Confessions of a Carioca

Missionary Vision Talking Points

2011-12-28T17:29:00.001-05:00

If you happen to be a rector, vicar, or priest-in-charge in the Diocese of Springfield, you will be getting this by email in a day or two. (It's a list of talking points that may be helpful at your annual meeting next month.) But I know there are others who are interested in the emerging missionary vision of our diocese, so I share it here.

We need to make some deep changes. There are a lot fewer of us than there used to be, and we're getting older. Do the math. This is not sustainable.
We don't have any time to lose. The rate of decline is alarming. We've already closed two churches this year. More are on life support. Yes, we need to make the right changes, but we need to start now.
Our challenge is to become mission-driven at every level. Ironically, if mere survival is our goal, we are guaranteed not to survive. If true mission is what drives us, nothing can stop us! This change of attitude has to happen among diocesan leaders, in local congregations, and in the hearts and minds of all our members.

The text of the Vision Statement: The Diocese of Springfield is one church, organized for mission into geographic parishes, manifested in Eucharistic Communities and communities-in-formation, with a goal of being concretely incarnate in all of the 60 counties of central and southern Illinois.

New way of thinking: We go to "them" rather than expecting "them" to come to us. The world around us has changed. Christianity no longer enjoys the privileged position in our society it once did. We must learn how to operate as a minority in a hostile environment. This means being able to engage unchurched and dechurched people at the level of their felt needs, and show them how knowing Jesus can make their lives and the world better.
A common vision reflects our theology as Episcopalians (Anglicans, in the Catholic tradition): The diocese, under the leadership of the Bishop, is the basic and essential unit of the church. We are all for one and one for all.
The geographic parish now becomes the organizing principle of our missionary work. Having a defined territory helps us raise our sights where they need to be raised and focus them where they need to be focused.
A Eucharistic Community is a group of baptized Christians who regularly worship together at the same altar. (For present purposes, of course, the assumption is that a Eucharistic Community is part of our diocese and under the leadership of our Bishop.)
The Eucharistic Communities in a given geographic parish are responsible for discerning, planning, and executing missionary activity in their parish. The Mission Leadership Team (current term: Vestry or Bishop's Committee) in each parish will develop a plan, in consultation with the Bishop and other diocesan leaders, and provide periodic reports on the implementation of the plan. Accountability and transparency are essential parts of a healthy community.
A community-in-formation is a group of people who are coming to Christian faith for the first time or rekindling a prior faith. The assumption is that they not currently celebrating the Eucharist, but are being formed in preparation for baptism or confirmation, and toward becoming a Eucharistic Community.
Diocesan leaders will create structures and provide resources that will enable Eucharistic Communities to pursue their mission. The goal is to make the work of mission less intimidating by training our members to a point where they are confident and joyful about doing what they are called to do.
The whole process of change must be constantly surrounded by prayer. Spiritual warfare will follow every phase of the implementation of this vision. We need a cadre of experienced and faithful and courageous "prayer warriors."

Advent

2011-12-07T10:36:00.001-05:00

I love Advent.

Liturgically, it is the most "interesting" season of the year. It has a shape that is completely irrational, but, somehow, when it all plays out, works beautifully. We begin at the end, with eschatology, Last Things. Then we're shot as though from a sling into a strange bifurcated dimension of time, with one foot in the messianic prophecies of Isaiah, and the other in the "rude and crude" figure of John the Baptist, preaching on the eve of the adult Jesus' debut into public life. Finally, on the fourth Sunday, we step back another thirty years or so to overhear the angel Gabriel's utterly outside-the-box exchanges with the Virgin Mary (Years B and C) and Joseph (Year A). It's a strange ride, but at that point we're actually ready for Christmas.

Spiritually, Advent is particularly compelling because it's so honestly real. It's about waiting and hoping and preparing, all in the context of simultaneous repenting and rejoicing. Doesn't that sound pretty much like ... life? The passage of a human soul through this world is one long Advent. The spiritual observance of a four week season each year never fails to connect me more deeply to some aspect of my "real" life that is very Advent-like, very much about waiting and hoping and preparing in an environment of simultaneous repenting and rejoicing.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is the degree to which Advent clashes with the larger culture's observance--both secular and religious--of the season, the "holidays." It makes me more than a little crabby, which gives me that much more to repent of!

There are two dimensions to this clash. The first, ironically, is with the premature Christian celebration of Christmas. "Back in the day," the weeks before Christmas were a time of preparation and joyful anticipation, but not of unrestrained celebration. That was saved for the actual arrival of actual Christmas, which then ushered in a twelve day period of festivity, concluding with the celebration of Epiphany on January 6. Now, even Christians, even liturgical Christians when they are outside a church building, tend to think of December as "the Christmas season." I've pretty much given up trying to actively resist this, but it does make me sad, because it creates an incoherence between what we do in church these four Sundays and what we do when we're out of church, and because we've lost something very beautiful. (For the record, I primarily blame the retailing industry for this.)

The other dimension is more obvious: We're now seriously into a post-Christian era in western developed society. There is a rapidly diminishing attachment to the notion of "Jesus is the reason for the season." Yet, there remains a critical mass of desire to keep this time of year somehow "special," and there is an array of cultural and economic forces lined up to fulfill that desire. Our society cherishes the echo of Christmas, the shadow of Christmas, if not Christmas itself. But if all you're after is a dose of nostalgia, a sentimentalized illusion of what once was, precision in timing is not so critical, and Advent gets quickly lost in the shuffle.

Like I said, this all makes me sad. And I try to avoid all that ... stuff ... as much as I can, which is to say, not very successfully. I have a completely Advent-compliant playlist in iTunes (including some wonderful choral settings of the Great O Antiphons), but it's generally not stuff most people would think of as very ... seasonal. And I really do try not to shame anybody who sees things differently. "Try" is the operative word here!

In the meantime, here's the Magnificat Antiphon for Advent, up until the 16th, when the O Antiphons take over: "Drop down, you heavens, from above; and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let it bring forth salvation."

God is Not Enough

2011-12-05T23:17:00.001-05:00

Here's a look at the Bishop's article for the December edition of the Springfield Current. For those who get the hard copy, it should be out any day now.

Thefirst article of both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds is “I (we) believe inGod…”. It seems entirely appropriate that we begin our confession of faith withsuch an affirmation. Whatever else we might believe, it stands or falls, afterall, with the existence of God. The Bible, the sacraments, prayer itself—itwould all be empty superstition if God were not there it give it reality andlife.

Ifthe surveys are to be trusted, while professed atheism is on the rise in ourculture, belief in God is still remarkably robust. Atheists can be found, butyou have to look for them. It is neither remarkable nor controversial tobelieve in One Supreme Being who is responsible for the creation of thematerial universe and continues to be involved with it in one way or another.

Itis, therefore, easy to overlook the fact that monotheism—the notion that thereis, by definition, only one Being who can legitimately be called “God”—is arelatively recent intellectual development. When we read the Old Testament, itis clear from the sweep of the narrative—from Abraham to Moses to David and thekingdoms of Israel and Judah—that the Israelites believed that while YHWH(rendered “the Lord” in mosttranslations of the Bible), their particular god, was definitely superior tothe gods of “the nations” (Hebrew–goyim:heathen, gentiles), He was not completely without competitors. The prophetscontinuously warned the people not to forsake YHWH, the one who had broughtthem out of slavery in Egypt, for any of these competing deities. It was onlylater in the history of Judaism, almost at the time of Christ, that a trulymonotheistic theology developed.

So,polytheism (belief in many gods) seems strange to most of us—at least on thesurface. When we look a little deeper, though, it’s all around us. We’ve justrefined the way we express it, from “belief in many gods” to “many beliefsabout God.” There is a generally accepted hierarchy of belief: To affirm “God”is considered virtuous, even necessary. On that level we expect uniformity. Butthe next level is another story. What we say precisely about God is optional, a matter of personal opinion. On that levelwe expect diversity. And it feels admirably “tolerant” to do so. But we deludeourselves, I fear. To accept limitless diversity in what we say about God istantamount to accepting belief in many gods. It is latter-day polytheism.

Simplebelief in God seems such a virtue in itself that we are reluctant to expect anythingmore. It seems downright impolite. Well, the Christian creeds, by that measure,are not very polite, because after “I believe in God…”, they go on to say agreat deal more. Specifically, they go on to say that this God who createdheaven and earth did a scandalously un-godlike thing: He assumed human flesh,was born of a woman, and walked this earth as a man. Of all the worldreligions, only Christianity is bold enough to make that claim. Our belief inthe Incarnation (God becoming a man) changes everything. It leads us from theintuitively appealing notion of one “simple” God to one “complex” God—asclassical Christian theology expresses it: unity of being in trinity ofpersons. The God whom Christians worship is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.This is a far cry from the generic God that our culture approves of. We wouldnever have invented a God like this; we only know Him because He has chosen toreveal Himself to us.

TheIncarnation also changes the way we view the material world. God took on flesh;God, who is by nature spiritual, became material for our sake. We can thereforenever, in good conscience, despise our flesh. We can no longer see our bodiesas mere “vessels.” To be a human being is to have a body; a disembodied spiritis not “free,” but less than fully human. The Christian hope is not theimmortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. The whole physicalworld, and everything we do in it, is invested with the potential to carry deepmeaning. This is the sacramental principle, that the common things we do withour bodies—eat, drink, bathe, touch, see, hear, speak, etc. etc.— can beinstruments of grace, media through which God makes us like Himself, preciselybecause He first made Himself like us.

Oneof my sad observations about the Church in these times is that we have atendency to reduce Christian faith to the lowest common denominator. For manypeople I meet—and I’m not talking about people off the street, but people I metin my role as a priest, and even now as a bishop—their religion can besummarized as “believe in God and be good.” That’s not enough! That’s settlingfor way less than the fullness of Christian truth. We have become disconnectedfrom our own tradition, our own inheritance. We do not believe simply in “God”—somevague First Cause. In fact, the notion of such a generic god has absolutely nomeaning for a Christian. As far as that kind of god is concerned, I am anatheist! No, Christians believe in a particularGod—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord JesusChrist, the God who makes Himself known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,the God who unites us to Himself in Word and Sacrament through the ministry ofa particular organism and institution: the One, Holy, Catholic, and ApostolicChurch, the society that commands our allegiance and affection before any otherassociation.

Ilove how Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson puts it: “God is whoever raisedJesus from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt.” So as we preparefor the celebration of the Great Scandal on December 25, let us raise ourawareness beyond the sentiments of “the holidays,” and even beyond mere “believingin God and being good.” Let us worship and adore the Father of lights, the Wordwho was made flesh, and the Holy Spirit who fills us and guides us.

Missionary Arts & Crafts

2011-11-28T17:02:00.001-05:00

There's an increasing amount of church chatter lately about the need to become more mission-driven, for Christians to get out out of the comfort zone defined by the familiar worship and program space of church buildings, and mix it up with ordinary people in their ordinary lives. Leaving aside the problem of wildly divergent understandings of "mission" (which is a whole topic unto itself), I happily add my Amen to this chorus.

So the question of the day is, How do we do that? So far, most of what I read on the subject is hortatory. Preachers and teachers and conference speakers and retreat leaders ... and bloggers ... regularly harangue their audiences, captive and otherwise, on the need to "get out of the pews" and get "out in the world" and do something. But ... what, exactly?

It may be helpful here to remind ourselves of the important distinction between art and craft. Art is the product of inspiration, and is by its nature original. It springs mysteriously from a dynamic interplay between the artist's inner vision and his or her technical training, in varying proportions. A work of art--be it a novel, a painting, a musical composition, or whatever--is unique and unrepeatable. It is often brought forth laboriously, with veritable birth pangs on the part of the artist.

Craft, by contrast, is the product of perspiration, and is by nature derivative. The scarf or the Christmas ornament or the ceramic turtle you bought at the last craft fair you walked through is no doubt a thing of beauty, perhaps even exquisite beauty, but it's not a work of art, if for no other reason than that there are a couple of dozen more just like it available at the same place. Craft is the application of acquired technical skill toward the production of an item or an experience (is "event planning" a craft?--I think it probably is) that is, at least in theory, infinitely repeatable. Quantities may be "limited," but a work of craft is always available in some quantity.

So, is Christian mission an art or a craft? As you might guess, I'm going to suggest that it's both, that it indeed needs both aspects to be effective, but what we need to emphasize more, at this point, I think, is the craft of mission.

Inasmuch as mission is art, the primary artist is, arguably, the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who carries what the theologians call "prevenient grace" ("We love him because he first loved us." I John 4:19), working in the hearts and minds of individuals to convict them of their hopeless condition apart from God and "melt the hearts of sinners" with the "resistless energy of love" (from a prayer said twice daily in the chapel at Nashotah House). It is the Holy Spirit who inspires the church with a collective "heart" for mission, and galvanizes the church's energy toward the effective prosecution of mission. Every quantum leap forward in Christian mission--from the journeys of St Paul, to the evangelization of peoples outside the borders of the Roman Empire, to work of the Jesuits in South America and the Franciscans in California, to the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century, to the current resurgence of Christianity under persecution in China--is evidence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Without the relentless original and ever re-creative artistry of the Holy Spirit, no mission (however one defines it) would be possible.

The practitioner of a craft takes the inspired fruit of the artist's labor (recognizing that the artist and the craftsman are sometimes one and the same person) and replicates it. In that work, the original vision of the artist becomes much more widely available and much more easily accessible than it would otherwise have been. This does not happen by accident. It does not happen casually, or without focused intention. It is a matter of thought and planning followed by trial and error followed by refinement and more thought and planning, eventually yielding a process that can be broken down into a succession of discrete actions, any one of which is actually quite simple, fairly easily taught and fairly easily learned. I have a very low mechanical aptitude, but I recently assembled two large metal shelving units (admittedly, not a work of art even in original conception, but my point still holds) in my basement, because all the tools and materials I needed were provided for me, and there were clear (I may speak somewhat generously!) step by step instructions for me to follow. The second unit took about half as much time to put together as the first one did, and had there been a third one, the assembly time would have been cut further still. Moreover, I would have been qualified to teach somebody else how to do it, saving them from some of the mistakes I initially made.

For some reason, we are stuck at the stage of "We need some shelves in the basement. Get out of your recliner and do something." I have no doubt that we have a critical mass of Christians, even among those who share my Episcopalian brand name, who are more than ready to get out of the recliner and get to work in the basement. I believe this because I believe in the sovereign and profligate artistry of the Holy Spirit. And I also have no doubt that we have a serious lack of materials, tools, and instructions. We're like military commanders sending troops into the field of battle without first securing their logistical supply lines, and often without proper training or ammunition. We expect them to be artists in the field, which most of them are not called and gifted to be. What they are capable of being, if we would properly equip them, is craftsmen.

In a mission-driven church, leaders, beginning with bishops, will be doubling down on the work of "equipping the saints for the work of ministry" (Ephesians 4:12). I am not suggesting that there has been lack of attention in recent years to this need. What I am suggesting is that perhaps, in our formation and education and catechetical work, we have been trying to produce more artists when the need is for more craftsmen. We have been teaching people the faith. We have been showing them how to pray and worship. We have encouraged them to be good stewards of their time, talent, and treasure, and some have even responded positively to those efforts. We have talked about mission, sometimes endlessly. What we have not done so well is to take the art of mission and break it down into a craft, a process with well-defined component steps that can be easily taught and easily learned--"Here, do this. Just this. ... Great! Well done. Now do this"--etc. etc.

Even as we renew our trust in the missional artistry of the Holy Spirit, the work of the hour is to equip the troops in the field, to form and deploy technicians of Christian mission, people whose knowledge of any grand strategic plan may be limited, but who, with joyful hearts motivated by a love for Jesus, are willing to learn to do one thing, to do it well, and to do it over and over again. The work of the hour among leaders is to secure robust supply lines that keep these troops fed, trained, motivated, and proficient at what they do.

In short, we need to get organized for mission. Somebody (several somebodies, actually) needs to know the strategy, how it all fits together and works together. Leaders in the field need to be able to make tactical decisions, implementing the strategy at a local level. Only with this sort of leadership can those who are being led pursue the craft of mission confidently and competently. The good news is, we can do it. We have all the resources we need.

Guest Post: Another Anglican View

2011-11-19T18:46:00.001-05:00

With the crack in the seams of the Anglican Communion continuing to widen, and "cracks in the cracks" even beginning to appear (witness recent developments in the AMiA/Rwanda relationship), and with anxiety over who's accepting and who's rejecting the Anglican Covenant ratcheting up, this piece shared with me by Father McMichael seems salient. Speaking personally, it well defines the circle (a wide one, I think) of those I am happily eager to "do church" with.

AnotherAnglican Voice

Proposed by

The Rev. RalphMcMichael, Ph.D

We are Anglicans. We are Anglicans who are deeply concernedabout our fellow Anglicans who are taking steps to “walk apart” from theAnglican Communion. Likewise, we areAnglicans who are deeply concerned about our fellow Anglicans who are overlydefining how Anglicans should walk. Wehave Anglicans who are walking away from the Anglican Communion throughunilateral actions, and we have Anglicans who stridently insist through variouscoalitions that all Anglicans must walk as they do. We are Anglicans who are distressed over theescalating abandonment of the essentials of catholic faith and order, and weare distressed by efforts to solidify Anglican identity through appeals to suchhistorical documents as the 1662 BCP and the Thirty-Nine Articles. The problem, as we perceive it, is thedissipation of the Anglican catholic vision of drinking from the deep well oftradition in order to bring living water to the full scope of humanity whollycalled to share in the divine life. Inother words, the Anglican appeal to essential or primitive catholicity is nevera search for safe harbor but a dynamic that will draw us into God’s future forthe church and for the world. Anglicanism at its best nurtures a generative tradition and a faithfulcreativity. With this preamble in mind,we would like to address directly the current situation of the AnglicanCommunion.

We are Anglicans who wish to upholdthe disciplines of communion, including those articulated by LambethConferences, the Windsor Report, and the proposed Anglican Covenant. And yet, we hold that authentic theologicalreflection and debate must continue on an array of critical questions facingthe Anglican Communion. We decry anyprovince taking unilateral action of any sort that steps away from communion:the binding mutuality of all ecclesial actions. Likewise, we consider any effort toward unilateral speaking one toanother to be its own kind of threat to communion: the binding mutuality of allecclesial speaking.

We are Anglicans who desire toremain faithful members of the Anglican Communion through communion with theSee of Canterbury. Some of us wish forthe eventual acceptance of gays and lesbians into all the orders of ministriesof our common life. Some of us maintainthe traditional teaching on sexuality and marriage. All of us are committed to the disciplines ofcommunion, ongoing vibrant theological reflection, and to the Anglicantradition of essential catholicity that generates a life of worship and missionexercised in humility and patience.

Therefore, we call on the wholeAnglican Communion to enter into the disciplines of communion where we act andspeak in light of the whole but not as the whole, where we act and speak alwaysas response to the gift of communion that only God provides. The disciplines of communion are to berenewed and understood from the baptismal font and the Eucharistic table. Let us live from our roots in the Triune lifeinto which we were baptized, and into which we participate at everyEucharist. Let us stop hacking offbranches of the tree instead of tending to the roots. Let us dig deep and wide in the Holy Scripturesand the works of our own tradition. Fromthe disciplines of communion, from our common roots, life will grow andflourish: a life characterized by glory and not anxiety, by patience and nothaste, and a life of wholeness and not division. Will this solve the problems of the AnglicanCommunion? No, but that is not why we arehere.

Unpacking the Vision

2011-11-11T18:17:00.001-05:00

This is the lead article in the November issue of the Springfield Current, our diocesan newsletter.

Beloved in Christ,

Many who are reading this attended the regular 2011 annual synod of the diocese last month, and heard my address on that occasion. Most, probably, did not. So the text of the Bishop's Address is printed elsewhere in this issue of the Springfield Current. It deals with a draft Vision Statement for the diocese, and what I want to do here is continue to unpack some of the elements of that statement. So, if you were not at synod, I encourage to take the time right now to read my address, and then come back to this article.

OK?

So ... I'd like to share a few thoughts on what I see as some of the implications of this statement. If we embrace this statement, how will it affect the way we think and act as a diocesan community? How will it change the way we experience life at a congregational level? Among other things, this Vision Statement will ...

... change much of the language we use about who we are and what we do. That may seem like a small thing, but the words we use doinfluence how we think, and how we think influences how we act, and how we act influences what we accomplish. Terms like Parish (in its new context) and Eucharistic Community, along with others, will become familiar in time, and when they do, it will means that we have changed.

... organize us for mission by focusing attention on defined geographic areas. The Eucharistic Communities in a particular geographic Parish will be responsible for pursuing the mission of the diocese in that area, and accountable to the rest of the diocese for that stewardship. This will involve detailed and carefully-made plans that are shared with the rest of the diocese. Of course, this also presumes that the diocese as a whole will provide leadership and training resources that will enable the Eucharistic Communities to accomplish this mission.

... draw us into "retail" evangelism and outreach ministry. Episcopalians are notoriously generous when it comes to writing checks for particular special needs when they arise, and supporting programs of service and evangelism with their financial resources. This is "wholesale" outreach, and may have worked well when the culture was predominantly Christian. But now we live in a post-Christian culture, and the need now is for individual Christians to build connections with individual non-Christians in very intentional and systematic ways. Again, huge amounts of training and formation for this sort of ministry will be necessary.

... encourage us to see ourselves as one church, rather than an association of local churches. Our theology has always been that the diocese is the essential primary unit of the church, but our practice as Episcopalians has said otherwise, and has focused on the local congregation. Without diminishing the importance of the local congregation (or, in the new way of speaking, Eucharistic Community), it's time to align our thinking and acting more closely with our theology. This means moving beyond some of the unspoken jealousies and rivalries and suspicions that have hampered our mission and ministry in the past. Really. That game has to be over.

... call us to develop (or adapt) concrete patterns of disciple-formation in which lay people can be trained and become confident. I've alluded to this already in two of the bullet points above, but it deserves its own place in the sun. We will need to be "methodists" in the sense of being quite disciplined about the spiritual formation of all our members, identification and practice of spiritual gifts, and growth in virtue and holiness such that we are less focused on tip-toeing around one another's egos and more focused on the task at hand, which is announcing, modeling, and expanding the Kingdom of God.

... invite us to constantly raise the bar on the quality of our worship. Our week by week liturgy at the local level needs to become more organic, vital, and authentic to each local environment. This is not so that it will become more appealing or accessible to newcomers; we need to relieve the Sunday Eucharist of that burden. Rather, it is for the sake of our already faithful communicants, that they will be adequately nourished and recharged for their work in the world.

... eventually make us rewrite our constitution and canons. This vision is, to use jargon from the 90s, a "paradigm shift." Our current governing documents assume the old paradigm. If we're going to operate in a new one, we will need new governing documents. New wine, new wineskins. But we need not rush into this work. We need to first see where we walk, and then pave those walkways with a new constitution and a new set of canons.

... require ceaseless prayer on the part of a cadre of spiritually mature and well-grounded "prayer warriors." I'll tell you straight out: I believe in what is called "spiritual warfare." I believe that when Christian disciples begin to do something right, something good, something that glorifies God and builds up his church, "spiritual forces of wickedness" become alarmed and become more active. I have not the slightest doubt that the Evil One will begin to throw obstacles in our way as we pursue this vision. Often, such obstacles take the form of a moral failure on the part of a key leader. Or it could take the form of sickness, or intractable conflict and strife. Whatever form it takes, we will need to combat it with serious, concerted, and relentless prayer.

This is serious stuff. It will be difficult. There will be missteps and mistakes galore. Burnout will be a constant hazard. And I have never been more excited and hopeful about anything in my life. We have a rich heritage in the Diocese of Springfield. God has been faithful to us in countless ways. We stand on the shoulders of some true heroes of the faith--some whose names we know, most whose individuals identities are forgotten. But I would like to think that our finest days are yet ahead of us, and that the miracles we see in the future will far outshine those that we see in the past.

Praised be Jesus Christ.

+Daniel

The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Covenant

2011-10-24T21:19:00.003-04:00

According to Episcopal News Service, there is a resolution, approved today by Executive Council, that will now automatically become an 'A' resolution in the General Convention "Blue Book." It thanks those who participated in the development of the Anglican Covenant, but states that the Episcopal Church is unable to subscribe to the covenant in its present form.

The effect of this is that, unless somebody else submits another resolution that actually makes it to the floor, deputies and bishops will not have an opportunity to vote for the adoption of the covenant. The way it is framed, even if Executive Council's 'A' resolution is defeated (an unlikely event, IMO), TEC would still not be adopting the covenant.

This should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It is nonetheless sobering to see the machinery for our rejection of the covenant taking concrete form.

I am an ardent supporter of both the idea of an Anglican covenant and the particular text of the covenant that has been developed. It lights the approach path for a quantum leap in Anglicanism's "coming of age" as a wordwide communion with a particularly ecumenical vocation.I would like to have the opportunity to cast my vote in its favor, even in a losing effort.

That said, I must confess that Council's resolution is probably an accurate representation of the center of gravity of opinion in the church. Regrettable, but accurate. There is a great work of teaching and winning of hearts and minds to be done.

Diocesan Synod Address, 2011

2011-10-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

I have to begin by telling you how completely thrilled I amto be standing before you at this moment doing what I’m doing. A year ago, Igot to speak to you briefly as your Bishop-elect. There was an air of cautiousoptimism in the room, and I was very excited about what lay ahead. But wedidn’t know each other well then, so there was a certain reserve in our embraceof one another. Now I have some nine months on the ground in the diocese. I’velogged about 20,000 miles on the vehicle you all own, and I’ve visited all buta handful of our churches. So I’m overjoyed to be able to tell you: I still goto bed every night and say a prayer of thanksgiving that I have the best job inthe entire world, so I thank you and I thank the Holy Spirit for the trust thathas been placed in me!

There is a great deal that I could talk about. But myremarks this afternoon are an exercise in triage—omitting much that is good andworthy of being said in order to focus on the one thing needful. So I wouldlike to tell you a story. I believe it’s a true story, though I can’t becertain because it takes place in the future. And I’m not really going to tellyou the whole story, I guess, but pretty much just the ending, because it’simportant that we all know that the story does have a happy ending, since thechapters leading up to the last one … well, they are a little scary! Oh … and Ishould probably mention that we are all characters in this story. Only thenames have been changed to protect the unsuspecting.

Lisa and Jeff live outside of Sharpstown in JonesCounty—check me out, there are no such place names in Illinois; I told you thenames had been changed—about 14 makes from the county seat city of Pinehurst.Jeff works in his father’s retail farm implement business, and will one day ownit; Lisa works in a local beauty parlor. They have two kids in high school,which can get a little expensive, so a couple of years ago they foundthemselves in nearly $50,000 of revolving credit card debt. It seemed that theyjust weren’t very good at managing their finances. Through one of Lisa’sclients, they heard about a series of seminars being held down at the VFW Hall.They were feeling just vulnerable enough that they were willing to accept helpfrom just about any direction, so they attended the meetings.

Doing so not only turned their financial life around—nowtheir debt is less than $20,000, they’re living within their means, and they’relooking forward to actually opening a savings account—not only is their financiallife turned around, but they made some new friends who were also part of thegroup. Lisa and a couple of the other women are talking about starting asupport group for mothers of teenagers. What she and Jeff learned about halfwaythrough the financial management series was that it was sponsored by StGabriel’s Episcopal Church in Pinehurst. Lisa’s client, in fact, the one whotold her about the seminar, is a member of St Gabriel’s.

Now, Lisa’s parents were Methodists when they were kids, andJeff’s were Catholics. But neither Lisa nor Jeff ever had any experience withany church, except for the occasional wedding or funeral, where the religioustalk never made any sense to them. But a couple of their new friends invitedthem to a come to a group meeting in their home, right there in Sharpstown.There was some good food, good fellowship, some conversation about the bigissues of life, and always a short prayer at the end, led by the host couple,Julie and Mark. Jeff and Lisa were a little skeptical at first, but they reallyliked the people, and found that they enjoyed exploring the spiritual dimensionof their lives, which they had never done before.

After about three months of coming to these week night homegroup meetings, there was a special visitor. Julie introduced him as FatherCliff, the priest from St Gabriel’s. Over dinner, Lisa and Jeff learned that FrCliff actually had a day job as an administrator at Pinehurst High School, andtook care of St Gabriel’s in his “spare time.” At the discussion time, Fr Cliffinformed the group that he had rented the VFW Hall on every other Sunday nightbeginning the following month, and wanted to know whether anyone in the groupwould be interested in joining him for a simple service of worship and instruction—alittle music, some prayers, and a time of teaching about the basics ofChristian faith, and, of course, some food. For those who continued to beinterested, this could lead to baptism. On their way home that night, Jeff andLisa agree that they would begin to attend those services.

So they do. And they find that they actually enjoy theexperience. Much to their surprise, they begin to pray, on their own, at home.Not too much, but some. They also find that their relationship with their kidsbegins to be a little less stormy, and is sometimes even a little sweet. Nobodyknows quite why, but both parents and kids are happy about it. The kids beginto join their parents at the VFW Hall on Saturday nights.

This goes on for a couple of years. The VFW Hall meetingsare now held every week. The oldest child is now away at one of the stateuniversities. It’s fall, and Fr Cliff begins to gently raise the question: Whofeels ready for baptism? By this time, there are over 20 adults in the group,none of whom had any previous ties to a church. To Fr Cliff’s delight, theresponse is, “We thought you’d never ask!” So the instruction becomes a littlemore intense. They begin to read more scripture in their worship. By this time,both Jeff and Lisa have each gotten hold of a Bible for their own personal use,so they notice that the passages of scripture that are read are not chosenrandomly, but follow a pattern. Some people from St Gabriel’s quietly begin toshow up and assist Fr Cliff with the teaching by leading small groupdiscussions. New songs are introduced in their worship—songs with unfamiliar languageand vocabulary that the catechists need to explain the meaning of—and the groupis taught to give responses to various things the leader might say.

At the beginning of December (or, as the group is told,“Advent”), each of the candidates for baptism is paired with a sponsor from StGabriel’s, someone who listens to them and prays for them and emails them andtalks by phone at least weekly. About ten weeks later, at the beginning of Lent(which Jeff remembers his Catholic grandmother talking about, though he neverknew what it was), the 20 candidates solemnly sign their names in a specialbook that has been prepared for that purpose, as their sponsors vouch for thefact that they have been faithful in attending worship and instruction, andhave lived in the world in a manner worthy of a follower of Jesus. Fr Cliff andthe other catechists begin to mention something called the Eucharist, thoughwhatever they say about it is kind of vague, and they never teach about itdirectly. But Jeff and Lisa and their other friends get the distinct impressionthat it’s pretty important, and that, after they are baptized, it will be aregular part of their experience.

Around the middle of Lent, everyone is given a specialhand-calligraphied copy of the Apostles’ Creed and the Our Father, and told tomemorize them. Then, on the night before Easter, a bus appears in the VFW Hallparking lot, which takes everyone to Pinehurst, and St Gabriel’s Church.They’re ushered into the back of the church and given a hand candle. It’s verydark. A lot of scripture is read, and the passages are very long. But thecatechumens have heard them all before. It is in these stories that the gospelhas been explained to them: the Creation, the Flood, Abraham’s Sacrifice ofIsaac, the Exodus, the Valley of the Dry Bones. Then their sponsors presentthem to Fr Cliff, who is dressed up in a way they’ve never seen him before! Heasks them if they renounce the ways of this world, and if they promise tofollow Jesus as Lord. Then the whole congregation says the Apostles’ Creed withthem and answers some more questions. Then, one by one, Fr Cliff baptizes them, and pours oil over them—generously—andtells them that they have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and markedas Christ’s own forever. Then, for the first time, they give and receive theSign of Peace, and finally, are actively present as heaven and earth are joinedand death and life become indistinguishable from one another, and they dine onthe Body and Blood of him whose true members they have now become.

The next Sunday, they gather for the Eucharist once again,only this time back in the familiar VFW Hall in Sharpstown. The Bishop isthere, somebody they’ve only heard rumors about until this point! He leads themin a discussion about becoming their own Eucharistic Community, and, together,they decide on a name: the Church of the Advent, Sharpstown. The Bishop goes onto tell them that they are now part of an entity known as Jones County Parish,which is now comprised of two Eucharistic Communities: St Gabriel’s, Pinehurstand Advent, Sharpstown. Members from both Eucharistic Communities will beelected to serve on a single Mission Leadership Team, which is responsible forplanning and advancing the mission of the Diocese of Springfield in JonesCounty.

Soon thereafter, Lisa and Jeff make plans to host a homegroup of their own. Their hope is to conceive and give birth to yet anotherCommunity-in-Formation in Jones County Parish, since there’s a new bio-fuelplant set to open in the community of Larkspur, about 17 miles north ofSharpstown. And so it goes.

In the meantime, a hundred miles to the northwest, in GibsonCounty, a more urban area, two long-established Eucharistic Communities in thecity of Parkerville, Incarnation and St Margaret’s, have reconfigured themselves into GibsonCounty Parish, merging their vestries into a single Mission Leadership Team.This is not yoking, in the sense in which we have used that term. This isgetting organized for effective coordinated and collaborative mission in GibsonCounty. Sunday services will continue at both Incarnation and St Margaret’s,both in the distinctive styles to which they have become accustomed. But nowthey’re working together to find ways of serving a growing immigrant population,many of whom seem to be sitting lightly to their traditional religiousheritage. They’re talking about establishing a literacy program for parents andadvocating on their behalf with the local school system. Serving themarginalized openly in the name of Christ, announcing good news to the poor andrecovery of sight to the blind—the people of St Margaret’s and Incarnation, whoonly a little while ago thought of themselves as rivals, are energized by theirparticipation in fundamental Christian mission.

Across the state laterally now, the people of Fawcett CountyParish, meeting for worship in historic St David’s Church in the county seattown of Reedsport, have done a sophisticated demographic survey of theirparish, and discovered a significant population of unchurched, and economicallymarginal, households living in mobile home parks tucked away in various cornersof the county. So they picked one, and got permission to hold a Vacation BibleSchool in the park’s community building. Nearly 40 children showed up, whichenabled them to established relationships with their parents. One of theseparents, a single mother, agreed to host a bible study in her trailer ifsomebody from St David’s would come and lead it. There is hope that aCommunity-in-Formation might soon be established in that area.

And so the church’s mission is pursued across the diocese.It’s not done exactly the same way in any two places. There’s a huge amount oftrial and error … especially error! More attempts at mission fail thansucceed, but there’s a sense that, at least we’re “failing forward.” More tothe point, there’s a sense that we’re all doing this together. We’re mutuallyaccountable. The people at Reedsport in Fawcett County are vitally interestedin what’s happening down in Jones County, and both are keeping tabs on how theEucharistic Communities in Parkerville are pursuing the whole church’s missionin Gibson County. They are interested in one another’s mission because theyknow themselves to all be members of one church—the Diocese of Springfield.

My brothers and sisters, about six weeks ago the members ofour Department of General Mission Strategy met in working retreat over a Fridaynight and a Saturday up in Springfield. I met with them. Naturally, we talkedabout … mission strategy! With the able assistance of Mr Mark Waight of StMichael’s, O’Fallon, we emerged from that meeting with a draft Vision Statementfor our diocese. I haven’t read it to you yet. But you already know it, becauseI’ve just described it to you. But here it is anyway:

The Diocese of Springfield in onechurch, organized for mission into geographic parishes, manifested inEucharistic Communities and communities-in-formation, with a goal of beingconcretely incarnate in all of the 60 counties of central and southernIllinois.

“The Diocese ofSpringfield is one church…” That’snot a novel concept. It’s what our basic Anglican theology tells us about anydiocese, because the diocese is the fundamental unit of the church. Anythingeither smaller than that or larger than that is just a matter of expediency.Within our diocese, we have everything we need to effectively pursue ourmission. Everything. That may not be the way we’re accustomed to thinking. Butit’s time we claim who we know we are, and begin to live that way.

“…organized formission into geographic parishes.” In the Episcopal Church, we use the word“parish” synonymously with “church” or “congregation.” But that’s not what theword means. Traditionally, it refers to a specific piece of geography; a parishhas clear boundaries. This vision statement allows us to reclaim that heritage,and use it as a way of being accountable to one another for mission. Within ageographic area, who is responsible for organizing and pursuing the church’smission in that area? The congregations in that area! This is just a “back tothe future” thing.

“…manifested in EucharisticCommunities…” Notice that the ‘E’and the ‘C’ at the beginning of ‘Eucharistic’ and ‘Community’ are capitalized.This suggests that we’re not just being descriptive here, but floating the ideathat Eucharistic Community might be a more useful formal term by which to speakof the people who habitually worship together at the same altar week by week,the people who make up what we presently would call the “congregation” of aParish or Mission. In the terms of this proposed Vision Statement, there will,at first, usually be a one-to-one correspondence between Parishes andEucharistic Communities. But if this vision grows wings, we will many instancesof two or more Eucharistic Communities in the same parish.

“…andcommunities-in-formation…” In my story, the group that eventually becamethe Eucharistic Community in Sharpstown, the Church of the Advent, was for acouple of years a Community-in-Formation. The Eucharistic Community of StGabriel’s in Pinehurst, acting through their Mission Leadership Team (formerlyknown as the Vestry) of the mission of the diocese in Jones County Parish,conceived a new Community-in-Formation when they rented the VFW Hall for thepersonal finance seminar, and gestated that new community through the homegroup hosted by Julie and Mark, and gave birth to that Community-in-Formationwhen the Saturday night worship and teaching sessions began. Simply put, aCommunity-in-Formation is the child of a Eucharistic Community, and when thatchild grows up, it becomes a Eucharistic Community in its own right.

“concretely incarnatein all 60 counties” Did you know that 60 out of the 102 counties inIllinois are within the territory of the Diocese of Springfield? At present, we have 37 churches at which theEucharist is regularly celebrated on Sunday. But four of those are in MadisonCounty, three are in Sangamon County, and two each are in McLean, St Clair, andMarion counties. So do the math: This means that we have no mission workestablished in 31 of our 60 counties. I realize, of course, that some peoplecross county lines to go to church, but I think you see my point. One of thefruits of pursuing our mission more effectively will simply be that we arevisible in more places.

I hope your head is spinning right now. I hope you’redisturbed. I hope you’re apprehensive about what I’m saying. Because if you’renot all those things, then you’re probably not grasping that the vision I’mlaying out is a many times more serious challenge to the status quo of the waywe “do church”—in this diocese or elsewhere—than anything we’ve everencountered in our lives. We could spend the rest of today, and all oftomorrow, and not even begin to tease out all the implications. Unfortunately,we’ve got other stuff we need to do. But make no mistake: This is agame-changer.

And I’m more than aware that, at this point, everything I’mtalking about is only a trial balloon. Before any of it can happen, there needsto be a very deliberate process of conversation and buy-in. If it’s just myvision, or just the vision of the DGMS, it won’t get to first base. There’senough here to make everyone in this room hugely uncomfortable, at the veryleast. But nothing less drastic than this is called for at this hour in ourlife together. I, for one, am scared to death. But I’m also excited beyondwords. What an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of the Lord renewing hischurch, and through the church being renewed, having the world be renewed. Asthe Lord tells us, “Behold, I make all things new.”

The Point of Christianity

2011-10-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

I don't know that, on my own, I would naturally use an expression like "the point of Christianity." It's just not my style. But over on the listserv that is operated for members (and recent former members) of General Convention, somebody else did today, and it struck me as one of those rare lucid moments when a bright light is inadvertently shined on why many members of the same church frustrate one another so much, and talk past one another so much.

It's because of vastly divergent views on ... well ... the point of Christianity.

The commenter queried, "Do we believe that the point of Christianity is to love one another, shun violence and hatred and care for the poor and needy. Or does it exist to get people to believe in Jesus so they won't go to hell?"

To be honest, if I had to choose, I would opt for the latter, though I don't think the alternatives are really quite that starkly opposed. Of course, I have no problem with love, non-violence, disavowal of hatred, and caring for the poor and needy. Those are important--yea, necessary--components of faithful Christian witness and ministry. But they are not themselves the "one thing needful", and I believe we are in error if we see them as "the point of Christianity." And while I would not choose to use language about the avoidance of hell to express "the point of Christianity" either, it is, I believe, less far from the mark.

Using affirmative terms, I would suggest that "the point of Christianity" is to make people fit to live in heaven, to be in the unfiltered presence of God without being vaporized by the sheer weight of divine glory. This is a process called sanctification (in the west; our eastern friends are apt to say theosis--deification). The process is fueled by grace, and grace, while generally ubiquitous, is found surely and certainly in the sacraments.

For my money, this is a lot more exciting than just trying to make the world a better place.

Low Country Rumblings

2011-10-06T18:00:00.002-04:00

I am hesitant to weigh in on the news coming out of the Diocese of South Carolina. I have been enjoying an extended period of low political drama as I try to settle in to my new ministry. But I'm also hesitant to say nothing, and my insights have indeed been solicited.

Bottom line: I don't think it's time to sound any alarms, or presume the activity of any malign conspiracies. Not yet, at least. It is well-known that there is a small minority of Episcopalians in the diocese who are disappointed that the majority, including Bishop Mark Lawrence, are not on board with the general drift of the larger Episcopal Church on the controverted issues of sexuality. Some of them, evidently, have initiated a process under the section of Title IV that governs the discipline of bishops, alleging that, by action and inaction, Bishop Lawrence has "abandoned the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church."

The canons specify that the matter now rests with a Review Committee, consisting of bishops, priests, and lay persons, headed by Bishop Dorsey Henderson, retired diocesan of Upper South Carolina (and a lawyer). In broad terms, this group is like a grand jury. Its job is to determine whether there is sufficient substance in the allegations to merit a trial.

I could be wrong, but my suspicion--and, of course, my hope--is that the panel will respond in the negative, and the matter will be laid to rest for the time being. I'm not going to take the time to "fisk" the allegations and the supporting documentation--that is no doubt being done elsewhere in cyberspace--but it is clear to me that that all but one are entirely specious and deserving of summary dismissal. To cite South Carolina's endorsement of the Anglican Covenant and its disavowal of TEC's association with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice as evidence of abandonment of the Episcopal Church beggars belief.

The only "charge" that is even worthy of discussion, in my opinion, has to do with the diocese's removal from its constitution its accession to the canons (not the constitution) of the Episcopal Church. This stems from a very particular issue. The convention of the diocese (and many others) believe that a particular canon (ironically, the one one under which Bishop Lawrence is being charged) is itself unconstitutional. Like I said, this is at least worthy of discussion, but it strains credulity to see it as in any way damning.

So I am hopeful that the Review Committee will see these charges for the nonsense they are. In the meantime, inflammatory rhetoric about grand conspiracies is ill-advised, unhelpful, and, at the very least, premature. Let's calmly let the process play out and see what happens.

I know a little bit about being the victim of unfounded allegations, so my heart goes out to Bishop Lawrence and all the people of the Diocese of South Carolina. May sanity, charity, and grace prevail.

On the Parting of Friends? (not quite)

2011-09-25T20:42:00.001-04:00

John Henry Newman's last sermon as an Anglican was entitled On the Parting of Friends. He then left his cure at Littlemore and shortly thereafter was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

This afternoon (if all went according to plan), there was a liturgy at St Patrick's Church (RC) in Fort Worth, Texas wherein a group of former Episcopalians was received en masse into communion with the See of Rome. They form the nucleus of what will in due course (sooner than later, I think) become the first American manifestation of Pope Benedict's provision for "personal ordinariates."

[Factual excursus: These are communities that will exists outside (though in cooperation with) the diocesan structure of the Latin Rite (that is, mainstream Roman Catholicism). An "ordinariate" is akin to a diocese, under the pastoral care of an "Ordinary." A diocesan bishop (in any tradition than maintains the historic episcopate) is always an Ordinary, with responsibility for ordering the life of the local church. In the case of this new structure, the Ordinary may or may not be a bishop. The reason for this anomaly is that the Ordinary may be a married man. While there have been several married former Anglican clergy serving as Roman Catholic priests for a couple of decades now, there is no provision for married men serving as bishops. So these new Ordinaries will have the administrative and pastoral authority of bishops, including seat and voice in the appropriate national Conference of Bishops, but will not themselves be able to ordain other clergy.

The purpose for this arrangement is to allow former Anglicans to retain the "spiritual patrimony" of Anglicanism. What this means precisely is not entirely clear, but it will no doubt include liturgy that has the "look and feel" of the various sub-streams of Anglo-Catholicism, including hymns and other music.]

One of those participating in the Fort Worth liturgy today is a close personal friend of long standing. We began seminary together a quarter century ago this month. Our children played together. We were formed together as priests, and ordained days apart. I gave a preaching mission in his first parish. We served different parishes in the same city for three years. His son took piano lessons from my wife. We broke bread in one another's homes. (Shooting empty beer cans with BB guns on Easter afternoon still sets the bar for me as to how best to observe that piece of sacred time.) He preached at my institution as rector of the parish I served for 13 years in California, and I preached a year later at his institution as rector of the parish he went on to serve for 15 years in Texas. We have taken road trips together just so we could have time to talk, and the conversation was never silent. We have known one another's joys and known one another's sorrows. We have stood at the same altar and presided at the sacred mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood. We have been friends. We have been colleagues. We have been brothers. And I probably haven't told the half of all that could be told.

We are still friends; that much is clear. I'm also certain that we remain brothers, though the character of that relationship is changed. What focuses my attention today, however, is that we are no longer colleagues.

So I'm processing some pretty strong feelings today. While today's event is "interesting" to anyone engaged with the Anglican angst of the last several years, for me it's personal. I've known this day was coming for at least two years. So I'm not surprised. And that advance knowledge makes the actual event not one whit less shocking.

Part of what I feel is joy. One whom I love is filled with joy, and I cannot but "rejoice with those who rejoice," per St Paul's injunction. This is the realization of a vocation he has felt coming on for a long number of years now, carefully and prayerfully discerned. What's not to like about that?

Part of what I feel is envy. This is a little difficult to articulate. I don't wish I had been standing beside my friend today. These are not the conditions under which reconciliation with the See of Rome would seem coherent and compelling for me. But reconciliation with the See of Rome is, in my opinion, a surpassingly worthy objective--certainly for Anglicans, but for all other Christians as well. To be out of communion with a church that has double apostolic foundation is, at best, an anomaly, and the burden of explanation rests on those outside such communion. The organic visible unity of Christ's Body should be at the top of everyone's prayer list.

Part of what I feel is anger. I'm angry toward all the forces that have contributed to making contemporary Anglicanism the fractious mess that it currently is. I am angry that other developed-world Anglicans have named a justice issue where I don't believe one exists, and have advanced a social agenda that a huge minority (at least) of the Episcopal Church (let alone the rest of the Anglican Communion) was not ready for. And I am angry that, with impatience that they see as righteous, some have resisted those developments by resorting to incendiary rhetoric, and turned aside from the agonizing but holy work of staying connected to a church that is still a church, even if it is in grave error. So my anger is bi-directional. Today's events in Fort Worth may have been inevitable; I don't know. But they have certainly been hastened by outside forces, and unnecessarily so.

Most of what I feel is grief. Something quite precious to me has been changed into a very unfamiliar and uncomfortable shape, so I experience it as a loss. That my friend and I can no longer receive the Blessed Sacrament at the same altar is a reality I can scarcely contemplate. I will get over it. Grace will abound in ways I cannot presently imagine. In the meantime, I will be sad, and my challenge will be to make friends with that sadness and put it at the disposal of the Holy Spirit for the outworking of God's providence.

All will be well. All will be well. All manner of things shall be well. (h/t Julian of Norwich) God is good, all the time.

On the Ministry of Bishops: Some Rookie Reflections

2011-09-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

I'm just back from my second meeting of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops. While in Quito, I observed both the anniversary of my election, and the six-month mark of my consecration. I'm still getting a feel for the culture and ethos of not just being a bishop, but being a bishop in a community of bishops. Those really are two related but distinct things, and I'm a little further along with the first learning curve than I am with the second, though solid progress has been made in the last few days.

While we were in South America, there was a bit of an internet buzz back home over the fact that we were assembled in such a faraway location. On balance, I concur with the skepticism. The airfares were steep, and the travel was inconvenient. For what it's worth, attendance at this meeting was perceptibly lower than when we met last March in North Carolina. That said, the hotel room rate--and we were at a Hilton--was dramatically lower than what we would have gotten domestically, and restaurant meals were downright cheap by comparison. Plus, in a time of crisis in the Diocese of Ecuador Central, I believe our presence there was a beneficial influence.

But the internet buzz was not only about the fact that we were meeting in Ecuador, it was about the fact that we were meeting at all. The criticism goes something like this: "The House of Bishops is only one of the two key players in the governance of the Episcopal Church. Why should bishops get to meet six times during a triennium, while the members of the House of Deputies only meet once?"

If one focuses narrowly on the process that produces legislation that governs the church, this critique may have some merit. It would appear to give the bishops, collectively, an unfair advantage. With only some 130 active bishops, it is already a more nimble body than the unwieldy 900-member House of Deputies. Adding to this the effect of the collegial relationships that are formed and sustained by meeting twice a year, and the fact that either house has an effective veto power over any proposed legislation, it would, in fact, appear that the "junior house" (as some Deputies are wont to call it) has disproportionate influence--some might say, unjustly so.

However, despite the experience of a not inconsiderable number of General Convention "wonks", I think it's safe to say that General Convention is not the church, and the church is not General Convention. There's a great deal of being and doing within the Body of Christ that has nothing to do with the legislative process. Much of that being and doing either requires or is enhanced by the presence of a bishop. This is amply evident at a diocesan level. To the baptized faithful within a diocese, the Bishop is an iconic sign of Christ the Good Shepherd, living and moving and having being among the flock of Christ. One of the lessons I've learned over the last six months is that a good percentage of my job involves just getting out of my car looking like a bishop, and then posing for pictures. Other things I do and say are pretty important, of course, but the significance of just being the Bishop cannot be overstated.

But, just as a diocese, despite possessing within itself the fullness of the Church's being, does not exist in isolation from other local churches that also possess the same fullness, a bishop does not exist in isolation, but is, rather, part of a college of bishops. There is a network of accountability--most of it mutual, some of it hierarchical. For bishops in those dioceses that are ordered by the structures of the Episcopal Church, the collegial character of the office is defined with some precision in the constitution and canons of the church, as well as in the rules and customs of that collegial community.

A bit of confusion--confusion leading to consternation--is perhaps engendered by the fact that, when the bishops of the Episcopal Church meet, they meet as the House of Bishops. This may be unfortunate, though there is so much inertial momentum behind it now that changing it is probably not worth the energy it would take to make it happen. The reality is, however, that when the HoB meets apart from General Convention, there is absolutely no legislative business that can take place. No canonical amendments can be proposed, debated, or voted on. Any resolutions that are passed (and they are rare) are strictly "mind of the house," with no binding effect on anyone. Instead, what happens at five out of every six HoB meetings concerns those aspects of a bishop's life and ministry, and the life and ministry of the college of bishops, that are non-legislative. This includes issues of leadership development, ongoing theological and spiritual formation, and teaching. While I dissented from the Pastoral Teaching promulgated by this most recent meeting, I wholly affirm that it is within the purview of the bishops' collective ministry to teach the faithful. Need I even be so explicit as to say that the House of Deputies has no cognate responsibility?

(Of course, subjects will from time to time be discussed among bishops that may eventually find their way into the legislative process, as was the case this week with regard to structural change. But the same can be said of any of the 50+ CCABs, all of which include priests/deacons and lay persons, to say nothing of any number of informal networks, especially in this internet age.)

So ... bishops are not mere agents of General Convention. They are accountable to a whole panoply of duties and expectations that have nothing to do with General Convention. Look at the ordination vows and examination questions in the Prayer Book, as well as the catechism. Taking a share in "the councils of the church" is a relatively small piece of the puzzle. I do wish we could refer to these assemblies as something like "bishops' meetings." Perhaps then there would be less angst about the disparity of opportunity between the two houses of General Convention. It's been said that TEC is "synodically governed and episcopally led." There is some wisdom in this, I think. The House of Bishops should not try to govern apart from the church's synod (i.e. G.C.), and the House of Deputies should let the bishops do their job, which is to lead.

Nor, it must be added, are bishops really creatures of General Convention. Yes, the life and work of a bishop in communion with the Episcopal Church is defined and described in the canons and in the liturgy. But, as Episcopalians, if we are true to our own heritage and identity, we are quite clear that we don't make any of this up. We are part of the Church Catholic. The structures of church order, the ministry of Word and Sacrament, the pastoral oversight (episkope) of the flock of Christ--these are all gifts from God that we hold in trust, as stewards, along with other ecclesial bodies that drink from the same well.

Tidbits

2011-09-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

It's not often that I indulge in news mongering, but my ears perked up this afternoon when the Bishop of Bath & Well, a guest of this meeting of the HoB, brought his greetings to the house.

First, he addressed the rumor, first appearing in the British press a week or so ago, that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will have resigned within a year's time in order to return to academia. This, Bishop Price told us, will not happen. He told us this emphatically, and without a hint of doubt. One might be forgiven for inferring that he had some inside information.

He then went on to suggest that legislation to enable the appointment and ordination of women as bishops is not necessarily a slam dunk for passage at the coming 2012 General Synod. He attributed his lack of confidence to the peculiarities of the English electoral system, wherein members of Synod are elected by geographic constituencies, and do not represent dioceses or parishes per se. If my memory serves, there have been elections since the last time this question came before the Synod.

Finally, Bishop Price opined as to the status of the Anglican Covenant in his church, observing that most probably do not understand it enough to either be supportive or critical of it, and that, in any case, it may already have served it purpose by provoking discussion around the communion.

For whatever it's worth.

Liberation Theology Revisited

2011-09-17T18:10:00.000-04:00

It has been the custom of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops to meet twice a year. At each meeting, a significant component is dedicated to continuing education of some sort. At the meeting I am currently attending, in Quito, Ecuador (the Episcopal Church has several overseas dioceses, including two in Ecuador), the subject of the continuing education is Liberation Theology. We have so far dedicated two afternoons and one morning to it, and we're not finished yet.

Liberation Theology is a term that refers to a discernible school of thought that emanates from the work of several theologians, mostly Roman Catholic and mostly Latin American. It came of age in the 1970s and 80s, waxed for a while, and then waned significantly. It is no longer in fashion--in fact, it has a certain "retro" feel to it--but it is certainly not dormant. Biblically, it is grounded in the strand of Old Testament tradition that gives voice to a God who is thoroughly disgusted with any exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful, with any injustice, with anyone who would be less than materially compassionate toward the poor. One sees it in the Exodus narrative (God rescues an oppressed Israel), the Psalms, and all over the Minor Prophets. If Liberation Theology were to be reduced to a slogan, it would be this: God has a preferential option for the poor.

In its heyday, Liberation Theology was suspect in many quarters on account of the company some of its advocates kept. It was associated with concrete sympathy toward movements of armed rebellion against entrenched political and economic structures, with land redistribution, socialism, and other leftist ideologies and activities. It was therefore criticized for being a mere theological smokescreen behind which to hide an essentially political movement, one that sat lightly toward traditional expressions of piety and worship. In effect, Liberation Theology seemed to be not much other than a new iteration of the Social Gospel movement from the 19th century, to be lacking any substantive eschatological dimension (i.e. its perspective is materialist, confined to this world and this world only).

The presenters we have heard here in Quito this week both confirm all the caricatures of Liberation Theology and at the same time raise some signals that are hopeful as regards the potential integration of its insights into more orthodox and mainstream Christian faith and practice. While some have momentarily indulged in anti-capitalist, anti-corporation rhetoric, they have all categorically disavowed any necessary link between Liberation Theology and either advocacy of or opposition to any particular political party, movement, or economic system. Apparently it's not impossible for a free market conservative to be a faithful Christian!

More helpfully, they have taken some care to locate Liberation Theology within the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, not only biblically, but sacramentally and liturgically. Wednesday's speaker (Don Compier from St Paul's School of Theology in Kansas City) made a serious effort to unpack the notion of incarnation as it is realized in the Eucharist (citing, especially, the work of Charles Gore). Having encountered the risen Christ in the sacrament, having been drawn into the intimate life of the Trinity, the faithful Christian disciple cannot not work for justice and extend Christ's presence in persona Christi in the midst of the poor and marginalized.

In the last question and answer session, I raised the issue of Liberation Theology's eschatological dimension, which seems to be largely absent, at least as it is packaged for general consumption. How does God's "end game" figure into the schema? What will "success", should it ever be achieved, look like? The panelists acknowledged that there is a utopian aspect to LT, which strikes me as very much in line with the vision of the Social Gospel; that is, God builds his Kingdom through progressive human effort, until, finally, injustice, violence, and poverty are extinct, signaling the fruition of the New Jerusalem. In more contemporary parlance, God has a "dream" of a world where justice, peace, and love are the ordering forces of society, and are no longer challenged. The Church's job is to participate in God's activity towards that end. This contrasts with a more traditional understanding that sees the fullness of the Kingdom of God flowing not from persistent human effort, but suddenly, apocalyptically, after a great crisis in which the powers of sin and death will first appear to have triumphed.

So I was heartened to hear our presenters use the language of "eschatological reserve." This notion, as I understand it, and as I would be wont to interpret it generously and irenically, takes seriously the reality that ministry to and among the poor and marginalized, in addition to providing obvious tangible benefits, it important semiotically--for its sign value. It is a sign to all that God has not abandoned them (whether or not he has a "preferential option" in their direction, which I think is a debatable idea), and that there will, in the eschaton, be a completely happy ending to their suffering.

Were I to have the opportunity, one question I would like to press with the proponents of LT, is how they integrate evangelization (of the sort that leads to repentance, faith, and baptism) and personal sanctification into their proclamation of "good news to the poor." Does our encounter with the incarnate and risen Jesus in the Eucharist merely inspire and empower us to "make the world a better place," or does it also motivate us to invite and include those whom we serve into that eucharistic fellowship? As I continue to ponder the ramifications of the rapid advance of the post-Christian era in western society, it strikes me that Liberation Theology may actually presume a Christendom paradigm, in which the Church advocates for the Christian poor in challenge to their Christian exploiters. In such a model, evangelization is not a paramount concern; the cast of characters in the drama are presumed to already be evangelized, to already be part of the community of the altare Dei. But what if this is no longer the case?

All this now having been said, I must confess that I did not hear anything fundamentally new in what has been presented to us. I am even hard pressed to see it as all that radical! It can arguably be recognized in what is already going on in my own rather conservative and traditional midwestern diocese, and in the parishes I have served. If the bishops of the Episcopal Church were supposed to have been gobsmacked by ideas that dramatically subvert the status quo in the ministries of their dioceses, I must have not been paying close enough attention.

Inventing the Wheel, Discovering Fire

2011-09-12T21:02:00.000-04:00

For my entire adult life (and I just turned 60), I have been passionately interested in the "marketing" of the gospel through and in the life of the church: What can the Christian community be doing to authentically and effectively commend faith and discipleship to those outside its numbers? Until I was around 40, I got to do this as a sort of deck hand and adviser to the skipper--whoever the skipper was for me at any given time. Since then, I've been a skipper. And now, to keep pushing the metaphor, I'm an admiral, with lots of people looking to me for leadership.

So, if I've been intensely interested in the subject until now--and I have been--the intensity of that interest is now in overdrive.

Of course, I'm not alone. There's a mountain range of published material out there on evangelism and church growth. I've been an avid consumer of that material. I've read books and articles, listened to cassette tapes (see...I told you I've been doing this a while!), attended conferences and seminars, and had innumerable informal discussions with colleagues and parishioners. Anyone familiar with even a fraction of this material could be forgiven for telling me that my task is simply to spend some time reviewing it, poke around cyberspace for some of the most recent developments, and cull out the "best practices." (OK, that's one buzz word--"best practices"--that I'm sort of hoping has a short half-life, but I digress.)

It makes sense. Why, as the saying goes, re-invent the wheel?

Here's the problem ... or, actually, there are two problems:

Problem the First--the process of societal dechristianization has finally passed the tipping point. We've known this was coming, of course. It's been gathering energy for around 300 years. But there are signs that the speed of change is now taking off exponentially. Even as recently as my deck hand years, we assumed that we weren't dealing with absolutely cold prospects, but with people who had some basic knowledge of the Christian narrative, which needed only to be awakened, corrected, and nourished in order to come to fruition. Maybe that was true then--I think it probably was--but it surely is not now. (I will grant that there is some residue of Christendom in "Bible belt" pockets, but even these bastions are beginning to give way.) And it's especially not true among young adults--the coveted 18-30 year old demographic. We can spend a lot of angst speculating as to why this is so, and assigning blame, but the reality is there nonetheless. North American (and still less European) culture is no longer predominantly Christian. We can resist this development--angrily and futilely--or we can embrace it and get on with figuring out what it means for the way we "do church." I vote for the latter.

Problem the Second--the fleet in which I'm an admiral is a liturgical and sacramental church. This would have been a handicap even in the absence of Problem the First, and, I would suggest, explains a lot about the history of the development of the Episcopal Church in this country. But with things as they actually are, it's a double whammy. Why? Because it represents such a small segment of those who profess and call themselves Christian and who are also focused on packaging the gospel to get attention in a secular marketplace. (The Roman Catholics are, of course, liturgical and sacramental--and also gargantuan. But, unless I'm missing some critical signs, they are largely relying on the inertia of their present size and not strategically engaging the dissolution of Christendom. They will, IMO, soon be staring into the same abyss that currently confronts the historic mainline denominations, and will confront the Big Box evangelicals once the first generation of innovative leaders dies out.) In other words, those who are doing the research and developing theories and testing theories about evangelism and ministry in a secular culture are distinctly non-liturgical and non-sacramental.

Obviously, I think this makes them rootless and systemically weak. There are reasons I am not a free-church evangelical! I believe in sacraments and historic church order. I think they're not only nice, but essential. But in the meantime, my rootless and systemically weak evangelical friends are also frighteningly more nimble and more adaptive and responsive to feedback than are the structures of the church in which I serve. They are at the wheel of a ski boat, while the craft I'm driving is a loaded supertanker doing thirty knots. What this means is that the practices that they might find successful in taking the gospel to the denizens of contemporary culture may not work for me. They can't just be adopted wholesale--not, at any rate, without either surrendering some of the core identity of a sacramental and liturgical church, or bending the strategy that I'm adapting so much as to compromise its effectiveness.

There are, in fact, no proven and reliable "best practices" for evangelization by Catholic Christians in 21st century American culture. And I find that fact simultaneously daunting and energizing. Anyone who does not find being in uncharted territory frightening is probably not sane. By that measure, I am quite sane! At the same time, anyone who does not find being a pioneer exciting may not be fully alive. By that measure, I am very alive! The work we are beginning to take on in the Diocese of Springfield will break new ground. Whether that ground will yield anything--a crop? a gusher?--I don't know. We will probably fail at a lot of things before we succeed at something. But to shrink back from being pioneers is simply to consent to our continued slow death. It's hard to believe that this would please the heart of the God whom we serve.

Pastoral Reflections on the 9/11 Anniversary

2011-09-08T22:19:00.000-04:00

This appears as the Bishop's letter to the Faithful in the Diocese of Springfield in the September issue of our newsletter, the Springfield Current.

Beloved in Christ,
This month marks the tenth anniversary of an event that any American adult, and many youth as well, can recall with vivid clarity. I lived in California in 2001, so it was just after 6am, as I lay in bed on a Tuesday morning thinking about facing the day, when the familiar voice of NPR's Bob Edwards on my nightstand radio calmly announced that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A few minutes later I was downstairs watching CNN as the rest of that morning's horrendous developments unfolded.

Ten years later, what can we make of "9-11"? It has changed our lives in more ways than we can count and for longer than we can imagine. Something as simple as accompanying a loved one all the way to the departure gate at an airport, or meeting them there when they arrive, is a thing of the past. Instead, we have to take our shoes off going through security and remember the 3-1-1 rule for liquids and gels in our carry-on baggage. Thousands have died in the ensuing military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands of lives have been adversely affected by those wars.

We now live in constant fear--even if that fear is subliminal--of terrorism. What I personally find most disturbing is not what we know, or what we know that we don't know, but what we don't know that we don't know ... the literally unimaginable. And for that very reason, I take great comfort from the words of one of our Prayer Book collects: "...that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness..." (from the Office of Compline, p. 133)

Of course, in addition to being afraid, we are also angry, even ten years later. We not only suffered the loss of lives and the destruction of property, our national pride was wounded. They went after some potent symbols of American identity: the twin towers, the Pentagon, and, but for the heroism of those aboard United 93, probably the Capitol Building or the White House. I must confess that I have at times pictured those who plot terrorism when one of the imprecatory Psalms comes comes up in the daily office lectionary, such as these lines from Psalm 109: "He loved cursing, let it come upon him; he took no delight in blessing, let is depart from him. He put on cursing like a garment, let it soak into his body like water and into his bones like oil...".

To the extent that we are afraid or angry, then, we do neither ourselves nor anyone else any favors by trying to deny or repress those feelings. We do well to recognize and acknowledge them. Then, as disciples of Jesus, we do well to lay that fear and anger at his feet and allow him to deliver us from them. When I visit the churches of our diocese, the liturgy often concludes with the Pontifical Blessing, which begins with the line from Psalm 124: "Our help is in the name of the Lord." This is the context into which we are invited to place our fear. Then we can take note of the scriptural counsel to avoid letting our instinct for revenge get the better of us: "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord" (Romans 12:19, Deuteronomy 32:35). This is the context into which we are invited to place our anger.

Then, having been partially liberated from fear and anger (full liberation does not occur in this world for most of us, I think), we can turn our attention to more constructive endeavors, such as justice, righteousness, and peace. Remember that in classical Christian theology, evil does not exist absolutely in its own right; it is, rather, the absence of good. Perhaps one could also say that evil is sometimes the distortion of good. The motives that lie behind terrorism are invariably rooted in a distortion of good, which, in turn, is rooted in a perceived absence of justice (a form of good). We don't have to agree with the moral assessments of those who attack us. We can legitimately oppose and attempt to thwart their efforts. I, for one, am more than happy to see armed guards at airports and to walk through scanners if any of that helps protect public safety. But we are only being foolish if we blind ourselves to the fact that those who wish us harm think they are doing good and opposing evil. Being open to engaging them on that level might just yield fruit that makes us all feel more secure. If nothing else, it is an act of obedience to the injunction from the Psalmist (34:14): "Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it."

Blessings in Christ Jesus,

+Daniel

Making All Things New

2011-08-25T23:01:00.001-04:00

As a child, I had a rich fantasy life. How it compares to any other kid’s, I can’t say; I’m not any other kid. But it was rich. And varied.

And there was at least one recurring theme. I would imagine going to a junkyard and finding the rusted out body of a car—something that was consigned to destruction and oblivion—and “rescuing” it … sanding off the rust, and slowly adding other junked parts to it, and eventually producing a fully-restored like-new automobile. There was something about that exercise in imagination that deeply touched my soul. (The irony, of course, is that I have NONE of the gifts or aptitudes that would allow me to pursue that fantasy in real life, though I admire and envy those who do.)

According to the gospel that Christians proclaim, my childhood fantasy is a microcosm of God’s project with respect to the human race—and not only the human race, in fact, but all of creation. In the Revelation to St John, God announces, “Behold, I make all things new.” In a word, this is salvation. I’m put in mind of a hymn I sang in my childhood, both text and tune by the Victorian-era evangelical Philip P. Bliss: “Man of Sorrows, what a name / For the Son of God who came / Ruined sinners to reclaim. / Hallelujah! What a Savior!” It’s “ruined” and “reclaim” that get my attention there; reference the fantasy described above.

Too often, I think, believers and non-believers alike (including those who do not yet believe and those who do not believe anymore) have a way too constricted understanding of what salvation is. When I was at the Illinois state fair last week, there was a booth with a sign asking the question, “Are you going to heaven? Take a free two-question test and find out!” Without disparaging either “heaven” or “going to heaven” (though the latter phrase is too semiotically impoverished to be useful, in my opinion), this barely scratches the surface of salvation. It is, rather, something infinitely grander and more cosmic in scope. At any rate, it’s a lot more poetic.

On our recent vacation, Lady Dragonfly and I spent two nights at the north end of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, in Port Angeles. On the morning of the one full day we were there, we boarded a ferry and rode to Victoria, British Columbia, on the southeast corner of the massive Vancouver Island, for a day trip out of the country. Then we got on a bus that took us to a place called Butchart Gardens, on the edge of the city. We knew next to nothing about the place, other than that there were a lot a flowers there and Brenda’s parents had visited there about 35 years ago and told us we should see it.

The story is actually quite fascinating. Mr Butchart was an entrepreneur in limestone, and he built a home for his family near where he discovered a large limestone deposit, which he intended to quarry. And quarry he did, selling the limestone to concrete manufacturers, and becoming quite wealthy in the process.

As a result, though, a chunk of coastal real estate that was quite lovely in its natural state had become quite … ugly. Picture a huge barren pit of jagged rock, with an odd-looking sort of promontory in the middle of it made of limestone that was subpar for quarrying purposes. This is where Mrs Butchart enters the picture. She’s not happy about this big ugly gaping whole in the middle of her backyard. So she had some of her husband’s employees lower her down the side of the quarry in a boatswain’s chair so she could plant ivy wherever she thought a seed might germinate on the rocky surface.

It worked, and the walls turned green and beautiful. So Jenny Butchart kept on. And kept on, planting a staggering variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees in that quarry … and then in other areas of the estate. The photo at the top of this post is one view of how that quarry looks today. It is a surpassingly beautiful place.

I don’t know what was in Mrs Butchart’s mind as she pursued what became her life’s work. Maybe she was just the right combination of bored and stubborn. But she did, intentionally or not, create a little bit of “heaven on earth,” and if one is invested in “going to heaven,” one could do worse than to go to Butchart Gardens! It is a compelling sign of God’s passionate desire to “reclaim” that which has (those who have) been “ruined.” Within the recent history of that parcel of land, we see the drama of salvation—creation, fall, redemption—writ small, small enough for us to be able to see it, and, in the imagination of our hearts, to project from there, and begin to grasp the scale of what “salvation” is really about.

Thinking Parochially

2011-07-15T23:28:00.004-04:00

Some years ago, while attending a conference in London, I was sharing a table at breakfast with a priest of the Church of England. In the manner of making casual small talk with a relative stranger, he inquired, "Tell me, Father, how large is your parish?" I proceeded to talk about the number of baptized members on the rolls, the number of communicants in good standing, and the average Sunday attendance. From his puzzled expression, I learned very quickly that this wasn't at all what he had in mind when he asked his question. He wanted to know, how large is the geographical area within the bounds of my parish, and how many people live in that area? Not how many of them considered themselves members of my parish church, but how many lived within the parish.

I was being typically American and Episcopalian, of course, and he was being typically British and C of E. Despite the bonds of affection that we share, those are two very different ecclesial environments.
The Church of England, being (still for a while yet, I expect) the legally established church of the realm, is heir to the ancient structural apparatus that evolved in a time when there was but one church, and everyone residing in the country was presumed to be a member thereof. There are two provinces--Canterbury in the south and York in the north--each comprised of its various constituent dioceses, with each diocese being divided into parishes. Parishes have definite boundaries, and if you know your address, it's easy enough to find out what parish you live in. You might be Methodist or agnostic or Hindu, but you live in a particular parish.

In the proverbial days of yore, every parish had one--and generally only one--church. Nowadays, there has been a good bit of consolidation, so many parishes have multiple churches. Each of these churches has a name associated with a saint (or saints) or one of the mysteries of the faith. But that's the name of the church, not that of the parish. The parish is denoted by its geography, generally either a rural village or an urban neighborhood. And even the church is often referred to by the name of the parish--e.g. Stepford Parish Church. This custom can be seen even in America, in places that date back to colonial times and were settled by Anglicans. One thinks here of the relatively well-known Bruton Parish (and Bruton Parish Church) in Williamsburg.

Of course, every parish has (or had, at any rate; the times they are achangin') a "parish priest", often, in the C of E, styled the vicar. The vicar is in charge of making sure Sunday services happen in the parish church (or churches), that people are instructed in the faith, that baptisms, weddings, and funerals all take place appropriately as needed. But the vicar's pastoral responsibility is not confined to those whose names appear on the voting rolls of the parish church, or who donate money to the church, or who even just occasionally walk by it reverently. It is to every soul that lives within the bounds of the parish. Indeed, in England, C of E clergy are legally obliged to preside at baptisms, weddings, and funerals whenever such services are requested by anyone living within the bounds of the parish, whether or not they are or have ever claimed to be Anglican.

By contrast, outside of those few vestiges of such a paradigm in older parts of Virginia, Anglicans in America have evolved rather different ways of thinking and acting. For the most part, we tend to use the words "parish" and "church" and "congregation" interchangeably (hence, my response to the breakfast question I was asked). Interestingly, our canons do make provision for the establishment of parish boundaries. But while there may be places where such boundaries are known about and observed, I could not tell you where any of them are. When Episcopalians speak of a "parish" they are usually referring to a particular church building along with the community that habitually gathers in that building for worship, instruction, and fellowship, and all of that together with the institutional infrastructure that support said building and said community.

As a result, we have grown comfortable in thinking of ourselves as a denomination--which is ultimately just another way of saying brand name--rather than as a church. That may seem like a distinction without a difference. Perhaps it is. God knows (literally), the institutional trappings in which our Church of England cousins operate are indeed something of a sham, given the minuscule percentage of their countrymen who actually worship in an Anglican parish church on any given Sunday. And, if I am suggesting that American Anglicans imitate the Brits by thinking of themselves more ecclesially and less denominationally, is that not just a bit pretentious, given the actual multiplicity of Christian brand names in this country?

Ah, but that is precisely what I am suggesting. And while it probably is pretentious, it is also, I think, salutary, at least from a missional perspective.

As the Episcopal Church has evolved, each diocese is less of a "local church" (in the Vatican II sense of that term) organized for mission into parishes that cover the landscape, as it is the regional subdivision of a denomination, with inward-turned clubs whose clubhouses dot the landscape. But what would it look like if we recovered a robust understanding of the geographic parish? What would it look like if a bishop could walk into the parish hall (think about that expression) and ask the clergy and lay leaders, "How are things in your parish?", and the clergy and lay leaders then spoke knowledgeably, not about attendance statistics and finances, but about all the households located within a half-mile of the church building, and could rattle off the median income, the poverty rate, the high school graduation rate, and the percentage of those who are not involved in any church community, and what social strata such persons come from, and what the church community is doing to connect with the lives of those fellow parishioners of theirs? In other words, what would it look like if every square meter in the bounds of the diocese was known to be within one particular parish or another, and the church community (or communities) in that parish understood it to be their missional responsibility to be connected, incarnate, and invested in everyone else who lives in the parish, even those whom they know will never darken the door of the parish church?

Honestly, I don't know what it would look like! But I have a strong suspicion that it would look very different than things look now, and that, in this case, different means better.

Language is important. Parish has too rich a history as a word to let it be co-opted into referring merely to a denominational club that meets in a denominational clubhouse. Sometimes something as small as a change in language unlocks substantial changes in attitude and behavior. As a network of denominational clubs, we're dying fast. As an aggregation of local churches (dioceses) organized for mission into geographic parishes, the gates of Hell itself will not prevail against us.

On Mission

2011-06-27T00:32:00.004-04:00

I made a sort of cameo appearance at the triennial Episcopal Youth Event this past week, spending about 24 hours on the campus of Bethel University in Arden Hills, Minnesota (suburban St Paul), about one-quarter of the entire length of the conference. We had two young people and an adult leader from the Diocese of Springfield there, and it was a not-to-be-passed-up opportunity for a bishop to be with them in such a setting and share some of their experience.

And what an experience it was: There were some 900 bodies in the Great Hall for the plenary sessions, with lots of rock concert ambience, an incessant tsunami of youthful energy, incredibly gifted adult leadership, and--if the two I heard are indicative--engaging speakers who are able to communicate effectively with teenagers. It's a good thing that we do this; it's a good thing that we sent kids from the diocese (I hope we send more next time); it's a good thing that I took the time to join them (perhaps I can stay longer next time). Kudos to EYE.

The theme was mission. Not a bad theme for a youth event. For most of us at that stage of life, it's all about activity and experience. We want to be doing stuff. It's also a little less difficult to inspire idealism than it is with those who've had more opportunity--just by living longer--to be jaded by the changes and chances of this life. I can remember being that age, and I can remember being inspired to mission by youth leaders, especially at times when we were gathered with our peers away from home--with lots of singing, lots of socializing, and lots of teaching. It's powerful stuff.

In the Christian tradition that I was raised in, mission pretty much meant one thing and one thing only: evangelism. Bringing others to Christ. That's what missionaries do. If what weighs on your mind is the thought that anyone who dies without having made a conscious "decision for Christ" will immediately be consigned to endless sensory and mental torment, that's a pretty potent reason to sublimate any other missional concern. And when one's understanding of God's redemptive activity becomes more--shall we say--generous in scope, the range of mission begins to broaden.

And broaden. And broaden still more.

So I hope I'm not being just cranky here. My intent is to reflect critically ("critically" in the best sense, not with animus) on how I'm hearing mission characterized these days, including in the two addresses, and some of the songs, that I heard at EYE.

In couterpoint to the restrictive mission-equals-evangelism notion that we get from--appropriately enough, perhaps--those who would call themselves evangelicals, here are the bullet points of what seems to be the regnant narrative among contemporary Episcopalians:

Creation is pervasively wounded. The sign of this woundedness is the degradation of our physical environment in such phenomena as climate change. The social dimension of creation's woundedness is seen in poverty, racism, discrimination, and the structures of injustice, greed, and fear that abet such conditions.
God has a dream of a world that is restored both physically and socially. God's mission, therefore, is to bring about wholeness through the elimination of social injustice and environmental irresponsibility.
In his life and death, Jesus shows us both the infinite extent of God's love, and how to be truly human, to live authenically in the way God intends us to live--justly, humbly, lovingly, and responsibly.
Inspired by our faith in Jesus, we are called as Christians to join God's mission (it is indeed "God's mission", not "the Church's mission") of healing creation.
As a concrete activity, "mission" entails serving the needs of others, advocating and working for the reformation of unjust social structures, and generally living in ways that support these endeavors.

I've seriously tried not to present a caricature here, so do let me know if you think I haven't succeeded.

I find this narrative ... well, the best word I can think of is "impoverished" ... as an account of Christian mission. There are two major reasons for this assessment, and then some lesser ones.

First, it lacks an evident and coherent connection with the Paschal Mystery. I use this expression (Paschal Mystery) as a shorthand for an event-word-symbol complex that includes the incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, ongoing high-priestly ministry, and anticipated return of Jesus the Word of God; i.e. that which underlies our celebration of the Eucharist, that which underlies our salvation. This is the core of the Good News. Mission, if it is to be understood as Christian mission, is rooted in the gospel, and there is no account of the gospel that is not anchored in and intertwined with the Paschal Mystery. We have nothing to say and nothing to do that cannot be pretty directly connected to "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."

Second, it lacks an eschatlogical dimension. That's not exactly a household word (eschatological), so let's briefly unpack it. Literally, the term denotes the study of "last things" (in Christian tradition: death, judgment, heaven, hell), the "end times." But itconnotes someting a bit more expansive and nuanced than it denotes; namely, that the fruition of God's redemptive purposes in the world, in human history, is accomplished by God's sovereign action, and that this fruition is not the summit of a gradual linear path, but, rather, something that follows on divine intervention of a sort that can, from a human perspective, only be described as cataclysmic. (See II Peter 3:10 for a graphic example of what I'm talking about.)

From these (in my opinion) major flaws flow some lesser ones. One hears with increasing frequency the notion of "God's dream" for the world. It causes me to wonder how those who use this expression understand either God's sovereignty (one could say, one of God's very defining characteristics) and God's providence (i.e. God's sovereignty put into action). I can understand the intuitive visceral appeal of "God's dream," which makes it all the more problematic, because it is theologically incoherent. It is meaningless to speak of God having a "dream" because God does not operate in the realm of a conditioned or qualified future. Our eschatological hope as Christians is simply this: God wins. We know how the story ends, and there's not a darn thing any of us can do, either individually or corporately, no matter how many mission trips we might send our youth groups on, to either hasten or retard the day, or affect it in any way. Personally, I find that a word of hope and comfort.

For similar reasons, I am troubled by language that speaks of Christian mission as joining in an effort to "heal God's world." It's nothing new. William Blake's celebrated poem, set to stirring music by Charles H. H. Parry, a song that puts a lump in the throat of every patriotic subject of the British Crown (and other anglophiles, including the Bishop of Springfield), speaks of "Jerusalem" (as a metaphor for God's Kingdom of perfect justice, peace, and love) being "builded here," and the singers promise to not "cease from mental fight" etc. etc. until that happens. Well, that song is wonderful poetry and horrible theology. The same can be said for songs that say "God has no hands but ours," and the like (even JFK's line, "God's work must truly be our own"). It's not up to us to usher in the kingdom of God. God is perfectly capable of ushering in his own kingdom with or without our help.

So ... here is a tentative proposed counter-narrative to the one that seems to be so pervasive:

The whole created order is under the thrall of sin and death. As a result, human beings are radically alienated from God and from one another.
God, in the person of Jesus, defeated the power of sin and death by his own death and resurrection. In so doing, he set in motion the inexorable process of redemption and renewal, making all things new.
Through faith in Christ, and participation in the life of Christ through word and sacrament, disciples of Christ form the community of God's "called out ones"--i.e. the ekklesia, the Church.
The mission of the Church is to announce to the world what God is doing, and in so doing to call all people everywhere to repentance, faith, baptism, and discipleship in the communion of the Church.
In service of this mission, the Church is called to order her interior life in such a manner as models to the world what the Kingdom of God looks like, to serve as a glimpse and foretaste of life in the Kingdom.
The pursuit of the Church's mission will necessarily include both works of compassion and kindness toward those who suffer or are in extreme need, ministering to the whole person. It will also include advocacy for social structures that are just and that are in accord with God's righteousness.

As you can see (I hope), the concrete results of the currently ascendant narrative and the counter-narrative I have proposed will overlap in many ways. Both are consistent with mission trips to rebuild housing in the wake of natural disasters. Both are capable, I believe, of inspiring selflessness and dedication on the part of idealistic young people. One of them, at any rate, lets God be God, and takes account of the broad sweep of gospel witness and Christian tradition.

Maybe I'll be invited to be a plenary speaker at the next EYE. (Or maybe not.)

Transdermal Evangelism

2011-06-05T23:46:00.002-04:00

While one might debate whether it's just another example of making virtue out of necessity, given the sharply declining percentage of the U.S. population that defines itself as Christian (especially among young adults), the subject of evangelism (or, as the Roman Catholics call it--aptly, I think--evangelization) has a certain currency across denominational and ideological lines these days. There are lots of different methods, lots of different "schools" of evangelism. I'm not an academic expert on the subject, or any kind of expert, for that matter. So what I say here is not intended to be an exhaustive tome.

My working definition of evangelism: The presentation of the good news of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ in a manner intended to draw people to repentance, faith, baptism, and discipleship in the communion of the Church.

In the ecclesiastical orbit in which I move--namely, Episcopalian--the evangelistic technique that I have heard mentioned most frequently over the last 35 years is, without a close second, "Invite your friends to come to church with you." At some level, I suspect, this has been voiced by well-meaning clergy who are trying to relieve their parishioners of the morbid dread they experience when they contemplate the possibility of actually talking to somebody about God. Don't even worry about it; just invite them to come to church, and maybe they'll see or hear something they like, and want to come back. Before you know it, they'll be on the Altar Guild rota, and you won't even have had to engage them at the level of their spiritual needs.

There's a certain admirable logic and consistency to this approach. After all, did Andrew talk to his brother Simon about Jesus all night? No, he simply brought Simon to Jesus, made the introduction, and let Jesus take it from there. We could do worse than to follow such an example. After all, as sacramental and liturgical Christians, do we not believe that Jesus is uniquely present in the eucharistic action? Do we not say that it is Jesus' own Body and Blood that lie on the altar as the congregation utters the Great Amen? What better thing could we do for those we care about than to invite them into such a Presence?

Here's where I think the logic breaks down: the Eucharist was never meant for the uninitiated. Our pre-Constantinian forebears (remember them? we're going to be getting to know them much, much better in the coming years) would be utterly gobsmacked by today's debate over whether the unbaptized should be invited to receive Holy Communion, because in their world, it was unthinkable for an unbaptized person to even be present in the same room while the Eucharist was being celebrated. The catechumens joined the faithful for the Liturgy of the Word, and then were dismissed following the sermon--dismissed with their catechists to further unpack the mysterium fidei as it slowly became clearer leading up to the Great Vigil of Easter at which they were baptized.

Fast forward to the 1950s and 60s (yes, when I was a kid): The default presumption was that everyone in America was some brand of Christian, unless you were in a place like New York, where the circle of expectations was expanded to include Jews. To be sure, some were more active than others, but everybody wore a label of one sort or another. (When I was rector of an old parish named St John's, I used to hear a lot of "I don't go to church, but St John's is the church I don't go to".) So if one of your friends or neighbors was inactive or unhappy, he or she was fair game for "Why don't you come to church with me this Sunday?"

Well, they still are, I would say. But it's a much, much shallower pond than it used to be, and continuing to dry up. Instead, we're looking at a cultural center-of-gravity that is astonishingly uninformed (or worse, misinformed) about even the most basic concepts of Christian belief and practice. Some are overtly hostile, but more are just benignly unconcerned; we're simply not on their radar. And inviting them to just come to church with us is like inviting a Harley-riding biker to come to a quilt show. It's not that the biker lacks the potential to appreciate the fine points of quilting, but there need to be a bunch of intermediate steps getting to that point.

The so-called "worship wars", but the way, are largely a consequence of this effort to make the Sunday Eucharist bear freight it was never intended to bear. Some souls readily intuit what's happening in the liturgy, but most do not. So there's contant pressure to tinker with the liturgy (usually fiddling with its music) to make it more accessible to those who know nothing about it, those who innocently impose their own cultural assumptions on the experience, and come away disappointed because the cat they just met meowed instead of barking.

Is there a "more excellent way"?

I believe there is, but it requires first having the courage to set aside the habit of thought that makes what we do in church on Sunday morning our show window to the world, the place where the Church's "product" is "merchandised" to potential "customers." And that's a lot more easily said than done, because it's a very, very, very deeply ingrained habit of thought.

If not through the "front door" of Sunday worship, then, where is the effective entry portal into the Christian community for someone who is beginning to experience spiritual hunger, but doesn't yet have the ability to name that as such, who doesn't yet have the vocabulary or the mental hooks by which to interpret what they're experiencing?

I suspect that what we need to find is a working side door. Or, to use a slightly different image, we need to configure our efforts at evangelization such that we create transdermal patches. A transdermal patch is a drug delivery system, but it doesn't use the main roads of oral ingestion or hypodermic injection. Instead, it makes a gentle and non-traumatic entry into the system, subtly infiltrating through the skin. An evangelistic transdermal patch probably looks like a social network--including cybernetic social networks, certainly, but, more importantly, human social networks with face to face interaction. Interaction, that is, probably not around concerns that would be immediately identifiable as spiritual or religious. Just real people being real to other real people.

Of course, this is already the context in which most effective evangelization already takes place. My point is that we need to become much more organized and intentional about it. The current generation of young adults may not know the difference between Easter and Groundhog Day (obviously, many do, but astonishingly many do not). But they are not immune to alienation, loneliness, cycnism, grief, despair, or just garden-variety boredom. We're probably not going to get them out of bed on a Sunday morning in time for a 10am Mass, wherein they might hear some pertinent homiletical words on those deep subjects. And if we did succeed in doing that, and if we're doing liturgy the way it should be done, we might just scare them off. But there are well-discipled Christians who are interested in mountain biking, or film noire,or fair trade coffee, or any one of a zillion things that people are interested in, and who can form relationships centered around those things.

I'm not talking about doing anything deceptive, surreptitious, or manipulative. If I want to start an organic gardening group (which I don't actually want to do, but hypothetically), I don't have to hide the fact that it's sponsored by St Swithun's Church. Most of them won't care, so long as no one makes them pray or sing or attend a bible study before they can harvest tomatoes. But when the teachable moment comes--and it does sooner or later for everybody, usually associated with adversity or tragedy--they will remember the bond they felt with the gardening group at St Swithun's, and that's when someone can explain about how Jesus walked out of his tomb and cared not a whit about whether he saw his shadow or not.

Then they can be enrolled as catechumens, and we can gradually show them that there is, in fact, a front door to the Church, and there's no way to avoid getting a little wet going through it.

Bored With the Book of Common Prayer?

2011-05-18T23:54:00.001-04:00

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. (II Timothy 4:3-4)

These verses of scripture certainly can be—and have been—used as a cudgel to beat up on one’s ideological foes, and most often, I suspect, in disputes between professing Christians. It is not my intention to weaponize them once again. Yet, they do mean something, and that phrase “itching ears” has long fascinated me. It bespeaks a propensity—one that all people share, I would say—to look and listen selectively, paying attention only to those data that tend to corroborate our prejudices and bolster our inclinations.

Having itching ears is less of a problem for some sorts of Christians than it is for others. The followers of Harold Camping, having been assured that all churches are apostate, are at liberty to scratch their itch by divesting themselves of their worldly goods in anticipation of being caught up in the air to meet Jesus barely 72 hours from when I write. Others—Anglicans, for example—are by definition accountable to an array of constraints that make treating the itch more of a challenge. We have scriptures, creeds, sacraments, and liturgies that the current generation did not invent, and which all—of whatever stripe of ideology or churchmanship—agree cannot be lightly tossed aside.

Lightly, that is.

From time to time—more frequently now that I am a bishop—I find myself in situations of corporate worship with other Episcopalians. Whether it’s sitting in a pew on a rare Sunday off, or attending a meeting or conference or the like, I have come to expect that what I find when I step into the worship space will probably not be a straight-from-the-book BCP service. Sometimes it is, but more often it’s not. On occasion, it’s one of the authorized supplemental texts from Enriching Our Worship, but not often. And, of course, there is the unauthorized but widespread informal emendation of Prayer Book language to render it more palatable to various sensibilities (“And blessed be God’s Kingdom, now and forever…”, “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord”, “Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel [and Leah]”). But I’m not actually talking about this sort of thing either (although, arguably, it deserves to be talked about).

No, what I have in mind are worship services that are cobbled together not quite on the spur of the moment, but almost. They appear on a printed sheet or booklet, so presumably some amount of thought has gone into them. They’re not exactly confected from whole cloth, because very often they incorporate substantial material from a Prayer Book rite (“Scenes from Morning Prayer,” some of them might be called). But they are almost invariably at a time of day for which there is an appropriate Prayer Book office. So, one wonders, why not simply use what we have? From whence comes the need to tinker?

Two factors immediately suggest themselves. One is a fairly widespread aversion in some quarters to traditional liturgical language that is considered sexist and/or patriarchal and/or insensitive to non-western cultures and thought patterns. The other is a practical concern to integrate worship with the particular objectives or ethos of a conference or retreat.

I wonder, however, whether a major contributing factor, and perhaps the major contributing factor, is simply … boredom. Itching ears. We are an over-stimulated society. We are addicted to constant change. Popular culture (music, fashion, entertainment media) is in a state of continual flux. Technology evolves so rapidly that the cycle of obsolescence keeps getting shorter and shorter. “Yesterday’s news” is no longer a euphemism but a literal descriptor. Should it be a surprise that people who exist in, and are formed by, secular culture would carry their conditioning with them into the councils of the church?

Of course, the status quo is not always worthy of acceptance. The fact that we see so much amateur DIY worship at church functions is indicative of the generally low level of knowledge of the inherent character and telos of liturgy, as well as formation in the praxis of liturgy, even among those who are supposed to be the stewards of the church’s worship (i.e. bishops and presbyters). Mind the (Catechesis) Gap, we might say. Only the gap is more like a canyon.

So it’s an uphill struggle, but, I hope, worth the effort. I don’t expect much to change any time soon. But as we begin to collectively “get it” that we live in a post-Constantinian age, that our mission (yea, our survival) depends on our developing effective counter-cultural strategies and language and intellectual habits, perhaps our liturgical tradition will be more widely appreciated for the anchor that it is. Perhaps it will someday be seen as not quite so boring. Perhaps it will even be known to be balm to our ears.

What's the Buzz About?

2011-05-06T16:04:00.007-04:00

My regular Friday prayer time (an adaptation of Ignatian Meditation this week), led me to Luke 3:15: "As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ."

John's preaching is creating a buzz among Palestinian Jews. "Is this perhaps the Messiah?" They were jumping to an erroneous conclusion, of course, as we can see clearly in retrospect and as John tried to warn them even in the moment. Yet, a "buzz" doesn't happen from nowhere, out of nothing. It depends on a pre-existing widespread hunger, a common yearning. In the case of John's contemporaries, it was for a deliverer who would lead them in throwing off the yoke of Roman political oppression and restore Israel to its Davidic glory days.

The key component in the Church's mission is to emulate John the Baptist, to be an heraldic community, to be creators of a buzz. (In the vocabulary of the Lewisian Narnia metaphor, "Aslan is on the loose!") But if we're to create a buzz effectively, we need to have a deep intuitive grasp of the public hunger, the common yearning, that will support such a buzz, that will give it wings, and let it "go viral."

What is that hunger for our contemporaries in this society? I don't presume to have a definite answer. Or even a preliminary one. But this I do know: Whatever it is, it's something that we (Christians) share. It's something we already feel. So we would do well to pay some focused attention to our own deepest longings, because therein will be revealed the linchpin to our mission, our capacity to emulate John and point the way to Jesus.

Some Rapturous Responses

2011-05-05T14:27:00.025-04:00

So ... did you know somebody is (once again) actually putting a date on the upcoming end of the world, aka Judgment Day? I ran across a guy on the radio a few days ago as I was scrolling through the AM dial on a road trip. Then I saw a billboard. And then I found the website.

It's pretty soon, too. Check it out.

Wow. One thing's for sure: Somebody's going to have egg on their face by the time June rolls around.

As it happens, I got a request from a former parishioner, a student at an evangelical Christian college, to help out with a class assignment requiring that two pastors be interviewed regarding what they believe and teach about eschatology. I thought it might be interesting to share the questions and my responses.

1 . Pleasedefine for me the following terms and what you or your church believes abouteach: What they are? When theyoccur? Who is involved?

Rapture – This word isnot in the vocabulary of the Anglican tradition. It is not found in Scripture,nor in the historic tradition of the Church.

Millennium – This wordis not in our theological vocabulary either. We would tend to interpret thedetails of the Revelation to St John poetically, while embracing the broadtheme that “God wins” in the end, and we find our fulfillment in worshiping himeternally.

Kingdom – The Kingdom ofGod (aka Kingdom of Heaven) is, quite simply, “wherever God rules.” In theory,this is everywhere, though God may allow rebellion against his rule to prosperfor a time. In the end, as mentioned above, God wins.

Heaven – In a sense,Heaven is both “here and now” and “then and there.” It exists wherever God’sreign is recognized and welcomed. In every experience of love, forgiveness, andunity, there is a glimpse of Heaven. Ultimately, God’s reign will be fully anduniversally acknowledged, and the saints of God will know him even as they arefully known. This is Heaven.

Hell – As with Heaven,Hell is both “here and now” and “then and there.” It is a condition marked bythe absence of God, the condition of those who persistently reject God’s grace.One might hope that, in the end, Hell will be unpopulated, but it is at least alogical necessity as long as one upholds the notion of free will.

Great White Throne – Apoetic term used in Revelation, traditionally not of any theologicalsignificance.

Judgment Seat of Christ– An expression that occurs in the Pauline epistles, and since used from timeto time in Christian liturgy, denoting the creedal affirmation that Jesus willreturn to “judge the living and the dead.”

First Resurrection – Notpart of our vocabulary.

Final Resurrection –Ditto. Both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds affirm the “resurrection of thebody.” Beyond that, we don’t put too fine a point on the matter.

2. Whichposition best describes your church or individual belief about the return ofChrist?

Pre-millennial return of Christ Post-millennial return of Christ

A-millennial return of Christ Preterit view of the return ofChrist

None of the above. The “millennium” just doesn’t figure. We simplybelieve that Christ will return in glory, that he will judge the living and thedead, and his kingdom will have no end.

3. Whichview best describes your church or individual belief about the rapture of thechurch?

Pre-Tribulational Rapture Mid-Tribulational rapture

Post-Tribulational Rapture Pre-Wrath rapture

Partial Rapture

Again, none of the above, for similar reasons. The historic traditionof biblical interpretation and Christian theology sees both “millennium” and“tribulation” as apocalyptic poetry, not as literal realities.

4. Inyour view or the view of your church explain in detail the meaning of thefollowing terms:

Day of the Lord—A richexpression that occurs in both the Old and New Testaments that denotes the “endof history,” time as we know it morphing into eternity, or, as C.S. Lewisdescribes it, the Author bringing down the curtain on the play.

Second Coming of Christ—Closelyrelated to the above, perhaps thought of as the incipient event in the sequencethat could be subsumed under “Day of the Lord.”

Sheep/Goat Judgment—Aparable in Matthew 25 that talks about the blessings that will occur to thosewho welcome Christian missionaries and the misfortune that will befall thosewho reject them.

Millennial Kingdom—Notan expression of theological significance.

Eternal State—Although Imight guess what this means, it is not a term I am familiar with.

5. Doyou believe that a person’s or church’s view of the end times has any practicalsignificance in the life of a believer? If yes…please explain what? Ifno…please explain why?

Yes, but probably in a limited sense. One of the cardinal Christianvirtues is Hope. A lively faith that, while the middle of the story may be acomplicated mess, the story nonetheless has a happy ending, is a majorfoundation for Hope. For one at peace with God, contemplation of “the end” ishope-filled.

6. Howsignificant is eschatology to the teaching ministry of the church which youlead? How significant is eschatology inyour teaching in the home?

It is significant at the time of year when it comes to the foregroundin our liturgical calendar—namely early Advent and the two or three Sundaysprior (i.e. mid-November through early December). Outside of that time, eschatologyoperates in the background while other themes take turns in the foreground.

Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T11:27:00.001-04:00

Perhaps the least-observed liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer is the Liturgy of the Word for Holy Saturday. On the nineteen consecutive Holy Saturdays during which I was a priest in charge of a congregation, I had a captive audience for this event, as I gathered the members of the Altar Guild for worship prior to their getting started decorating the church for Easter. It is somewhat ironic that, as a diocesan bishop, I no longer have such a captive audience, and I miss it. There is something sweet about this very brief "liturgy of the tomb."

On each of these nineteen occasions, rather than delivering a homily of my own, I simply read this ancient anonymous sermon. You've no doubt seen it; I posted it in previous years, and it's rather ubiquitous in the Christian blogsphere today. But it's just as moving as it was the first time I encountered it. Wish I could preach like that! Drink it in.

Something strange is happening-there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

“He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’
“I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

“For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

“See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

“I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

“Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.”

–From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

God So Loved the World

2011-04-22T18:34:00.002-04:00

The sixteenth verse of the third chapter of St John’s gospel is so verbally iconic of the entire Christian narrative that even its “address” is an icon in its own right. There’s actually a song that includes in its lyrics the words “John three-sixteen” … several times. A few years ago, it seemed impossible to view a major sporting event without spotting a huge poster being held up by someone, just saying “John 3:16.”

This is somewhat unfortunate, I think. The mere reference to these words has become a sort of shibboleth, a tool that can be abused as means of being judgmental. I think now of another song from my childhood, one that spoke of two possible “sides” with respect to one’s relation to God, and posing the question, “I’m on the right side, on which side are you?”

OK.

As I listen to (what I hope is) the prompting of the Spirit on this Good Friday, I find myself more drawn to John 3:17":

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

I’m not gong to weigh in on the Rob Bell controversy over “Is there a Hell?”; I’ve only read the headlines, not the articles. But I can testify from my own experience that there are Christians who seem a whole lot more interested in Hell and how hot it is and how long after death it takes to get there and precisely who’s headed that direction than they are in the love of God and how to spread it. Fifteen years after seeing it, I recall being dumbstruck by a scene in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. A dour Scottish Presbyterian minister is presiding at the burial of one Bess McNeil, who, before departing this life, made some less than laudable choices in her behavior. Looking straight into the grave at the coffin, he declaims, “Bess McNeil, ye are a sinner, and for your sins ye are condemned to Hell!” (Imagine it with a thick Scottish accent.) He appeared to like his job just a little bit to much in that moment.

So I’m aware in this moment of how much God’s project in sending us Jesus is about saving us, not about condemning anyone. Indeed, it’s precisely aimed at combating condemnation. Why? Because he loves us. Of course, that very love means he holds our free will in such high regard that he will not coerce us into loving him back, not annul the choices we make that separate us from him, such separation being the very definition of Hell. But I suspect that whoever’s in Hell is not there because it’s God’s idea.

The music in thenvideo is by Sir John Stainer, taken from his canata The Crucifixion. Yes, it’s rather oozingly Victorian, and that’s not everyone’s taste. I happen to like it … in regulated doses, at any rate. But the performance, you have to admit, is stellar.

Remember. John 3:17.

A Technology Note

2011-04-13T10:06:00.000-04:00

I'm suddenly finding an unexpected level of comfort praying the Daily Office completely from my iPad.

It requires two apps to make it a fluid and satisfying experience: iBCP and Lectionary. And it would not be possible without the multi-tasking feature on the iPad, accessed by double-clicking the Home button.

It requires knowing a handful of page numbers in the Prayer Book to get started. But in the spot where the Collect of the Day comes, it only takes clicking on two hyperlinks to find it, and then you can use the Back button to return to MP/EP.

The mechanics of doing this are scarcely more invasive (and may be even less so) than dealing with a Prayer Book (or office book) and lectionary (or Bible). It allows some actual praying to get done.

Holy Participation in Holy Mysteries

2011-04-13T00:43:00.000-04:00

Palm Sunday is coming right up. Lent seemed to take forever to get here, but then, once here, it has sped by. Of course, it's been a little weird for me personally, what with getting made a bishop ten days into it. The transition has distracted me from the more normal rhythm of the season.

But here we are, nonetheless. The historic western liturgy for Palm Sunday is, by any stretch, slightly incoherent at first glance. This incoherence is encapsulated right in the title of the day in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer--The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. Here's an interesting, if useless, bit of historical trivia: In the 1928 Prayer Book (and earlier editions), the Fifth Sunday in Lent was subtitled Passion Sunday, but none of the propers had anything to do with the Passion. The following Sunday was styled Palm Sunday, but there was no mention of the Triumphal Entry or anything to do with Palms, though there was the long reading of St Matthew's version of the Passion. So the incoherence is nothing new.

The current rite takes two distinct but cognate liturgies and puts them in a sequential temporal relationship with each other: first the Liturgy of the Palms and then the Liturgy of the Passion. This sequence makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, since, in the biblical narrative, the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem takes place before--five days before, to be precise--our Lord's Passion.

But here's a place where our intuition can get us into trouble if we're not vigilant, because it's tempting to infer from this liturgical-sequence-mirroring-historical-sequence that the mysteries in which we participate through the liturgical sanctification of time ought to be, and indeed are, a reenactment of historical time. Maundy Thursday gives way to Good Friday which gives way to Easter, just as the Last Supper gave way to the Passion, which then gave way to the Resurrection. We too easily assume that the liturgies of Holy Week are of the same genre as the reenactment of a Civil War battle.

We assume wrongly, however. Liturgy is an eschatological and mystical participation in the Paschal Mystery. And the Paschal Mystery, while faceted--or, we might even say, segmented--is a unitary whole. It encompasses the incarnation, birth, life, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of the Son of God, along with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the ongoing life of the Church, and the prefigurement of the whole thing in the Old Testament. Participation in part of it is participation in all of it. Reenactors of the Battle of Gettysburg can pretend that they don't know how it ends; in fact, the ability to so pretend is what makes the whole endeavor possible.

But Christians cannot forget that Jesus is risen from the dead.

Ever.

And our liturgical life does not call us to set aside such knowledge, even on Good Friday. Christians are appropriately solemn and awestruck on Good Friday. But if we shed tears, they are tears of gratitude, or tears of remorse, never tears of grief.

This may all seem like a fine distinction, but it is manifestly not a distinction without a difference. Only in the light of just such a distinction does what the church calls us to do this Sunday make any sense. If we see it simply as the reenactment of a historical sequence of events, then the reading of the synoptic Passion (from Matthew this year) seems out of place, an interloper, a chance to exploit a captive audience, many of which will not bother to show up the following Friday to hear John's account of the same events.

But if we wear our mystical and eschatological glasses to church on Sunday--or even if we can just tap into the frame of mind in which we would read poetry--then it will not only not be jarring, it will make consummate sense. In the parish hall, our lips will shout "Hosanna in the highest!" In the church, maybe twenty minutes later, those same lips will shout "Crucify him!" It would be a remarkably insensitive soul that would not be brought up short by the starkness of that juxtaposition. And precisely in that moment of being brought up short, we know the power of liturgy to take us into territory our rational minds are appropriately wary of, but which is necessary for us to traverse if we would find wholeness.

I'll see you at the cross.

It's All Local Now

2011-03-30T13:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the House of Bishop's spent the morning considering the proposed Anglican Covenant (there's a link to the text on the right). The Bishop of Atlanta, Neil Alexander, gave a lucid presentation in which he framed the issue as a manifestation of the classic tension between the local and the universal. Local, in this case, means national or provincial (i.e. the Episcopal Church), while universal refers to the worldwide Anglican Communion, the members of which are being invited to become covenant partners. It's about working out how to maintain both the autonomy of the "local" churches, in their disparate cultural and historical contexts, and the mutual accountability of the whole communion. This is nothing new in church history, nor is it uniquely an Anglican problem.

On a long afternoon walk on one of the trails here at Kanuga, I had an epiphany: It's all local. A hundred years ago, the concept of the Anglican Communion was already in full development. There was a sense of "we" as a unified global entity. And everybody knew, at a cognitive level, that there was wide diversity of liturgical practice, spiritual formation, polity, and trajectory of theological thought. Indeed, the idiosyncratic theological musings of a bishop in South Africa, with concomitant overtones in polity, led to the first Lambeth Conference. But few Anglicans in that day actually experienced such diversity. They didn't worry over much about what their fellow Anglicans on other continents were up to, and when they did become concerned, it took years--decades, even--for an actual controversy to develop and play out.

Then came the electronic revolution--the internet, in particular. Within the time of my own mature adulthood, the world has vastly shrunk. Within a few minutes of the moment I click Publish on this very blog post, somebody across North America, or in Asia or Africa or Europe, could be reading it and sharing it and creating an unruly viral conversation. (I don't actually expect that to happen with this post, of course!)

This means that all the assumptions about communication and community that I and my chronological peers (as well as, probably, the generation behind us, at least) have grown up with are increasingly meaningless. In church life, what can it now mean to distinguish between that which is local and that which is universal? Less and less, I think, because now it's all local.

The Anglican Covenant--no longer merely "proposed" for the three provinces that have adopted it--has been criticized for pushing the center of gravity too far away from local autonomy and toward mutual accountability. It has even been accused of setting up something akin to the Roman Catholic curia, though this seems rather far-fetched. But I strongly suspect that it's actually just an expression of what we all know but often don't want to acknowledge, that some reconfiguration of Anglicanism that takes into account our drastically "smaller" world is not only necessary but inevitable.

Anglican provinces have a choice. They can reject the Covenant in a principled defense of local autonomy. But this, I would suggest, is ostrich-like behavior. Denying the changed environment as a result of the internet isn't going to make it go away. Provinces that cling to outdated notions of local autonomy are only delaying the inevitable, and I don't think they will even be able to do it for very long. The other option is to embrace it, sign the Covenant, and remain a "player" in the evolution of a dynamic new Anglican Communion.

Bishop Alexander made the point that the Anglican Covenant will change us in the Episcopal Church. I would add that it will change us whether we adopt it or not. It will change our polity and will change our ecclesiology. I think it has great potential to change us for the better. If we distance ourselves from it, however, those changes may well be for the worse.

On Young Adults

2011-03-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I'm a Baby Boomer. Most members of my generation haven't yet figured out that we're NOT young adults anymore. But that's another blog post.

I'm at the regular spring meeting of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops. The focus of today's sessions was on the church's ministry to and with young adults. "Young adult" seems to be defined as between 18 and 35, so it's actually been a quarter century or so since I've been one, as young and hip as I may feel.

God knows, the Episcopal Church (all churches, for that matter) needs to be concerning itself with this topic, as this demographic is hugely conspicuous by its absence from our worship and communal life. It has ever been this, for a host of understandable life-cycle reasons, but the gap is much more pronounced now than it was when I was ... well ... a young adult (and I was always part of the church community when I was that age).

One of our presenters is a 40-something seminary professor with a background (and a PhD) in the social sciences. The other two (one ordained, one lay) live and work in the Diocese of Massachusetts, and are involved in a pilot project aimed at finding new ways to "do church" that connect more organically with their chronological (and, it probably needs to be said, cultural) peers.

Here's what I like about what they're doing: They are ambitious about forming intentional community--people who covenant to spend significant amounts of time with one another, sharing several meals a week, even sharing living quarters when feasible. They are serious about disciplined spiritual formation, and doing so be drilling down into their own Christian tradition, rather than indulging in an eclectic smorgasbord of spiritual practice. And they're not shy about saying that it's a relationship with Jesus that is at the root of what they do, that such a relationship has changed their lives and calling others into such a relationship is a critical part of their mission.

Here are my concerns about what I heard: Their articulation of the gospel seems not to be clearly connected to the Paschal Mystery. There was even a PowerPoint slide labeled "The Good News", and its content was simply "Community, Compassion, Co-creation." No Jesus. No dying and rising. No mystical participation in the eschaton. In all fairness, I would wager this was an oversight, and that they would be horrified to have it pointed out that Jesus was absent from their definition of the gospel. At least I hope so.

And then there is what for me is that bugaboo that just doesn't want to ever go away. Previous generations would have called it the Social Gospel. Nowadays the language is something about "God's mission" or "God's dream." Either way, the task before the Christian community is to participate in the implementation of this mission and the realization of this dream. And the metric for determining faithfulness to this task is the diminution of the total amount of human suffering. This is considered an end in itself, and it it is accomplished without people coming into an explicit relationship with Jesus in the communion of the church, then that's really no big deal; the end is still accomplished.

This isn't that occasion for a treatise on that subject. Suffice it to say that I find it an impoverished account of the Christian narrative, and I am saddened when the notion is purveyed and accepted as self-evident.

These young people are inspiring. I wish them well. They are doing many things that I would hope to adapt and implement in my ministry. But we need to keep the main thing the main thing.

Rookie Appearance

2011-03-24T23:13:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow morning, the FAA permitting, I will fly to the Asheville, NC area (Kanuga, a conference center) for my first meeting of the House of Bishops. One of the major themes of the meeting will be ministry to and with young adults. This is certainly a timely concern, as anyone familiar with the demographics of the Episcopal Church can attest.

My better self wants to applaud whoever planned a focus in this area. Perhaps we will collectively begin to "get it" and proactively embrace, rather than lag behind, the reality that we live in a post-Christian society, and start to aim our message at theological blank slates rather than Church hoppers who are disgruntled with their present connection.

My more cynical self seriously wonders whether whatever we do is too little, too late, that we have passed a tipping point, and that there will need to be some sort of ecclesial apocalypse before we can emerge reconfigured for more authentic mission in the 21st century as it actually is, not as we wish it were.

I honestly hope my better self is right on this one, and that I come away from Kanuga with a deeper understanding of the issue. In any case, since I'm too lazy to lug my laptop on the trip, and getting a WiFi connection on my iPad is sometimes dicey, I probably won't be blogging for the next week or so.

Being What I Do, Doing What I Am

2011-03-21T22:51:00.001-04:00

Here's the holy huddle from last Saturday. Take my word for it; I'm in there somewhere.

The day was utterly joyful and completely exhausting. It's been just a couple of weeks more than a year since I had the first serious conversation with someone about the possibility of being nominated to become the 11th Bishop of Springfield. The disposition of my heart at the time was that, yes, this may indeed be a vocation, that I had the raw charism that, perfected by the Holy Spirit through the sacrament of ordination, might make me a round peg in a round hole. But the odds were long, and I've had plenty of unvalidated spiritual premonitions in my time. So I'm still completely in awe at what has transpired. When I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday morning, my first thought was, "Who's that guy in a purple shirt who looks so much like me?"

That purple shirt--along with the other associated "bling" (as my 30-something children are wont to call it)--may be a small thing, inconsequential in itself, but as I've pondered it all during fleeting moments of solitude over the past couple of days, it has been the conduit toward a deeper understanding of the calling into which I have been (and continue to be) incorporated. It's a symbol, and among Anglicans, it evokes an immediate--almost visceral--response. It "means more than it says."

And it reminds me that being a bishop in the Catholic tradition, simply making myself available to be a symbol is a hugely important part of the job. Sure, there are thorny pastoral and administrative issues to tackle, and I've already got such things on my radar screen. But when I walked into St Paul's Cathedral yesterday morning wearing a mitre and carrying a crozier, I was aware--almost crushingly aware--of the weight of responsibility for me to simply be The Bishop, as distinguished from doing bishop-like things.

After the consecration liturgy on Saturday, I tried to go to the reception, but hardly got more than ten feet into the hall. I was beset with, of all things, requests for my autograph on the program booklet. I complied cheerfully, and posed for a lot of pictures in the process. But I was fully aware, even in the midst of such joyful activity, that people didn't really want an autograph from Dan Martins. They wanted an autograph from Daniel, Bishop of Springfield. That may seem like a fine distinction, but it is, I believe, a significant one (literally ... significant).

Today, I've tried to figure out whether I want to wear my ring even when I'm not "in harness" (Monday is my day off). Again, that may seem like an utterly trivial decision, and on one level it undoubtedly is. My first thought is, No. The ring is heavy, and I'm almost constantly aware of it being there when I'm wearing it. It feels like an interloper; I haven't worn anything on that finger since I had a class ring in high school. But perhaps the weight of that ring is precisely what I need to be aware of right now. This vocation indeed weighs something. I am suddenly acutely aware that I am less "my own" than I have ever been. This was true, of course, as a priest. But that truth is now magnified several times over. I have no doubt that there will be heartache in what lies ahead. I also have no doubt that grace will abound. No doubt whatever.

Lessons & Carols Text Notes

2010-12-19T14:42:00.000-05:00

We're doing Lessons & Carols tonight at St Anne's. My lovely and talented Dragonfly is the director. The texts and music are sublime, of course, but Brenda's program notes on the choral selections are themselves works of literary art.

Notes on Carol Texts Brenda Martins

Adam Lay Y’bounden: This famous and much-set medieval text not only describes the key points of the ‘fall’ in the garden of Eden, but goes on to revel in that disaster as a catalyst for wondrous grace: “Blessed be the time that apple take was!” Matthew Larkin’s setting for treble voices evokes swirling winds in a primal cosmos…and the moment in which God spoke and brought order out of both nothingness and chaos. And the Word spoken? Redemption. Such a Redemption…that even pre-exists the need.

Ralph Vaughan-Williams is credited with rediscovering and preserving the text of The Truth From Above, whose ten verses chronicling the fall from grace to redemption in Jesus had been passed down through oral tradition. He set it twice. Tonight’s version of this carol—which he transcribed from a Herefordshire folksinger—includes verses 1, 2, 5 & 6 of the oringinal ten. So it seems there is good reason that the phrase ‘endless woe’ seems a non sequitur to the prior ‘woman was made with man to dwell’.

Ave Maria is arguably one of—if not the—most blessed and revered sacred texts. And if that is so, then we are doubly fortunate tonight to hear what is perhaps the most heart-stirring and mystically beautiful setting ever, by Franz Biebl. There is no inkilin of the messiness of the angel’s proclamation or any of its scandalous ramifications, but simply the awe-filled harmonies of heavenly bodies at the most holy moment—to which the response was to be the most cosmos-rending ‘yes’ ever.

Herself a Rose: Mystical poet Christina Rosetti’s sublime poem (1877) speaks to the precious interconnectivity between Mary and Jesus… Mother and Child . From the first few phrases we are both playfully and profoundly drawn into that poetic and mysterious relationship where One is mirrored in the Other. May we be inspired on our journey to be transformed into His likeness.

The Christ Child: British composer Will Todd weaves a lovely, rocking setting around G. K. Chesterton’s marvelous poem. In and through that collaboration, we are given three glimpses of the Christ Child as He grows—first on Mary’s lap, then on her heart, then standing at her knee. Yet through prophetic vision, we see more—The weary, weary world is promised all is aright; the world’s desire is in her arms. And, in a foreshadowing triumph, heaven and earth are joined in adoration of their King.

Sure on this Shining Night: James Agee’s poem has captured for decades the hearts of those seeking wholeness. Morton Lauridsen, who primarily sets religious texts, gives it a lush, expansive setting that emphasizes the reality…the surety of this Shining Night. Tonight, we are there. We claim the mystical vision of the health and healing we know are ours. All is health. All is healed. Bring on the high summer of God’s presence in those worshiping the Babe, then…in our hearts, now…and in presence of the crowned Christ Child in the world to come.

God So Loved the World truly speaks for itself. John 3:16? Certainly a most wholly and holy rejoinder to John 1

Feedback (or...An Evangelical Walks into a Nave)

2010-11-10T09:17:00.002-05:00

Not long ago I preached a Sunday sermon about one of the techniques I have found useful for keeping my own liturgical spirituality fresh, which is to put myself intentionally in the place of a visitor, experiencing for the first time (or close to the first time) that which I and others now find routine and commonplace.

I don't often actually get feedback from such a person--any feedback at all, let alone articulate and penetrating feedback. Over the past couple of years at St Anne's, we've been getting a small stream of visitors from the local evangelical liberal arts college. In the milieu of that community, St Anne's is kind of para-normal; clearly we "know the Lord," but we do strange stuff. Some of them have a taste of our liturgical worship rooted in Catholic tradition, quietly roll their eyes, and move on. Others have an epiphany.

Connor Park is one of the latter, apparently. This morning he posted the following (longish) poem on his Facebook page, and I share it here with his permission. I love it when somebody "gets it" even without the benefit of months of careful catechesis. It's almost enough to make on believe in the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit.

(Connor Park's poetry blog is here.)

On the Eucharist #1

So it's mid-autumn, right

Smack dab in the middle of the season of change

Where everything green turns to gold

Like God's up there playing Midas or something

“You thought that green was gorgeous? - Just wait till you see what colours I have left.”

And everything's falling down

or falling apart.

The trees are out in the cold with no coats.

Crazy trees.

But anyhow,

An evangelical walked into the nave -

Great set up for a joke, right?

That's sort of how I always thought too,

Like God's up there throwing feelings my way or something -

“You thought THAT theology was mindblowing? - Just wait till you hear my really good stuff.”

And everything's rising up

or raring up.

The kid is out on the road with no coat.

Crazy kid.

So there's this guy right?

And he's the type of nutcase who'll wear sandals in sub-zero

And maybe doesn't quite have it all together

And maybe he's got a twinge of that postmodern, question-the-world, Jacques Derrida, Jack Kerouac, Jack Daniels différance,

Drunk on uncertainty and linguistic ambiguity

Incapable of settling, living life with abandon

Or at least as wild as his upbringing will allow.

So all his life he's had the answers,

And a bunch of questions too -

Why am I here?

Whose language am I speaking?

Why am I here again? Where's my home, my hope?

And everything's bursting forth

or busting doors.

The guy's out in the world without a clue.

Crazy guy.

All right.

Leave him on his corner for a while.

He could go on for hours.

Let's talk about bread.

About how yeast -

when harbored in a warm and welcoming envelope of water

and nurtured on the sweet monosaccharides of life

expands and ferments and sweetens and enriches

and turns the sticky glutens of grain

into something well worth eating and savoring.

What was potentially, but only just potentially edible

Is nourishing, life-giving, delicious.

And how about wine?

You've got these little vine berries

Some people think they're ambrosia but

Most will acknowledge that grapes are not actually all that.

But you take this purple fruit

and walk all over it

and throw in - what else? - yeast

and bury that for a while

And raise it up again

As an invigorating force.

These are the things that we can understand.

Simple facts. Not a lot to question there.

Nope.

But the kid, he's out for more

In this mid autumn time when everything is changing

During the season when green is passing out

During the question-raising time.

It's like God is out there somewhere, right here –

“You thought the first two decades were interesting? Just wait a little while longer.”

The kid's out for enough love to drown in.

Crazy kid.

This kid is a walking paradox, all right?

A homebody to the core

A wearer of floured aprons and a dough-puncher

An eater of warm stew and wearer of slippers

But at the same time

A road-lusty wanderer

A wearer of flannel shirts and the same jeans for ten days

A devourer of life and a barefoot nomad

At least, metaphorically.

Yes, a complete oxymoron:

Contending peacenik.

Studious poet.

Egalitarian medievalist.

A musician with no rhythm

A believer with questions.

Confound it all, but he is also a man helplessly in love.

Crazy kid.

So that joke from earlier?

An evangelical walked into the nave?

True story.

Searching for God knows what.

Indeed.

He's always supposed

Kid has

That the readiness is all.

If he waited restless long enough

His colours would change without intent or action

And the undiscovered country would remain so –

Found but not discovered

And he'd gain entry with enough forethought

and examination

and above all, reading

An armchair theologian of a God in the wild.

Now that's absurd.

To set out on a voyage without ever casting off.

Remember, this kid is a very oxymoron

Definitely like God decided to tell a joke –

“There’s this kid, you see, drunk on questions, dizzy for answers.”

But things do change,

in mid-autumn

In the falling of the leaves

Other types of falling happen slow

There’s that love thing

“Gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight…”

And there’s the discovery of home in a concrete crate –

And what’s more the embrace of people with as much paradox

as the kid could ever dream.

and yes, the girl.

She warrants two mentions at least.

So many more though, definitely.

Everything budding, brewing, rising

Yeasty.

“An evangelical walked into the nave.”

Searching for God knows what

And he did.

Miracle of miracles –

The forensic formulae for bread and wine

Come up short, which confirms his poetic leaning

But also so much more.

The wind blows

and the light in the window catches his eye,

illuminating, knowing, forgiving

“…by what we have done, and by what we have left undone…”

and a centuries-old rhythm calms his heart

beating, walking, steady pacing

“…joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven…”

and the smell of incense hallows him a temple

ringing, singing, loud echoing still

“Hosanna in the highest.”

The wind blows

“…to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son...”

And he kneels.

And he rises.

New.

You’d think that God was crazy or something.

A Welcome Word

2010-11-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

I received the following this morning. Most of the members of CLSD probably differ from my position on some the core theological and ethical controversies that currently beset the Episcopal Church, so I am especially grateful to Chuck Evans and the leadership of that organization for putting out this message.

An Open Letter to Standing Committee Members and Bishops with Jurisdiction by The Concerned Laity of the Springfield Diocese (“CLSD”)

The Concerned Laity of the Springfield Diocese was initially organized in 2003 (in association with the Via Media USA) to provide a voice for the disenfranchised moderate majority (primarily lay, but also including a few brave clergy) by calling for full participation of all points of view and all sorts of persons in the governance and ministry life of the diocese, and for Springfield's return to an active and cooperative role within the Episcopal Church.

CLSD congregations represent approximately two-thirds of ASA and Pledge and Plate income within the Diocese of Springfield and many CLSD members were actively involved in the election process that resulted in the election of Father Dan Martins.

CLSD wants all in the church, especially members of Standing Committees and Bishops with jurisdiction, to know that while Father Martins may not have been the first choice of all of our members, he was very near the top of everyone’s list of preferred candidates, and we strongly urge you to provide Father Martins with the necessary consents. CLSD has been assured in writing by Bishop-elect Martins that he will not take the Diocese out of The Episcopal Church -- “I cannot imagine circumstances in which I would seek to lead the Diocese of Springfield out of the Episcopal Church. Period. Full stop. Take that to the bank. Should I ever come to believe that my own soul is fatally compromised by my association with the Episcopal Church, I would leave it simply as an individual ……. I am clearer than ever that this is where I am called to be. What would cause me to individually leave would be a conviction that my own soul's health was in clear and present danger. I don't foresee that happening.)” Thus, Father Martin’s stated commitment, and the very makeup of the Diocese of Springfield (see the election Process Survey results http://www.episcopalspringfield.org/documents/SurveyResults.pdf) should assure the broader church that the Diocese of Springfield is not leaving the Episcopal Church ..… the most favorable environment for that eventuality has passed without ever having the necessary votes to succeed.

CLSD believes our bishop-elect to be a person of integrity and honesty, with evident gifts for gracious listening, inclusive leadership and pastoral care – three of the most urgent needs within the Diocese. We believe he will be faithful to his vows to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church. We encourage anyone with questions or concerns to contact Fr Martins directly [frdanmartins@gmail.com].

The hope and prayer of the CLSD is for a speedy affirmative conclusion of the consent process. We look forward to the consecration of our new bishop on March 19, 2011, with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as chief consecrator.

Charles T Evans – Convener / Moderator CLSD

Consent

2010-11-01T14:14:00.001-04:00

Almost since the day of my election as Eleventh Bishop of Springfield, there have been rumors that some folks in my former diocese (San Joaquin) would mount an organized campaign of opposition to my consecration (scheduled for 19 March 2011). I had hoped that they were the sort of rumors that turn out not to be true. Sadly, this was not the case. Last Thursday I received a phone call from Bishop Jerry Lamb, provisional bishop of the (reconstituted) Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. Bishop Lamb informed me that, within a matter of a couple of hours, a set of documents would be sent to all the Standing Committees and Bishops-with-jurisdiction asking that they withhold consent from my election. (The package may be found here.)

Since I am aware that Standing Committees across the Episcopal Church meet at various times of the month according to local custom, and that several will indeed be meeting within the next week, and since I don’t have access to the email addresses of all the members of these committees, a platform like my own blog is the only one available to me in which I might effectively respond to charges made by the Bishop and Standing Committee of the Diocese of San Joaquin. I do so acutely aware of the fine line between “presenting a defense” and “being defensive.” I hope to competently do the former while avoiding the latter.

One of the things I have become aware of in all this is that what a person knows to be true about his words and actions doesn’t always correspond with what others perceive about those words and actions. As I have considered my words and actions as a priest active in the affairs of the Diocese of San Joaquin during my thirteen years there (1994-2007), I am aware of how plausible it is for others to surmise that I was at all times an “insider,” that I had Bishop Schofield’s ear and was part of a relatively small group of advisors whom he took into his confidence. I was, after all, a Rural Dean from 2000 until my departure, and a member of the Standing Committee for one term and part of another one, separated by a year of hiatus. I was also an Examining Chaplain and put in charge of organizing many diocesan liturgies.

For much of this time, particularly the first five years of the last decade, this perception can probably be said to be largely true. I shared the concerns of Bishop Schofield, and the majority of clergy and laity within the diocese, over the steady movement of the Episcopal Church’s leadership away from classical Anglican and Christian moral teaching. I was alarmed by the actions of General Convention in 2003. In January 2004 I, along with one other priest and two lay persons, accompanied Bishop Schofield to the organizational meeting for what became the Anglican Communion Network. I signed the charter of that network. Yet, at that very meeting, after some animated discussion, the majority of those voting clarified the intention of the group that the ACN was to operate within the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church. I voted with the majority on that question, and would not have signed the charter had the matter not prevailed. Also at that same meeting, we explicitly repudiated the so-called “Chapman Memo,” which laid out a strategy for “replacing” the Episcopal Church with another Anglican province.

As we know in retrospect, of course, the Anglican Communion Network did not long retain a commitment to operating within its original framework. In August 2006, I once again represented the diocese at an ACN council meeting and was dismayed by how the tone had changed. Clearly the impetus toward separation on the part of some key leadership was a “done deal.” Even before that time, I had begun to distance myself from participation in such activities, and to voice my reservations at meetings of the Standing Committee and Rural Deans. As a result, I, along with other leaders of similar persuasion, began to perceive that we were being frozen out of the decision-making process, that Bishop Schofield’s true inner circle consisted only of three or four diocesan staff members.

I found myself, then, in an exceedingly awkward place. I revered—indeed, loved—my Bishop, and wanted to be loyal to him to the extent of my conscience. I did not wish to number myself among his detractors, or even to aid them in any way. Moreover, I realized that, even had I been inclined to do so, directly opposing him would have been an utterly fruitless effort. He commanded a strong following among both clergy and laity—and even among the majority of my own parishioners. And as I have mentioned, I was in basic sympathy with the concerns driving the high level of frustration and anger within the diocese.

Yet, at the same time, I knew I could not go where he was going. The sexuality conflict is serious and troubling, but it is my sense now, and was my sense then, that having what I perceive to be the “wrong” view on conflicted issues does not make someone my enemy, only my opponent. I can “share a church” with people who disagree with me on these things; indeed, I believe it a gospel mandate that I do so.

So the path I ended up following was one of loyal and oblique opposition. Ironically, the documents posted by the current San Joaquin Standing Committee, if one takes the time to examine them closely, quite clearly illustrate this. When the Committee on Constitution and Canons proposed an amendment to Article II of the diocesan constitution that said, in effect, “We’re going to be Anglican, and affiliate with a province to be named later,” I cooperated with two clergy colleagues in crafting a substitute that would have been compatible with remaining within the Episcopal Church. (True, it omitted any mention of TEC, but it is worth noting that the “unqualified accession” language had already been removed some years earlier, so that concern was not at issue in 2006.) This was supplemented by a resolution that we drafted that appointed a committee to study various options for ensuring continued affiliation with the Anglican Communion, one of which would have been continued affiliation with the Episcopal Church. I did everything within my power, given the political realities in the diocese, to retard and subvert progress toward separation from the Episcopal Church. I even proposed an amendment to the constitutional change on the floor of convention that would have restored mention of the Episcopal Church to Article II, but my amendment was roundly defeated. So I failed in my efforts, but it was not for lack of trying.

Of course, from late 2006—actually, about the time of the diocesan convention that year—and on into the following year, I was involved with the search process at St Anne’s in Warsaw, Indiana, where I now serve as rector. I accepted that call in May 2007. In my experience, God’s timing usually turns out to be pretty good (!), and in this case it got me out of a situation where my opposition would have needed to turn from oblique to direct, not only with my bishop, but with my own parish, where the vestry was overwhelmingly committed to Bishop Schofield’s leadership. As the saying goes, it would not have been pretty.

Let me conclude by reiterating my intention to make my vows when I am consecrated a bishop without crossing my fingers, either physically or mentally. I will neither attempt to lead, nor cooperate with anyone else’s effort, in taking the Diocese of Springfield out of the Episcopal Church. In fact, I will oppose any such effort. I have tasted the fruit of that sort of activity, and it’s not sweet. I am committed to the Episcopal Church, and believe my specific vocation is to exercise my ministry within the Episcopal Church. My voice has been and will continue to be a minority voice on many important questions. I accept what comes with that territory. It is my call.

Life is Changed, Not Ended

2010-09-19T22:09:00.000-04:00

OK, that's a quote from the funeral liturgy, so it's kind of ripped out of context. I have not died. But, metaphorically, there has been a kind of death, and simultaneously a rebirth to new life. It began with definitive suddenness when I received a phone call from the President of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Springfield yesterday afternoon informing me that their electing synod had chosen me to become the 11th bishop of their diocese. But this death-leading-to-rebirth will take some months to fully play out; the canonical processes must be satisfied, and they take time.

Some hours after the event, someone told me the bells of St Paul's Cathedral in Springfield were rung, announcing my election. It was at that moment that I nearly broke down and wept. I am quite certain I have never felt so humbled in my life.

So begins a time of transition--a rather long one, actually. I will probably end up being a bishop-elect for as long as I was a deacon in 1989. But there will be an immense amount to do on both ends of the transition, so I'm not particularly worried that time will drag. At my age, time never really drags much, anyway.

One of the questions that I had to answer during the "walkabout" events in the diocese three weeks ago was, "If you have a blog, will you continue it after you are a bishop?" I answered then that I'm not entirely sure, but I hope so. I realize that being a bishop is a rather different kind of job (that is, not merely different as a matter of degree) than being a parish priest. It comes with its own peculiar constraints, constraints that I am at this time only conceptually familiar with. So that may have an effect on the character of my blogging. I don't know. It's something we'll just have to live into.

A Prayer For Today

2010-09-18T08:27:00.001-04:00

Marcel Dupre improvising on Veni Creator Spiritus on the organ of St Sulpice, Paris. The Dragonfly and I visited this place in 2005, and we have remembered it with great affection ever since.

A Friday Afternoon Sentiment

2010-09-17T16:41:00.001-04:00

"Since from his bounty I receive
such proofs of love divine,
Had I a thousand tongues to give,
Lord, they should all be thine."
--Samuel Stennett, 1787
(Hymnal 1940, #353)

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

2010-09-12T21:33:00.001-04:00

One of my parishioners posted this as her Facebook status this afternoon:

So, M...'s been sick for a couple weeks, and I haven't let her drink from the chalice at church. This morning at the altar rail she asks, "Mom, can I have salvation this morning?"

M. is her daughter, who turns seven this Friday. Reading this was, for me, one of those luminous moments when the veil that divides Heaven and Earth is exquisitely thin.

If you know the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer, it's not difficult to see where she got the language of her petition. For longer than this child can remember, she has drunk from the chalice while hearing the words, "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation." Hence ... can I have salvation this morning?

Of course, M. was saying more than she knows. I suspect that she also knows more than she can say. (Shameless plug: This little girl has been formed for the past two years in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.) And I thank her mother for sharing this precious moment. We all stand in need of being reminded just what it is we're doing every time we stretch our hands across a communion rail. We are, implicitly, asking, "Can I have salvation this morning?" And the answer, unfailingly, is ... Yes.

Thy Will Be Done

2010-09-05T21:50:00.008-04:00

My parents-in-law, for as long as I can remember them inhabiting a home together, had a wall plaque that quoted (paraphrased, actually) I Timothy 6:15 in the King James Version: “God is the blessed controller of all things.” Much to my relief, the Revised Standard Version chooses to render that text “blessed and only Sovereign,” thus sparing all Christian apologists one more iteration of the theodicy question, the “problem” of Evil. If God is the blessed controller of all things, why did the earth quake in New Zealand yesterday? And why hasn’t my wife’s friend’s house sold yet, as a large swath of the Facebook world has been summoned repeatedly to pray it would?

The will of God and the sovereignty of God, those things that come under the doctrinal category of Providence, are mysteries eminently worth pondering—and yes, I’ve been pondering them a little bit more intensely than usual of late, given what’s going on in my life. Christians pray “thy will be done” virtually every time we pray publicly at all. Jesus himself taught us that petition. What do we mean by it? If it is indeed a petition at all, then there is an implied element of uncertainty; that is, it’s possible that God’s will may be thwarted. That points to a trajectory with an unsettling conclusion, one in which God is manifestly weak. But perhaps it’s not so much a petition as an statement of expectation, an affirmation of faith. Of course God’s will will be done. He’s God! If so, however, the trajectory is equally unsettling. It leads to simplistic fatalism—“whatever will be will be”—and silly nostrums like the one that attributes the death of a child to “God needing another little angel in Heaven.”

There are two essential theological rudders, I think, that enable us to navigate the narrow territory between the rock and the hard place. One is the Doctrine of the Fall. This is a bit of dogma that I’m finding lots of people don’t like to take seriously these days, which is a pity, because it really is quite essential. The biblical underpinning, of course, lies in Genesis 3, with the narrative of our primordial ancestors yielding to the Serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, and the Lord’s subsequent pronouncement of consequences that affect all their progeny, which is to say, us. In his epistle to the Romans, St Paul takes this story and teases out its universal implications, not only for humankind, but for the entire created order, with “all creation groaning” (Rom. 8:22) under its weight. St Augustine took up the same baton in the fifth century and left it lying around for John Calvin to find and gild even further in the sixteenth.

But even if one is averse (as I certainly am) to embracing the whole Calvinist project (total depravity and double predestination, etc.), or even the Augustinian one (as the Eastern Orthodox are), there is broad agreement in Christian thought that human beings are congenitally predisposed toward egocentrism, enthroning ourselves where God alone should be, which is the very root of all Sin. We are, then, both victims of Sin—we didn’t ask to be born this way, after all—and perpetrators of Sin; “the Devil made me do it” may be true at some level, but that doesn’t let us off the hook of personal responsibility for the nasty things we do and say and the good things we fail to do or say. A great deal of human suffering—arguably the majority of it—is attributable to the fact that we are not sinners simply because we commit sins; we commit sins because we are sinners. We were born that way. Ultimately, 20 million people perished under the Third Reich because Adolf Hitler was born a sinner. He was a major perpetrator, but he was also a victim. Each of us is both of those things as well, though probably in differing proportions.

This is all what we refer to as our “fallenness.” It both infects and affects us at a personal level. This is why some act of confession or contrition is a regular part of our public worship. In the parlance of the ‘79 BCP baptismal liturgy, we’re talking about the “sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.” It also infects and affects us at a social (one might dare to say, political) level. Poverty, for example, is a social evil. Except in the rarest cases, however, it is not attributable to the malevolent actions of any individual, or even any single group of individuals. It is a systemic feature of the way we organize ourselves economically, particularly if we participate in an economy that relies on market forces. On one level, I’m not personally responsible for making anyone else poor. On another level, I am, simply because I benefit from our (relatively) free market economy. In our baptismal renunciations, these are the “evil forces of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” (Please note: I am not an enemy of free market capitalism; I believe firmly that it’s the worst possible economic system, except for all the others.) But, as St Paul is at pains to point out, the Fall affects not only humankind, but all of creation. It’s not just people that are fallen; the world is fallen. When the earth shook under Port au Prince last year, when Katrina blew into the gulf coast five years ago, we witnessed the tragic consequences of the Fall of creation. (Not human wickedness, mind you--I carry no brief for Pat Robertson!--but the brokenness of creation at a "meta-structural" level.) Those things did not happen only as a result of tectonic plate shifting or a low pressure system feeding off itself in exponential fury. There was a deeper cause, one that is beyond the ken of geologists or meteorologists. We’re talking here about “the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.” These, too, we renounce when we stand at the font.

Clearly, it is not God’s will that death entered the world “through one man’s sin” (per Paul to the Romans). There may be a host of reasons behind a tornado forming and wiping out a trailer park, or cancer cells metastasizing inside a human body, but “because it was God’s will” is not one of them. Poverty and war and racism and gang violence and bad hair days are not God’s will. God’s will can never be righteously invoked as a justification for lying, cheating, stealing, or breaking any of the other Ten Commandments. By endowing us with the ability to not obey him, God took an audacious calculated risk. It can be plausibly argued that he lost his bet in the Garden of Eden, and has been losing it over and over again ever since. Not everything that happens is God’s will. “Que sera sera” may be a great song for Doris Day to sing, but it’s lousy theology. Human sinfulness, fueled by the “elementary principles of the world” (per Paul in Galatians and Colossians), can and does sometimes thwart the will of God.

The problem, of course, is that this leaves God in what looks like an indefinitely weakened and vulnerable position. So what do we do? I would suggest that this is where the second of my two essential theological rudders gets put into the water, which is the doctrine of Ubiquitous Grace. OK, there isn’t, so far as I know, actually a formal doctrine by that name—I made it up (the name, that is; the idea is hardly original)—but I’m fairly certain it’s consistent with both scripture and tradition. To say that God’s grace is “ubiquitous” is to say that it’s everywhere—places we expect to find it (like sacraments) and places we would never think to look for it, sometimes even smuggled in with the very sinful behavior that is trying to separate us from God’s love. God is the consummate opportunist, and is not above using even our sinful acts as “mules” for his redeeming grace. Should we then sin the more so that grace may abound the more? Well, Paul has already answered that question in the negative. But grace abounds nonetheless. It abounds everywhere, in the unlikeliest of places, whether we’re looking for it or not.

Sometimes what we experience in the wake of our prayers looks obviously like our petitions have been granted, and for that we give great thanks. It is an occasion of praise. At other times, not so much, and we have that "prayers hitting the ceiling" feeling. So, from our time-bound human perspective, then, we might say that God is indeed the “blessed controller of all things,” but that his “control” is exercised retrospectively, not prospectively. God is the master of Plan B. God is never above acting tactically when human sinfulness, to say nothing of the “elementary principles of the world,” frustrates his acting strategically. God comes in right behind the messes we make, or the messes made by tectonic plates or low pressure systems or cell growth run amok, and begins gathering the debris and weaving it back together in the grand tapestry of what theologians call Redemption. And redemptive weaving is an improvisatory art. It morphs constantly as Ubiquitous Grace responds to the attempts of the Evil One to blind us to our identity and destiny. Most of the time, we’re too close to the tapestry to get a sense of the evolving picture. But once in a while, we actually get to see a glimpse of suffering redeemed, of vessels made stronger precisely where they had been broken. I have seen broken hearts and I have seen mended hearts, and it’s joy to behold.

“Thy will be done.” It will, in the end. But getting there is, for God, a matter of art, not architecture. It’s not anything that looks all that “controlling” while it’s in process. But it is, indeed, blessed.

Eucharist: An Anniversary Love Poem

2010-08-26T23:03:00.000-04:00

Sometime tomorrow afternoon, Brenda and I will have been married 38 years. "Growing old together" is no longer an abstraction, but a present experience. I've never been happier in my life than I am now, and I've never been happier with Brenda than I am now, and I don't mind saying so publicly. Since I didn't make it to the store for a card, here's my little gift.

Eucharist

good gift

we give ourselves to each other

one coincidence at a time,

in the peripheral vision of dailiness

catalyzed on occasion

with a burst of intentionality

we are given to one another

as hands and clay

as chisel and granite

as river and limestone

the result revealed only over time

and after no small irritation

and in all our becoming

we are the gift of us

a semiotic herald

of wholeness trumping brokenness

of Hope snarling to Despair,

"Gotcha!"

good gift

Singing Hopefully

2010-08-26T15:50:00.001-04:00

What follows is cross-posted from my parish’s website and newsletter, where I maintain a monthly reflection on one of the hymns we will be singing in our worship.

Hope is one of the traditional "cardinal" Christian virtues (along with Faith and Love). It is something to which we are invited to aspire, to cultivate. Hope is a habit of the heart that is perhaps well illustrated by Yogi Berra's famous quote, "It ain't over till it's over." Hope is the fruit of a deep inner conviction, that, in the end, God wins. Creation is redeemed, and all is well for those who are reconciled with God. Our Prayer Book catechism puts it this way: "The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God's purposes for the world."

The Scriptures give us several images of the fulfillment of our hope in Christ, especially in the Revelation to St John. It would probably be inadvisable to take them with exact literalness; they are, rather, compelling poetic symbols that point to a reality much grander than anything human language could describe. One of these images is "Jerusalem," which is, of course, literally a city on this earth that has been intimately bound up in the sacred story of God's dealings with humankind, but which is also a sign of something greater, something yet to come.

Peter Abelard was a 12th century theologian and poet who lived in a place and time in which it was arguably much more difficult to cultivate the virtue of Hope than it is for us here and now, much more difficult to see "Jerusalem" descending from the clouds as a bride adorned for her bridegroom. It was a time of widespread violence, epidemic disease, and corruption at all levels of church and state in Europe. It was in such an environment that Peter Abelard penned the lines of this Latin hymn, drawing on the biblical imagery of Jerusalem, and painting a vivid picture of the realization of the Christian hope.

O what their joy and their glory must be, those endless Sabbaths the blessèd ones see; crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest: God shall be all, and in all ever blest.

The notion of Sabbath denotes rest, and rest is part of the symbolic vocabulary of our hope (as when we pray for the departed that they may "rest in peace"). When we come to our eternal Sabbath rest, we know God to "be all, and in all."

Truly “Jerusalem” name we that shore, city of peace that brings joy evermore; wish and fulfillment are not severed there, nor do things prayed for come short of the prayer.

Indeed, "Jerusalem" literally (and, it would seem, somewhat ironically much of the time) means "city of peace." The second half of this stanza is perhaps the most poetically and spiritually profound part of the entire hymn. In the realization of our hope in Christ, there is no longer a gap between wish and fulfillment, between what we pray for and what we receive from God.

There, where no troubles distraction can bring,we the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing; while for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise thy blessed people eternally raise.

Of all the poetic images of what goes on in the heavenly Jerusalem, "singing" is the most prolific. Perhaps this is what lies behind St Augustine's aphorism to the effect that "those who sing pray twice." The importance of singing in our earthly worship can probably not be overstated; it is evidently in some way a preparation for what will become a consuming occupation when our hope comes to fruition.

Now, in the meanwhile, with hearts raised on high, we for that country must yearn and must sigh, seeking Jerusalem, dear native land, through our long exile on Babylon’s strand.

Of course, while our hope is assured (because it is founded on God's victory manifested in Jesus rising from the dead), it is something we yet wait for. We live in a time "in between." We are in the ironic position of citizens of a country they have never seen, who live in exile, awaiting their arrival in their "dear native land."

Low before him with our praises we fall, of whom, and in whom, and through whom are all; of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son; through whom, the Spirit, with them ever One.

Latin hymns from the Middle Ages invariably close with a trinitarian doxology, a final outburst of praise and adoration toward the Triune God.

This text was rendered into English by the great John Mason Neale, a Church of England priest from the 19th century who is singularly responsible for brining innumerable treasures of Greek and Latin hymnody into the experience of English-speaking Christians. It has been married to the tune O Quanta Qualia (the opening words of the Latin text) since its first appearance in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern. The tune is somewhat older, however; it appears in several 17th century French sources.

Lost in Translation

2010-08-24T08:27:00.002-04:00

I've been doing a good bit of reading and reflecting lately on poverty, particularly poverty that is not situational (i.e. middle class folks who suffer job loss, divorce, or disability and end up broke), but generational (I’m poor, my parents were poor, and my children will be poor). I’ve been very impressed by the work of Dr Ruby Payne on this subject, particularly the book she co-authored, What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty. The drum she keeps beating is that generational poverty is not so much a circumstance as it is a culture, a system of assumptions and thought and behavior that conspire together to keep people in poverty from one generation to the next. I’ve been paying attention to these things because of some people that the Lord seems to have “sent” to my parish—not only, I’m convinced, for their benefit, but for the benefit of the good-hearted middle-class majority, to enable us to learn to bridge the cultural—indeed, veritably linguistic—gap between between the middle-class mainstream and generational poverty.

So I’m sitting in the tire store yesterday, on my day off, waiting for a new set of tires to be mounted on the vehicle I drive, feeling depressed about what I’m having to pay, and reading a book while I wait. A family walks in and sits down in the waiting area with me—apparently a husband, wife, their grown daughter, and their grown daughter’s daughter, who is about three. I don’t know whether they’re actually “poor”—certainly not if they’re paying what I’m paying for tires—but they give off all the signals. They are a walking bundle of stereotypes that one associates with that nasty label, “poor white trash.” I begin to feel subliminally uncomfortable, and subliminally guilty for feeling subliminally uncomfortable.

Then the older female in the group asks me, out of the blue, “What are you reading.” Well, what I’m reading is a volume entitled If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him: Radically Rethinking Priestly Ministry, by a Church of England priest named Justin Lewis-Anthony.

OK. Talk about a deer-in-the-headlights moment. My mind raced over possible responses. I could simply show her the book title and let her draw her own conclusions. But somehow that didn’t seem charitable. I could try to paraphrase the subject of the book, but it made my brain hurt to think of just how to do that. So, after a few seconds, what came out of my mouth was, “It’s not a story. It’s non-fiction.”

“Oh, really? I sometimes like to read books like that.”

“What are some of your favorite books like that?” I’m an introvert, and wouldn’t choose to ask a stranger an open-ended question, all else being equal, but my subliminal guilt over the way I had “profiled” this family was asserting itself.

She proceeded to not be able to remember either an author or a title, but from her description I surmised that she was talking about The Shack, which is, of course, fiction, but I didn’t go there.

I’m still pondering the meaning of this encounter. But the fact remains that I was reading a book that makes eminent sense to me and to most of my first-world middle class colleagues in Anglican parish ministry, but may as well be written in Klingon as far as many of the people I drive and walk and look past in my daily life are concerned—people whom I would like to find ways to reach with the gospel of Christ in the tradition that has formed me.

As they say, “food for thought.”

Another Nugget from the Hymnal 1940

2010-08-13T17:13:00.001-04:00

If you stop by here from time to time, you know that I like to dig around once in awhile in the detritus of the Hymnal 1940—items that were passed over when the “new” hymnal for the Episcopal Church was compiled … thirty years ago (!).

Today’s treasure is #348, a text penned by Frederick William Faber in 1854, nine years after his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

Jesus, gentlest Savior, God of might and power, Thou thyself art dwelling With us at this hour.

Nature cannot hold thee, Heav’n is all too strait For thine endless glory And thy royal state.

Out beyond the shining of the farthest star, Thou art ever stretching Infinitely far.

Yet the hearts of children Hold what worlds cannot, And the God of wonders Loves the lowly spot.

No, it’s not on the level of the ineffable early 17th century metaphysical poets (Herbert, Donne, Herrick, et al), or even Wordsworth (to choose a contemporary of Faber’s whom he admired). But there’s something quite affecting about how he lays out the paradox of the Incarnation, with subtle gestures toward New Testament imagery (say, Colossians 1): The universe itself is too small to “hold” Christ, yet that same Christ can dwell in the heart of a child.

I guess what I like about it is that it’s not only Victorian schmaltz (which it indeed is), but has both literary and theological integrity as well.

The tune, Eudoxia, by Sabine Baring-Gould (who wrote the text, but not the music, to Onward, Christian Soldiers), is one that I find quite charming, but I fear my tastes are so rarified as to be eccentric. Most would find it … well … stodgy.

An Alternative Collect for the Feast of St Laurence

2010-08-10T08:04:00.000-04:00

To appreciate this, you have to a) know something about how St Laurence left this world, and b) have a secure sense of humor, slightly twisted.

O GOD, unto whom the martyrdom of thy blessed deacon Laurence amid the raging flames and upon the searing iron of the grill was received as a sweet smelling savor in thy nostrils, mercifully grant that we, by the yearly keeping of this feast, may be so nourished in our faith that we pass from the spiritual hunger of this world, where we do but recieve rare portions of thy grace, unto the fullness of thy heavenly table, where we shall hear those blessed words, "Well done, good and faithful servant"; through . . .

Guaranteed Agony

2010-08-09T17:44:00.001-04:00

The Diocese of Springfield (Illinois) will be electing its eleventh bishop on September 18. Two days ago, I learned that my name will be among the three that appear on the ballot at that election. This is a great honor, and I am still taking it in.

It is also a place of some risk and vulnerability. Whatever transpires over the next six weeks, I am aware that one of the results--not the only result, of course, but one of them--will be agony, agony for me and agony for others. No, not life-shattering or even gut-wrenching agony; it will hardly be the torment of the damned. But it will be more than just the prick of a needle to draw blood; it will be a wound, a wound that leaves a scar. The scar will fade into nothingness rather quickly, I expect, but it will be there.

The election of a bishop is a dynamic process. It is a simultaneously holy and unholy alliance between faithful spiritual discernment, raw power politics, unintended consequences, deep and worthy aspirations, hedging of bets, the operation of the collective unconscious on a scale that would impress even Dr Jung, and, one hopes, a generous dollop of the sovereign action of the Holy Spirit. I'm not entirely persuaded that the Church would be any less well-served if we just threw dice, or had each candidate pull the lever of a consecrated slot machine. Nonetheless, the process we have is the process we have.

The process in Springfield began with some 24 priests, I am given to understand, having had their names submitted to the Election Committee. Fifteen then opted to fulfill the rather demanding requests that the diocese asked them to comply with. These included reading and digesting a lengthy profile of the diocese, a large number of statistical data compiled from a survey of clergy and communicants there, and writing nine 500-word essays in response to specific questions, each of which had to then be rendered as a video presentation. This required a considerable investment of time, initiative, intellectual energy, and prayer. One of the fifteen subsequently dropped out along the way.

Then the poor clergy and lay delegates in the Diocese of Springfield had to deal with dossiers that I have not seen but could only have made War and Peace seem like the Sunday comics! They all got together last Saturday at their cathedral church with the intention of winnowing the list of fourteen down to four. Three "selections"--your humble blogger among them--were made relatively quickly. But they then ran into a snag, with one of the remaining nominees showing strong support among the clergy and the other showing strong support among the laity, but clearly there was not going to be any significant movement. It was getting late, and some the delegates had long drives ahead of them, so they opted to stick with the three birds they had in hand rather than continue to pursue one more of the two in the bush.

A process of this sort is one of discernment. For me, at least, discernment requires imaginatively "trying on" the role under consideration. This is psychically and spiritually costly--worth it, one hopes, but costly. I have found no other way to faithfully do the job. I have to make myself totally available, in an interior way, to the possibility that is being discerned. I can only assume that my two colleagues who are in the same place in the process also have to do the same. Sometime on September 18, two of us are going to be invited to suddenly close the book on that work (as eleven others had to do last Saturday). I imagine they (or should I say "we"?) will wince, at least, as we do that. A moment of agony. It isn't that my self-esteem is tied up with becoming Bishop of Springfield (or bishop of anything else, for that matter). The pain will be in the sheer suddenness of the conclusion.

If I am elected, there will be the joy and excitement of taking up new work, but the challenges of being a bishop are legion. It will not be a walk in the park. I have served as a Rural Dean and a member of Standing Committees long enough to be familiar with the sorts of very un-fun issues bishops have to deal with. There is agony in that. But the greater agony, I think, flowing from my election, should it occur, will be that of taking leave once again of a congregation and a community that Brenda and I have come to love a great deal. We like our life in Warsaw. We have been at St Anne's only three years, but it's long enough to have put down some roots and form relationships that are quite precious to us. We have dreamed big dreams together at St Anne's, and I remain energized and joyful in my ministry. It would be not only agonizing, but wrenching indeed, to leave it all.

The point, of course, is that agony, of whatever scale, is not something to be avoided, but embraced. It is the way of the cross, and only by taking up the cross do we find it to be "the way of life and peace." Of your charity, do pray for me--as well as for Father Gunter and Canon Stevenson, and for the clergy and delegates of the Diocese of Springfield--that we will be courageously faithful in taking up the cross of guaranteed agony in the time between now and the election, and that the wind of the Holy Spirit will permeate St Paul's Cathedral on that day.

Quotable and Ponderable...

2010-07-21T15:05:00.000-04:00

... though I can't precisely say why. It's just an intuition.

I'm about to make the turn from the "at home" portion of my vacation (this is the eleventh day thereof) to the "on the road" portion (the next twelve days, in eastern and northern Michigan and Door County, Wisconsin). The summer reading that I'm in the middle of, and which I'll be taking with me, is Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, one of the (many) classics I missed when reading was forced on me and which I'm getting around to only in my dotage.

It's Easter morning, and the story's narrator, Ethan Allen Hawley, is conversing with his wife in their kitchen after getting home from church.

"Do you know whether you believe in the church or not, Ethan? Why do you call me silly names? You hardly ever use my name."

"To avoid being repetitious and tiresome, but in my heart your name rings like a bell. Do I believe? What a question! Do I lift each shining phrase out of the Nicene creed, loaded like a shotgun shell, and inspect it? No. It isn't necessary. It's a singular thing, Mary. If my mind and soul and body were as dry of faith as a navy bean, the words, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,' would still make my stomach turn over and put a flutter in my chest and light a fire in my brain."

"I don't understand."

"Good girl. Neither do I. Let's just say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?"

There is perhaps more truth here than can be spoken, more than was intended--more than Ethan intended, doubtless more than Steinbeck intended. It invites reflection.

Unless something quite unforeseeable happens, my mind will be other places than on blogging until well into the first week of August, and probably for a few days beyond that, as there will be a pile of demands waiting for me when I get back into harness. I intend to focus on the natural beauty of the Great Lakes and the northwoods, and to enjoy the mostly undivided attention of the one whose name rings like a bell in my heart.

Summer is, for me, the icon of "things as they were meant to be." I intend to drink it in with abandon, and store up such spiritual reserves as will help see me through the darkness and gloom that will descend inexorably all too quickly.

Christian or Christ Follower?

2010-07-17T18:32:00.000-04:00

You are probably familiar with Apple's ad campaign wherein one character declares, "I'm a PC", and the others says, "I'm a Mac." The guy who says he's a Mac, of course, is young, hip, transparently self-assured, and comfortable with himself, while the man who represents the world of Windows is slightly older, a bit stodgy in his dress and demeanor, generally defensive and on edge.

Imitation still being the sincerest form of flattery, there eventually appeared a video that is technically, I suppose, a spoof, but the intent behind the obvious humor was quite serious. Instead of a PC and a Mac, it featured a "Christian" and a "Christ follower, respectively. Just as the original was set up to make a Macintosh computer much more attractive than a PC, so the imitative spoof was set up to make being a "Christ follower" decidedly superior to being a "Christian."

The implication is clearly that to be a Christ follower is to be accountable solely and directly to ... Christ. Simple. Transparent. Unaffected. Weighed down by nothing more substantive than the question mark at the end of "WWJD?". To be a Christian, by contrast, is to carry 2,000 years worth of baggage--controversies, councils, creeds, sacraments, orders, doctrines, dogmas, and institutional infrastructures. Why bother with all that? Why not just cut through it all and and just get on with following Jesus?

There are two angles (at least) from which to approach such a conclusion. One is the evangelical, ultra-low church, hyper-individualistic strain of piety and devotion that is fairly ubiquitous in the history of American Christianity. But another route to the same spot is the ultra-modern liberal deconstructionist school of thought represented by, inter alia, the Jesus Seminar. These two camps are pretty much mortal enemies, so I realize the irony of painting them with the same brush. But they both uphold, in differing ways, the notion that what we are accountable to is what the actual Jesus who got Palestinian dirt between his toes would want us to think an do. The fundamentalist would claim that such knowledge is unambiguously accessible on the pages of the New Testament. The modernist takes a more complex and sophisticated approach in proposing that the "historical Jesus" (a term coined about a century ago) is accessible by carefully combing through historical and literary artifacts with the disciplined and detached eye of a scholar. Importantly, however, both would contend that most, if not all, of what the generations succeeding Jesus' own said about him (for the modernist, this would include the way Paul theologized Jesus) ought to be taken with several grains of salt, if not tossed out completely. The two might come up with very different descriptions of what it looks like to be a "Christ follower," but they would both maintain a suspicious attitude toward the theological and institutional apparatus associated with being "Christian."

This is a pluralistic world and a free society, and I don't find myself particularly scandalized by these views. They are certainly nothing new. What utterly baffles me, however, is when someone who is personally implicated, by free choice, with institutional structures and commitments that are decidedly "Christian" takes the position of the cheeky "Christ follower." Yesterday, on the HoB/D listserv, there was a thread inspired by tomorrow's Epistle reading from Colossians that speaks of Christ being "pre-eminent." At one point, an Episcopal priest from Tennessee (his name is Peter Keese, which I share at his request), wrote this:

My thinking (still evolving, I hope) is that we misunderstand and misuse the notion - the reality, if you will - of incarnation. I'm suggesting that incarnation is a universal reality - Jesus being a symbol and example of what God is doing everywhere and all the time. It is not that I object to the notion of God incarnating in Jesus; what I object to is your (and my) reluctance to claim that God inhabits you (and me) no less fully.

I have heard such suggestions before--from Unitarians, other non-Christians, and from Episcopalian lay people who are poorly-catechized. But Peter (whom I know personally and with whom I have had a quite cordial relationship over the years) is a presbyter--an elder--who helps form candidates for ordained ministry and whose diocese has elected him to represent them at the last two General Conventions. So we're not talking about some crackpot on the margins of the institution.

In another part of the thread, another priest (again, someone I know personally, and who is in charge of a parish), gave voice to the modernist "Christ follower" position that traditional christology--from the language of "pre-eminence" in the New Testament to that of the creeds--represents the successful attempt to certain forces within the movement begun by the historical Jesus to exert political control over others. It's the shopworn "history is written by the winners" mantra.

I am grateful for occasional stark reminders of the very great theological divergence in our midst, not only on conclusions we draw on how to live faithfully and responsibly as Christians in our contemporary culture, not only on how best to apply the insights of our tradition, but on underlying core principles. Does it not seem that much of our talking past one another on issues du jour is a vain exercise when we're starting from such radically different places?

It all comes down to what we consider ourselves, both individually and as a "community of communities", accountable to. Is it the "Jesus of history" (per "Christ followers" of both the fundamentalist and modernist varieties)? Or is it the "Christ of faith" (per the catholic tradition, to which all the churches of the Anglican Communion are at least formally committed)?

I am probably neither willing nor able to argue my case. All I can do is offer the observation that the underlying narrative of the "Christ follower" does not represent the "doctrine, discipline, and worship" of the Episcopal Church. Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, we are Christians. I would contend that this does not prevent us from also being Christ-followers, but it does mean that we are committed to the notion that we see the path of discipleship through and with the community of all other Christ-followers, which is another way of speaking about the Church--with all of her scriptures, councils, creeds, orders, liturgies, and institutional infrastructure. There is no relationship with the (pre-eminent) Head without going through the Body (which is by nature something that can be seen and touched and has a "voice"). So, it is precisely in order to be followers of Christ that we are accountable to the Church--both as individuals and as local churches in respect to the Larger Whole.

I believe myself to be a Christ-follower. But the only way I know how to do that is by being a Christian.

Theology Exam Questions

2010-07-09T15:32:00.000-04:00

OK, you have to be a bit of a geek in the area of academic theology to even get why some of these are funny, but if you are ... most of them will be funny. Found them cleaning out an old file yesterday.

You may answer all or some of the following questions. Please turn in your answers before picking up your diploma.

1. Is there such a thing as a theologically indefensible proposition? If so, where did you last see one? Under what conditions?

2. How many different ways can you spell Schillebeeckx?

3. Has the Church always taught anything? Explain. And be specific.

4. Reflect on the Seven Deadly Sins. Describe how you have integrated these into your life. Be specific.

5. Who wrote the Summa Theologica, and why? What did they get out of it?

6. Why is Simon Stylites important in the history of Eccentric Spirituality?

7. Compare the discernment process of Ignatius with that of Sherlock Holmes.

8. Does Karl Rahner believe in verbs?

9. Which does not belong to the group?

a. Rahner, Kung, Howdy Doody, Dulles, Schillebeexkz

b. Ecclesiology, Christology, Mariology, Phrenology, Eschatology

c. Esther, Dolly Parton, Ruth, Judith, Sarah

d. bishop, cardinal, priest, deacon, cowboy

e. John XXIII, Malcolm X, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II

10. Construct on a single legal-size sheet of paper a mock-up of the Trinity. Your construct should take into account the writing of John of St Thomas, Thomas of Aquin, Thomas the Apostle, an/or the Neo-Thomists.

11. Chart the progress of a mystic climbing of Dante's Mount of Purgation from the inside.

12. Discuss recent continental developments in astrology, Christology, and the linchpin theory of the universe.

13. Make an ethical critique of a hypothetical proposal to establish a papal sperm bank.

14. The great powers have loosed a nuclear war. Discuss the following propositions:

a. Use of hard tack for a shelter liturgy is, for the duration, valid but illicit.

b. A rack of shot guns at the shelter door will enlarge the chance of Christian survival.

15. If the headquarters of the Western Church are a Rome and Geneva, where are the hindquarters?

16. Taking into account the view of Norman Vincent Peale that Christ had everything going for him and blew it, refute the Servant Songs of Isaiah.

Update on Mexico and the Covenant

2010-07-09T10:46:00.000-04:00

Apropos of the post immediately upstream from this one, do look here for some perceptive reflections on why it is "meet and right" that it is Mexico that is the first province to adopt the Anglican Covenant.

Here's a tidbit:

It is, therefore, highly appropriate that it should be Mexico - a land far removed from evensong in ancient English cathedrals - that has first adopted the Covenant. Mexico has pointed to the post-imperial, global Communion nature of 21st century Anglicanism. To again quote the Covenant, we Anglicans are "united across many cultures and languages".

Muchas Gracias, Mexico!

2010-07-04T21:19:00.002-04:00

When, in the wake of certain controversial decisions taken by the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the ad hoc Lambeth Commission issued the document since known as the Windsor Report, the idea of an Anglican Covenant entered the radar screen, but was a relatively small blip near the margins. Most of us, some hopefully and some fearfully, were looking for something that would address past events, “fix” past events. A covenant, by contrast, would be a future-oriented enterprise—a good thing, perhaps, but not a front-burner issue.
During the intervening years, as events in the Anglican Communion have unfolded like a slow-motion train wreck, the Covenant has steadily inched ever closer to center stage. The evolving text went through three drafts, and the final text was commended to the provinces by the Anglican Consultative Council in May 2009—sans Part IV, which has since been “perfected” by a special committee and appended to the document. The covenant has been discussed and debated, formally and informally, all over the communion. It has been analyzed and criticized from the left and from the right. General Convention 2009 commended it to the various dioceses for study and feedback.
At each step of this process, however, the Anglican Covenant has been theoretical, an idea turned into a proposal.
Until last week, that is.
Last Wednesday, June 30, the Anglican Communion News Service reported that the Anglican Province of Mexico has become the first province to formally, by an act of its duly-constituted synod, adopt the Anglican Covenant.
This will have no immediate impact on anyone. But it’s big news, nonetheless, for two reasons:

The terms of the Covenant itself dictate that it becomes effective as soon as a province formally adopts it, for those provinces that so adopt it. So, with Mexico’s action, the Anglican Covenant is now a “fact on the ground.” The Mexican church has promised to abide by its terms, and presumably this includes its relations with provinces that have not (yet) adopted it.
That Mexico was the first is especially significant because of its historic close ties to the Episcopal Church. Indeed, the Mexican dioceses were all once part of TEC’s Province IX. It is a “daughter” to TEC. Conventional wisdom would have it that Mexico would share TEC officialdom’s stand-offish attitude toward the Covenant, and if it were to eventually embrace the agreement, it would be late in the game, after several other provinces have done so. But not so. The first Covenant-signer is TEC’s own offspring, right in our own backyard.

Honestly, to say that the future of the Anglican Communion is tenuous would be to substantially understate the reality we face. I don’t know that the Covenant will save it. I do know, however, that without the Covenant, its doom is sure. The Covenant may not be sufficient, but it is necessary. It may not lead us all the way out of our crisis, but it is the only thing presently pointing us in the direction of the exit. As I believe passionately that the Anglican Communion is a treasure eminently worth saving, I am committed to exercising whatever tiny influence I might have in its favor.
The Mexican church has done all Anglicans a service. Demos gracias al Dios!

Spelunking in the Hymnal 1940

2010-06-25T23:56:00.003-04:00

As is my wont on occasion, I spent some time this afternoon at the console of the “Mighty Rodgers” in St Anne’s Church playing through selections from the Hymnal 1940. This volume was the Episcopal Church’s official hymnal from 1943 until 1985, when it was succeeded by the Hymnal 1982, still in the pew racks in Episcopal parishes across the land. (Yes, there’s a three year date discrepancy between the name by which a collection is eventually remembered and the time it is put into use, owing to the fact that one General Convention approves the proposed texts, to which are then assigned tunes by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and the next convention approves the final edition. My suspicion is that most churches will never again issue an actual bound hymnal for wide distribution; there will simply be a series of supplementary new collections which are legally downloadable and reproducible for use in local congregations.)

I became an Episcopalian in the early 1970s, and a semi-mystical experience with the Hymnal 1940 in a piano practice room at Westmont College played a big role in setting me on that path. I was so moved that I thought to myself, “Where have these hymns been all my life? If there’s a church that actually sings them, I need to be in it.” And so I am.

As one who suffers from the curse of being a “classically trained musician” (a polyvalent moniker if there ever was one), there is some irony in the fact that I am pastor of a congregation where there is a good bit of energy for the 2000s version of the sort of musical fare I thought I was fleeing (and being liberated from) when I embraced Anglicanism. The Lord has a sense of humor. I have occasional flashes of pastoral wisdom, which lead me to be judicious in what I ask my people to sing, and, if you know me at all, it shouldn’t surprise you that I let the demands of the liturgy itself, in dialogue with what will actually “work” in this community, shape the selection of musical items that we use in our worship. Consequently, a lot of songs—hymns and service music—that I find personally very appealing have to be kept on the shelf.

This does not keep me, however, from spending an hour on a Friday afternoon rooting around territory that I know I can’t cut and paste into Sunday morning. When I do so, it’s nearly always a bittersweet experience. It’s very like watching Mad Men, which, as a child of the 1960s, I find almost painfully nostalgic, in that it shows me a reality, aspects of which I yearn for, but certainly could not (and should not even if I could) “cut and paste” into the real world of the 2010s.

Today I began at Hymn 451 of the Hymnal 1940. The text is a 19th century paraphrase of Psalm 131, which just happens to be one of my favorite passages of scripture. But the poet, James Montgomery, certainly brings some of his own baggage into the endeavor.

Lord, forever at thy side Let my place and portion be; Strip me of the robe of pride, Clothe me with humility.

Meekly may my soul receive All thy Spirit hath revealed; Thou hast spoken, I believe, Though the oracle be sealed.

Humble as a little child, Weaned from the mother’s breast, By no subtleties beguiled, On thy faithful word I rest.

Israel now and evermore In the Lord Jehovah trust; Him, in all thy ways adore Wise, and wonderful, and just.

The second verse in particular arrested my attention in light of a recent thread on a message board in which I participate (made up mostly of deputies to General Convention). The subject has been the nature of scriptural authority, and whether the canon of scripture is indeed actually “closed",” or could the Church (yes, I know, which manifestation of the Church?) determine that the Holy Spirit is leading it to include some other document—someone suggested National Geographic. I have an opinion or two on this question, but I’m not going to go there now except to observe that, apparently, it was not considered a live option in 1940 when the texts of the new hymnal were forwarded to convention. I don’t think the Episcopal Church is going to evict any of of the Pauline epistles or adopt the Gospel of Thomas as canonical scripture any time soon. But the fact that it would even be brought up is telling enough, and evokes a certain wistfulness for the days of yore.

Moving on now to Hymn 454, here’s a trivia factoid certainly worth a raised eyebrow:

Lord, with glowing heart I praise thee For the bliss thy love bestows, For the pardoning grace that saves me and the peace that from it flow; Help, O God, my weak endeavor; This dull soul to rapture raise: Thou must light the flame, or never Can my love be warmed to praise.

Two more stanzas of similarly wholesome self-abnegating piety follow. Who’s the author? None other than he who watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor in 1812 and penned the lines that are now known as our National Anthem—Francis Scott Key.

I’ve been known to rehabilitate an item from the Hymnal 1940 for Sunday use from time to time, even while I concede that it certainly needed to be replaced when it was, if for no other reason than that we needed hymns compatible with the revision of the Prayer Book six years earlier. But, like the celebrated eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is a classic in its own right, and can’t ever really be replaced. And it’s a wonderful artifact of an era in the church’s history when it seemed at the same time more sure of itself and more humble than it does now. If I could travel in time, I don’t think I would enjoy the Episcopal Church of the 1940s for what it was—much of it would annoy me. But I suspect that I would to some extent enjoy it for what it was not.

Missional Notes

2010-06-23T15:13:00.000-04:00

A Canadian Anglican--a member of a parish that has recently severed its relationship with the Anglican Church of Canada, so it's fair to label him as a "conservative"--has published this piece in the National Post. Do read the whole thing, but here's what piqued my attention:

Is being an antiseptic church where only wholesome families and saintly, celibate, straight singles could fit in — a kind of Stepford Church — an accurate picture of a parish like St. Hilda’s? No. If it were otherwise, I would have to leave.

William Temple, the former Archbishop of Canterbury said: “The church exists mainly for those who are not its members.” All parishes should concentrate on attracting people who are not Christians or churchgoers. Whether or not they are living out of wedlock up with someone — of the opposite or same sex — is immaterial. The hope, though, would be that their perspective and lives gradually change as they become followers of Christ in his Church.

I would much rather attend a church with a high percentage of un-churched gays who are honestly seeking to live according to the Gospel than one with a high percentage of straight cradle-Anglicans who are not. And I don’t think that this would necessarily be unappealing to a gay or straight non-Christian. To say, “we believe in trying to live according to Biblical principles, even though we all may fail to varying degrees” has, I suspect, a more honest ring than the note of desperation in, “come to our church and do or believe what you want”.

I can certainly add my own hearty "Amen" to this. But it raises a host of secondary questions, particularly for liturgical and sacramental churches for whom a liturgically rich celebration of the Holy Eucharist is normative Sunday morning fare. I am ever more of the mind that a key element in the Church's response to the rapidly emerging post-Christendom era is to find ways of relieving the Sunday Mass of the burden of serving as our show window to the world and the primary portal through which an inquirer makes first contact with the ecclesial community.

One dimension of this response involves creating social architecture in parishes by which an unchurched/dechurched individual can experience authentic koinonia without ever entering the nave, or even the church grounds. We need to find ways to make them say, "What was that, and where can I get some more?" The second dimension is to cultivate forms of corporate worship that are non-eucharistic and that are more directly accessible to the unevangelized and uncatechized. People have an innate need to worship, whether they consciously realize it or not. But the Eucharist is not for the uninitiated, particularly with the sort of liturgical accouterments that appropriately feed the souls of those who are evangelized and catechized.

Solemn High Mass is solid food, and is likely to induce spiritual indigestion in those who haven't been carefully and gradually prepared for it. Where's our version of breast milk, strained carrots, and Cheerios?

For the Record

2010-06-12T17:28:00.002-04:00

The last two to three weeks have been unusually eventful in Anglicanland.

The Archbishop of Canterbury published his Pentecost Letter in which, for the first time, he actually spelled out the consequences that would ensue from the Episcopal Church’s consecration of a bishop living in a same-sex partnership.
The Presiding Bishop issued a sharp retort, in the form of a Pastoral Letter to TEC, expressing irritation with Canturar’s actions. In the process, she laid down a narrative that contained an unfortunate factual error and an interpretation of Anglican and Episcopal history that many have considered dubious at best (specifically, the relation between Celtic and Roman Christianity in the seventh century, the nature of the Elizabethan Settlement in the sixteenth, and the events surrounding American Anglicans securing the episcopate in the eighteenth).
The General Secretary of the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Kenneth Kearon, issued a press release in which he announced the execution of what the Archbishop had “proposed.” (A good bit of misunderstanding, it appears, has issued from Dr Williams’ use of the word “propose,” which, in certain contexts, carries some good bit more weight in British ears than in American.)
The Presiding Bishop spoke before the triennial General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, emphasizing the commonalities between the two churches in their commitment to providing the sort of pastoral care to their gay and lesbian members that the majority parties in both churches seems to believe is appropriate.
With the news from across the pond still ringing in their ears, members of the Canadian General Synod declined to legislate on the subject of blessing same-sex relationships, in contrast to the approach taken by TEC’s General Convention a year ago. Voices from both ends of the spectrum have expressed disgruntlement at this outcome. Other voices, however, have seen in the Canadian example a “more excellent way” that the Americans might do well to emulate.
The Presiding Bishop then turned up at the General Synod of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, a province that is generally rather sympathetic to TEC’s positions, before moving on to speaking engagements in London—at Southwark Cathedral, a bastion of “progressive” Anglicanism, and at a meeting of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. These foreign forays have added fuel to the speculation that she is trying to dig the foundation for a sort of alternative Anglican Communion, one not centered on Canterbury, but on the Episcopal Church (which, she and others will indefatigably point out, already exists in fifteen countries).

I won’t attempt any punditry. I have very little that I might add to what has already been written. I do wish to observe, however, that none of this should come as a shock or surprise to anyone. Many are, nonetheless, shocked and surprised. Neither the activist Left nor the hyper-Right expected the Archbishop to do anything. Both figured him for being long (interminably long) on talk and short on action (if not devoid of it). The liberals were happy about this (“See, he actually is one of us deep down!”) and the uber-conservatives had long since cast him into outer darkness as dithering and ineffectual. Ironically, they are now both staring at one another’s jaws hugging the pavement.
As I have pointed out in this venue many times before, Rowan Williams is nothing if not consistent. He is, in fact, doggedly consistent. And remarkably patient. And unfailingly charitable. The events of this early summer of 2010 may turn out to be part of a hinge in the history of Anglicanism. But there was nothing stealthy about their approach. This handwriting has been on the wall for so long it’s just become part of the decor. Take a look back at Rowan’s letter, The Challenge and Hope of Being Anglican, issued in the wake of General Convention 2006. What we are seeing is nothing less than the implementation of the vision articulated in that letter. For what it’s worth, it’s a vision I embraced then, and I’m glad to see it coming to fruition. This is an exciting time to be an Anglican. And I mean “exciting” in a good way.

Discerning the Body and Blood of Christ

2010-06-03T11:17:00.002-04:00

Today is the day on which the feast of Corpus Christi is observed. It was my joy to preside at the Mass for the eve of this feast last night. It is not officially part of the calendar of the Episcopal Church, but it does appear in that of some other Anglican provinces, including the Church of England, as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi). The 1979 Book of Common Prayer does, however, include an optional proper (“votive Mass”) Of the Holy Eucharist, which it designates as “especially appropriate for Thursdays”, thus enabling communities that wish to observe the feast to do so with formally authorized texts. So while I’m grateful for this provision, I still believe it should be an official feast day of the “red letter” (or, more recently, “bold print”) variety, up there with apostles and evangelists, at least, and probably “feasts of our Lord.”

There are myriad reasons why this is so. I personally like the language of Vatican II, which speaks of the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of the Christian life. The Church is reconstituted afresh at the altar during every celebration—hence “source”—and the Church is ever straining forward toward the eschatological vision of the messianic banquet, of which every Mass is an anticipatory foretaste—hence, “summit.” The Church is then never more herself than when gathered at the altare dei. Everything else we do—formation, fellowship, service—springs from the Eucharist and leads us back to the Eucharist.

By far the most eloquent exponent of this insight into the Eucharist that I am aware of is the late (Anglican) Benedictine scholar Dom Gregory Dix. His magnum opus, The Shape of the Liturgy, is bone dry for long sections. But when he decides to wax poetic, he deposits a gem that can only be contemplated breathlessly. The most glorious of those gems is this:

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc—one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God.

The point could be made both more precisely and more concisely, but I can’t imagine it being made more compellingly.

Now, to shift attention in a way that may seem abrupt, but, upon closer examination, perhaps not so … the Presiding Bishop published yesterday, in the form of a pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church, her response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter, which was made public last week. As a statement from a Primate of the Anglican Communion, it is disappointing, at least, for its historical and theological naiveté. However, it is not my intent here to comprehensively “fisk” the PB’s effort; that is being done admirably elsewhere. Rather, I want to focus narrowly on the final paragraph of the letter:

As a Church of many nations, languages, and peoples, we will continue to seek every opportunity to increase our partnership in God’s mission for a healed creation and holy community. We look forward to the ongoing growth in partnership possible in the Listening Process, Continuing Indaba, Bible in the Life of the Church, Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the myriad of less formal and more local partnerships across the Communion – efforts in mission and ministry that inform and transform individuals and communities toward the vision of the Gospel – a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.

Rarely is the nature of the battle for the soul of the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism, and Christianity itself, more starkly evident than in this paragraph. At first blush, it seems harmless. The first sentence uses biblical language (from Revelation) in its reference to “many nations, languages, and peoples”. But she twists words that, in their original context, denote the universal and inclusive character of the whole people of God through space and time, and employs them to designate only the Episcopal Church, and to make the political point, “Who needs you, Archbishop? We’ve already got our own international ‘communion’.” This would be insidious even if it were substantively true, but it’s not. With the exception of Haiti, TEC’s presence in the 14 non-USA countries in which it has a presence is miniscule. To say “We’re in fifteen nations” as evidence of the internationality of TEC is a deceptive ploy that works only among those who don’t examine the facts.

But the real nugget is this: “…our partnership in God’s mission for a healed creation and holy community”, and later, “a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.” Again, on its face, there doesn’t seem to be anything to argue with here. What professing Christian could be opposed to a “healed creation” and “holy community”? What’s not to like about “loving God and neighbor”? Unfortunately, this says nothing wrong in itself, but it says too little if it is taken as a capsule of the Good News which it is the Church's privilege to share. It is nothing more than re-packaged and warmed-over Social Gospel liberalism of the sort advocated by Walter Rauschenbusch in the late 1800s. In this view, Jesus is not so much a divine savior as a powerful exemplar, one whose holy life of love and concern for the poor and sick and outcast inspires his followers to work for justice and peace until, gradually, the Kingdom of God is ushered in and all people dwell in freedom and love. It was predicated on the notion of constant incremental improvement in human social behavior. The cataclysm of World War I, of course, pretty much destroyed this thesis, and World War II drove the point home.

What’s missing from the Social Gospel is a connection to the Paschal Mystery, and the practices (including the Eucharist) that are flow from it, rooted in the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Spirit as the Church is constituted., all seen as God’s definitive saving and redeeming intervention in the human predicament. It is God who brings about his own Kingdom, in his way and in his time. The Church’s vocation is to announce that Kingdom and model it, but not to take responsibility for making it happen. Yes, God has a “mission” of reconciliation, and, yes, the Church’s mission is congruent with God’s own mission. But the Church’s mission has a finer point on it. We take our place within the missio dei not by reforming society (an effort of which the Millennium Development Goals are the Presiding Bishop’s favorite sign), but by being an alternative society, a sign that says to the world, “Things can and will be different.” We live out that semiotic [one of my favorite words—look it up!] vocation in a number of ways, all of which, by the way, spring from and lead back to the Eucharist.

Alas, like the cyborgs in the Terminator film series, the Social Gospel keeps reappearing, and the Presiding Bishop’s pastoral letter is its most recent iteration. It is, sadly, not a wrong vision, but an inadequate vision. It is not as much anti-Christian as sub-Christian. It fails to discern the Body and Blood of Christ. This Episcopalian thinks we can do better. We must do better.

Technology Wish List, Revisited

2010-06-01T11:36:00.001-04:00

I have at times in the past written about how I try to employ technology as a useful servant—hopefully without inadvertently letting it become my master. (I will let those who know me best decide whether I fulfill that second aspiration.)

Here’s my latest quest: A task management application that really works for me.

Before going paperless in my personal organization aids some nine years ago, I was as devotee of the Franklin Planner, and particularly fond of its task prioritizing tools (ABC-123). Then I used the FranklinCovey add-on with MS Outlook happily for several years, until I moved into an environment with an Exchange Server, and everything seemed to be constantly going to hell. So, about a year ago, I went Outlook-free, and have never regretted my decision.

What do I miss about my former arrangement?

Outlook is visually attractive—nice “eye candy.” Very little else comes close on that score.
Outlook is integrated—tasks, calendar, contacts, email, and notes, all on one screen, with databases that are on friendly speaking terms. However, integration may be more attractive in concept than in practice. I have grown completely accustomed to moving between various tabs in my browser to access each of those functions, and it really isn’t a bother.
The classic F/C ABC-123 task management, combined with MS Office’s feature-rich dialogue boxes.

I’m currently using ToodleDo as a task manager (having earlier spent a few weeks with Nozbe). What I like about it is that it is feature-rich, performs quickly and reliably, and is inexpensive (I have a premium account, but the free one is quite robust).

But here’s what annoys me about ToodleDo:

The interface is just plain ugly. There’s no kinder way to say it.
The interface is awkward in that it takes up the whole width of my browser window. So unless I want to take the time to resize the window every time I click on my Tasks tab, I am forced to put a whole lot of unnecessary mileage on my mouse. Added up, this consumes time that can begin to be called “serious.”
I’m not fully in control of what I see in the main view (“Hotlist”). It uses a sophisticated algorithm based on start date, due date, and priority to determine what shows up. Sometimes stuff is there that I don’t want to see, and sometimes (not often) I’ve missed a task that I did want to see. This is not a huge problem, but a definite irritation.
No drag-and-drop to re-prioritize or change start date.
I can’t click on any given date and see what tasks are going to be active on that date. This means that I can’t refine my next day’s tasks the night before; I have to wait for them to show up in my Hotlist the next morning.

So here are the specs for the ideal task management app that I haven’t found yet:

It must be web-based. I have made the mental transition to cloud computing, and there is no going back.
It must have an iPhone version to which it syncs automatically. (The iPhone app doesn’t need to be all that great; mostly I just want to be able to add a task when one occurs to me.)
My task planning is driven by Start Dates. (Due Dates are of only marginal importance.) When I enter a task into the system and give it a start date, I want that task to go away and hide until that date, at which time I want it to show up conspicuously.
Along those lines, it would be nice to be able to drag a task to a date on a calendar to assign a Start Date.
There needs to be some way I can functionally emulate the ABC-123 prioritizing I like so much.
I’ve grown fond of being able to tag tasks with categories (aka Folders), and being able to sort them by those categories when I want to.
The same goes for Contexts (in the Getting Things Done sense), but this is not hugely important.
It must have the functional ability to create Projects, and then to break those projects down into Tasks.
Sharing is not a big deal. In fact, it’s no deal at all. I can take it or leave it, but don’t want to be distracted by it.
The visual interface doesn’t need to be a work of art, but it should be elegant, classy, and perhaps even customizable.

Any ideas out there?

Canterbury

2010-05-26T11:53:00.001-04:00

Today is the (lesser) feast of St Augustine of Canterbury. He was the Roman monk who was sent to England by Pope Gregory (“the Great”) in 597. He established a mission in the kingdom of Kent (the seat of which is now known as Canterbury), re-established contact with the indigenous Celtic church that had been living in isolation for 150 years or so, and became the first Archbishop of the new episcopal see of Canterbury. Rowan Williams, the present incumbent, is the 103rd in succession to Augustine. The chair pictured above sits near the east end of Canterbury cathedral and is known as “Augustine’s throne,” but, I’m told, actually dates only from the thirteenth century (Augustine died in 604, on May 26).

A thousand years (and more) after Augustine, as British imperialism led to colonialism, the church over which Augustine and his successors exercised pastoral oversight grew and evolved into an international family of churches that share the ecclesial ‘DNA’ known as Anglicanism. This family now exists in 39 autonomous provinces, numbering almost 80 million, and with a significant presence on every inhabited continent. It is the third largest Christian communion, behind Rome and Orthodoxy.

It is probably no secret to anyone reading this that the Anglican family is under an enormous amount of stress in recent years. There are powerful centripetal forces at work, and substantial fractures have appeared in the Anglican communion that are widening daily, in direct proportion to the recession of any plausible hope of their being healed. Canterbury itself, including the words and actions of Archbishop Williams, is at the epicenter of this conflict. Some have questioned—or even overtly rejected--the enduring value of Augustine's chair as a sign and focal point of Anglican unity.

I have generally been a supporter of Rowan Williams. He possesses a combination of frightening intelligence and manifest holiness that is the hallmark of not just a good pastor, but a great one. My admiration is not unqualified, and I am among those who are disappointed that he has not responded more quickly to articulate the “consequences” (his word) for the behavior of my own church (the Episcopal Church, of the “mostly USA” variety), which has intentionally veered away from the norms of our communion’s common life. Nonetheless, regardless of my personal opinion of the present occupant of the see, today’s commemoration reminds me of the vital importance of Canterbury as one of the “instruments of communion” for Anglican Christians.

In our creeds, we profess that the Church is “apostolic.” In our baptismal vows, we affirm fidelity to the “fellowship of the apostles.” Yes, without Canterbury, we would still have the historic episcopate (a chain of bishops-in-succession that can be transparently followed back to the original apostles) as a sign of our visible connection to the church that was “born” on the day of Pentecost. But it’s alarmingly easy to reach an abstract and mechanistic understanding of “apostolic succession” that leads to such anomalies as episcopi vagantes—in effect, bishops without churches. A healthy catholic ecclesiology certainly includes bishops in historic succession, but it also includes something more organic and more dispersed throughout the whole community of the faithful, a succession not simply of apostolic bishops, but of apostolic churches. The element of ecclesial security that a connection to Canterbury provides is simply this: the church of Canterbury is a church that is not just old, but was itself established by a church that was founded by not one, but two, apostles: Ss Peter and Paul. Canterbury is the token of the apostolicity of my particular church. Being tied to Canterbury is not magic. It guarantees nothing in and of itself. But, as part of a system of connections and reference points, it is invaluable, and ought not to be tossed aside, even for reasons that, in the thick of present but ultimately passing conflict, appear weighty.

Update on the Pax Nashotah

2010-05-22T22:28:00.001-04:00

The sturm und drang of Anglicanism seems quiet of late, but it’s a deceptive calm. It’s not a good kind of calm. The disintegration quietly continues but the contending parties have long since pretty much quit talking to each other. They wonder what the point is. Meanwhile, average Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church continues to skydive. The leadership of the Global South appears to be at odds within itself over whether it’s even a worthwhile aspiration to maintain the institutional and organic integrity of the worldwide (Canterbury-based) Anglican Communion. There’s a spat over the incumbency in an American seat on the Anglican Consultative Council. The Anglican Mission in America announced just days ago that it is stepping back from integration into the Anglican Church of North America, a major disappointment for many. And, of course, a week after a controversial episcopal consecration in Los Angeles, the deafening silence from Lambeth Palace drapes like a funeral pall over the hopes of those who long for a communion reconfigured and revived by a documented covenant.

This past week, I journeyed once again to Nashotah House, my seminary alma mater of 21 years, for Alumni Day and Commencement. I wrote about the same trip last year, and am pleased to report that I picked up the same vibe once again, possibly even amped up a tick or two. My enduring mental snapshot this time includes a thoroughly mainstream centrist TEC bishop walking in procession next to a former TEC bishop who is now, in the official eyes of TEC top leadership, deposed from the ordained ministry. Such details didn’t seem to matter. A Canadian bishop was awarded an honorary degree, the retired Bishop of Rochester (Church of England) preached the finest graduation homily I have ever heard, at Nashotah or elsewhere, a priest from Malawi received an advanced degree, students from the ACNA and the Reformed Episcopal Church got their MDivs alongside their TEC classmates, and alums who have left Anglicanism itself for Rome and Orthodoxy made their spiritual communion and participated with enthusiasm in every part of the liturgies save their denouement.

To paraphrase a question that should be familiar to my Baby-Boomer colleagues: What if they gave a schism and nobody came?

I am very grateful to God for Nashotah House. For a brief shining moment at this time each year, it is an eschatological sign of the answer to that question.

Getting Religion

2010-05-12T22:36:00.002-04:00

Sadly, I am fluent in only one language, and will probably go to my grave in that lamentable state. I can carry on basic conversation (as long as everyone speaks slowly) in Spanish or Portuguese, and can credibly give you the gist of a newspaper article in either of those languages. I can read signs (for the most part) in French, and could probably do so in Italian, though I haven’t really tried. A basic knowledge I have of how German works, but scanty my vocabulary is. I’ve picked up a bit of Latin from studying music, and retain a smattering of Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek from my seminary work.

So while I haven’t actually gone deep in any language other than English, my exposure is broad enough to enable me to draw some important generalizations. One of these is that different languages are not just different vocalizations for the objects and actions that are common to human experience. They are different ways of thinking, different ways of perceiving our common experience (which leads one to question how much of our experience is actually common). When Americans (for example) hear someone who is still learning English try to speak it, we find their mistakes amusing, and while we are perhaps likely to chuckle at their errors of word usage more than their errors of syntax and grammar, it is the syntactical and grammatical errors that tell us most clearly that we’re listening to someone for whom English is not a mother tongue, because syntax and grammar are the discernible signs of how the speakers of any given language perceive and process their sensory and interior experience.

So while one may study comparative languages quite fruitfully, doing so leads inexorably to the realization that one is actually studying comparative systems of thought, and eventually to the even deeper realization that one cannot fully comprehend any system of thought except from the inside, by taking the risk of “going native,” surrendering any pretense of objectivity.

But while I am an amateur philologist (in the strict etymological sense of both those words), I am not a linguist, and this post is not really about comparative languages. I’m setting up an analogy, which I wish now to apply to religion, and to “comparative religions.” Just as a linguist learns that one can take objective comparison only so far, and that comparative study is actually likely to yield deceptive results unless one subjectively enters another language and the system of thought that it represents—in other words, that there is no such thing as a genre we can call “language”, of which the various actual languages are mere speciations—so there is no such thing as a genre we can call “religion”, of which the various individual “religions” are mere speciations. Indeed, I think it is arguable that there is no such thing as “religion.” We can speak meaningfully of phenomena known as Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, or Taoism, or Zoroastrianism, etc. etc., and comparative analysis of these phenomena may be fruitful to a point. But only to a point. Eventually, one hits a brick wall, and in order to fully comprehend Buddhism, one must subjectively embrace Buddhism, from the inside. A non-Buddhist may be able to make some true statements about Buddhism, but can neither fully understand Buddhism nor explain it.

Here’s a glaring example of what I’m talking about. In the late nineteenth century, historical and literary criticism, in tandem with ascendant empiricism, seemed to be setting explosive charges to the very foundations of Christianity. In America, a movement among some east coast Protestant scholars gained momentum in response to these developments. In time, they published a series of articles that affirmed what they called the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith (virgin birth, sacrificial death, bodily resurrection, to name the big ones). The movement they initiated began to be known as “fundamentalism.” It was not a populist movement in its origins; it was led by learned academics at mainstream institutions. What they professed varied in no substantive way from what anyone who says the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed with uncrossed fingers also professes.

A generation later (mid-1920s), “fundamentalism” went lowbrow, and the movement became known for embracing not just the creedal verities, but a hyper-literal interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, and a six 24-hour day Creation, thus acquiring a patina of intellectual obscurantism and a generally pugnacious spirit. Still, the appellation “fundamentalist” made sense only the the context of Christianity; it was not a phenomenon that anyone would have thought to correlate generically with “religion.”

Fast-forward now to the late twentieth century, and the rise of activist militant Islam. Academics of a “comparative religion” stripe, with the eager cooperation of thoroughly secularized journalists who were largely ignorant of the history of American Christianity, noticed within Islamist quarters the traits of intellectual obscurantism and general pugnacity that they associated with the Christian “fundamentalists” that they believed themselves familiar with, and wasted no time coining the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism.” That they would be so quick to do so, and that the public would consider it appropriate for them to do so, is a testimony not only to their historical ignorance and intellectual laziness, but is clearly incoherent to anyone who has ever made a serious effort to learn another language. There is Christianity and there is Islam, but Christianity and Islam are not only not the same thing, they are not the same sort of thing. Failure to recognize the inherent limits of a “comparative religion” approach leads invariably to a failure to understand either Christianity or Islam.

So, from the perspective of everything I have written thus far in this post, I’m entirely sympathetic with the spirit behind a Facebook group that one of my “friends” announced to the world today that he “likes”: Christianity … It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship. I have effectively disavowed any claim that Christianity is “a religion,” because I’m not sure there is such a thing as “a religion.” And I can certainly affirm wholeheartedly that Christianity is about relationship (not just “a” relationship, actually, but a network of relationships).

But now I’m going to flip, and turn my laser in the opposite direction.

I had a Facebook friend request today from somebody I don’t know. The request is in the holding tank while I discern what to do. We have one mutual friend, someone whom I revere highly, so there’s a good chance this person will get the green light. But when I looked at the profile, I saw under the category of Religion (yes, Facebook apparently thinks there is such a thing) that this person identifies as “spiritual.” He has plenty of company, apparently. “Spiritual but not religious”, some surveys indicate, is the fastest growing self-identifying category, especially among the Millennial Generation (late teens and twenties, at present). It’s cool to be spiritual—that indicates both personal depth and commendable open-mindedness—but suspect to be religious, which indicates narcissistic and closed-minded judgmentalism. (I’m going to leave aside for the time being the whole question of what “spiritual” can even coherently mean apart from the concrete practices that constitute Wicca or Candomble or Confucianism, but it’s a big question.)

Even among many professing Christians, there is an aversion to the term “religion”—hence, the Facebook group referenced above. With some, even “Christian” is eschewed; the new hip label is “Christ-follower.” There’s even a video that parodies the Mac-is-cool but PC-is-nerdy ads: “I’m a Christian … well, I’m a Christ-follower.” Christ-followers are, by implication, SO not religious.

If so, then they’re missing something quite valuable. Christianity may not be a species of the genus “religion,” but that is not to say that there are not dimensions of Christian faith and practice that are quite clearly religious. The Latin stem in the word “religion”—lig—denotes binding, tying together, unifying, making coherent (the same connotation as there is in “ligature”). There are things that Christians do that not only testify to their identity as Christians, but serve to form them more deeply as Christians. Habits of public worship, private prayer, devotional practices, evangelism, stewardship, study, fellowship with other Christians, and service (ministry)—these are all elements of religion. One can hardly conceive of what it would mean to be a Christian apart from these things. They are what bind us to Christ, to one another, and to our true selves. Religion is an eminently valuable and positive word that we (Christians) should not blithely surrender to the semantic refuse bin. Christianity may not be “a religion.” But to be a Christian is most assuredly to be “religious.”

Liturgy and Worship: A Distinction With a Difference

2010-05-10T23:27:00.005-04:00

I have from time to time offered the opinion that when Episcopalians and other Anglicans—and Christians in general, for that matter—are finished wrangling over sex, we will resume fighting over the mode and manner of our public worship, a conflict in which, taking a historical view, we have considerably more experience. But there will be a new twist this time. Instead of the Brain-Dead Anglo-Catholics in one corner, and the Snake-Belly Low Evangelicals in the other, it will be organs, hymnals, and choir cottas in one transept glaring across the nave at guitars, microphones, and Power Point projectors in the other.

I’m not in any way suggesting that the sexuality war is over. Sadly, there’s a lot of unexploded ordnance remaining on both sides of the divide there. But we are, I’m sensing, in a bit of a lull—the eye of the storm, perhaps, but a lull nonetheless. There will no doubt be “developments” in the wake of next Saturday’s consecration in Los Angeles, and the operational tempo may pick up. But, for whatever it may be worth, I’ve noticed, over the last few weeks, some ardent conversations being had in Anglican cyberspace on the subject of public worship—from the language and texts we use to speak of God, to the songs we sing when we gather, to the physical mechanics by which we access those texts and those songs. The subject never lies very far beneath the surface.

I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas knocking around my head en route to becoming wise and insightful and erudite observations. But they’re mostly still gelling, not yet ready for prime time. So in this post I’m going to confine myself to a small bit of rhetorical prep work—you know, the tedious process of sanding and putting down masking tape before indulging in the rush that comes from cracking the seal on a can of paint.

The canons of the Episcopal Church state that it is the duty of every member of the church to participate, “unless for good cause prevented,” in public worship on the Lord’s Day. “Worship” is a broad category. It is a genre of human activity that is not even uniquely Christian; Jews and Muslims, at least, have a notion of God and a notion of worship that is sufficiently parallel to what Christians mean by “God” and “worship” that a disinterested observer could be forgiven for concluding that assemblies of Christians and assemblies of Jews and assemblies of Muslims are essentially doing the same thing, just in different ways. I have very little training in either anthropology or sociology, but I feel pretty safe in suggesting that human beings demonstrably have an innate urge to worship. Many have achieved great success in resisting this urge, but the urge is nonetheless there.

The rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer (1979), which carry the weight of canon law, go even a bit further than the canon cited above (“On the Due Observance of Sundays”). They specify that the Holy Eucharist in particular is “the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day.” Now, while it may be possible to speak of the Eucharist in abstract terms if our goal is to address the fine points of sacramental theology, sooner of later any consideration of the Eucharist must come to terms with the particular forms by which a particular community in a particular place actually accomplishes the act. In others words, we eventually have to talk about liturgy. There are myriad liturgical forms for the celebration of the Eucharist. Some are highly complex and some are disarmingly simple. Some are ancient and some are recent. Some prescribe every detail and some lay down only the broad strokes and allow a great deal of improvisation. Some are formal and some are casual. One may argue, as some have done eloquently and elegantly, that there is a basic inherent “shape” to the Eucharistic action, but even within the confines of such a shape, the possible variations are virtually endless.

In casual conversation, most Christians who have an interest in the subject will find themselves using “worship” and “liturgy” almost interchangeably. But a great many people are apt to do the same with alligators and crocodiles, toads and frogs, ostriches and emus, llamas and alpacas. At one level, such distinctions appear meaningless. If you’re a baby wildebeest hydrating on a riverbank, it doesn’t much matter what species of predatory reptile inhabit those waters; you’d just better be careful. But if you’re a sweater manufacturer shopping for yarn, you definitely want your merchandise to come from an alpaca and not a llama.

I would suggest that, before we can engage in any fruitful conversation on any aspect of either liturgy or worship, or both, we need to acknowledge the distinction between the two.

Worship, as I have posited, is an inherent—some might say necessary—human activity. It can be corporate and it can be private. Not all worship is liturgy. Worship can be very authentic and very powerful—and very emotional—without being liturgy. In the ‘90s I attended a couple of Promise Keepers events. On such occasions, it is the job of a team of musicians to lead a stadium full of men in worship through singing together. I remember being impressed with how masterfully they went about their task, using carefully chosen and carefully sequenced songs to raise the level of adrenalin (and, in that venue, probably testosterone as well!) and then orchestrate a soft landing of quiet reverence before the emcee introduced the next speaker. There was definitely Christian worship going on, facilitated by skilled leadership. But it was not liturgy. Not even in the same neighborhood.

Here’s another very well-done illustration of what I’m talking about:

Interestingly, this is a nineteenth century “standard” workhorse of a gospel song—one which was firmly embedded in the repertoire of my Baptist youth—with both the text and tune preserved intact while being recontextualized with the instrumentation and vocal style of a currently popular musical idiom and some fresh harmonies just discordant enough to be ethereal, used to great effect. This is, I would say, authentic Christian worship, and, again, nothing even close to Christian liturgy.

Liturgy, at its etymological heart, is a job, a task, a service. When the liturgy at hand is that of the Eucharist, it is the job of the gathered community to re-member itself, to put itself back together. And the “self” that it re-members simply by coming together is, of course, the Body of Christ. By proclaiming the Word of God, and by taking, blessing, breaking and giving “the gifts of God for the people of God,” the eucharistic community rediscovers afresh each time its identity as the Body of Christ. It participates—has koinonia, “holy communion”—in Christ.

In order to accomplish this work, the liturgy of the Eucharist bears a particular form and shape that has multitudinous expressions, but an essential character that has been passed on for two millennia. Those who are stewards of the Church’s liturgy (clergy and musicians, mostly) perform their work most faithfully when they allow the liturgy’s own inherent form and shape, its rhythm, pace and momentum, to take the lead in making decisions regarding choreography, use of space, posture, gesture, and, of course, music.

It is tempting, powerfully tempting, for these very stewards to view the form and shape of the liturgy as a sort of flatbed truck on which they can load the freight of various agendas. These agendas can be musical, or pastoral, or catechetical, or aesthetic, or political. They are almost invariably good and proper things, activities and ministries that the Church is rightfully engaged in. But at the moment they are allowed to trump the liturgy itself, to eclipse its proper character and shape, its momentum and flow, they become trespassers, interlopers, invaders.

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I would contend that even worship itself can become one of these trespassing agendas. I realize that may seem ludicrous on its face, and I am not in any way suggesting that worship is unimportant, or even of secondary importance. But when the Church gathers on the Lord’s Day, its “work” is not merely to worship in some generic sense, it is to perform the liturgy of the Eucharist, and in so doing, to worship the triune God. Our particular task on Sundays is to offer a certain kind of worship, worship that is disciplined by the liturgy.

Any perceived conflict between worship and liturgy is, of course, an illusion. The liturgy is certainly a vehicle of worship, and a splendid one at that. But its purpose is not merely to serve as a means to the end of worship. It is itself a proper end (though ultimately, of course, a contingent one), compatible with the end of worship, but not identical with it. At some point I will speak again of pipe organs and plainchant and praise bands and Power Point. But in considering those things, it will be essential to recall that while liturgy and worship may be siblings, they are not identical twins.

Reflections on a Holy Spirit Hymn

2010-04-28T16:48:00.001-04:00

From my parish newsletter.

Among the mysteries of our Christian faith, the Holy Spirit has certainly inspired a sizable amount of devotional poetry. This text, which occurs in the Hymnal 1982 at #516, is a translation of part of a poem written in Italian (Discendi, amor santo...) by Bianco da Siena, a Tuscan who died in Venice in 1434, and about whom virtually nothing is known, save for the legacy of these exquisite lines. The translator is R. F. Littledale, a 19th century Church of England priest and liturgical scholar.

Come down, O Love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

This first stanza introduces an image that is found throughout the hymn: the Holy Spirit as fire. On the day of Pentecost, "tongues of fire" were seen above the heads of the apostles (this, by the way, is part of what lies behind the shape of the liturgical headgear worn by bishops--the miter--reinforcing the notion that bishops are "successors of the apostles"). Human experience of fire is ambivalent: It warms and cheers, and it also burns and consumes. In this verse, the poet (and by extension, those who sing the hymn) invites the "Comforter" (one of the biblical euphemisms for the Holy Spirit) to "draw near" and "kindle" our hearts with a "holy flame."

O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Now the fire that has been kindled is invited to "freely burn," which is always a risky proposition. Burns cause pain. But what is it that we are asking be destroyed by the Spirit's "heat consuming"? "Earthly passions," sinful desires that, in the language of our baptismal liturgy, "draw us from the love of God." Then one of the benign properties of fire is invoked--that of providing light, light that is at the same time "glorious" and a practical source of illumination, providing light for the path on which we walk. Indeed, guidance is one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit.

And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till Love create a place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.

All this fire and light is eventually bound to make some changes in the soul which has invited and welcomed it. The Spirit's ministry produces a "yearning strong" for more of the same, a yearning that cannot be adequately articulated in human language, and can be known only by others who have been possessed by the same yearning.

The tune is from the renowned English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1959), and is called Down Ampney after the village of his birth. The text and tune are pretty happily married to one another among English-speaking hymn singers, as there are no suggested alternates in either direction. We will sing this hymn at the 10:15 liturgy on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, as our post-communion devotion.

Quote of the Day

2010-04-27T22:47:00.002-04:00

"God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt."
--Robert Jenson, quoted by Stanley Hauerwas in the March 28 issue of The Living Church.

I find this a rather breathtaking statement in its combination of simplicity and profundity. How easy it is for Christians to forget that we worship a particular God, not a generic "god." If we indeed know God as a "first cause" or as a guarantor of hope for life in the dimension of Eternity--and I believe there is merit in both of those assertions--then it is only because we first know him as the one who raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is not some deduced or derived data point, having previously postulated a set of abstract propositions about God's nature (omnipotent, omniscient, etc. etc.). It is itself the starting point of theology, the original fact from which everything else is derived and on which everything else depends.

What We're Actually Doing When We Come to Church

2010-04-26T08:26:00.005-04:00

I'm usually a few weeks behind in seriously reading through issues of The Living Church, an eminently worthy weekly publication that has been a channel for the "Catholic voice" in the Episcopal Church for over 130 years. So this morning I was working my way through the March 21 issue and came across this gem of a quote which I am excerpting from a gem of an article ("The Sacrament of Lent"). The author is Father Ralph McMichael, who happens to have been my professor of liturgics during my senior year in seminary (1988-89), though I'm fairly certain he would be reluctant to accept any blame for the way I turned out. This is definitely worth pondering:

Each action of the Eucharist is thus part of the economy of God’s offer of salvation, to share in Christ’s life of communion. Our gathering—leaving the homes we have chosen and arranged for ourselves—is the beginning of our offering to live in the place God has prepared for us to dwell. Listening to Scripture is the ascetic practice of laying aside our own opinions and viewpoints for the sake of the silence where only God’sWord is heard. We thus listen before we speak, and are acted upon before we act — formed and renewed by what we believe, rather than by what you or I might think at any given moment on an issue du jour.

Does it not seem like consumerism ("What's in it for me?") is ever more regnant in the attitude of American Christians toward their church relationships? Hyper-individualism will yet be our undoing as an effective witness in this culture. We need more strong antidotes like this article to help us see straight and remember who we are and what we're doing when we come (or don't come, as the case may be) to the Eucharist.

On Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change

2010-04-23T16:25:00.002-04:00

I have just sent the following letter to the Revd Dr Ruth Meyers in her capacity as Chair of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Church. For background on the issue, follow the link in the letter.

Dear Ruth,

I write to you in your capacity as Chair of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and in partial fulfillment of the friendly promise I made to you when we chatted briefly at General Convention that I would be a thorn in the side of the SCLM during this triennium!

In the spirit of "fulfilling all righteousness" with respect to providing feedback on the trial use calendar commemorations in Holy Women, Holy Men, I want you to know that I have made a commitment to liturgically observing any of these proposed lesser feasts that happen to fall on a Wednesday, which is when my parish has a regular weekday celebration of the Eucharist. So far, we have commemorated the Dorchester Chaplains, Fanny Crosby, and Demby & Delany. Between now and the end of September, we will be observing five more of these occasions, and most likely more going forward, though I haven't yet done that much advance planning. At some point before the end of the calendar year, I will send you a synposis of our experience.

In the meantime, however, I would like to flag an underlying cognate concern that touches not only on HWHM, but on all the work that the commission pursues by way of drafting liturgical texts. When the draft of HWHM was made available in the Blue Book last spring, I observed publicly that the proposed collects aggressively continue a policy of systematically excluding the term "Lord" from new liturgical texts. I have not re-verified my count, so I may be off by a little bit, but at that time, out of 112 proposed new additions to the calendar, only three collects employed the traditional concluding phrase, "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

I think I understand the motivation for this. I am not unfamiliar with the feminist critique of "Lord" as enabling the perpetuation of a patriarchal stereotypes, a "gateway" word, so to speak, that enables a whole array of images that serve to marginalize half the human race and obscure the radical universality of the gospel. While I believe it is possible to offer a cogent rebuttal to that critique, it is actually not my purpose to do so here. What I hope to argue for is, first, transparency and honesty in the process of drafting liturgical texts, and, secondly, as a result of such transparency and honesty, a practical measure of charity and inclusivity for all Episcopalians.

My point about transparency and honesty is that the "Lord" question is a serious theological issue. It deserves to be explored and debated on its own merits, freely and overtly, out in the open, for everyone to see. Instead, my perception of the standard procedure of the SCLM over the last 25 years (since the first revision of the Book of Occasional Services, at any rate) has been to virtually eliminate "Lord" from any new or revised texts, and do so quietly, without announcement or explanation. I can understand following this process in those portions of projects like Enriching Our Worship that have parallel texts in the Prayer Book or B.O.S., and are offered as optional alternatives to the standard rites. In such cases, the avoidance of avoidance of patriarchal or masculine language for God is understood as part of the underlying premise. But that same premise does not apply (or, at least, is not widely understood to apply) in the case of texts that do not have such parallels, and are intended, either in their present form or in a future form, to be the church's standard texts for the purposes to which they apply. HWHM would fit this category, as would efforts like Rachel's Tears, Hannah's Hopes. In these cases, I have trouble not naming the behavior of the Commission as (unintentionally, no doubt) deceptive, for, in effect, "sneaking" language driven by a particular ideology into liturgical texts intended for use by the whole church even though there has not been an open conversation, let alone an emerging consensus, throughout the church about the theological implications of such language.

At the very least, I would encourage the SCLM to be publicly explicit and clear about the policy of systematically excluding "Lord" from any new articulations of this church's worship. Make a case for it, and open the conversation. Beyond that minimal step, however, I would invite the commission to consider recasting the familiar two-track system of liturgical language. Since 1976, we have become accustomed to language that is either "traditional" or "contemporary." Given the blanket rubrical permission for local communities to render "Rite Two" texts into "Rite One" language (of which the Anglican Service Book is a published example), and given the evolution of the environment and parameters of liturgical change since the 1970s, it may now be more judicious to frame the distinction between "contemporary" and "traditional" in theological terms rather than linguistic terms. So, the "contemporary" form of a collect (or other element of a rite) could openly respond to the concerns of those who prefer an alternative to what they perceive as patriarchal or exclusive terms (inter alia, "Lord" and "Father"). The "traditional" form would robustly continue to use verbal forms that have been part of our liturgical inheritance. Such an approach would be both more honest and more charitable, I believe, than to continue what appears to be a practice of slipping in major theological change under the guise of responding to neglected pastoral needs, or adding prayers for new occasions, and the like.

As you might imagine, given the blogsphere's innate capacity for the dispersion and democratization of discourse, I intend to post this letter in cyberspace. I appreciate your attention to it, and sincerely hope you will share it with your colleagues on the SCLM. Know that I hold the commission's members in my prayers as you pursue your very important work for our church.

Faithfully in Christ,

Dan Martins+

What He Says

2010-04-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

As the consecrations of the Bishops Suffragan of Los Angeles approach, the Anglican waters are once again stirring. I could not offer a more apposite assessment of this moment than that offered by my friend and colleague, Father Tony Clavier. Go here for the whole thing, but here are some pertinent snips:

The crucial matter is one of honesty and trust. Even after the votes taken at the last General Convention which seemed to reject a principled pause in these areas, the PB and the President of the House of Deputies wrote to the leaders of the Anglican Communion stating that TEC still honored its agreement to a moratorium on the ordination and consecration of persons in partnered same-sex relationships and to authorizing same-sex blessings.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has made his dismay quite clear. Mutual affection and submission, the type of any loving relationship, depends on trust. The issue presented to the Communion now is that it cannot trust TEC, for no single agency of TEC represents its voice, and thus one “voice” may say one thing and seem authoritative, only to be drowned out by another which seems authoritative.This confusion of tongues is lauded as TEC’s superior form of government!

And also (referring to criticism of Archbishop Williams on conservative blogs):

Having said all this, I return to another form of bad behavior and that is demonizing those one believes to be wrong, or inefficient. Traditionalists in TEC: those who have left have no business grumping about TEC’s doings – so often sound like the “Tea Party at Prayer”. ... Starting from the premise that the government is rotten, which may be true who ever is in power, such people invent stories intended to prove their point and these stories include personal invective against those assumed to be the Enemy.

I could draw instances of Liberals who demonize traditionalists, but my point this April morning is aimed at those in whose camp I uneasily dwell, whose world-view and consequent invective begins with the premise that the Archbishop and his Communion are rotten, and weave tales to prove the point, spiced with personal invective.

Well said, IMHO. I believe in vigorous debate. But I would rather think the best of someone's intentions, rather than automatically assume the worst.

Notes from Great Paschal Vespers

2010-04-05T12:46:00.000-04:00

This will be succinct, as I'm writing from my iPhone while on a train.

Last night I attended Paschal Vespers at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. It was an unexpectedly magnificent experience.

As a genre, this is the Roman Catholic equivalent of Choral Evensong (which, as a genre, I adore). But instead of receiving the inheritance through the line of Benedictine monasticism, the form used at ND drinks from the well of the ancient "cathedral vespers." This means that, without dumbing it down musically--a rehearsed choir plays a prominent role--it invites a great deal of congregational participation, mostly by way of antiphons, refrains, and imitative responses.

Here's what I loved the best:

The place was packed, mostly with students. What a joy to see young people serious about high-octane worship in the best Catholic tradition.

A fine organ played with great skill.

A metrical Magnificat set to the English hymn tune "Jerusalem."

A fine rendition by the choir of the (quintessentially Anglican anthem Hail, Gladdening Light by Charles Wood.

And most of all, I wasn't in charge. I wasn't responsible for midwifing the liturgical experience of others; I got to just be part of the worshiping crowd. People in my line of work need that from time to time. It was balm to my soul.