Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III departs from the interview format during this Sunday Forum. In the first of a pair of lectures, Lloyd talks about “Finding Peace in a Global Storm: St. Paul Speaks to a Troubled Time—Facing the Overwhelming.”

What does it mean for people of faith to make their way through times as complex and difficult as these? Our national economy and state of mind, so recently soaring, have now been pushed down. Alluding to Parker Palmer’s observations about psychological depression, Lloyd suggests a new perspective. Depression might be viewed not only as an enemy, but also as a force that presses us down onto firm ground, upon which we can stand.

Lloyd introduces the letter to the Philippians, which St. Paul wrote while under something akin to house arrest. The dean suggests (quoting George Steiner) that we try to understand Scripture in a new way. Instead of reading ancient Scripture with our hopelessly modern minds, perhaps we should let Scripture read us, and transform us.

Paul never met Jesus. Initially called Saul, Paul at first persecuted Jesus’ followers, but on the road to Damascus he experienced a conversion, a vision of ultimate reality, which Lloyd describes as “an embracing, nonstop, un-letting up, love that holds everyone, everywhere, for all time. …You’re as loved as you’re ever going to be. You’re as worthy as you’re ever going to be. So all you need to do is to learn to live it with those around you.”

Fired by this vision, Paul and other followers of Jesus nurtured early Christian communities. “Paul founded Christianity,” Lloyd says. “Jesus did not found Christianity. Jesus lived and preached and loved and forgave and died and was raised, but Paul was the one who spread the church. It was that spreading of the church that created the Christianity that we know.”

The persecutor became the persecuted; Paul was probably executed by the Roman authorities. When he wrote to the church in Philippi, Paul reports joy despite, and even because of, his imprisonment. Such was the strength of his faith in the ultimate reality. “If you see that and know that and live in that,” Lloyd says, “you can have some confidence, and some joy, that whatever happens, things will not finally fail.” Over a lifetime of practicing our faith, we too can cultivate a confidence that will see us through everything, even the question of life or death.

Hard times force us back to basics, to asking what matters most, whom can we trust, how should we live? 2009 promises to be a year filled with major crises and concerns for the world and for many individually. What can we depend on when the storm is raging and nothing seems secure?

In two consecutive Sunday Forums (January 25 and February 1) Dean Sam Lloyd explored one of the most remarkable letters ever written—Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Paul scribbled it while sitting in a Roman prison, and yet it shines with an almost unearthly joy and confidence. From where does that confidence come, and what can it mean for us?

These Forums were offered in a different, lecture-style format. Dean Lloyd spoke for about forty minutes and then opened the floor for questions and reflections.