Broken Lights Shining God's Love

Beloved in Christ,

Today is Bishop Whipple’s 200th birthday. He was elected by the second convention of the Diocese of Minnesota after delegates to the first could not reach a majority of the votes for a single candidate needed to elect a bishop. At the time of his election, he was a relatively unknown rector serving a small congregation in Chicago. 

When Whipple arrived in Minnesota, he found a land marked by deep racial conflict and a future marked by both great possibility and great uncertainty. Along with many others, he set about the work of leading and serving our new diocese in the best and most faithful way he could. His legacy, like all of ours, is complex. In his book Broken Lights and Mended Lives, theologian Rowan Greer explores the way in which the earliest Christians pursued a life that would refract the light of God’s love through the broken fragments of their lives, and refraction that would be made more rich a nd vibrant by the ways in which they had allowed God to mend some of those broken pieces. It’s a beautiful, powerful image of what Christian holiness looks like. Like Bishop Whipple, we are all broken lights shining God’s love into the darkness, and doing out best to let God mend our lives in a loving direction. 

We need the stories of our saints and heroes so very much. Those stories never present us with icons of perfection who did everything right and in the right way for every moment of their lives. What they do present us with is sinners like us who did their level best to live by the light of God’s promises and love, no matter how broken, dim, and limited that may have been. It seems to me that Bishop Whipple did just that, and for whatever limitations he had, whatever he achieved and whatever he left undone, he helped start the story of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. Together with so many other disciples in his own day and down the years, we get to take our place in that story. Like Whipple and others before us, we will at times get it all very right, and at times get it painfully wrong. Through it all, what we are called to is not perfection, but holiness, allowing ourselves to be so saturated in the Spirit that God’s light seeps through all the cracks we bear in our hearts. We continue to do our best in the face of lingering systemic racism. We continue to face a future that is marked by both great possibility and great uncertainty. What a gift to be joined to this story. What a gift to have each other. What a gift to have Bishop Whipple, and Enmegahbowh, and so very many others, known and unknown, now part of the great communion of saints, cheering us on, having our back, enfolding us in light and love. 

Grace and Peace,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in Minnesota