Rest in peace...

Two shinning lights in the Episcopal Church died this past week...

The Rev. Dr. John Macquarrie, an influential theologian whose graceful writing and sagacious melding of existentialist philosophy with orthodox Christian thought offered intellectually penetrating rationales for belief in God, died on May 28 in Oxford, England, where he lived. He was 87.

Dr. Macquarrie was a Scottish Presbyterian minister turned Episcopal priest who never lost his enthusiasm for preaching in parish churches. But he earned his reputation as one of the 20th century’s leading theologians for lucidly combining the thinking of philosophers like Martin Heidegger, whose works he translated, with his own and others’ interpretations of the Bible. One of his goals was to develop an accessible theology relevant to a world that after the Holocaust and World War II seemed to doubt divine guidance.

From the NY Times obituary.

"God is a God of love, whose purpose in creation was not to bring into being a fascinatingly beautiful universe, but to be confronted with an "other" who could respond to love with love, who could live in communion. God's creation is a sharing, a self-giving. Its purpose is to realize through as much travail as it takes that Kingdom in which we may evermore dwell in God and God in us." - John Macquarrie

Bishop James Kelsey of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan was killed in a road accident at around 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3, while returning to Marquette from a parish visitation.

"The Episcopal Church has today lost one of its bright lights," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said. "We will be less without the easy grace of Bishop James Kelsey -- Jim to most of us -- and we shall miss his humor, insight, and passion for the ministry of all. He gave us much. We pray for the repose of his soul, and for his family. We pray also for the Diocese of Northern Michigan. All of us have lost a friend. May he rest in peace and rise in glory."

You can read more about Bishop Jim Kelsey here.

"Do you see? ...that the Dream, God’s Dream, is something which reaches beyond us; beyond the horizon of our own perspective, beyond the outer limits of our sight, beyond what we can imagine possible..." - Jim Kelsey

"The foundation of all ministry is baptism, we’re indelibly marked and gifted to share...” -Jim Kelsey