Fake bishop tries
to crash secret Vatican meeting
Authentic Christianity!
Let’s face it, people know the real thing when they see it. Or at least after a
brief encounter or two. The story out of the Vatican of a fake ‘Bishop’
crashing the Cardinals meeting in preparation for electing a new pope is too
good an opportunity to pass up. The amazing part of the story if you read it
and see the picture of this thirty something year old ‘bishop’ shaking the hand
of one Cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana you have to wonder how he fooled so many
people. To me the picture in the article says it all. Instead of a skull cap he is wearing a fedora
and instead of cassock cincture around his waist he has a purple sash. Yeah I
am an Anglican priest who knows what the proper garb is, but so do the Swiss
guards and so does anyone else with just a wee bit of knowledge; you know like
Roman catholic cardinals and bishops. Thinking about it though you really have
to hand it to the guy. It takes a lot of confidence and charisma to get as far
as he did.
This
gets me back to the thought of authentic Christianity. The truth is you can’t
fake people out; at least not for very long. The guy in story never actually
made it into the Cardinal meeting, but he got close. I am less than a month old
as the new pastor and priest of St. Luke & St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in
St. Cloud, FL and I can tell you that after one month people know whether I am
faking it or not. They know I am a truly committed follower of Jesus. Whether I
am their kind of guy or not remains to be seen. But that is not the point. The point
is an authentic Christian faith organically and naturally flows out of a
person. It is evident in their actions, their life, their witness and in their
words. We do not have to try to dress ourselves up. We simply have to reveal
ourselves to the world and say he we are. We are not perfect, but we know a guy
who is and He isn’t looking for perfection but a process of becoming more like
him.
I
know you still may be asking yourself is this Fr. Rob guy the real thing. Is
Fr. Rob an authentic Christian. I can not tell you that. I can only do the best
I can to live by faith in Jesus Christ and let you decide. Is he faking it or
is he the real deal? Truth is, none of us Christians are the real deal. We are
all hypocrites or falling short in some area or another. What makes us
authentic is admitting it and saying it is not about me, it is about being more
like Jesus. Like him in our worship, like him in our loving our neighbors, like
him in serving the poor, the broken and the least of these. We are like him
when we do all we can to serve as Jesus served and point the world not to our
actions, but to Jesus.
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