Thursday, March 10: Bishop Greg Rickel

"For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless." - Titus 1:1-16

Any bishop would read Titus 1:1-16, especially verse 7, with some pause. “For a Bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless.” I looked up “blameless,” and it is most often is defined as “free of guilt; not subject to blame”; “has lived a blameless life”; “of irreproachable character”; “an unimpeachable reputation.” Some light there, but still pretty daunting stuff. I read this much as I hear, and I think we
misunderstand, John Wesley’s famous phrase, still used in United Methodist ordinations, “moving on toward perfection.” We don’t like that word “perfection” any more than we like the word “blameless.”

But, I am not sure our 21st century Western ears hear it right. For me, it is the difference between the life and ministry we seek, and publicly proclaim, versus the one we live. It is the ability to put these two into the same conversation, and have the vulnerability, and the love for others, and the Body of Christ, the Church, as the foremost and primary role in your life, so that you remain willing to be open about your faults, seek reconciliation when it is needed, and continue to note yourself, rightfully and truthfully so, a sinner. It is the ability to not allow your position to blind you from challenge by others. Being blameless, as a Christian, is to know you are among all to be blamed, and so, thereby, to be in the need of reconciliation and God’s grace and to publicly acknowledge it. If it were to mean what we think of so often as blameless, or perfect, then bishops would be more difficult to live with than we already are, and we would be of no earthly good to anyone. As one commentator on this idea said, “The perfection to which we are called is a maturity, or “rightness,” at each point in our journey with the final, true perfection coming on that day when everything shakable has been shaken out.”

I have to see it this way. I am praised on a daily basis, but blamed just as often. Blamed for saying the wrong thing to the wrong people, for speaking out on this or that, for not being where someone thought I should be. This should strike any bishop right between the eyes, because if you are awake at all, you know you are not blameless, but you are saved, and loved, as are we all, by our God of grace, and in the end, this is what we are to be an example of: a sinner, redeemed. — The Rt Rev Greg Rickel

"Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised or dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone." —Dom Helder Camara