If, however, the lymph node is cancerous, that means Paul is likely to have cancer elsewhere, as well. Most cancers at that stage would be treated by chemotherapy and radiation, but apparently, melanoma is a particularly virulent cancer. It is resistant to such treatments, and the best the doctors would be able to do is chase the cancer, removing bits and pieces of my brother's body as they discover more and more cancer, until they are confident that they have gotten all of it, or until the cancer kills him.

As you can imagine, this has come as something of a shock to our family.

I decided to tell you about this situation because I know that there are many members of this congregation who have suffered from cancer, or have loved ones that are either now fighting it or, sadly, whose loved ones have succumbed to it. I also mention Paul's situation to you not to evoke your sympathy for me, though I do covet your prayers for my brother, but because this turn of events in my own family's life has profoundly affected the way I look at what's going on in the Episcopal Church right now. For you see, the two most important families to me are my biological family, and the family into which I was adopted by baptism, that is, my church family. Both, it seems, are suffering from cancer, and as St. Paul writes: "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." So allow me to turn for a few moments from my biological family to my adopted family, and after this sermon we will all have an opportunity in the Prayers of the People to pray for both families.

Since this past summer, conservatives have been telling us that the part of the body of Christ known as the Anglican Communion has a limb, known as the Episcopal Church, which has been infected with a pernicious cancer. We must either fight it off or cut it off. As long as this cancer remains on our body, we are in danger of succumbing to it. Conservatives have told us that this cancer has a name and a face, and that he is in New Hampshire: his name, now widely known, is Bishop Gene Robinson.

On the other hand, liberals have been speaking up, too. I am beginning to hear that according to liberals, the part of the body of Christ known as the Anglican Communion has a limb, known as the Episcopal Church, which has been infected with a pernicious cancer, but it is not in New Hampshire. We must fight to remain one body, or else part of that limb will be amputated and the healthy church will be significantly weakened. Liberals are now telling us that this cancer also has a name and a face, and that he is in Pittsburgh: his name, though less widely known, is Bishop Robert Duncan. Five days ago, conservatives elected Bishop Duncan the Convener of a new "Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes," which by some accounts has been created to supplant the Episcopal Church as the legitimate representative of the Anglican Communion in North America.

To liberals, then, Bishop Duncan is the cancer eating away at the Episcopal Church, but to conservatives, he is the doctor who will amputate the cancerous limb, leaving the healthy part of the body intact.

To shift the metaphor a bit, if we think of the Episcopal Church not as a limb of the Anglican Communion, but as one of its constituent organs, what conservatives are trying to do is prepare the Anglican Communion for an organ transplant. The old, diseased organ will be rejected by the body, and a new, healthy organ will take its place.

Were I a betting man, I would say that a majority of this parish would agree that the bishop of New Hampshire is the cancer and the bishop of Pittsburgh is the life-saving surgeon. But I have many friends who see it the other way around: the Bishop of Pittsburgh is a cancer, and the Bishop of New Hampshire is, if not a surgeon, just the medicine the body needs in order to make us a more inclusive church, more faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, I think both views are wrong, for a very simple reason: no human being is a cancer. To treat a human being as if he were the cancer, is to dehumanize-or worse, demonize-that human being. Bp. Duncan is not a cancer in the Episcopal Church, nor is Bp. Robinson. My brother Paul, for instance, has cancer. He isn't the cancer itself.

In first Corinthians, St. Paul was trying to make the point that we are all part of one body, and that to amputate a limb or cut out an organ is, ultimately, to be self-destructive. It would be like trying to do surgery on one's self. Further, when we begin to treat the people involved in any controversy as if they were nothing more than either healthy cells or cancer cells, we do them not just an injustice: we do them violence. Were human beings either healthy cells or cancer cells, it would be easy: all we'd have to do is identify the cancer cells, and get rid of them. (And if some healthy cells in the surrounding area had to be sacrificed to the greater good, so be it.) But we are not mere cells in this part of the body we call the Episcopal Church. No, as St. Paul tells us, "you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."

The problem with the cancer metaphor is that it makes out sin to be the criterion for membership in the body. If you are sinful, you are cancer, and you should be cut out, or better yet, never let in at all. But if you are leading a righteous life, at least by our current standards, you are a healthy cell, and welcome to the body. But St. Paul doesn't use sin as the criterion; he uses grace-specifically, the grace given to us by the Holy Spirit in baptism. He writes, "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." The criterion for membership in the body isn't righteousness, it's baptism. St. Paul doesn't say that Good Greeks who've been baptized are members and that Bad Greeks who've been baptized are not. He simply says: "we were all baptized into one body."

In order to be ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church, you must first be ordained a priest. Before being ordained a priest, you must be ordained a deacon. And before ordination as a deacon, you must have been baptized. Baptism is the font of ministry. You may turn out to be a stinky deacon, a lousy priest, and a bad bishop, but this does not de-baptize you, nor does it make you any less a member of the body of Christ. In other words, you may, whether lay or ordained, be cancerous, but that doesn't mean you're not still a part of the body.

What, then, is Paul's cure for cancer? He doesn't address sin directly in this passage, but he clearly indicates that no matter who we're dealing with in the body of Christ, "Jews or Greeks, slaves or free," we are "to have the same care for one another" so that "there may be no [schism]¹ in the body."

Now, I want to be absolutely clear that I am not in favor of bishops behaving badly. But I'm also not interested in scapegoating bishops behaving badly. I think it's terrible that liberals are beginning to scapegoat Bp. Duncan, a man I have met on several occasions and who strikes me as someone desiring to live in the full integrity of his faith. He clearly wants to empower other conservatives to have the courage of their convictions. But I also don't want to see Bp. Duncan scapegoating Bp. Robinson, for the simple reason that even if (in Bp. Duncan's eyes) Bp. Robinson has cancer, that doesn't mean that Bp. Robinson is a cancer.

People guilty of grave sins can indeed do damage to the body. But they are not the cancer. People may have cancer, but they are never cancers. Sin is cancer, and sin is what we all suffer from. Some of us are lucky enough to be in remission, and when we're not, confession and absolution act as the most effective chemotherapy and radiation known to humanity. We may, in fact, be on a long road to recovery, and we may resist treatment, exist in a state of denial, or be grieving over our own cancer and that of others. But we are not our cancers.

Bp. Duncan is not the right surgeon for a cancerous church, and Bp. Robinson is not just the medicine the church needs to make us better. Rather, these two men, like all of us, are merely two more members of the body of Christ, with their imperfections and their sins, who are in need of the true physician.

Christ is our true physician. He is the one who is working away, even at this moment, at whatever is hindering both of these our brothers from loving each other as Christ loves them, and he is doing the same for us. When we put our hope in the divine physician of our souls, we can stop chasing the cancer. Paradoxically, chasing the cancer only makes things worse. The way we can help Christ the Physician is by suffering together with all our brothers, those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree. It's not our job to cure cancer. It's our job to "have the same care for one another," "that there may be no schism in the body."

Jesus taught us to care for our enemies just as much as we would care for our friends. I don't care who you put in the one category or the other, as long as you realize that neither category should limit the love we are called to show to each. (It may nuance the way we express our love to our friends and enemies, but it should not limit the love itself.) When it comes to the cancer of sin, though, it becomes very difficult to act out of love rather than fear. That's because it's scary to let go of control; we would rather wield the scalpel. But we'd just end up cutting ourselves. And the really silly thing is, none of us has been to medical school-not even those of us with advanced degrees. There's a big difference, after all, between someone who has studied the history of medicine and someone who has a license to practice medicine.

The truth is, we are unqualified to cure cancer. Of course, that doesn't mean we must sit idly by while our brothers and sisters are eaten alive by it. But we're not the doctor. We don't have the knowledge, or the expertise, or the right to pretend that we are the doctor. The only thing we are qualified to do, by virtue of our baptism, is to care for those of us suffering from cancer-which just happens to be all of us. At best, we can be Christ's assisting nurses, whose job is to care for all alike; but we are not the surgeons.

If you want to do something about this situation, refuse to practice medicine without a license, and recognize that anyone other than Jesus Christ himself who claims to be a surgeon is a quack.

At the same time, those quacks are our brothers in Christ. Don't be fooled into scapegoating them; we may be tempted to call them snake-oil salesmen, but it's not our job to tar and feather them and ride them out on a rail. It's our job to care for them. And that's the hardest job of all for a sinful human being to do: to look at another person with whom we have serious issues and love them anyway. This doesn't mean that we must excuse the harm they may be doing to themselves and to others, but it does mean that we need to recognize that to perform surgery on them without a license wouldn't be surgery: it would be butchery.

Put down the surgeon's scalpel. Pick up the nurse's bandage. Care for one another so that there may be no schism in the body, and call a qualified physician. There's only one, and he's not a bishop-and, thank God, he's none of us.