I don't recall where I heard this, but someone once advised -- I believe in connection with the theologian Paul Tillich -- that if you want to know what a theologian really thinks, read his (or her) sermons.
Though it sounded good at the time, that hasn't always been true of my own experience as a preacher. I'm no theologian, but I've found that we priests are often just a bit more declarative in sermons than we might otherwise be (how do you explain to parishioners that sometimes you feel strange even uttering the name "God" with the degree of certainty often expected in sermons?).
On the other hand, sermons, particularly if the setting is right, can also invite transparency. Which brings me to Archbishop Peter Akinola's sermon given at last Monday's (required) chapel service at Wheaton College.
In the interest of full disclosure, Wheaton is my alma mater, which, while not exactly a point of pride at this moment, made it easy to get the scoop on his visit from some insiders there. Those I talked to insisted (even as their own sympathies, quite unlike mine, lie with Akinola) that his chapel address was benign -- as in, not touching on anything that has made him one of the most controversial figures in the Anglican Communion. Someone at the chaplain's office called it nothing more than a "fatherly address to the students." So I decided to give it a listen.
After comparing his humble beginnings with his current exalted status -- the primate of all Nigeria means leading 20 million people in the pews every Sunday, and presiding at meetings over 24 other primates (perhaps many of whom might find that surprising) -- he launched into three Scripture passages, the second of which was I Corinthians 15:33: "Do not be misled: bad company corrupts character."
This led into a rousing group-chant of the verse -- "Bad company corrupts character!" -- followed by this revealing commentary:
"In this college, thank God you are Christians. You know the Lord Jesus Christ, Halleluiah. But even here - among Jesus' disciples was Judas Iscariot. What company do you keep? ... Out there in the world there are so many good people like your professors here ... But out there in the world are very many bad guys, very many of them - out there. The evil people, the wicked people [pause and groan]: the arsonists, the murderers, the rapists, the cheats ... they're all there, and I pray God may you never fall prey to any of them. But they're there."
Finally, he concluded this point with a litany of places you might find such people: "When you go to San Francisco, or to New York City, to London, to Lagos ... there you see the real world." As a New Yorker, I certainly didn't appreciate this jab at my hometown, which I happen to find one of the most spiritually uplifting places on the planet -- if you count as spiritual a place that, unlike Wheaton, IL, actually forces you to rub elbows with people unlike and far less coddled than yourself day in and day out. But I digress ...
At any rate, this was obviously a moment of homiletic transparency for Akinola. I'm dismayed that the smart people I spoke with didn't seem to grasp the connection between remarks like these and his insidious name-calling and power-grabbing in the Anglican Communion.
And, speaking as a disheartened alum, it's too bad that Wheaton has become the kind of setting where Archbishop Akinola feels so comfortable letting down his guard and saying how he really feels.