plays in relationships, acquisitions, status, work, power, ego, manipulation and judgment?

Christ did not talk about giving money to the church (synagogue), nor did he talk about 2 percent or 5 percent or 10 percent of our money.  He talked about 100 percent of it – all of  it – and how we should live with it. Christianity is a way of life, and money is a spiritual matter. What concerned Christ was how we live our life as stewards of the gifts we have been given – including our money.

The church should be obsessed with money!  Christ was.

The story in the April issue of Episcopal Life about McVickar (“How blind I was”) was poignant and well-told:  well-told until the last full paragraph.

That paragraph reads in part, "In a world of theological bickering and impassioned protests about who's in and who's out of the church, McVickar simply lived as a child of God..."

That is a nice sentiment, except that sin is still sin, and we need to be true to God's word.  You may be the nicest person in the world, but if you stray from the word of God, you are not practicing the Christian faith.

Yes, we are all sinners, and we shouldn't pluck the splinter from our neighbor's eye till we remove the plank from our own, but we shouldn't follow our neighbor's theology if it leads to sin.

The Episcopal Church has a choice to make.  Via Media has been used as a solution for far too long -- in fact, it is just an excuse, a way to avoid making hard decisions.

The road to hell is not only paved with good intentions but also lined with wrong theology.  We need to decide what we are to believe and then act on it, and anyone who disagrees will have to suffer in silence or move on.  We cannot continue to rehash old fights; what is done is done, let us move ahead.

We need to find the road that follow God's will.  And we must do it quickly, or there will be no church left.

I sent [an e-mail] to the Israeli Embassy regarding the ghettoizing of the Palestinians.  I was going to put it in the “wisdom to know the difference” pile until read Dr. Leila Richards article regarding the Israeli security wall [“Working for peace: Palestinians, Israelis join in protesting Israel’s diving wall,” April].

It seems that the Israelis have forgotten their heritage. They have forgotten the years of bondage under Pharaoh. They have forgotten the Warsaw Ghetto. They have forgotten the victims of the Holocaust.

The stance taken toward the Palestinians has set in motion a dynamic. It is the same dynamic that enabled Moses to free his people and lead them through the desert. It is the same dynamic that put Christ on the cross. It is the same dynamic that enabled the Holocaust victims to survive. It is the dynamic of persistent hope.

I’m dismayed by the comments of your readers (“Viewers weigh lessons and messages of Gibson’s Passion,” April) who are religious leaders and future leaders. One of our theologians denies that the blood of Christ – thus, his death on the cross – is what saves us from sin and evil’s power.

To overcome sin’s power, sin must be directly confronted and vanquished, and in that titanic struggle, sin is going to pull out all the stops. The pain, suffering, blood, brutality and death that always are associated with the manifestation of sin and evil are going to be very much in the forefront of that struggle.

One of your readers comments that he seems to believe it was Jesus’ healings, wisdom, teaching, compassion, passion for justice that saves us, rather than his death on the cross. As I read the Bible, I come across many people who reflect those qualities, but no one calls them “Messiah.” Jesus’ death on the cross is central to our salvation.
There are lots of people in the church who have little or no understanding of what sin and evil really are … and what it takes (or, took) to overcome that demonic power.

I had an uncle who was responsible for saving over 10,000 German Jews from the Holocaust. He was “head of station” for MI-6 in Berlin from 1920-1939. His cover was passport control officer for the British Embassy there. When asked why he did it – risked not only his career but his life – he replied, “To show the churches what they should have been doing!”

Thank God there are those among us, still, who understand the profundity and power of evil in human life and are willing to take the risk to both reveal what it is and confront it here and now.

The passion of Jesus is the ultimate revelation of what it really takes to do that, and in doing it offers to us all salvation from evil’s power.

I apparently saw a different Mel Gibson movie than those who wrote for Episcopal Life (April). The Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ that I saw was a deeply moving and loving religious experience. The movie that I saw proclaimed the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God.  The movie that I saw brought to life the Negro spiritual Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Someone should be courageous enough to inform our church members that crucifixion was so horrendous a punishment that it was reserved only for those who were not citizens of the Roman Empire. It was intentionally designed to torture and humiliate the victim both before and after death. The goal of the authorities was to destroy the rapidly expanding cult of Christians by discrediting its leader as a blasphemer and common criminal.

Christians around the world believe that Jesus willingly accepted such a horrible death as a sacrifice for our sins. Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Light of the World. I always believed that the Episcopal Church shared in this belief.

Mel Gibson's version of Jesus' passion has certainly elicited a number of comments, but none are so telling as the comments of Episcopalians concerning the passion itself.

Michele Morgan's affront over Jesus' stomping of the snake in Gethsemane ("Well, you can tell it's not the Prince of Peace.  And my Jesus is the Prince of Peace.")  reminds me of the hymns we used to sing about "gentle Jesus, meek and mild."  Apparently wrath was unknown to the Son of Man?  All that scene was about was Gibson's heavy-handed reference to Genesis 3:15.

Professor Deirdre Good's comments are truly remarkable: "Neither atonement theology or blood sacrifice belongs to gospel traditions."  Hmmm. Well, so much for centuries of atonement theology as well as Eucharistic theology. I hope that Ms. Good meant something other than what she said.  Of  course, she and those in her camp (and I fear their name is Legion) would probably claim that that "Jesus never said any of that stuff," and I'm sure that the book of Hebrews has been thoroughly discredited in seminaries these days, as well as much of the corpus of St. Paul.  And, of course, the gospels have been deconstructed beyond recognition, so why should we be surprised?

But, as Paul says, the cross has always been a stumbling block. And without the cross, there simply is no Christianity worth believing in, and where you have a cross, you have atonement theology and sacrificial blood. 

I, too, am glad that Gibson's movie has raised these questions.  If we, as a Christian church, have so stripped the Christian faith of its basics in favor of  -- what? "I'm OK, you're OK"? -- Gibson will indeed have done us all a favor.

I read with interest the three views of Mel Gibson's movie.  I also finished Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's book Glorious Appearing.

After some thought and meditation on all this, I have come to a conclusion.  God must fit into the particular box we are comfortable with.  Anyone who presents God from a different perspective must be wrong!  We can clearly see God, and our vision is not the same as theirs.

Imagine a cross sitting in the center of a room surrounded by a circle of believers.  They all see the cross, and they all have the goal of coming closer to it and understanding it.  However, my view is not the same as the person directly across from me or 90 degrees around the circle from me.  My path to the cross would appear to be exactly the opposite of that of the person across from me.  That person would be headed in the wrong direction!

Most Christians are too concerned about being right and others being wrong, rather than about spending time in prayer and meditation seeking the truth.  When you turn a few pages of Scripture into an 80-page script and a two-hour movie, you have to add some detail.  Good stories are not always totally accurate.  Good stories are true in the message.  When you tell a story to a culture where many are used to violent movies, you must go further to get their attention to point of the story.

We all have a long ways to go to understand Scripture and each other.  I pray that we all at least start the journey.

I am rather tired of the debates centered around quoting the few Bible passages condemning homosexual behavior and trying to explain them away. It is clear that the Bible forbids such behavior. It is also clear that the Bible writers had no concept of sexual orientation or genetics.

In the light of modern knowledge and understanding, it is time to simply say, “The Bible is wrong at this point!” and be done with the argument.

I value and love the Bible and regard its message of love as basic to how we live our lives, but that does not mean that when I read it I have to park my intellect and agree with everything in it written by men limited by the knowledge and understanding of their times.

Gordon Lee
St. Louis Park, Minn.