Inventing the Wheel, Discovering Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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 .    Please define for me the following terms and what you or your church believes about each: What they are?  When they occur?  Who is involved?

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

Millennium – This word is not in our theological vocabulary either. We would tend to interpret the details of the Revelation to St John poetically, while embracing the broad theme that “God wins” in the end, and we find our fulfillment in worshiping him eternally.

Kingdom – The Kingdom of God (aka Kingdom of Heaven) is, quite simply, “wherever God rules.” In theory, this is everywhere, though God may allow rebellion against his rule to prosper for 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’s reign is recognized and welcomed. In every experience of love, forgiveness, and unity, there is a glimpse of Heaven. Ultimately, God’s reign will be fully and universally acknowledged, and the saints of God will know him even as they are fully known. This is Heaven.

Hell – As with Heaven, Hell is both “here and now” and “then and there.” It is a condition marked by the 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 a logical necessity as long as one upholds the notion of free will.

Great White Throne – A poetic term used in Revelation, traditionally not of any theological significance.

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

First Resurrection – Not part of our vocabulary.

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

2.     Which position best describes your church or individual belief about the return of Christ?

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

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

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

3.     Which view best describes your church or individual belief about the rapture of the church?

Pre-Tribulational Rapture                   Mid-Tribulational rapture

Post-Tribulational Rapture                 Pre-Wrath rapture

Partial Rapture

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

4.     In your view or the view of your church explain in detail the meaning of the following terms:

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

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

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

Millennial Kingdom—Not an expression of theological significance.

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

5.     Do you believe that a person’s or church’s view of the end times has any practical significance in the life of a believer?  If yes…please explain what?  If no…please explain why?

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

6.     How significant is eschatology to the teaching ministry of the church which you lead?  How significant is eschatology in your teaching in the home?

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

Holy Saturday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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