WLSU: When a Church Practices What it Preaches

Hi friends. As you may know, I am currently on sabbatical and we'll be out until August 11th. Throughout my time off we have a couple new episodes that I recorded prior to leaving that are related to my sabbatical journey. We will also rerun a couple of previous episodes that are connected to the ongoing theme of transformation and best of all.

Thanks for listening.

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Sometimes things are easier said than done. To put it another way, it’s not always easy to practice what we preach. We preach a lot in the church.

This podcast is about love, so let’s talk about what the church preaches about love. We say that we should love others as Jesus first loved us. We say we should love our enemies. We say to should love generously, sacrificially even. But do we practice what we preach?

Yes, of course we do. Sometimes. I’ve seen extraordinary love inside the church, and from the church toward the world. I’ve spent most of my life working in the church, and I’ve seen a lot of exemplary love in those years. I’ve also seen us fall short plenty of times. After all, the church is made up of people, and we’re all sinners. So the church will never be perfect, at least not until Jesus comes again to sort it all out.

For now, I wanted to celebrate a time I saw — I felt — the church practice what it preaches.

It all happened in 2022 when I almost died. I was passing through Singapore airport on my way to Vietnam for vacation. But my body had other ideas. My heart stopped. And when I collapsed from my heart stopping, I hit my head and received a pretty serious brain injury. After 59 minutes of CPR, I was rushed to a nearby hospital. It turns out that the hospital closest to Singapore airport is one of the best heart hospitals in the world.

I was in the hospital for two weeks, including several days of complete sedation so the swelling in my brain could go down. When I was discharged from the hospital, I was in a wheelchair. My brain wasn’t quite working right, as it continued to heal. By then, Sherilyn, my spouse, had arrived. We couldn’t go home until the doctors said my brain was well enough healed to travel by air. So we were stuck in Singapore for a few weeks.

At first we stayed in hotels, but then an extraordinary thing happened. St. Hilda’s Anglican Church offered to take us in. They have an apartment on their campus, and they said we could live there while I continued to recover.

Before I go on with this, I should mention that when Sherilyn arrived in Singapore, an Anglican priest met her at the airport and brought her to the hospital to see me. While I was in the hospital, two different priests came several times to visit me and to pray with me. The Anglican Church in Singapore was gracious from the moment they learned we needed care.

Back to the apartment. Sherilyn and I took up residence at St. Hilda’s Church. Parishioners brought us food. They checked in on us to see what we might need. As soon as I was well, parishioners started offering to take us out for dinner. Most important, they prayed for us. Mightily.

On Sundays, when I was well enough, we started going to church at St. Hilda’s. One Sunday, we went to a different service than we had attended. A couple approached us and introduced themselves, the way you hope members of a church would welcome guests. When we said our names, this paid of strangers responded, “Oh, we know who you are. We’ve been praying for you at home every day.” They didn’t even know us, but they were praying for us daily.

This church took us in and loved us in tangible ways — with kindness and prayer. But that’s not all.

The Anglican Church in Singapore is quite theologically conservative. They don’t ordain women there. But every time we were introduced, it was “Canon Scott and Reverend Sherilyn.”

Anglicans in Singapore have very different views than the Episcopal Church in the US has on the place of LGBTQ people in the life of the church. From the perspective of many Singaporeans, I would be considered a heretic. But without compromising their own views, they loved me.

Near the end of our time in Singapore, I asked the pastor if I could thank the church for their love. He allowed me to speak for a few minutes at a couple of their Sunday services. He did not tell me what to say or not to say. He trusted me with the pulpit. That kind of trust is rare in our time.

As I have reflected on the love I received in Singapore, on the one hand, it seems completely expected. Those followers of Jesus were simply practicing what they preach. On the other hand, in our divided era in which dehumanization is the norm, the kind of love I received is radical, shocking even,.

I wonder what I can learn. Would I be able to love others the way I was loved? Would I respect others — and respect their views — even when I don’t agree with them on really important things? Would I be so trusting? Would I commit to the hard work of daily prayer and regular acts of kindness to strangers?

Of course, I know I might get it right sometimes, while other times I will fail. And Jesus will never stop loving me. That’s the Gospel. All Jesus asks of us is love — to love God, to love our neighbors. He upped the ante when he commanded us to love others as he loved us — completely, bravely, honestly, and sacrificially.

The times in my life I’ve received this kind of love have been amazing. The times in my life I’ve managed by God’s grace to practice this love have been amazing. Every time love shows up, it’s amazing.