contemplative vernacular

Complicating Liturgy: Problematizing Community, Evangelism, and Mission in post-Christendom

2012-01-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

“If we don’t, we’re not.”

In words to this effect, an interviewee coming out of the Mass tells anthropologist, Victor Turner, why it is she must go to Mass. Her words capture to my mind the essence of why we Christians are gathered together Sunday after Sunday.

Yet, lately, I have read a spate of suggestions that unless we do it differently, we will be not. And by differently, those doing the suggesting mean complete overhauls. We must undo everything we have done before.

Complete breaks with languages and idioms of our past. Rite I must go. [And even Rite II.] Good-by Schmuecke Dich. [Bach be gone, too.]

And with these breaks we must countenance complete rejection of the liturgically-formed pieties that have fed generations to go forth and serve a world in need. Including the pieties of many currently living. We are asked to dismiss generations with all of their own greatnesses and failures, compassions and sins, just like us in all of our own ambiguities and complexities.

This either/or approach to liturgy sets my teeth on edge because it is quite distinct from a tradition, like the Anglican tradition, or I would suggest, the Lutheran tradition, that has tended to incorporate insights, expand options, and build bridges between liturgically-formed pieties past and present as we go along. This antagonistic thinking is at odds with a canonical approach to liturgy in the same vein Luke Timothy Johnson uses when discussing Holy Writ, an approach that makes us stronger because we have many resources upon which and whom to draw from across many, many centuries. New languages and idioms and theological insights will indeed find their way into our praying—alongside that which and those who have gone before. And after sifting. But they will not pit themselves over and against that which has fed ancestors in faith or current sisters and brothers, but seek development in which ancestors and kin too might recognize themselves if but in glimpses and in which they too would recognize the Jesus who came to them as he does to us and turns us from ourselves.

Recently, Dr Derek Olsen offered a cogent, to my mind, initial answer in a conversation on what it is that we Episcopalians should and should not bring up for negotiation in these changing times. Derek noted that we cannot negotiate giving up our common prayer with the theological commitments as expressed in the 1979 Prayer Book. Another responder suggested that, on the contrary, the Prayer Book must be the first thing negotiated—and fast. And if we do so, young people will show up “in droves.”

[As an aside, to be fair, the languages and idioms of the Prayer Book may no longer be in a language understanded for all comers. Nevertheless, finding languages and idioms that do communicate and maintain the scriptural allusions, inherited resonances, and creedal commitments of those we currently have is delicate if we are not to lose the gains of our current prayers--both in Rite I and Rite II. Finding such languages and idioms is careful work if what we shall have in a “Rite III” is to be heard as development consonant with Rites I and II in keys that communicate the Incarnation in his fullness as he is for us here and now AND as he has been for those gone before us. ]

So, droves. Let me be honest. I don’t buy it. The fact is that there are many other, often more interesting, things most younger people (sometimes, including myself) would rather do on their Sunday mornings no matter how revised, with it, or expressive of current spiritual longings our prayers might become. In fact, I am willing to wager that many of the unending debates about language we Christians are currently engaged in are lost on many who don’t currently go to Church or who have never gone to Church. That isn’t to say these debates aren’t important, but it is to say that making these changes won’t make us less sinners and more saints, less irrelevant and more appealing. That work largely lies in community, evangelism, and mission.

What gets me is the suggestion that we make all of these changes, and if we do so, people will come in droves. This is only verifiable if we make all of the changes and risk losing everything that has made us who we are to-date. Are we willing to take that risk? I’m not. The liturgies that we have in our Prayer Book are the stuff of many hundreds of years of people in ongoing encounter with Jesus Christ by the Spirit to the Father and the simultaneous theological and Christological reflection that goes with these encounters. This simultaneous encounter/reflection being what Rahner termed an ever “mediated immediacy” in which the prayers shape the encounter and the encounter shapes the prayers.

What also gets me about this suggestion is that when we get to brass tacks, many of those telling us we must change everything about ourselves don’t seem to have a common understanding of what that would be. Some say chant. Others say not. Some say Lord. And others say not. And so on. In the mean time, I have worshipped in many Episcopal parishes, and the breadth of variety that touches all of these suggestions is to be found with varying levels of numbers and vibrancy (and numbers are no guarantee of vibrancy). No single formula seems to do the trick if numbers is the measure.

And then yesterday, I read a piece in The Lutheran in which the author claims that unless we change everything about ourselves as insiders, we will keep others away and die of irrelevance.

In a rather overly general and swift dismissal of the pieties that feed many to go forth and serve through their life, work, and loves, the piece suggests that folks must give up what makes them who they are using the insider/outsider trope to guilt us into changing everything. This sort of thinking is a set up for a new round of liturgical warfare in congregations. And that will serve no one.

Like those who suggest changes in language and idiom will solve everything, with due respect, I think the bishop who wrote the piece mistakes liturgy for the hard work of community, evangelism, and mission.

Liturgy, particularly, Holy Communion or the Divine Service, is meant to feed those who are already Christians, and Christians of this or that particular stripe. And before anyone reminds me that liturgy is embedded, yes, I am quite aware that liturgy as actually done in any given context is contextual and cultural in communicating our Risen Lord. I expect to find that cultures have been and are being taken up in liturgies to this task. But inculturation does not mean we will not continue to recognize one another and what we’re doing even across cultural expressions and variations.

And what is this we're doing? Receiving and responding to Jesus Christ who comes to us as word and bread.

Just as our Orthodox kin are masters at inculturation while maintaining shared liturgical commitments across a wide range of peoples, I hardly think it wise to suggest we lose recognize-ability. And who, by the way, are growing in the U.S. without changing a thing? The Orthodox. [And yes, I know that that growth has a complicated story.]

The end result of all of this is that we are in danger of making relevance the wag that tells the god. And then who shall we be?

Now, we are living into post-Christendom. This is neither necessarily the greatest thing to ever happen to us as Churches, nor is it the worst. It is different.

One mistake we often make is to compare post-Christendom with pre-Christendom or Christendom.

Post-Christendom is not pre-Christendom. We who are living into post-Christendom realities are not on the whole prone to sporadic persecutions. On the whole, society is indifferent to us at best and carries a low level hostility toward us at worst.
Unlike Christendom, we are finding ourselves increasingly irrelevant and marginalized and vulnerable. And this taste of low grade marginalization, however, does carry resonances with pre-Christendom. This taste is an opportunity. Yet, who knows now what finally will differentiate post-Christendom from Christendom?

But, let me make a bold claim about our current liturgical expectations: The expectation that liturgy can and must carry the weight of community, evangelism, and mission is itself a hangover from Christendom. Why do I say this? Because only in societies in which Christianity has been dominant and thoroughly a part would we suggest that liturgy should be the most central or primary or initial encounter the unchurched have with us.

Folks in the pre-Christendom era did not join up with the Way because of liturgy. In fact, depending on their locale, they might not have been permitted to join us in God’s Service at all because they might be spies on the look out for trouble-making Christ-followers.

As historian and theologian, Robert Wilken, once noted, Christianity spread because we were the great redistribution society at a time when mystery religions of similar ilk and style disconnected rite and right. Our deacons, like St. Lawrence of Rome, were a hit because they distributed the goods brought to the service to those who were poor and in need, radically undercutting a society that, like our own, reduced most human beings to resource and use and numbers and disposability.

What makes us distinct is that unlike these early ancestors, folks do walk in off the street and join us from time to time. The question I have for us is not how did we change our liturgy to bring them in, but how does who we are at prayer reflect who we are we being with one another, who we are in sharing the Reason for our worship in the rest of our lives, and raising a stink and sharing daily bread in the middle of a society willing to use up and spit out the masses?

How is it we are being actively irrelevant, nay a thorn in the side, to a culture that measures relevance by use, resource, numbers, and disposability?

Recovering the Commons, Part III: Occupying Advent

2011-11-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

“And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.”

In my previous posts published at The Episcopal Café here and here I began teasing out a concern for economy that does not have many takers in our American two-party increasingly unregulated market system. This concern veers both left and right, being concerned for both the personal-local and the social-global. It cannot easily be classified as either Republican or Democrat—indeed, radically criticizes the sycophantic, greedy corporatism of both parties. It cannot readily be classified as capitalist or socialist, noting that each expression has tended to turn over an ever-increasing authority to the state or the state in collusion with transnational corporations to the detriment of freedom that is not merely individual and individualistic, but rather personal-communal-ecological/cosmic and that touches not just on political rights but on economic rights, and indeed, on the rights of our fellow creatures and creation.

Benedictine, Roman, and Anglican Catholics of other times, giants really, such as T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, J.R.R. Tolkein, Dorothy L. Sayers, C.S. Lewis, Hilaire Belloc, F.D. Maurice, Samuel Taylor Coleridge were involved in similar searches, often quite Biblical in their vision, drawing on the positive aspects of Medieval and monastic existence, as well as insights of capitalism and communism to propose third ways that honor the legitimate value in our past scrubbed of romantic notions because lest we forget serfdom actually carried the day for most in other times, that takes care to note what is positive in both markets and the social, and in our time, I dare add ecological.

Their search was deeply rooted in the Incarnation, Holy Communion, the Body of Christ (the Church), and Creation. Almost without fail, a radical and Biblical Christocentric-Trinitarianism pervades their thoughts. And rightly so. A Christian concern for the economies of earth will orient itself to and within the Economy of God as the centering Relationship.

As a poet and theologian who views the world through the lens of radical and Biblical Christocentric-Trinitarianism, I cannot help but follow the lead of my High Church ancestors in faith as I look at the current economic situation, a situation I will dare say is in this moment at odds with the Economy, the Household, of God revealed in Christ Jesus.

Knowingly and unknowingly, the Occupy movement brings this into the open. As Christians, we ignore this to the detriment of our vocation as witnesses to God's Word.

I have read a lot of criticisms of the Occupy movement. Some are more valid than others. Reading between the lines, most of these criticisms tell me that many of us have not yet experienced the full horror of what our current economy can mete out upon us if we fall behind, fall between the cracks, or fall out of the net all together. Indeed, I sit writing this from a heated office, drinking a cup of hot coffee with milk.

Whatever else the Occupy Movement may be, this movement brings into the open and into sharp relief, the brokenness of our economy, an economy that is the expression of how we relate to one another personally-communally-ecologically/cosmically, an economy that commodifies everything and everyone and everybeing:

Resource. Mine. Self. Me. Hoard. Produce. Consume. Job.

This brokenness is not new. Riding CalTrain past US 101 many years ago on my way to my field placement at Stanford, I remember observing the tent cities hidden away beneath the overpasses. But things were good then. For many of us. It was the last years of the Clinton Era. So many didn’t have to pay attention.

Many did not notice where Jesus was at work, where Jesus dwelled, where Jesus was crying out, pitching himself still among those our own worldliness would rather enough forget and doom to the underside and death.

Most of us will not remember or perhaps even know about Hoovervilles. But the Reaganvillages, Clintoncamps, Bushburgs I and II, and Obamavilles have been with and are all about us.

Now that the middle classes and the educated classes themselves are under threat,

Occupy forces us to reevaluate our own dance with worldliness;

Occupy pushes brokenness into the social center, the common ground of the various public plazas, circles, squares, and parks;

We can no longer avoid our mess and complicitness and vulnerability and fragility;

We have to confess that we interdepend on one another and the whole of creation.

Meandmine stepped too near the ledge and fell off on Wall Street. Most of us went along for the ride, participating in ways great and small, failing to notice who was getting bilked and who we’d left behind. The bandages of the past, labor movements and government safety nets and the like, may not be able to put Meandmine back together again.

Even amidst what may be problematic about Occupy, including hints of utopianism, the tents sitting in the midst of us bring a word to us of what has gone ignored for a very long time. And, indeed, as Christians we are called upon to interpret in that word what the Word is saying to us by these bodies pitching their tents among us.

For, as one of us, a creature of earth, God choses to home with us in the Incarnation. God does so because God loves and desires to be with us and all the creatures throughout the far flung cosmos.

God comes to us not as an alien invader, but as One coming to and being with God’s own creation, a creation radically off-kilter, alientated, because we human beings have a tendency to turn everything to our self-interest alone, eschewing the call to be tillers and caregivers and wild-respecters and most of all, reverenters, venerators.

Precisely as one of us, Jesus Christ, God cannot in loving us, help but also enter the depths of this tendency. God liberates us for the good, “by means of Himself,” to quote St. Irenaeus.

And God brings into being a Body who is called to witness to wherever the Word is at work in general society, though hidden, unknown, forgotten, despised, even amidst all of the worldliness—especially our own.

We call this God’s Economy.

So, let’s turn things to God’s Economy, God’s Relating to us, for a moment, a relating that is very much concerned with the beings and being of earth. Indeed, this is unavoidable because we Christians proclaim the Incarnation, Emmanuel, Jesus. In him, precisely because he was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to play on William Porcher DuBose, every being and all of the cosmos is encompassed potentially, that is, with the promise and hope of the Consummation when God shall be All In All. A promise we receive really in Holy Baptism, not for ourselves, but that as in the Gospel according to St. Mark, we would go forth and proclaim and witness to the Gospel to every kind, to every creature.

God makes home with us, as one of us, a creature of clay, and freely gives to us, sharing with us God’s goodness and bounty and health, just as it was in the beginning when God began to create:

Gift. Share. Us. Work. Create. Forgiveness. Together. Joy.

These are the language of God’s Economy precisely emerging through and with and by the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of God’s vision for us as human beings with one another—not just the Church, but all of general societies.

While the media portray the dangers of disease and unruliness of Occupy encampments, what goes uncommented upon is a relational criticism of the status quo, of the unruliness of those who crashed the system and left the rest of us to carry the burden for generations to come, of a growing disparity between the extremely wealthy and the growing poor, of the degradation of earth, of the disease of greed, exploitation, and domination that touches us all.

What I have not heard about in our media is that precisely in Occupy encampments, those who have been without easy access to services, sometimes for years, can find a meal, a bed, a clinic without stigma.

What of the free library at OWS providing reading for those who can no longer accessed our many closing libraries?

I won’t romanticize Occupy, for that is the danger of flitting with utopianism, and I will nevertheless suggest this movement is a strong criticism of the wealthiest nation on earth in our exploits here and abroad. And it is a criticism framed not largely as a series of demands, though they do exist contrary to media claims, but as a collection of tents, a community of bodies.

I do not have easy solutions to the problems of our broken economy, an economy steeped in the vices of self-interest alone.

Perhaps sitting with the brokenness and being with one another is the one thing most needful, learning to:

Gift. Share. Us. Work. Create. Forgiveness. Together. Joy.

This sociality on the level of human beings correlates to God's Economy in refraining from more than need as each requires in her or his body and for sharing of her or his gifts, skills, and talents; being a self-for-with-by-others to accomplish life together, being-in-doing; spacious time; and most of all, being present to one another in our brokenness rather than escaping.

I do,suggest that as we move into Advent, that a season of examination, confession, preparation, refraining, and witness to God’s Economy is appropriate for we who profess Jesus Christ as the One Who Causes To Be, as the One Who Saves—that is, as Lord.

How will you, how will we be occupying Advent?

How will you, how will we Gift, Share, Us, Work, Create, Forgiveness, Together, Joy?

Continuing the Conversation: Grace

2011-11-09T05:29:00.001-08:00

Lee, bls, and myself continue the conversation on sin and grace. I note,

bls makes a good point. Perfection-seeking often reinforces addictive behaviors. It is also crippling to the overly scrupulous like myself. The two can go hand in hand. To be able to admit our limitations is healthy and mature Christian spirituality. The saint is one who accepts without self-loathing that she or he is sinner, and paradoxically grace flows from and through that acceptance. And that for some of us, that involves a felt and experienced break with the past. For some of us, it involves a revision of inhabiting a loved universe not as we might wish it but as it is. I think that much of the sharper divisions on matters of sin and grace exist for at least two reasons: 1) particular theologians of great weight experienced sin and grace for and in themselves in particular ways–spiritualities, and write these into their theological musings–it’s unavoidable, 2) others are shaped by these spiritualities as they are enacted in prayer and imbibed in study. This leaves us always in conversation with others’ spiritualities that do or don’t give us full sense of our own experiences of sin and grace. For those who have experienced the surprise of grace in the midst of addiction or perfectionism, those who seek a way or rule of life may come across as reinforcing the very trouble grace is freeing them from. For those who experience the slow steadiness of grace, such folks may seem to be asking for dispensation from a shared way of putting on Christ. As someone who navigates both of these, I want to avoid legalism because it will crush grace, and at the same time not lose a sense of shared discipleship. At the heart of the genius of Anglicanism is a common rule that is meant to lean us encounter the surprise of grace–Common Prayer (see Countryman’s work on Anglicanism and poetry).

I would posit that accepting our dependence on or trust in God (sound familiar) is the cornerstone that leads us into a vision of our shared coinherence as human beings and interdependence on one another and the entire creation. Dependence on our part paradoxically if slowly renews freedom because as Kathryn Tanner reminds us God is not in opposition to our createdness, but releases our createdness to be more itself, including admission of limitations and shortcomings. I would use Luther’s positive insight re: we don’t want to be creatures as the heart of Sin to reframe the famed theosis phrase, “God became human being so that human beings could become divine” to mean precisely not an upwards movement, as in ladder spirituality, but a groundward movement, where admission of and acceptance of dependence on God is the foundation. Divinity or our partaking of divine nature or participation as well as ways of life together are reframed not primarily as moral requirements, but shared ways that support our being more human–more honest with ourselves and others, more able to admit failure and sin, more responsible for ourselves, more generous to others, more caring of creation, etc. In this way, God became human being, so that human beings might be free, more ourselves, human. That is to say, that “divinity” on our “side” of the experience does not look more ethereal, but more earthy.

A Call for an Ascetical Advent Movement

2011-11-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

Lee offered us a post on Pelagius that reminded me that that age-old debate is as complicated as that of Theodore of Mopsuestia—and both may have been unfairly condemned. History gives us space to reassess. We would do well to remember to separate out Pelagius' teachings from what Augustine said Pelagius taught from Pelagianism, just as we would do well to separate out Theodore from Nestorianism. We would also do well to note that what we do know of Pelagius’ teaching in his own words is not very different from that of Orthodox, that is, Eastern Patristic writings on these matters. Now, setting aside that debate for a minute.

Lee’s post reminded me that what is missing from many modern appropriations and reappropriations of Celtic Christianities is a way of life together rooted in a participatory Christocentric Trinitarianism. And of course, that at least something of these Christianities lives on in the Christian expressions of the Isles we have today, and I would argue, especially Anglicanism at our best. And definitely so in the music and poetry and art of the Celtic peoples.

Like the Hebrews, these Christianities value a way of life together lived in response to the creating-liberating God—think Torah. And like the Hebrews, these Christianities do not shy from a world enchanted—yes, animals do speak if we pause to listen; yes, angels grace us if we prepare our hearts with hospitality; yes, Mother Mary and all the Saints and all who have gone before us in faith are not far away but present if we pray; and yes, evil beings walk about looking to destroy flesh beings.

Last year I was a guest lecturer on Indigenous theologies for a course taught by Dr Moses Penumaka, “Theology from the Margins.” My lecture covered a lot, and emphasized those things we call a way of life as intended to keep the people living out of grace and in harmony, what Christians have called asceticism, even as we live in hope when All Shall Be In All and lions shall lie down with lambs—by the way, I take that hope literally. At the close of the conversational lecture, I asked for feedback. A young woman who is a Coptic Christian raised her hand and said, “For the first time in any course at the GTU I feel that someone has understood my tradition, that our ascetical ways exist precisely that we might live out of grace and in harmony with one another and all of creation.”

A Rule of Life in Community and ascetical theology are not primarily about earning or gaining heaven. Rather they are about living out of and in response to Heaven, for Heaven is among us though often unnamed, unknown, forgotten, and even despised. Christian ascetical theologies worth their salt assume Emmanuel, God-With-Us, Jesus Christ at work in the life of not just the Church or general society (i.e., what we often call “the world” which is distinct from worldly), but all of the cosmos creating, redeeming, healing, sustaining, sanctifying. That is, grace is assumed present and active and abounding and ground for our existence at all and for our living good. Human beings living out of this grace, however, is not assumed as evident. We call this the Fall or stepping outside the dance, and it is not merely a back there occurrence, but existential, something in which we personally participate. The Fall touches on us all. Yet grace abounds all the more. By Baptism we receive and participate in Christ, and in Christ by the Spirit, in the Life of the Triune God.

A graced world—a God-With-Us world, nevertheless upended by Sin (and if you don’t think so, read a newspaper) requires shared patterned gospel response on the part of a people called to live in and out of the Harmony of this One, Jesus Christ. This approach assumes the Body as a Community of and within the Head in a way that much Protestant theology rejects, claiming a once-for-all salvation in Christ that often suggests this means that grace need not meet Sin still in our own living out of this once-for-allness. In contrasts, AM Allchin notes that High Church and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans have a participatory soteriology. I might add, that perhaps despite himself the Cranmer of the Prayer Book also does so. Just read Cranmer’s 1549 Eucharistic Prayer. In my writings past, not aware of Allchin’s work on this matter at the time, I called it a gift soteriology. What this means is not that we save ourselves, or that salvation has not been given once-for-all, but rather in Christ we receive this Life as pure gift and participate in and live out of the Life of this One who is our salvation, our healing, our reharmonization as a leavening society and as a people of and friends of the earth, that is, the whole of creation and every creature.

What shall be our shared patterned gospel response together is the question?

Sin is like a hydra. Cut off a head and new ones appear. Which is to say that our response and life is contextual to how it is Sin is operative in me, among us, destroying all creatures.

And so our responses will draw on the wisdom of the Elders of every age, for it is in wisdom that is, a sort of means testing over the long haul, that we learn ways that live Christ.

And “our” is paramount. And where Protestantism runs into trouble. There can be no shared rule of life, for “how dare you tell me what to do,” and where then, a participatory soteriological ascetical theology breaks down. For such a theology is necessarily communal in the One Lord Jesus Christ. What then is lost is means testing over the long haul, for after all we learn new things AND we encounter Sin in changed form, requiring adjustments to our way of life together. Hooker does this similarly be means testing natural law with a common law approach. And what is lost is a shared way of living together that is not about earning salvation but living out of salvation not just pro me or pro nobis but pro mundis.

And in our time poverty and ecological devastation cannot be ignored as how Sin is at work among us. So too, then, must be our shared patterned gospel response.

Which gets us to criticisms lobbed at those who appropriate portions of Celtic Christian spiritualities in a middle class comfortable way. Now, parts of the Celtic traditions run in the familial traditions in my veins. An abiding sense of the aliveness of creation, for example, in which rocks and hills and mountains are not inert but mineral creations of Love meant too to have a name. Rocks sing. I believe this. Or that a raven may speak a word. Yes, I believe this, too. In fact, it is because of God’s Other Book as proclamation of God’s goodness that I as a gay man did not lose my faith when treated harshly by the Church. And so, my own faith cannot divorce the Incarnation from the Creation.

What goes lacking in middle class appropriations is a participatory Christocentric Trinitarianism (read Celtic prayers and you will be struck by their Christ-Trinity focus) and a shared ascetical outlook that is meant to call us to and hold us in harmony, and has extremists, who mind us to our own living and remind us of our utter dependence on God and interdependence on one another and all of creation. Extremists, or elders, however, while always reminding the community to itself should not be confused with the bulk of participants, who nevertheless, lived an outlook based in a prayerful way of life. And hence, we have been bequeathed numerous prayers and prayer-poems and runes of precisely this sort that are common praying.

Which gets me to Advent. Martinmas is coming Nov. 11, marking a time when the season we now know as Advent began not merely as a time of expectant joy for the Nativity, but as a time of expectant preparation for Lord of History to bring all to completion in the Consummation. Advent, like Lent, is a time to reassess our ways, ask about our ways, and wonder if we have any in response to the Incarnation, Jesus Christ. Penitential has become a dirty word not to be applied to Advent. It has also been associated with being anti-body. But penitential is really another way of saying, being off the way, reassessing, turning away from, repenting, and turning to the way again when it is removed from any sense of self-hatred and flesh-hatred. On the contrary, lack of penitence, a failure of ascesis may itself show a hatred of the self, the body, all flesh, and society if our aim is to live out of grace and in harmony, that is, peace, Shalom, holiness with all of life. For example, food is good. But overindulging... Eating animals treated like product... Being comfortable with others not eating... These dishonor and mar bodiliness, both ours, others', and the whole of creation.

So, how are we living out of Christ’s ways as our community has determined this shared pattern of gospel response?

Am I praying daily? Or not? Are we?

What are my buying habits? My habits of heart-mind related to a society based on production and consumption? Ours?

How am I eating in such a way to reverence creatures and creation? Or not? And We?

How am I restraining my own wants so that others’ needs might be filled? And we?

…

Death, death on a cross...

2011-09-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

In the Name of the Father, and of + the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A few days ago Troy Davis was executed in the state of Georgia. I do not claim to know his innocence or guilt. I do know that a great deal of uncertainty surrounded his case. And conservatively speaking such uncertainty should have been enough to grant Troy clemency. And I do know that in these United States men of color inordinately bear the brunt of incarceration and the death penalty. That under conditions of a racist society, the death penalty cannot be but a racist act, an act of desecration.

I know we do not like to speak of encountering God in our white-washed Churches, but as the news announced his execution and broadcast pictures of him, for a moment, a flash, I saw pictures of Troy Davis, and his spectacled face was the face of Christ. And I wept.

Yesterday, Wangari Maathai died. She had championed the planting of nearly 30 million trees to restore her Kenyan homeland. Many women joined Wangari in her work, and planting trees came to also highlight the plight and dignity of women in her country. Wangari did all of this in the face of early scorn and even government opposition. Late did she receive the Nobel prize for her work. In “Redwood Cathedral,” a poem dedicated to her life’s work, the poet tells of an encounter with the Living God among the Redwood forests of Northern California:

I enter the house of your praise
without thought of worship
stumps and needles cense
the heated air in late day
you still even my heart
at columns holding the sky
I touch my lips to rot.

I dip my fingers in decay
forgetting pious decorum
a salamander red-tailed
lingers in the last warm rays
you turn me again to dust
by pillars of silence keeping
I walk your dwelling place.(1)

I know we do not like to speak of encountering God in our sanitized Churches, but in the poet’s telling of smelling sweet decay and kissing rot and delight in a lone salamander, I am awed by a sense of God’s walking among us just as God does in the Garden in Genesis. I do not claim many such encounters for myself. But I do know that in these United States of late capitalism, creatures great and small bear the brunt of our insatiable use that now threatens all life. That under such conditions, to hug a tree destined for mansion-building is laughable, if not heresy.

“Because of the Incarnation, I reverence all remaining manner.” St. John of Damascus wrote these striking words in defense of icons during the struggles over iconoclasm in the Sixth Century. For many of us today, his words may seem outrageous if not outright heretical or even pagan.

Yet, at the heart of the controversy over icons rests this question, Is matter, created existence, made for and to show forth God? That is, in questioning the implications of the Incarnation, the icon, the Incarnation himself is at stake. Is matter, created existence, made to bear, to birth God? And finally, Do we dare hope in the Incarnation fully leavened in every creatures and all of creation, when in all transparency and fullness, God shall be all in all? Do we see? Dare we act as if?(2)

Let me reframe St. John’s maxim for the iconoclasms of our time, among them racism and sexism and ecological devastation: Because God became one of us, human, clay, creature, flesh, matter, Jesus Christ, I reverence every creature and all of creation. I will be so bold to say that in matters of racism and sexism and ecological devastation, the Incarnation is at stake for you and me and us. In the words of 19th Century Anglican theologian, F.D. Maurice, “the Incarnation may be set aside in acts as well as words.”

Maybe it’s easier for us to imagine matter showing forth God in proclamations written on gold leaf backgrounds in vibrant egg tempura strokes of cinnabar and cobalt? And perhaps it’s easier for us to believe that a mother tender and mild, holding an infant, ancient of face and robed in dazzling array, reveals matter bearing forth God? Though perhaps the controversy on Facebook last year over censoring pictures of women breastfeeding suggests otherwise?

Yet to gaze upon the doxa, the glory, the beauty of the Nativity, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Sending of the Spirit without paying attention to the Crucifixion is to finally miss the Person Whom they proclaim: The Word became flesh and dwelled among us all the way.

No, the Incarnation hymn we heard proclaimed from Philippians this morning is itself an icon written with strokes of iron on parchment and meant to be proclaimed as song. Just as with every icon of the Incarnation, this hymn brings us to encounter with a Living Person, God become Human, Jesus Christ. For hear, we encounter the God who so identifies with us as flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, that in Christ Jesus, God willingly experiences humiliation, enters abandonment, and risks annihilation for you, for me, for us.

Make no mistake, this Incarnational hymn at the heart of St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi contains within it the Personal, that is Christological, seeds of social, cultural, and I dare say, economic and ecological, reorientation and reordering, starting not with general society out there, but with we who sing and hear the hymn, Christ’s own Body.

So, just as we would gaze closely at an icon written in paint, let us listen attentively to a few stanzas of this hymn. Hear and meet again, God’s own Self-Word given to us:

Though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

This God enters fully into the midst of us as one of us. And God does so not in glorious array and imperial might on clouds of thunder and lightning, but in the words of St. Martin Luther, “There in a stable, without man or maid, lay the Creator of the world.” This Jesus, God’s own Self-Word does not grasp at his divinity, but having identified himself with us as one of us in the flesh, he gives over his Person fully to us. Jesus does not hold back entering into the fullness of human life and experience. And the fullness of God is found as a newborn infant crying in a cave adored by those considered of low or no estate, shepherds, sheep, oxen, donkeys, and chickens.

Oh, the innkeeper had done his best. The inn was full. Full of a questionable crowd, raucous on beer and wine, some women without any other means to support themselves than prostitution, some men thieves and murders taking refuge for the night from the very roads they made unsafe. So a place of quiet and relative safety seemed a gift. Yet, here in the midst of these, a child is born. And for a few moments of calm, at least, the Human One nurses as cattle bend their knee and donkeys bray loud rejoicing and sages sneak in with gifts of kings and angels sing out glorious Peace. But already the Cross looms as Herod slaughters the innocent.

No, this God does not ignore the vicious realities of human existence, of Herodian monstrosities and Caesarly usurpations and the banal, everyday cruelty toward one another and the use of creation for profit and gain. This Jesus is born into particularity, smack dab in the midst of that viciousness, as a slave among a people who have known slavery and live under to the boot of a new Pharaoh, Caesar Augustus. Not a servant as some translations give us. Servant, after all, sounds so genteel and civilized doesn’t it? No, God who is perfect Love, and therefore, perfectly free, comes among us as one without freedom, a slave. A slave, one who unlike the sons into today’s gospel proclamation, is sent out into the vineyards without a choice to break his back in hard labor in scorching heat. A slave, a class deemed of no account in the societies of Jesus’ day, a class deemed without personhood, a class worthy only of supporting the scaffolding of an exploitative economy through daily burdensome labor, and often, through physical, verbal, and sexual abuse at the whim of those who claimed ownership over their lives.

And in the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “by means of Himself,” by means of his very Person, as one in the flesh, as one bound in chains, Jesus binds Godself to us precisely where the most wretched inhumanity to inhumanity shows itself. Indeed, precisely as one whose very treatment and station or lack thereof is representative of humanity gone awry, a humanity of siblings turned against God and one another and all of creation, God becomes one of us. And it is this One enslaved that the hymn dares name human, person. Do you hear a social revolution?

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross.

This God enters fully into the midst of us as one of us, holding back not at all, not fleeing from being body and blood, but experiences himself the most terrible death of torturous suffocation at the hands of the state with only vinegar for comfort and dogs and vultures for company as his body begins to rot alive! Here on a tree, without friend or family, hangs dead the Creator of the world.

The fullness of God is found in this One condemned alongside thieves and murderers, as one of us. Precisely here, surrounded by thieves and highway robbers, this Jesus, muscled by hard labor and long walking, now broken and beaten, of late age at 33, hangs from a cross, an instrument of torture and death for criminals. And it is this One hanged that the hymn dares name human, person. Do you hear a social revolution?

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Christ Jesus is Lord,
to the Glory of God the Father.

Do we imagine still, even now, after all of that, flame orange angels and gold foil? Of triumph and might? To encounter in this hymn God Crucified in the flesh spoils our quick reverie and flight from this life and engagement with all that desecrates.

Again at this Table we shall receive this Lord Jesus in his Body given for you and me and us and his Blood shed for you and me and us. This Jesus, true to the Incarnation, does not run off to the far heavens to bask in the unapproachable light of Godself adulation. But, true to Love’s self-identification with all creatures, by means of his humanity, bends a knee to every creature and speaks a name. Above every name is a Name who surprisingly bends his knee to us.

This Lord Jesus freely shares the dignity of his Person and Name with you, and with you, and with me, with us, and with every creature and the whole of creation. Above every name is a Name who surprisingly confesses us. In Prof Carol Jacobson’s paradoxical completion of St. John Damascene’s words, “Because of the Incarnation, God reverences all remaining matter,” you and you and me and us and every creature and the whole of creation. Amen.

__________
(1) Christopher Evans, “Redwood Cathedral,” Unpublished manuscript.
(2) This emphasis on the Consummation is characteristic of Anglican theology and is reflected in Anglican ascetical theology that we act as if the Consummation were already. Dr. Carol Jacobson in her explorations of eschatology also notes that we are called to act in the subjunctive, as if.

Problematizing the Language of Inclusion and Exclusion as a Singular Hermeneutic for Christian Community

2011-05-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I found myself refused Holy Communion because of being a gay man. It was a deeply painful experience and I lost faith in the Church that day. That faith has recovered only as my faith in Jesus Christ has deepened, my love of the Community even in brokenness and sin has emerged with an honesty that does not brook romantic notions of Church communal life while nevertheless insisting that we can be better, and my sense of self before God has grown even in the face of sometimes mean and unexamined behavior by fellow Christians.

In recent times, the language of inclusion and exclusion has largely been attached to queer persons and our place within the life of the Body of Christ. There are gains and losses with this language.

A central gain is that this language raises awareness within the Body of Christ that not all is well with us, that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, that we too are deeply shaped by racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and the like, all of us. And we treat one another in ways we would never wish to be treated ourselves if we were the other both by commission and by omission.

In contrast to this, this language implicitly recognizes that we are quick to point fingers at the world, to claim “counter-cultural” status—a term by the way that I utterly despise because it allows us to fail to note our own cultural shapings and often produces a cultural claim that is the mirror image rather than one more shaped to Jesus Christ and his life for and to us.

We as Church are slow to note how we are ourselves very worldly-shaped and very cultural, claiming a superiority, justification by place and position and traits and accidents of birth, rather than our shared drowning in the watery grave and regenerative womb of Holy Baptism, our being united with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in new birth, our being made able to stand before God in Christ Jesus apart from any work of our own. That we, any of us, could claim a priority of voice for Christ’s Community because of our bio-socio-cultural status is worthy of challenge. Even our counter-cultures often look more like the culture of another time than truly a culture concerned with being shaped by the Other, Jesus Christ, and engaged with our own cultural shapings and changing realities in constructive-critical ways so that we might all excel in the mind of Christ, being love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. And to these, let me add single-heartedness or chastity, persistence and diligence, wisdom and courage, generosity and justice, and most importantly, humility—close-to-earth-ed-ness—remembering that without God we are but dust, that our only true standing place is acknowledging our utter need before Infinite and Eternal God Who is Risen, that we share together the vulnerability of all finite creatures—just like everyone else.

And there are losses.

Increasingly, this language functions at a very low level as an all-encompassing hermeneutic or lens by which to interpret all matters.

This language may even be used for any and every situation in which someone feels her or him self wronged or left out or not on the inside no matter what the situation is or why or intent and often without engaging with the other person about whom such a claim is made that she or he is exclusive. Use of this language in this way ends up trivializing real and painful harm to persons in the community often associated with identity traits such as skin color, culture, class, and so forth.

Indeed, such trivializing ends up overturning the very ethical concern this language originally hoped to name and redress, namely the real and painful harm done to persons because of race, gender, ethnicity, and more. In other words, true communal ethical or ascetical theological concerns of the Body of Christ, Christ’s Community in our care for one another are compared with any and every matter of concern.

Use of this language alone as a singular interpreter of Christ’s Community finally does not allow for questioning or making of any claims about communal ethics or ascetical theology at all. It ends up precisely negating the possibility of making any such claims because no other hermeneutic or claim can stand alongside it when pushed to its final end.

The extreme claim by some is that it allows for an “anything goes” mentality. An example might be that a person in the community is bedding another’s spouse. The personal and communal damage of such behavior is enormous. To suggest this is not okay, however, could be claimed to be exclusive—and I have witnessed this happen. But this “anything goes” works both from the “right” and from the “left”. What of the person who is a Neo-Nazi and makes no bones about it. Or the landlord who actively oppresses her or his tenants and shows up on Sunday expecting to be praised and admired and unchallenged. To be truly inclusive in this low-level understanding of this language dialectic would not allow for me to claim that racism and anti-Semiticism and sharkery and adultery are not okay. And that makes me exclusive on both counts where this dialectic becomes the singularly driving interpretive framework. Or if we do make such claims in the name of inclusion we automatically put into question using this as the singular interpretive framework by which we challenge ourselves and the community. And to then jump to claiming that the other person is being exclusive without further ado is to instantiate a framework that is inoperable on its own alone. Better to get specific about the communal ethical or ascetical theological claim regarding sexual conduct, racializing, and the like.

After all, in all three cases, I am willing to make faithful pastorally informed communal ethical or ascetical theological claims. And to do so is not to cast that person out the door, but it is to challenge them, and in some cases, yes, it might mean the possibility of excommunication if there is failure of amendment of life and the community is increasingly harmed by unchecked behavior. Whether I like it or not, this is the charitable interpretation of my own experience of excommunication even if I must finally disagree with the assessment and must assert in kind that in actuality the Church is very culturally-shaped in relation to queer persons so that it is not clear to me if it is possible for the Church at this time to make an equitable examination of our persons and lives in light of Christ's mind. That bullying (and worse), for example, is a regular feature of Churchly and worldly treatment of queer persons should give all Christians pause that perhaps something is off. But that is not nearly as interesting as what a committed pair does between the sheets.

The framework of much inclusion/exclusion however makes communal correction at all nearly impossible. And when dealing with matters of racism or adultery, communal correction, preferably conversational-conflictual in style is vitally necessary to make change to how it is we are with one another.

Further, this language dialectic also allows the user of the language to claim instant personal and moral unchallengeability no matter what and in such a way that any shade of distinctions is lost. A circle emerges in which to ask any questions of a person claiming to be excluded is to make oneself into an excluder also. With this, the language tends to assume willful malice or willful obliviousness on the part of the other and is not available to alternative input much less conversational engagement and awareness raising. Worst of all, it can shut down conversations or development of awareness about painful and hard matters we face as fellow God’s-beloveds at precisely the point when conversation even conflictual conversation and awareness raising are most necessary and vital to begin to rip away masks that tell us as Church that all is well with us and that we actually treat one another as we would wish to be treated if we were in the other’s shoes.

But finally, and not unrelated to this unchallengeability, indeed coupled precisely with it, this language actually becomes a language that holds persons in a place of victimization and allegiance to a noblesse oblige benevolence mentality toward the harmed on the part of those who think of themselves as including.

There is a failure to recognize that in Christ’s Body, it is God who includes all of us through Holy Baptism. The challenge to the ways we treat one another in community, that is our communal ethics or ascetical theology or lack thereof, thus, flows first and foremost from and in God’s embrace of each of us as beloved in Jesus Christ and God’s embrace of us to become more like Jesus Christ. In other words, to be included by God is also to be being changed more into an image of Christ. And that comes with communal ethical or ascetical theological claims to excelling in the mind of Christ as growth in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. And to these, let me add single-heartedness or chastity, persistence and diligence, wisdom and courage, generosity and justice, and most importantly, humility—close-to-earth-ed-ness—remembering that without God we are but dust, that our only true standing place is acknowledging our utter need before Infinite and Eternal God Who is Risen, that we share together the vulnerability of all finite creatures—just like everyone else. We can disagree about those patterned gospel responses that increase us in these character markers or ways of being, certainly, but we cannot set aside that these have claim on us at all for the sake of including as a singular interpretive framework.

As theologian, James Alison, reminds us, to be baptized is to be on the inside of God’s life. And if I am on the inside of God’s life, I am a responsible. To be on the inside, to a responsible, means that I can speak face to face to my fellow baptized, and challenge her or him and the community if necessary because I am held by God's indissoluable bond. And they can do the same with me. It means that I can refuse to place myself in a grateful subservient position to others simply for being allowed through the door. It means that I am free to offer my gifts irrespective of whether or not they are welcome or received or wanted. It means that I am a full participant in God’s own life through Christ in the Spirit. And it means in turn that I am a full participant in the life of this world, so I can stand in solidarity with others rather than think of myself as their defender or think of them as recipients of my charitable excess, so that I can take responsibility for those moments when I do not treat a fellow beloved of God as I would wish to be treated if I were her or him.

Baptism Practicum: Afterthoughts: Responsibility and Normativity

2011-03-12T11:36:00.001-08:00

Last week we met to do the baptism practicum. In solidarity with the students in my practicum group, I too led a practice baptism using the rite from the 1979 BCP.

What I appreciate in the BCP besides the spare, yet elegant language and theologically focused brevity, is that this is what you will do. Period. No options to the nth degree. As I noted to the students, as an Episcopalian, I don’t get to choose, but must do what the Church does as legislated for in this Church. Common Prayer and canon law are means to provide for normativity in a non-established setting.

This not being free to choose among myriad options is a form of freedom in its own right similar to the freedom of marriage. The tyranny of choice is removed and in its place is given the freedom of commitment over the long-haul. In a society driven by an economy of choice, an economy of commitment is liberating while also difficult because it counters the daily justification for our wandering and changing desires.

As a pastor in the ELCA, however, my students will be required to choose and not simply let the one being baptized or the parents choose from options, some of which are better than others. This too is a pastoral responsibility, a commitment to something, the Church, and to Someone, Christ, who is more than just ourselves.

When asked why it is I recommend all have the Baptismal formula memorized in both its Eastern and Western forms, I noted that in extremis, a layperson too may be called upon to baptize, especially if you work in a setting where death is a regular occurrence. Even as a layman, however, I am not free to futz with the formulae and I am responsible to use the Western form as a common prayer Anglican:

N., I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Or if free to use the Eastern form, it is:

N. is baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I remain surprised then that some thought themselves free to futz with the formulae in either form. Ecumenically, historically, and theologically this presents great problems and places the baptized in pastoral danger. What do I mean? She or he may transfer at some point to another congregation or to another tradition and mentioning that she or he was baptized in the Name of the Source, Word, and Spirit, or God forbid, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer may put her or his baptism in question, may take away the liberty of God’s assurance marked by word, water, cross, and oil. That is not to say that we cannot write and speak of the Trinity in several ways that are orthodox, but for the sake of catholicity, these liturgical formulae are not futzable, just as we would not substitute something other for the Words of Institution. To do so here again raises pastoral questions as to whether this is what we say it is, namely, Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This is all to say that to be beholden to Someone and someones more than oneself is part of what if means to be Christian, part of what it means to be ordained.

Six Signs: Two Years Later

2011-03-12T11:04:00.001-08:00

I still think this has punch: Six Signs. The unbinding of our Prayer Book in processes not as carefully structured as those which went into its 1979 revision slowly undoes common prayer, our yardstick or normativity, as Anglican Christians in practice.

Communion Without Baptism (CWOB): A Follow-Up to Derek Olsen

2011-02-13T09:16:00.001-08:00

Though I played a little bit the interlocutor or gadfly, Derek's assessment of CWOB gels close to my own concerns. At heart it undermines God's Economy as received and responded to us through means of matter and words. It undoes the Anglican commitment to a sacramental worldview on the universe, a rather generous outlook toward our social worlds, creation, and the entire cosmos despite it all, made possible because we have been given Sacraments of Irrevocable Union in Christ and Ongoing Nourishment by Christ.

Read his three-piece concerns on the subject:

Communion without Baptism I

Communion without Baptism II

Communion without Baptism III

I will say this as follow-up to Derek's concerns, oriented through my own lens, which tends to orient ecclesiological and ascetical concerns to the Person and work of Jesus Christ:

Jesus Christ's incorporation of us into His own Body, not simply inclusion into any old community--the Church is not a club (and parties left and right be ware! Unsavory ones, Gentiles abound.), is for me the explicit theological point of entry for God's wide welcome, into explicit relationship within God's own Life, made available at the Font by water and word and the Holy Spirit.

Explicit Welcome into and living within God's own Life is through God's Community, the Church, we are given a Community and given over to one another in Christ, which should signify to us and to the whole cosmos, that God's Welcome explicitly received and taken up and put on in Holy Baptism, and living in as well as out of God's own Life as flesh and blood human creatures, works itself out on the level of creatures in the ways we relate to one another and the whole cosmos in Christlike ways and not (and when not, turning again and again, to our only Life). St. Paul calls these fruits of the Spirit: faithfulness, promise-keeping, courage, listening (obedience), and the like.

In other words, God's Welcome explicitly received and taken up and put on in Holy Baptism and living in God's own Life flows into discipleship rooted first and foremost not in being the interlocutor of my sister or brother, but of myself. How might my habits, emotions, attitudes, behaviors not show forth God's love of myself, my neighbors, and the whole cosmos? Where do I lie? Not keep a promise? Forget the least? Scorn the vulnerable?

Where we downplay that our Baptism is an incorporation into the Life of God the Father Unbegotten through Jesus Christ the Son Only-Begotten by the Holy Spirit Proceeding in Christ's Community, that is, Christ's Body, Christ's Temple, Christ's People, Christ's Convocation, Christ's Church, Christ's Bride, Christ's Friends, we fail to be honest of Whose we are as members and of our calling when inviting the potential praiser, and so, we fail to be the Church, the visible Witness to God in Christ.

God's Baptismal Covenant presupposes this grounding as the inclusion into Christ's Community, beginning as it does with The Apostles' Creed, and only then moving on to our promises as response. It also suggests that inclusion in this Community, Christ's very Body, requires of all of us as response the ongoing reordering of the way we relate to one another, the world, and creation--that is, discipleship, in light of Who Christ is for us and to us. The fallout of being incorporated by God through God's Community is a life ongoingly reordered to the Incarnation in His totality, namely, His Person, Jesus Christ, is a life, in other words, reordered to the Life of the Holy Trinity on the level of human creatures.

In the totality of Incarnation of the Second Person the Word the Only-Begotten from Conception to Cross, from Resurrection to Ascension, heaven and earth are irrevocably joined. This is the bedrock and ground of our witness, our proclamation, our invitation. And it by this lens that we are called to live in all the everyday and ordinary as well as the extraordinary difficulties of being alive.

We need not be anxious mongerers of damnation, swelling the ranks of the Font through fear and unbelief, nor need we be hawkers of salvific wares as if the chief point were purchase of heaven rather than receiving Life in God, but we are called to witness, proclaim, point to, and invite all peoples and indeed the entire cosmos into open praise-response to this Generous, Loving, Saving Word Who Has Once-For-All Overcome, Who is present and working among us hiddenly in the day-to-day life of the world and all of creation, and Who is present to us explicitly wherever two or three are gathered in His Name in Psalm and Prayer, Word and Sacrament, in proclamation as well as presentation.

We are called as the Witnessing, Praise Community to invite all so moved to receive and take up their part and put on Christ in the Witnessing, Praise Community, and Holy Baptism is the means given us for this purpose as well as the chief visible witness and Testament in matter and by word to the work of God's Holy Spirit in making known God's irrevocable decision for me, for you, for us, for the whole cosmos in Christ Jesus once-for-all.

Giving no explicit account of Who we receive in Holy Communion and the claims this One makes on us to grow up into full stature, is false advertisement of a chummy hospitality cheese-and-cracker affair without the risks entailed in receiving God's xenia, God's peace-offering. God's xenia, God's peace-offering will and does change us, and starts not with that one or that one, but with pointing at me in making self-examination, of reflecting on where my own life shines forth less than God's once-for-all peace wrought fleshwise in Christ.

If and only if we are clear and upfront that it is this Life Who we are inviting any and all to receive at the Altar-Table, then should we feel comfortable opening up the Altar-Table without explicit mention of Holy Baptism as prior ground.

And with this warning to us should we so choose: We set up the one unbaptized receiving for great travail, for she or he has no visible Mark by water and word so necessary to a created race, that Irrevocable Sign and Seal of God's joining heaven and earth once-for-all in Christ.

She or he has no explicit being joined to the Support Community by etching on her or his flesh by drops and drips and splashes of water with words of God's Irrevocable Embrace sealed by oiled traces crossward forever, of which our daily remembrance by marking ourselves (+) at The Apostles' Creed serves as rebuke to hell, and upon which we fall back when the Tempter comes scheming, and the Tempter will come as F. D. Maurice reminds us: Baptismal Calling

Here are some of my previous posts that relate to the matter:

Questions on Communion Without Baptism (CWOB): Real Presence

Prefer Nothing to Christ or Keep Death Always Before You: CWOB and Patterns of the Cross

Focus of Unity? Inclusion?

2011-01-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

One of the current problems afflicting Anglicanese especially as we concern ourselves with ecclesiologies and the Anglican Communion as institution is that oft repeated phrase that "the Archbishop of Canterbury is the focus of unity" and such similar turns. Let me be frank. As an Anglican, the Archbishop of Canterbury is not my focus, nor that Who binds me to all other Anglicans and more Christians besides. There is One Center, One Focus of our Unity, One Head, namely, Jesus Christ, Who is not localized but available in all times and places to all sorts and conditions of human beings whenever they call upon His Name or so gather.

There can be and is only One focus of our unity, Jesus Christ. This Reformation profession of faith is at the heart of our Anglican praying surrounding headship and representation, mediation and salvation. If and whenever one called to present and represent, that is, point we the Body to the One Christ among us, binding us, holding us, abiding with and in us, or the office that that one occupies rather becomes another Rome or Constantinople or Alexandria or Jerusalem, we have sold our inheritance for rotted pottage.

The second is like the first, inclusion is the work of God in Christ by the Spirit first and foremost, not our own. God's inclusion is likely to upset apple carts for those who don't want to be related to sorts considered unsavory wherever that lies for you and I. If we have no place for those we hold to be unsavory, Christ may have no place for us.

To be included in Christ's own life by Baptism, that is, to receive Christ's decisive once-for-all overcoming of sin, evil, and death calls us into a life of discipleship, but a life of discipleship is not a program, however, great the intellectual edifice and theological arguments for a formulaic response, but a living response to grace of which the fruits, as St Paul reminds, us are rather obvious.

Ascetical theology, thus, gives us time-and-community-tested shapes for what a faithful response looks like, not a pat-program for success or a one-size-fits-all formula that expects extraordinary things of a small group while being comfortable with the ordinary and even rather less than shining for the majority blessed. Adjustments can and will and must be made to the time-and-community-tested patterns in light of the ongoing observation of graced lives of peoples living in response to Christ as members of the One Body. We must always ask the question of one another, What is grace doing in your life? Fruits will surely tell us over time.

That is to say, any ascetical theology worth its catholicity requires observation and experience, and not just those of the majority. All the careful biblical, traditional, rational, theological, intellectual, ecclesiological, "objective" arguments and systems and programs regarding our current ascetical theological issue de jour end up making of these honorable enterprises a laughstock to our despisers when observations and experiences of real flesh with real flesh simply do not fit the edifice. Sometimes it requires the Word working in the world to turn us again to consider what He might be up to among the peoples and nations. Sometimes it is the Word at work in the world that catches our attention long enough to repent, that is, turn us again to reliance on the only Center we can or will ever properly have as Churches. We finally have to admit that theology too can disguise sheer loathing, prejudice, and ill will. And all in the Name of Jesus Christ.

To quote from F.D. Maurice:

This is the second characteristic of the Prayer Book I would speak of. It is expressed in the words of my text,—“With all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.”

The Romanists asserted that the Church was bound together by the common adherence of its members to a visible Person and a visible Centre. How was this notion to be refuted? Can you overthrow it by calling the Bishop of Rome Antichrist? By denouncing the Church to which he belongs as the Babylonian Harlot? Or by setting up an Anglican system in opposition to this Roman system—by determining that the centre in our fellowship shall be at home instead of Italy? Or is exclusiveness best defeated by Catholicity, cruel anathemas by an universal fellowship, a mimic Ecclesiastical centre, by turning to that invisible spiritual Centre which was made manifest when Christ rose from the dead and ascended on high? Our Reformers adopted the latter form of protest as the most reasonable, and they made it in this way. They found prayers which were based on this universal principle, many of which had been narrowed and debased by the local and idolatrous principle; they removed the outgrowths, they took the substance of the petitions. So they claimed for themselves and for us a fraternity with other ages and other countries, with men whose habits and opinions were most different from their own, with those very Romanists who were slandering and excommunicating them. They claimed fraternity with men who in every place were calling on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whether they were tied and bound by the chains of an evil system, or had broken those bonds asunder. They claimed fellowship with men hereafter, who on any other grounds should repudiate their Church and establish some other communion—with men of every tongue and clime, and of every system. If they will not have a Common Prayer with us, we can make our prayers large enough to include them. Nay, to take in Jews, Turks, Infidels and Heretics, all whose nature Christ has borne. For he is theirs as well as ours. He has died for them as for us, he lives for them as for us. Our privilege and glory is to proclaim him in this character; we forfeit our own right in him when we fail to assert a right in him for all mankind. The baptized Church is not set apart as a witness for exclusion, but against it. The denial of Christ as the root of all life and all society—this is the exclusive sectarian principle. And it is a principle so near to all of us, into which we are so ready at every moment to fall, that only prayer to our Heavenly Father through the one Mediator, can deliver us from it.[1]

[1] F.D. Maurice, “Sermon I,” The Prayer Book (London: James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1966), 6-9.

Forget "Contemporary" and "Traditional": Other Directions

2011-01-15T08:50:00.001-08:00

In teaching courses in liturgy last semester, I found myself having to give names to assumptions and observations I make about liturgy that move outside the usual categories, categories often used in derisive ways by those of various parties in worship warfare. While avoiding cultural tourism, I am cognizant that hybridity is ever at work. The idioms that move one generation may not move another simply because the overlap of popular and church music in everyday experience is different over time. Here are some thoughts:

Recycling - We have riches in orders of service for a reason. Each of these orders in their time, place, and culture intended an encounter with the Living God in a way consonant with the distinctive Christian tradition through a particularity of shape and content. To recycle is to familiarize oneself with these riches and to incorporate these riches into liturgical preparation, for example, the Minor Propers, such as the Introit.

Fusion - Whether or not recycling is well-received often enough depends on how it is placed in linguistic and musical idioms that will speak to people in a particular locale and cultural formation. In Twenty-first Century America this can be quite wide and understanding your own parish context is vital. Though I am white, of largely Isles origin, and partial to Gregorian chant, I also move to Latin and African beats that are both vital to American music formation in our various types of music. To take the Introit appointed in Gregorian chant, adapt it to a Latin, Gospel, etc. is not necessarily at variance or inauthentic to my own musical or idiom formation on the whole or to that of many in our cultural. It is wise to teach how it is inculturation need not mean dumping what is inherited. Fusion is a way to do this.

Directionality - How is it that the overall flow or direction of the service carries how we meet God and God meets us?[1] For Lutherans, this is generally an Incarnational, Christocentric, God comes to us, movement. For Anglicans, this is generally a Pneumatic or Trinitarian, God takes us into God's own life, movement. Neither is wrong, and neither is necessarily only to be found in either tradition, but they are distinctive "feels".

Formational Resonances - We are not tabulae rasae. We are already shaped before we shape. We come to preparing and doing worship already formed in certain ways. For example, assumption that there is an ordo is to already be formed without consciously recognizing this as such.

_____

[1] "meets us" is language I received from two students, Holly Johnson and Michael Larson.

Marriage as Discipleship

2011-01-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

My friend Lee points us to a piece http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/traditional-marriage-hasnt-existed-for-a-long-time/noting how marriage is no longer traditional. The observations are true that marriage has changed a great deal in our time, moving away from a focus on alliances and property and begetting to love and partnership. But romantic notions too will not do. This wedding frenzy of modern American life is not consonant with relating the married estate to the gospel life of discipleship as I understand it, and so, I continue to raise the question of what marriage means as disciples of Christ. As a minority sort and condition, I have more freedom to do just that.

From here, it often seems like defense of marriage looks an awful lot like an unwillingness to examine how much Christians do not have a singular theology of marriage, and so, we're quick to resort to simplistic reaffirmations (of ourselves). A quick perusal of scripture, history, theology, and liturgies bears this out. And any who tell you otherwise have not wrestled with the fragments adequately. So the question for me is this, how will we arrange the fragments into a response to Jesus Christ? In vows? In rites? In ascetical or moral theologies or ethics? In the particularity of real human lives (no two marriages are alike)?

For me, marriage is about discipleship, about growing together in being for others in response to Christ. That will look different in each case even as all cases share similarities. In this regard, I do not see the monastic life and married life as unrelated, nor do I accept Manichaean tendencies in the tradition that would break eros and agape completely sometimes doing so by making of monastic life something superior (as if celibates are not sexual) rather than a particular way of discipling fallen connectivity. Both are oriented to bridle and disciple our fallen connectivity (sexuality) for others over the long haul. Nor do I accept the romantic lauds of marriage that somehow make of it in itself our sanctification if not salvation. Such is romanticism pushing into our ascetical theologies in an unwarranted way. On the level of systematics, we would call that eschatological collapse. Marriage is wrought with tensions of the incomplete and contingent. Rowan Willliams reminds us of this in The Body's Graces by observing that such notions do not bear out in examination of real marriages, where blessed and approved relationships harbor abuse and the like all too often. Such romantic, self-justifying notions are just too easy. In our own time, marriage itself has become something of an idol just as in the days of the Reformers was monastic life. And it is used to make oneself feel superior (justified) to the minority sort. That this seems to go unnoticed except by those of minority affectional orientation puzzles this Christian. That this subtle salvation by marriage trajectory flies in the face of God's unearned love in Christ astonishes and horrifies. It leaves no room for others to receive themselves from God as good and as also fallen in their connectivity. It has a program for you too... No receiving God's gospel first and having patience to see how that might work out or not in receiving a self for others.

Marriage is about disicpleship not some sense of feeling oneself glorious and superior for being made a majority sort (some sort of heterosexual theology of glory thinly disguised by a too quick and self-justifying read of nature without Hooker's and even Aquinas' recognition that minority possibilities are likely in creation and human life and need be accounted for within the same required virtues or rather gifts of the Spirit--as in, does this have any chance of showing any? Hooker does this by relating the minority sort to the usual cases as his reform of natural law by common law sensibilities. But moreso, all cases for Christians must be related first to Christ.

The Norm for us, and Marriage properly conceived, is not heterosexuality nor homosexuality, but Jesus Christ and his relationship to us in Holy Baptism. All others at best are derivative, pointing us to Him (that fruits of the Spirit thing again). Just as Bl. Julian makes of maternity something first reflective of Christ's own for and to us. And it is this directionality that leaves us wiggle room for rethinking several things.

Within discipleship, it is possible to have variety. I say this because there is more than one relationship of Christ to us, than Ephesians on Marriage or Luke on Mothering. John's Friendship is one, and one with which many same-sex partnerships resonate precisely because some of the other notions suggest domination and too easy pigeonholing of men and women without care for their particularity. And hence, why some of us continue to raise questions both about Christian conceptions of marriage and whether or not a third estate is not called for the same-sex affectioned. Or if not, marriage needs further rethinking. After all, same-sex partnerships bear many similarities to both married and monastic life. So much of traditional marriage rites have little to say about marriage as discipleship and I want little part in them. It very well could be that we are being given a gift in our time because of having to wrestle with the existence of same-sex affectioned persons to really rethink our rites to discipleship.

As I wrote in comment to Lee's post:

I think companionate is a key term here and maintains a central component of traditional notions of marriage that cannot help but be concerned with matters of estate, namely board and bed. To be a companion is one who shares bread together, and be extension, all that this requires as responsibles–work, home, hearth, children if so blessed, parents to attend in later years, etc. It does not allow you to fly the coop of responsibility as too much of romantic notions tends to do.

In companionship love unbridled and undisciplined and otherwise disposed not to care but for self (lust) needs takes shape as for others, firstly within the realm of hearth and home, but not without being so in the rest of life at work, extended family, etc. Romantic notions of marriage at play in our culture are a problem for me as Christian because what I am looking for, what I would discern as a mark of a healthy marriage, is are you overtime both growing in for others? And sometimes that starts with accepting that the beard shavings will never be wiped out of the sink!

What I would ask you, whether monastic or married, single or partnered is this, Are you growing in being for others in response to Jesus Christ? This question of the Incarnation, both in the Crib and on the Cross, is what makes or breaks our notions, ideologies, and prejudices all around.

The Rhythm of the Days and Seasons of our Church Year

2010-12-19T08:02:00.000-08:00

One of the things I am reminded of at two of the greater transitions in the Church Year, After Trinity/Pentecost to Advent and After Epiphany to Lent, is that at its best, as Derek, reminds us again and again, the lectionary is a key to understanding the formation of us by the Church Year.

Transition is gradual. The lectionary texts start taking on the themes of Advent before Advent, and the same with Lent. Preparation is already underway in the trifecta of the Cloud of Witnesses. Preparation is already underway in those formerly numbered weeks.

This is how we are formed and normed by the Incarnation, to the oneness and totality of Jesus Christ's conception, birth, life, teachings, death, resurrection, ascension, sending of the Spirit, and coming, always coming to us explicitly in psalm and canticle and prayer, word and bread and wine, and hiddenly in life everyday and in all of God's creation, until finally, when as Tutu writes, we shall reach a tipping point, and Christ hidden and at work always and everywhere shall burst forth full bloom and we see the Little One in every face and the great Cloud take on flesh before our eyes in the blinding light of Love.

This all gets me to the point of this post. The Advent Sours, those people who go into apoplexy if you dare sing a Christmas hymn in the Advent season, need to take a chill pill. I write this as a former Advent cranky-pants extraordinaire. This sort of thing is a little like an anachronism. Sort of like those in a perfectly pristine sanctuary of 21st Century America trying to recreate in exact replica the rites of 14th Century Hereford cathedral (never mind that local practice in parishes was probably quite unique, and never mind the dogs and horses and stink). Singing carols and hymns in Advent as preparation for the Nativity is longstanding and finds support in all sorts of popular practices if we dare to look at dramas, local customs, and the like. Advent after all has a multivalent character, looking toward Nativity, looking toward Parousia, bleeding into and being bled into by the trifecta of the Cloud of Witnesses, and even carries with it more than a tinge of the Cross and the promise of Resurrection and the goodness of Creation afire by God's Holy Spirit.

The central concern of many sour folk, a very catholic concern, is that the American Reformed tradition's elimination of the liturgical year has led us to a socio-cultural rhythm of the commercial days of Christmas starting after Black Friday, if not earlier, and ending Christmas Day--just when the Days and Season of Christmas are beginning. Commerce swallows up both Advent and Christmas and forms us! And not to the Incarnation! We lose expectation, waiting, preparation, and a bit of penitence (yes, I think, a bit of penitence as much as joy characterizes this season, disagreeing with some of my former professors in this regard. I recommend using the first Collect everyday just as Ash Wednesday's is used in Lent.). But this swallowing up is only so by our own actions and habits. We have been formed in competing ways. That is the catholic concern, and rightly so. But rather than rail and whine and get all pissy, let's take responsibility for this, rather than slam someone down for singing, What Child Is This? Better a hymn to the Incarnation than not. We do not know how God might move a heart to faith by that long stretch of holiday favorites usurping regular radio programming unto Christmas Day.

As Dr. Michael B. Aune noted of Candlemas last year in a magnificent sermon, this is a day already portending Lent. He mused, perhaps we Twentieth Century folk have compartmentalized our Days and Seasons of the Church Year in ways our ancestors in the faith would not--because they knew better. To hear, Lo, How A Rose at Rejoicemas is a welcome relief, a bit of Christmas, and more than a bit of Marian piety for we who swing that way.

Nativity reaches into Parousia, and vice versa. Purposely. As I wrote in my last post, the Nativity is put-to-promise on God's word to us that in the End the fullness of God shall be visibly, completely, fully All in All. Nativity should reach into Parousia. And just so, Parousia should reach into Nativity. God is with us! God is with us, indeed! God has not gone absent in the meantime contra popular cultural tales of being left behind. Though often hidden, unknown, even despised, God in Christ is present, working, redeeming, creating anew through, with, and in flesh. And calling we who are Church to say so. Everyday! Nativity reaching into Parousia is also a reminder that flesh matters. Flesh is fit for showing forth God, as the Damascene writes in defending icons. Yet, crap still happens. Flesh bleeds. The Cross is present, too. Folks still are starving in the streets. People are now dying from wars. Creation groans from our pollution and waste. And we hear God say, "I send you." Flesh matters, love Me in the flesh.

So, if we must offer a liturgical solution so that Advent gets its due in an overly commercialized cultural context, rather than become Advent Sours, I recommend revisiting the possibility of an earlier start to Advent, say the Sunday after St. Martin's Feast. After all, catholic practice, the want to make the Incarnation encountered here and now in proclamation and sacrament, is known to respond to the contextual realities of flesh.

We tried just this solution this year at the seminary. What I have noticed is that the longer Advent season has led on my part to a bit of melancholy, perhaps depression if not despair, and impatience for Christmas to arrive. One person noted, there are consequences for making such changes in the calendar. Yes, there are. And a bit of melancholy and blues, not just contemplation and give aways, are precisely how it should be in Advent. The long seeming slow decay to despair that otherwise haunts this season in a world of hunger and fear and hate makes way to the Promise that we and all flesh shall behold God, in the Child, and Though, With, and In Us and All Flesh. And in this mean time of tensions, when we know Him only explicitly in remembrance of His death and by proclamation, a longer Advent reminds us as does the Nativity to "Love Him in the World of the Flesh." (W.H. Auden, For the Time Being).

At the Heart of Anglican Catholicity is the Incarnation: Devotion to the Theotokos

2010-12-12T07:23:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has read my ramblings over many years know that I tend to resist labels, partially because labels can get in the way of learning from those with whom you disagree and partially because the categories Anglicans tend to work in do not fit very well or have become ossified by their most ardent adherents so that I associate:

Anglo-Catholic not only with the sensuous worship without which I cannot live, but also with some serious 19th Century theological errors related to Baptism and Eucharist; with a tendency to focus on an autocratic if not tyrannical authority of the episcopate to the exclusion of the rest of the Body in Council, sometimes in ways, as of late, that show inclinations toward Roman ecclesiologies at odds with our messy (because alive and engaged with flesh) lived Anglican ownhood (to draw from Auden); with a museum curator's habit in collecting liturgical artifacts that at the same time makes dismissal of any creativity or recycling necessary to make the Incarnate One known in our time, place, and culture even as is lauded the creativity of other times, places, and cultures; and with a don't ask, don't tell tendency that kills members of the Body and is justified for the sake of the greater good in an imperial interpretation of 1 Corinthians 12. While lauding the flesh of the Incarnate One, I have sometimes found a tendency to denigrate the flesh of others, whether women or gays, in the name of theology and beauty. Such seems at odds to me with the Incarnate One in his fullness, of whom we too are members.

What I have come to realize is that these things are not the markers of one who is catholic; many in fact, are conditions of temperament, time, and place, and culture. But as I lit the candle before the icon of the Virgin of the Sign at seminary this last week, made the Sign of the Cross, and said the Ave Maria in Latin, I could not avoid the catholic label in some fashion. Some have thought me Catholic (that is, Roman or Anglican) for such devotion, but I have explained that no, such devotion is just catholic. Just catholic. Meaning simply ordinary, common, universal. The sensuousness of it all in the best of High and Anglo-Catholic worship is the inspiration of imagination, to vision, to a world as seen through the Image of God, Jesus Christ. A truly catholic worship should inspire creativity as response and even as offering liturgically in hymnody, art, poetry, and the like.

I do not flee to Mother Mary because she stands in for Jesus. As Anglicans we did away with any sense that mediation or merit is other than Jesus Christ's. And rightly so. I go to her because in her as like no other, Holy Wisdom was, and is, and comes. She is the one pregnant with promise and possibility. My connection to the Theotokos is not for need of mediation, but it is for comfort and friendship and intercession and inspiration as members of the same One Body, for we are of hers by Him and through His. Like other saints, I have a relationship with her. I talk to Mary, yes, I talk to Mary, often. In hard times and easy, she listens, embraces, and challenges, pointing me to Christ, as if to tell me pray, "Be it done unto me, according to your word." And she really likes, not just loves, her gay children, btw.

At the heart of an Anglican catholicity is the God who gets himself dirty, humbles (makes himself earthy) Godself out of love for us into all the ordinary and messy places of life unto birth in a manger, our theologia incarnationis again. Not that the manger is where it will end in some gross nostalgia, for the Cross already looms in Herod's evil order and Rome's imperial foot-on-neck, but because at the Crib everything is already won. God is become one of us! Today! as the antiphon for the Magnificat declares for Christmas days. In the Word become flesh the powers of sin and death are subjected no matter how they whisper lies otherwise in the meantime, and in this Child, our humanity and indeed all flesh is shown its true dignity as that fit for deity. The promise of Easter arrives in a Crib: God will never let us go! So it has been from the Beginning, when God began to create...

And just so, the promise of the End is given in the Beginning. We were and are ever spoken into being through God's Word, as Maurice noted--the powers never had a chance. Even before his birth in time, we were and do belong to the Word. That is precisely why what feels to be the close of the Church Year is also its beginning. The promise of the Consummation found in the All Saints Octave and its afters, in Adventtide, and Saptientiatide is found in the Nativity and the entire swath of Presentations through Candlemas. That given and promised in the Nativity of the Word of God shall be finished in the Consummation, when that same Wisdom, Jesus Christ, who fills all things in his risen humanity, is All in All, hidden, unknown, even despised, and always at work, shall burst forth full bloom upon us all unawares and overtake all that separates us from ourselves, one another, the whole of creation, and God:

One day, the Gospel tells us, the tension gradually accumulating between humanity and God will touch the limits prescribed by the possibilities of the world. And then will come the end. The presence of Christ, which has been silently accruing in things, will suddenly be revealed—like a flash of light from pole to pole. Breaking through all the barriers within which the veil of matter and the watertightness of souls have seemingly kept it confined, it will invade the face of the earth….Like lightning, like conflagration, like a flood, the attraction exerted by the Son of Man will lay hold of all the whirling elements in the universe so as to reunite them or subject them to his body....[1]

Yes, we live in the tension of the meantime of promise, feeding on him who we know only explicitly as proclaimed Word and ingested Sacrament, but we shall see face to face. But this feeding nevertheless opens our eyes to a creation ever being spoken into being by this One, ever groaning forth shoots of light, and so the catholic Christian gives each due reverence, even praying that God remember a Holy Thorn Tree cutdown without thankfulness or purpose when others would scorn:

Blessed are you, O God, Creator of the universe,

who was, and is, and will ever be our only life: Receive into your care this holy thorn tree, daughter of that which you gave to the people of Glastonbury to twice yearly bloom as remembrance and sign of the incarnate deity and risen humanity of your Son; Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

By Word and Sacrament, we may read Christ in his Other Book from hurtling Asteroid to braying Zebra. For me, the Mystery of God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, and of the Body nurtured by him, and the promised fulfillment of all creation in the Consummation is no where better discovered than in Mother Mary. I cannot help but see that promise most fully in the she who birthed the Creator of earth, and sea, and sky:

Mother of Christ, hear thou thy people's cry

Star of the deep and Portal of the sky!

Mother of Him who thee made from nothing made.
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid:
Oh, by what joy which Gabriel brought to thee,
Thou Virgin first and last, let us thy mercy see.

[1] Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 266.

Ramblings on Our Anglican Theologia Incarnationis

2010-11-20T09:21:00.000-08:00

More Deeply Into the Life of the World: God’s Humility and Human Glory

I live and work among Lutherans. Over time, in fact, I would say that I have become somewhat “bi-lingual,” able to speak both “Anglican” and “Lutheran” theologically, historically, liturgically. A certain vocabulary and directionality characterizes this Lutheran distinctiveness. And it is a gift to the wider Church universal.

This ecumenical conversation has not left my own thinking unchanged. On the contrary, this conversation has led me to appreciate more deeply my own tradition, which shares much with Lutherans, and to examine afresh our own conceptions, theologies, doxologies, teachings--our distinctiveness as Anglicans.

Lutherans often speak and write of the theologia crucis or theology of the cross. I will go so far as to say that this theologia crucis is not so very far from the Anglican emphasis on the Incarnation. After all, if I may speak so boldly, what characterizes Anglican theology is a theologia incarnationis.

The Lutheran focus on Christ on the Cross as the paramount self-revelation of God rubs wrong all of our desires for a glory rooted in success and self-centeredness, excess and exaltation. As an Anglican, I would chime in, so does a God in diapers living under threat of empire and vassals.

This Lutheran focus on the Cross is an Incarnational bent not unrelated to the Anglican emphasis of the crib, heightened this time of year. But just as the Cross is more than the Crucifixion, so is the Incarnation more than the Nativity. Both in my experience indeed take us through the full sweep of the event of the Person of Christ happening among us, not just back then, but here and now among us explicitly in Word and Sacrament. Both in turn take us into the life of our social worlds and all of creation--good, bad, ugly, and shit. This is what Anglicans have tended to call "incarnational," that notion, that because God has become a creature, nothing creaturely is outside the purview of God's concern. This incarnationalism is not unrelated to Anglican emphasis on the Church as Christ's Body, something we take rather seriously, sometimes to the point that Christ who makes us "by the power of the Holy Spirit" is eclipsed by our being made, ecclesiology, and related polity and governance.

Yet, our theologia incarnationis is not first and foremost a mystical emphasis on birthing "Christ in us," though it may be that for some few given particular gifts, but first and foremost a communion or fellowship or commons of "Christ for us and we for others." Irrespective of gifts, explicit means are what remain commonly shared and required. The emphasis is on relationships to God and one another centrally in Baptism and Communion, and in turn, to our social worlds and the whole of creation. And not that we bring Christ to an otherwise Christless world, but that we go forth to name where the Word is at work in our social worlds and creation, though hidden, unknown, and even despised. What we might characterize as Brs. Paul and Cranmer's "we in Christ." That is why leaves can burst forth divine fire and surprise us, why it is that movements and changes in our social worlds too can say something of truth, and so, precisely why Anglican poetry has tended not to ignore God's working in our social worlds and creation.

But before we get to the good and the ugly, something perhaps most obvious in Anglican poetry, being bold enough to look at the bad and the shit begins at Nativity. The close of Auden's For the Time Being is a prime example. This is where Cross and Crib kiss.

The Lutheran emphasis on the Incarnational direction of God’s self-gift, that is a direction toward us as ground for our response, questions any spirituality that would put our own quest for God as the starting point. We are, to quote so many, receptive responders in relationship to the God of the universe. We do not go up to God. God comes down to us. In modern parlance, we do not find God. God searches us out and meets us. In Christ, God has found us, embraced us, once for all times. The spiritual quest under such conditions is not finding God, but loving our neighbor as ourselves in our daily society. At the same time, this Incarnational bent is not unrelated to the Anglican emphasis on participation in God’s own life in the Spirit by Christ to the Father precisely by living lives of good with others in society—that is, a Trinitarian emphasis. Our participation, as Hooker reminds us, is always gift, that is, a receiving.

So it’s a matter of seeing things from different angles.

As an Anglican and Benedictine, I want to appreciate this critical Reformation insight into grace, into God’s unearned Love in Christ—one we have bequeathed to us by Cranmer and our Prayer Book; I also want to appreciate self-examination and contemplation, again, bequeathed to us by Cranmer and our Prayer Book. Self-examination, waiting on God, contemplation, inwardness are not necessarily opposed to love of neighbor as ourselves.

However, much of contemplative and monastic thinking and spirituality is focused on our ascent, our gain in spiritual gifts, our growth in grace, me, me, me. Inwardness can become an excuse for not being in life with and for others. Many books offer us stages of progress. Even the wisdom of our Elders sometimes suggests a division of the personal and communal in the struggle that cannot stand the test of a Trinitarian theology where the personal and communal coarise in the Three Who Are One. Our own personhood is itself formed by others and by Another prior to budding self-awareness. We are never alone when we are with the Alone. All of humanity, each human being, every creature, all of creation is present with us in this One In Three. But stages tend to suggest how we are apart or better or further along. Stage-thinking separates (the definition of Sin I most often use) rather than serves sisters and brothers.

As an introvert, I have always been quite aware of an inward concern and yet skeptical of stages. One because I do not see the life of discipleship as rooted primarily in an inward focus on levels of attainment, but on resting in God’s graciousness and self-examination, where is it that God and Sin are moving the heart? And two because I think we humans are prone to put ourselves higher up the ladder than is truthful or honest. How many of us know someone who announces often and floats about “spiritual,” who yet is narcissistic, self-serving, miserable to be around, all about me, and clueless of this (lacking insight)? For myself, just about the time I start feeling all “spiritual” is about the time comes a moment of crabbiness, snarkiness, or grumpiness to bring me back down to earth. Just ask my partner.

Ascent language, though common in Christian tradition through interpretation of Jacob’s ladder, can be trouble. Too often, it has interpreted gain in spiritual gifts and growth in grace as escape from ordinariness and daily life, and without intending, bequeathed to us portions of a Manichaean inheritance—a distrust or even hatred of flesh or world understood not as vice—the power of Sin (hubris, domination, selfishness, etc.), but as our createdness, our social worlds, and all that goes with this:

Food

Drink

Sex

Work

Play

Under such conditions, self-control has tended to become hypervigilance, eliminating, or extinguishing passions rather than manifest as moderation, gardening, or tilling our desires: the "mutual joy" of our marriage office. The message underlying such a hypervigilant understanding of ascesis or discipline is that our createdness is evil rather than fallen, has tended to suggest that we have to escape our createdness in order to become more Christlike, rather than to embrace our createdness through direction, that is, discipline, patterns of life, as disciples in the midst of everyday life.

So many of the Churches great ethical errors arise from a theological error to properly appreciate bodies, social worlds, and creation in light of the Incarnation. Our christology, frankly, is not robust enough to deal with a God who ate, slept, wept, and shat. And so we cannot in turn, deal with our own messy createdness and that of one another.

Fear of createdness has tended to rigor.

Every era has its rigorists. And too often those rigorists are dismissive of human finitude. Ethics and ascesis are ever cast in either/or terms and sometimes with little thought about what supports and nurtures fruits of the Spirit for particular human beings. Rare is the rigorist who connects how and what we eat with other’s lack of food or our farming practices. Or if so, the spirit is one of guilt-inducement and shaming. I think of the nobleman in the film, Chocolat.

Rare is the rigorist who connects human lovemaking or refraining there from (as expression of our capacity for connectivity, our sexuality) with Christ’s faithfulness to us as interpretive key in determining styles and manners of life suited to Christian discipleship. Of if so, connects it so as to puff up oneself and tear down another, to paint an aura of light about oneself while denouncing the other.

And alongside the rigorists, we have the moralists and traditionalists, who more often than not simply mouth the past formulae without apprehension of God’s Word at work in the present, often for the sake of institution-protection rather than concern for what serves to support the Spirit patterning Christ in our lives here and now. Formulae under such circumstances become dead letters rather than life-giving expressions. The danger is that left naked by this failure to present the Incarnation in our time and culture and place, formulae are rejected altogether rather than reinvigorated—antinomy. These folks do more to undermine any credibility for Scripture and Tradition than all of the liberals and even libertines combined because the conflations are so strong that one of the traditions of both Scripture and Tradition is completely ignored, namely criticism in light of God’s self-revelation. And hence, the possibility of handing over Christ in our time--traditioning.

On the other hand, love of createdness has tended to extremity.

Quite in contrast to these rigorists, though they may appear the same, we find those who just as extreme, embrace the most messy realities of created existence. Sr Catherine and Br Francis licking lepers sores like dogs to give relief.

But this extremity, while having the same outward appearance as that of the rigorist in discipline, carries a different Spirit. This Spirit loves the flesh even in its vulnerability, passions, and death.

For most of us, however, between rigor and extremity, lies moderation. Moderation is intricately wrapped up in an embrace of finitude, in a recognition of humility. Few are they who can show forth God in the extremes and not become rigorists. Many are the rest of us. And our hope lies together in a community of humility of common humanity at prayer.

In the Rule, Br Benedict gives us a curious ascent. A ladder of humility. To ascend a ladder of this sort is precisely to climb down from the ethereal plane. Ascending the ladder of humility requires climbing down from the ladder of exaltation. To climb the ladder of humility is to step into the things of dirt. Only by stepping into the things of earth will we find ourselves surrounded by God’s ever-Presence.

The point of Benedict’s approach is not a focus on personal inward attainment, but on lived expression of love of God in the things of everyday life together with fellow humans and all creatures.

Old hat to some by now, humility is related to the Latin humus or earth. Other translations of humility might include “down to earth” or “close to earth.”

To be humble is not to be a doormat for Jesus, a popular misconception too readily reinforced by too many Church authorities, who have misunderstood power as control rather than as compassion. Whereever control rather than compassion dominates an understanding of power, we have misuse and abuse in light of the Cross, in light of preferring Christ.

To be humble is to shamelessly embrace ourselves as dust, clay, earth beings without flinching from our vulnerability, without fleeing from our capacity for passion (joy, pain, enthusiasm, despair), without turning away from facing death.

To be humble is to be an earth creature, endowed from our shared creation with all creatures with much intelligence and consciousness, called to lives of service by prayer, work, and play in community on Earth, our garden home.

To be humble is to have a capacity for humor, to laugh at ourselves and with others. Not directly related to humus, humor derives from the Latin for body fluid. But I don’t think being of earth and being fluid filled are unrelated. To be able to smile gently at ourselves and our bodiliness, and we are quite comical, is sign of health. To be able to laugh when we are less than perfect is sign of being close to earth. Sr Hildegaard of Bingen would speak of our being wet, filled with fluid, as the Holy Spirit’s viriditas or greening power. The wet, living fluids of life are sign of God’s creating and sustaining us.

This humility, this earthiness places us in relationship with our fellow creatures with our two arms and two legs and brain capacity oversized for trouble. Rather than leading us to flee from our shared flesh with rocks, plants, humility leads us to a delight in our shared creation, perhaps no more obvious than as voiced in several of the Psalms.

We are of the same flesh, spoken into being by the same Wisdom, Jesus Christ; drawn into new life by the same Spirit, Holy and Life-giving; and beloved of the same Source of All Being, a merciful Father.

Abba Irenaeus once wrote, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” Abba Athanasius later penned, “God became a human being that human beings might become divine.” Many Lutheran theologians I have read balk at these sayings because they suggest a quest for our self-glorification, for holiness, for theosis or sanctification.

But I think they misunderstand. And I think, so do some of our spirituality enthusiasts. After all, given Brs Irenaeus’ and Athanasius’ incarnational bent, the divinity revealed and given in Jesus Christ is one of embrace of the earthly, the dust, the clay—even the shit. Becoming divine is not about becoming airy-fairy, ethereal, far from earthly concerns. Becoming divine in our case is precisely about facing up to our createdness, our fleshiness, our dishonesties with ourselves. Becoming divine is about our becoming more human. And becoming more human is not to fly away on wings of Love. Becoming human is to walk into the tough stuff held by Love. That is the point on our end of the communicatio idiomatum.

Br Cyril of Alexandria’s notion of the communication of attributes is useful in this regard. The attributes of God, such as glory or mightiness, are communicated to us through Christ, that is, on the level of human beings as humility or earthiness. Which vice versa reveals to us a God whose own glory is unlike our fallen notions and scripts, that is, unlike the hubris of Sin. Being embraced by God makes us more salty, not less. Some would call this a reversal. I would call it what happens when the God Who Is Love reveals and gives Godself through, with, in, as flesh, the Human One.

As an Anglican and Benedictine, I, of course, have to ask the theosis or sanctification question. What might better be called the ascetical theology question. How is it that my life is to be a response to Christ that shows forth the pattern of Christ’s faithfulness? A question that I tend to reframe from Br Paul as, “How is Salvation working Himself out in us and among us?” Or from spiritual direction, simply put, “How is God at work in my life? How is Sin at work in my life?”

Both of these sayings of Brs Irenaeus and Athanasius are intricately tied to the Incarnation, to Jesus Christ, who reveals Godself, gives Godsself in a manger, as a peasant teacher, on a curse tree, as the ordinary things of life—drink and food. God’s divinity embraces earthly beings. And makes us not less, but more earthly, accepting of our limitations, our fragility, our need for God so poignant in “keeping death ever before us.” That is what it means to be “divine” on the level of human beings.

This is not a ladder of our glorious movement toward God, but a ladder of God’s glorious movement toward us, a movement that draws us deeper into the life of the world. For in this movement toward us, we are embraced (“caught up”) into the Life of the Triune God, ever at work in the life of the world. We are touched by God not for escape or denigration of this body, this world, this creation, these creatures, but for entering more deeply into skin, going into all of creation to proclaim the Good News of God’s embrace and to serve all flesh in need.

May we do relatedness,

+ love blessing,

and walk close to earth.

Amen.

Not Mere Subscription, But Wholly Formation

2010-11-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

I do not dip as much into Anglican controversies anymore.

I do have serious reservations about the proposed Anglican Covenant, most recently expressed in a two-part piece that my academese made incomprehensible. In short, I do not think it adequately makes room for our peculiarly and messy contextual catholicity, what we have often called "comprehension." Part I and Part II.

A coalition formed to oppose the proposed Anglican Covenant is now underway. There is much to commend it as Fr. Haller notes.

And I do share many misgivings about this proposed Anglican Covenent, not rejection of any possible covenant whatsoever, and while I will continue to raise questions of this proposal, offer my disagreement, and make common partnership, I cannot join this coalition for these words, "We believe in an Anglicanism based on a shared heritage of worship, not on a set of doctrines to which all must subscribe."

We have here a misunderstanding, if not decoupling, of liturgy and doctrine as they function in Anglican tradition, as if the one can be divorced from the other. Doctrine, especially that which we call Core Doctrine, in our tradition is not merely propositional or dry (or dead) teaching, but living and relational presentation and proclamation of Presence, more so, of Persons in relation to us. In that same way, liturgy is not merely a shared heritage, but some common sense and praying of Who God is, Who God is for and with us, and Who we are in God. It is ironic to me that both many defenders of doctrine and many detractors of doctrine seem to fail to see their shared similarity of making doctrine something merely black-on-white, something objectified and cardboard, in contrast to common praying, to living relationship that is doctrine and liturgy.

So, while we do not always agree, and we do not on the problems of the present proposed Anglican Covenant, Fr. Owen is right to point out problems with this divorce of doctrine and liturgy.

That is, doctrine is a living reality of among others, God to us, us to God, we to one another, as liturgy. That is not to say that these central or Core presentations and proclamations cannot be expressed in different ways, languages, idioms, or even liturgies. They have been and will continue to be so, as we share these central with the Whole Church Catholic as summed in our profession of living trust in the God who is this way and this way with us, the Nicene Creed.

And so our liturgies, for each is a happening and more so for we have allowable variety, even in our set praying, present and proclaim precisely about Who God is, Who God is for and with us, and Who we are in God. This includes language of Trinity, Incarnation, Creation, Consummation, Salvation by no merit of our own just to name a few. That is to say, Anglicanism does involve shared doctrines, which inscribe us.

As an example, take the last, Salvation. To notice doctrine by contrast, just compare the collects for many Saints feast days as found in the Roman Rite (or Sarum) to those found in Anglican liturgies. While the former often appeal to merits of the Saint, the latter always close on Christ's merits only. That is a peculiarly Anglican way of handling Reformation reforms, as is the Rite I Eucharistic Prayer. We did not throw out the Communion of Saints (all the living in Christ--i.e., the living and the dead), but we did make of it again a companionship and communion, even an intercessory companionship and communion, in Christ rather than a patronage or mediation to Christ.

On the contrary, then, Anglican Christianity is peculiar precisely because we have the audacity to declare that our confession is praying. Our whole selves at prayer are formed by Who God is, Who God is for and with us, and Who we are in God: To you, O Christ.

Ascending by Humility: The Hard Truths of Imprecatory Psalms

2010-10-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Derek has offered a post on the retention of the imprecatory Psalms. While there is merit to reinterpretations of these Psalms, I find these Psalms invaluable for self-examination and social-examination. We do not want to face ugliness in ourselves. We would prefer to think of our sense of justice as untouched by Sin, as we go on (self-)righteous crusade devoid of mercy. Too much ugliness is accomplished in the name of the good, in the Name of God. The Twentieth Century is the bloodiest and most vicious in history. With all of our advances, on the level of human relating, we are not any better than those desiring to dash babes against rocks. And it could be argued that we are worse--sometimes because of our advances in technology. The imprecatory Psalms are a wake up to face what is in ourselves, in our socialities—not just those of society that bugaboo "the world," but those of our Churches, a reminder not lost on me in the wake of so many suicides by lgbt young people.

Abba Isaac of Scetis reminds us that the passions are not themselves evil. His was a revolution in desert understanding. Previous teachers had taught that the passions were either evil or meant to be extinguished. Abba Isaac sees them as fallen, in need of bridling, so as to be redeemed and turned to the good. Anger, he tells us, exists to do justice. But God’s justice, seen through the lens of Crib and Cross, Resurrection and Ascension, namely, Jesus Christ, is not the justice of unbridled self-righteousness. God’s justice on the level of fallen humanity gently firmly says “no” to harm of others while staying close to earth, while recognizing “I too am a sinner.” For Anglicans, this should all be very familiar. Our Prayer Book ever holds before us the mirror of “sinner,” of which the imprecatory Psalms are a part, and reminds us repeatedly that our desires are created good, but fallen, in need of redemption, once-for-all accomplished in Christ, who now works himself out in our own lives if we will to face ourselves and face Reality nowhere more vivid than the Crucifixion, where we who would put to death God, find ourselves "within the reach of saving embrace."

To face our ugliness personally and socially too is confession and profession of need for God. We leave out the imprecatory Psalms at our peril. In a manuscript I am currently working on, I write of the Psalms and their order,

“All of us have favorites. I personally resonate with those that set our praise within the whole of creation. And some psalms horrify us. We do not want to face the possibility of God's anger. Or our own. By neglecting nothing in the psalter, we cannot avoid wrestling with our own want to crush enemies or gloat over another's ruin. We cannot avoid our own alienation from God, one another, and all creatures. A continua practice asks us to enter into the struggle of discipleship.

For busy days and for ease-of-use in keeping up the practice, a psalm has been chosen and arranged in contemplative vernacular for each time and day as a beginning. These are designed for this continua approach to making God's Work. You will notice that the different types of psalms are not avoided. The variety chosen is meant to give a sweep of the types of psalms, each of which reveals our dependence in a different way, a mini-continua. The effect of continua practice is maintained.”

Keeping Death: Psalms and Conversion

2010-08-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

The Rule instructs to keep death ever before us.

Death is the ultimate reminder that we are utterly dependent upon God in our existence and redemption and consummation. To face death is to keep it real. All of our plans, sifted through this lens, are more likely to be less ego-touched, less sin-touched, more concerned with doing God's will. Facing death daily is permission to slow down and not react and not devise. Facing death is wise guidance to first and always adore I AM, One Who Is Who causes us to be.

What is important and what is the dross or the minor is clarified. So does facing the tough stuff. If we face death, then, paradoxically we are free to live in the moment, face the tough stuff with firm gentleness, and not take ourselves so seriously about everything that we forget to laugh, love, live, and, in Blessed Julian's words, enjoy.

Death says, we need God. We cannot escape facing this reality.

We need God whose is the Creative Word ever speaking us into existence and the Holy Spirit ever bringing sustenance out of the chaos sin injects into life together in human social worlds and into our relationships with the whole of creation. God's Wisdom in Word and Spirit is always at work to order things to, in what Borg and Crossan have beautifully called, the share economy. God's economy given to us in Jesus Christ and to be lived by Christ's Body by the sustaining Spirit is at odds with all that would deny that we are interdependent upon one another for our daily bread, for the good things and tangible graces of life meant for all.

Conversion is not unrelated to conversation, especially conversation with God. And the Psalms are par excellence for recognition of conversion to our utter dependence upon God for our existence, redemption, and consummation. If we face death, we can face the ugliness in ourselves, hope to do so so that our actions are rooted in adoration, and where we fail, to ask for pardon and help:

Be compassionate, O God, as is your way;

in your great compassion wipe away my offenses.

Wash away my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sins.

For I know my transgressions,

and my offense is always before me.

Against you only have I sinned

and done what is evil in your eyes.

You are just when you speak,

You make a fair ruling.

You search for truth deep within me,

You make known to me Wisdom hidden away. (Psalm 51)

God Everywhere: Psalms and Creation

2010-08-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

I greet you simultaneously speaking Peace and >{} reverencing Christ in you by bowing with hands clasped together.

The Rule tells us "God is everywhere." (RB 19). And so in relation especially to The Work of God. Why? And somewhat so sternly? Rule 19 is about reverence. About paying attention. All of heaven and earth are present with us: Holy, holy, holy; heaven and earth are full of Your glory.

The Psalms lead us into attentiveness if said or sung slowly and reflectively in the same manner of well-worn rosary beads. Many days, I wake up to birds singing. I give thanks to God for their song. And take their song as their own praise in the midst of their own daily lives to which we are privy to so little. So many peoples and nations the four-legged, winged, crawling, and finned. The Psalms invite us into a universe at praise of the One Who dwells with us and pitches tent among us (see John and Hebrews and Revelation):

Wisdom, you have made your home with us
from one generation to the next,
Before the mountains rose from the sea,
or the land and the earth were formed,
from age to age you are God. (Psalm 90)

These days I sometimes pray the Beginning of the Day with,

Sustain us, O God, for our refuge is in you.

The words come from Psalm 121. We are in God. You cannot pray the Psalms and not find a more connected relationship with all living beings, indeed, all that exists. Even the rocks shout out. As a child, I had a few rock friends on my shelves. I talked to them as if they were animate. In their own way, they do praise. Recovery of a worldview basted in God's love, soaked in God's presence, reenchantment need not take great volumes, just a few songs. For God's praises are everywhere sung, not just by human words in song and chant and speech, but by tweets and meows, slithers and barks:

Let the sea make a noise and all that is in it,
the lands and those who dwell therein.

Let the rivers clap their hands,
and let the hills ring out joy before One Who Is. (Psalm 98)

Praise I AM from the earth,
you sea creatures and the depths;

Fire and hail, snow and fog,
tempestuous wind, doing God's will;

Mountains and hills,
fruit trees and all cedars;

Wild creatures and domesticated,
creeping beings and winged ones.

Let these praise the Name: One Who Is,
for the Name alone is glorified,
Whose grandeur fills heaven and earth.
(Psalm 148)

So many happy voices, so much more to nature "red in tooth and claw."

Peace.

Preferring Christ: Psalms and Contemplation

2010-08-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

I greet you simultaneously speaking Peace and >{} reverencing Christ in you by bowing with hands clasped together.

This morning after beginning my day with my best practice, meditating on the Name of Jesus with coffee in hand and dog by my side, I happened again on Abba Isaac of Syria's words and said them slowly for holy reading:

O name of Jesus,
key to all gifts,
open up for me
the great door
to your treasure-house,
that I may enter
and praise you
with the praise
that comes
from the heart.

Like Abba Benedict, Abba Isaac and many elders before both of them remind us that this one Name, Jesus, is to be preferred above all else. The Eastern Churches have an entire practice of silence wrapped up in this preference for Christ's Name: The Jesus Prayer or hesychast tradition. Many variations exist on this way.

It is, however, no accident that Benedictine's open up the prayer at the end of the day with: "O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us." Abba Cassian reminds us that praying repeatedly this phrase from Psalm 70 leads us to resting in reality, that is, our utter dependence on God. Praise is "recognition of dependence," is practiced trust:

One thing is clear. Praise is not all alleluias and hosannas. If it were, the Psalter would not be listed as “praise.” There is, however, a common thread that runs through the Psalter, regardless of the devotional mood of the individual Psalm. It is the motif of dependency. Regardless of the difficulty that surrounds the individual Psalmist, the solution to the difficulty is always found in trust in and dependence on God….the act of dependence itself becomes the beginning of praise, from which its proclamation comes. (Clifford W. Atkinson, Study Guide for The Daily Office: Proposed Book of Common Prayer, 11)

Praying the Psalms with care, whether said slowly or sung in chant, leads us slowly but gently over the course of a lifetime, to greater and deeper silence. Abba Benedict intends communities that live out of this Great Silence. He sets up practice in such a way that the dangers of the life of solitude are avoided. Silence is among we who pray together the songs that tradition associates with Christ, and through Christ's high priestly ministry, with Christ's whole Body--the Church. And even unrecognizably, or invisibly, the entire Creation.

Praying the Psalms is the Prayer of the Church. And the Prayer of the Church does not divorce communal, outward expression and personal, inner encounter. The contemplative life is communal life. Word and silence are intertwined. Psalms and Christian meditation are cut from the same cloth.

Peace.

Prefer Nothing to Christ or Keep Death Always Before You: CWOB and Patterns of the Cross

2010-06-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

I am allergic to the word “inclusion.” The term does not fit well my concern for a rule of life, a discipline, or ascetical theology as needful expression of our christology in the day-to-day living of our own lives.

Something exists within the tension between grace and sin we find ourselves within as we live in the hope of the Consummation, of which Jesus Christ is first fruits, namely pattern. What ways does Christ’s Society discern over time that are most likely to deepen us to receive and renew us by grace (as expressed in our character by words and deeds) and root out and redeem deforming effects of sin? How is it that we shall be shaped over the long-haul to go out of ourselves for others, formed in the pattern of the cross? Sometimes these patterns vary in expression from place and time and culture. But one pattern is fasting, for example. Expression of this pattern as receiving simple meals on Wednesdays and Fridays is a time-tested example.

Within the poles of grace and sin, our monastic or ascetical inheritance asks Anglicans about patterns of life, patterns of life-for-others. We can disagree about practiced expressions of a pattern and still desire a shared pattern.

While other Christian traditions, I think of our Lutheran kin, who ideally live out their Christian freedom in direct response to neighbor in any given situation forgoing pattern (or so is claimed in much discourse but not so clear in actual practice), Christian freedom for Anglicans on the whole has been about taking up a pattern of life, especially and namely Common Prayer. We, of course, have our exceptions. For example, William Stringfellow, while insisting upon Common Prayer, tended to talk of the Christian life in more Lutheran terms.

I realize that some of you may be thinking, I’m sounding awfully evangelical or conservative. Well, in a sense, yes. Neither Benedictine, nor Anglican tradition lets us off the hook of discipleship. The difference, from say the bulk of our Reformed kin, is that we do not begin with the ethical patterns of our daily life (morality, moral theology, ethics), we begin with the pattern of praise—our dependency on God—namely, our being at prayer together. Our theology of patterns of the cross is thus filtered through our primary discipline of response to God's grace, namely, prayer. This sets the pattern for all else in our life together and in our social worlds. Christ’s faithfulness to us as we encounter him in prayer in turn leads us to ask ourselves together what patterns of life will reflect Christ in our daily living over the long-haul. While we hold these patterns contingent and Christ ultimate, being creatures, contingent is a very solid thing. On the whole, for example, treating our fellow creatures as particular, loved of God in their own right, worthy of our care, and where eaten, to be received by thanks to God at meals is more likely to form us as thanksgivers and Christlike shepherds/gardeners.

Inclusion, to my mind, implies not so much that we can revoke one another’s membership--we can't, but that we need not hold ourselves or one another accountable for patterns of life that do not display characteristics of Christlikeness: faithfulness, promise-keeping, courage, generosity, and so forth. Or that we need not hold ourselves accountable to disruptions of those patterns by our sinning. Discipline at all becomes anathema where inclusion becomes a singular hermeneutic. I have been told I am not inclusive enough because I do not think sleeping around on one’s partner is a positive expression of faithfulness, for example. This raises the question if Christ's sociality is any different at all from those of the social worlds within which we also live? Or does Christ's sociality (admittedly only imperfectly lived out among us as we live in hope of the Consummation) reform, challenge, correct the socialities of the social worlds within which we live and by which we too have been and are shaped?

Related to this is the same invitation of which yesterday I wrote some positive comments: “All who seek Christ are welcome to receive.”

We do not first seek Christ. Christ pursues us, challenges us, corrects us, builds us up to serve the worlds needs. Were I a proponent of CWOB, I would have to rather say, “All whom Christ has called to take up their cross and follow him are welcome to receive.” That, of course, would mean that as a priest, my sermon would have preached Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Questions on Communion Without Baptism (CWOB): Real Presence

2010-06-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

Episcopalians are talking Communion Without Baptism again.

Communion Without Baptism (CWOB) is the making of an explicit and ordinary practice of inviting the non-baptized to the altar-table.

The practice has both proponents and opponents, who on theological and practicable grounds argue for and against its being explicit and ordinary practice.

By way of being up front, at the moment, I remain unconvinced and uncertain of this practice as explicit and ordinary norm of our Church and at the same time I have witnessed this practice bring people to Jesus Christ as some most amazing of his disciples. This latter is not mere emotional proof or even personal experience. I have seen fruits.

The questions this practice raises for me relate to affirming governing or norming patterns of the Society while not discounting God's ability to work through God's means.

The practice seems to be rooted in a sense of hospitality. Inclusion is the watchword.

If I were to make a distinction in the parlance of our day, I would prefer "incorporation" rather than "inclusion." And sociality rather than hospitality. As will be seen.

It would be easy on my part to simply quote canons, which maintain a long-standing pattern and strong affirmation of our Reformation commitment to Baptism as ground sacrament and an ecclesiology that does not unChurch our divisions. Our baptismal ecclesiology in the 1979 BCP is a strong outgrowth of refinement of catholic and reformed engagement over several centuries. quoting canons does not address this development.

I have to admit that institutional self-protectionism, though I have little direct stake in that protection beyond great care for our BCP, could very well blind me to a movement of God to reach all peoples in our time and place. More careful assessment of our time and place and how we can present Christ given our theological/practicable commitments is required.

After all, in this time and place, we can neither presume the persecution of the first few centuries, nor the Christendom of many thereafter. Early, Medieval, and even Modern practices of Holy Communion, however, presume either or both in development of sacramental practice.

Further, as contexts changed and new questions were asked, the practice and theology of Baptism, and by turns Church and Christ, were modified. St. Cyprian's practice and the ecclesiology implied were revised by St. Augustine. St. Augustine's by the Reformation. And in our case, the Reformation refined particularly by Maurice who is very near Rahner and Vatican II positions.

We find ourselves in a different context from Early and Medieval and Reformation and even Modern, especially on the West Coast. This does lead to new questions, especially of mission. Is CWOB the beginning of another modification of Baptism, and by extension of our theology of Church and Christ?

After all, in our time The Episcopal Church in our American context is largely irrelevant to the powers of our day. We do little that leads to our persecution and we are no longer at the center of power. Neither the first few centuries nor the long centuries thereafter prepare us for living in a mostly indifferent secularity. So, I do ask myself questions, Is this reordering a means to bring people to the Gospel in our time and place? What does it mean to reorder Baptism and Communion? What are the implications? Responsibilities? What does it say about the relationship between our social worlds and Christ's Society? A post-persecution, post-Christendom existence?

Before I go into criticisms of this practice (CWOB), I think it helpful to highlight positive aspects even as I offer concerns. Here is one: A Higher Altar-Table Christology Than Expected.

Again to be up front, I have a bleeding high christology of Holy Communion. Rather than delve into the distinctions of Real Presence doctrines, I prefer the poets: Jesus Christ gives himself to us as bread and wine. This is a meeting of Person and persons. The bread and wine are Jesus' Body and Blood. I need say no more. This christology of Holy Communion is not unrelated to a high christology in the Incarnation.

The explicit invitation often given by proponents of CWOB is something to the effect that “all who seek Jesus Christ are welcome to receive.”

Surprisingly, in this statement is a positive development. Such statements tend toward recognition a strong notion of Jesus Christ’s self-giving to us as bread and wine, that is, Holy Communion. At the very least, such statements recognize that Holy Communion is a real encounter with our Lord in some way. An explicit encounter with Jesus Christ will not leave us unchanged. Testimony to this fact by CWOB proponents should warm our hearts. Many have sought to be catechized and then baptized by first receiving Holy Communion.

My bleeding high christology of Holy Communion, however, is coupled with an equally strong sense of the Christ's Society, the Church.

My question of this practice as it relates to the doctrine of Christ's Communion Presence centers on Christ’s Body. The realness of this Encounter is not separable from the realness of the Society into which we are bonded irrevocably. Yet, CWOB troubles me because to my mind as a means of bondedness irrevocably it fails precisely because it is the nature of the sacrament of Holy Communion that it be regular and ongoing. More anon.

Traditionally, to receive Holy Communion flows out of a prior reception of, incorporation into, and commitment to the Society of Jesus Christ in Baptism. This Society is called to live out of Christ's sociality, where sociality are those ways of being together (Society) that reflect the life of the Trinity on the level of creatures (recognizing that our persons are created unlike the Persons Three) where Jesus himself is the incarnation of God's sociality in creation and center, ground, firstborn, heart, lifeblood of that Society. Anglicans, like the Reformed, have placed a strong emphasis on our being incorporated in Jesus Christ by Baptism. In Communion, we are nourished: Our failings in this regard are forgiven and we receive strengthening for keeping on the Way. But the being given over into a Society is in Baptism.

A quick perusal of our Prayer Book finds us running up against an understanding of Jesus Christ that is not only personal but corporate, communal, social. This makes sense in light of the fact that personal and communal are inextricably bound up to one another in our relational, that is, Trinitarian theology. The same is true for Christ’s Body. As the New Humanity, the Person of Jesus Christ is necessarily personal and social. A Society lives in, flows out of this One. This Society is not separate from the bulk of humanity, but is none other than humanity in relationship to our Creator, that is, acknowledges the Creator and ourselves creatures meant to be at thanks and praise, to serve the needs of others. I think of St. Augustine’s famed Sermon 272: “Receive what you are, be what you receive.” We are inextricably related to one another in Christ who has once-for-all identified himself with his creation. That is the adoption, the relationship, the sociality we receive in Baptism.

This being at thanks and praise, serving the needs of others is a sociality. This sociality of Jesus Christ, a sociality meant for the whole of creation and every social world I would argue, however, comes with a cost to our sense of self when we receive it, respond to it, and abide in it. Our humanity finds itself wrestling with and taken out of joint by the Risen Lord's. To be Church is precisely to be those who receive, respond, and abide—who take up the cost of Love for Love’s world. Not because we're better. Not because we're not sinners. Not because we're saints. But because God needs witnesses, proclaimers, presenters, friends, workers in every social world. God needs praisers of God's Trusting Humanity, Jesus Christ, in the midst of social worlds comfortable with anything but singing God's praise. The Church are we who explicitly abide in, take up, and proclaim God's faithfulness at any cost for the life of every social world of which we are a part and for the whole of creation. To receive Christ is to recognize that we are not our own (and never have been)—we exist and are sustained by God’s will alone.

This sociality recognizes that while Christ’s work of salvation is once-for-all, that work in us here and now personally and corporately is often a cross to us, where cross is to go out of ourselves for others, is to die to selfishness, ego, alienation. While being in the world, we are meant to live out Christ’s sociality in our (and every) social world, being marked by characteristics or virtues, those ways of being on our part out of response out of Jesus’ way of being with us and for us: faithfulness, embrace of vulnerability, courage, thankfulness, etc. We may disagree about how these are practically and particularly expressed and still affirm that discipleship is part of what it means to receive.

The explicitness baptismal preparation through catechesis and baptismal rite make of this cost in our receiving God’s embrace should give us pause. Being up front about what it means to receive our adoption as children of God by Christ's once-for-all saving work is only truth in advertising. Discipleship will not be always fun, easy, or happy. To live out of trust in God’s promises, to give thanks, to serve others in the midst of personal sufferings and social horrors is no picnic and impossible without God’s grace and our reception of our Risen Lord's own faithful Humanity.

Again, a sociality of Jesus Christ is affected and activated in us. We may and likely will not live it out fully here and now. Indeed, we find ourselves always wrestling with accepting that we are God’s, being shaped a bit here by alienation and redeemed the same by grace, trusting that God will out--of which Baptism is God's mark upon us.

What stands out for me is to think about if and how in CWOB, Communion can or cannot serve as the sacrament of receiving God's adoption in Christ and of celebrating our irrevocable incorporation into Christ's Society in the same way as Baptism.

Can CWOB at its best be practice of assurance in the same way as Baptism done? What does it mean to nibble at the edges and never take the plunge? Or to eat frequently and be drawn into a leap of trust? Can I fall back on Communion in the same way I can always fall back on Baptism when the Tempter whispers lies that I am other than God's in Christ? To my mind, CWOB precisely because of the nature of Holy Communion to be ongoing may imply rather the very thing the likes of Maurice and Ramsey after found troubling in certain positions on Baptism, that somehow we can fall out of God's irrevocable adoption. The singular nature of Baptism, on the other hand. In darkest night, I do not cry out, "I am communed." I rebuke, "I am baptized."

God’s give-away of grace, I trust will not be spurned by those who receive Communion and never come back. I need not protect God’s grace, but I do need to take care that others understand that grace and its power and implications for their lives. God's works through God's means. While CWOB implies a high Presence of Christ in Communion, does it properly warn of God's wrestling grace?

The long days of Christendom have past in our American context, especially so for the so-called Main Line. I wonder if this and because The Episcopal Church is not dangerous to our society, CWOB may indeed have become necessary as a means to share the Gospel. Perhaps the problem is not as much with CWOB as with our discipleship? Or is it that in a our consumer social world, CWOB offers an out?

On the other hand, at its best CWOB has drawn some into radical questioning of our social world in light of Christ's Society. Being fed on Christ has led to the feeding of others good things. And this is direct assault on a social world built on expending the most vulnerable, using up every resource, and declaring ourselves self-reliant rather than God-dependent and one-another-with-all-of-creation-interdependent.

Writing Histories Is Not a Plain Task

2010-06-03T08:39:00.001-07:00

Historical literalism or positivism still seemingly abounds. Robert Taft, SJ that great liturgical scholar of history reminds us that histories are not mere expositions of the past without interpretation (not possible) but interpretations of the past that help us understand and create our present. In that sense, histories are related to tradition where tradition is not a mere handing on (replicative), but a handing over (developmental).

Histories both explain who we are and create how we are. More than one telling is possible. Tellings may be more or less careful with the past. Tellings may also require repudiation of our past, often by digging up some other portion of our inheritance or digging more deeply theologically.

That the Scottish Episcopal Church has a different telling of itself and its roots in Celtic Catholic history than the Church of England should not surprise us. Dig enough into the Welsh Church and you'll find as well a different telling from glorious England. The Cornish cry against Cranmer's insistence on English, for example, is not without recognition of a colonial imposition. After all, sermons and sometimes Scripture texts were read in Cornish in 1549. These tellings need not be understood as simple romanticizations or New Age-ery as others accuse, but tellings meant to distinguish and conserve, sometimes naively, other portions of our inheritance easily swallowed up by conformity--and hand over a spirit or ethos.

I would suggest that it is not merely a bishop that The Scottish Episcopal Church bequeathed to us. Our kin bequeathed to us a spirit or ethos born of non-establishment (and persecution) that places us in a different relationship to the social worlds we inhabit from that of the established Church of England of the time. A tension is created in relationship between Church and the social worlds we inhabit, and through time and events (slavery, for example) we learn that we cannot pretend that the Church can extract itself from our social worlds completely or naively. Through time and history, our own Episcopal Church has learned that the Spirit may not only correct our social worlds by means of the Church (and sometimes despite us), the Spirit may correct the Church by means of ourselves and the social worlds within which we find ourselves. Given need for correction, such complexity does not allow anything more than the contingent cry of the prophet--but a cry it must be.

The sermon by Bp Skinner preached at the consecration of Bp Seabury.

Asking the Wrong Question

2010-05-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Over at the Cafe we are having a conversation about the question being asked of our polity and governance, "Who is the head of the Church?"

By asking the wrong question, we end up contravening our own common praying and history, and undermining the very Reason, Logos, Wisdom we have many authorities and dispersed authority in The Episcopal Church: Jesus Christ is Lord.

With regard to polity and governance, I assert that this is the wrong question. A proper question in this regard would be, "Who are the responsible-answerable authorities in this Church?"

Venite, exultemus: Our Morning Profession of Faith

2010-04-07T06:46:00.001-07:00

O Come, let us sing unto the Lord; *

let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; *

and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God; *

and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are all the corners of the earth; *

and the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it; *

and his hands prepared the dry land.

O come, let us worship and fall down, *

and kneel before the LORD our Maker.

For he is the Lord our God; *

and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; *

let the whole earth stand in awe of him.

For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; *

and with righteousness to judge the world,

and the peoples with his truth.

I am in the middle of writing a short book on Benedictine practice in the way of the house to which I belong. In doing this, with Hebrew help from my partner, I will be providing certain Psalms in a contemplative vernacular using expanded language in a brief Office setting.

Contemplative vernacular is my way of describing a translation that is pleasing to the ear, respecting contemporary language as capable of the divine, and inviting (mystagogical) of pray-ers into a receptive or contemplative stance. Expanded language, used in Enriching Our Worship, works on the premise that we set aside one another a variety of scriptural and traditional images and names for God so that a resonating and correcting can occur among them. It differs from inclusive language which tends to want to throw out masculine translations. To set aside one another translations and prayers that address Jesus as king and Jesus as mother, for example, produces a wider sense this God Who Is is incomparable to any other, who turns our notions of deity and lordship downside up. The crib and cross being spectacular moments of this explosion of our conceptions. Expanded language encourages a canonical approach to our praying as does already our 1979 Book of Common Prayer in structure and provision. To hear LORD, One Who Is, Self Existent One, and One Who Causes To Exist clarifies that this God is Creator unlike any other god or human master.

This is all prelude to my translating the classic American Venite (Ps. 95:1-7, Ps. 96:9, 12b-13). By pondering the Name and the many connotations, and then "Rock of our salvation" then "a great God...above all gods," suddenly the Venite just opened up in a way I had never read or heard it before as "Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God is one" who creates heaven and earth. It dawned on me as I translated LORD and as I read through the text that the Venite is comparable to the She'ma. The Venite is a profession of faith, a creed in psalmody. How could I have missed this before?

Which then got me to pondering God's greatness above all gods, or God's oneness, which properly speaking makes Jews and Christians not monotheists, or having one God, but rather that God is One, eternal, only, alone, unity, creator, unlike any other being, etc.

And then the eschatological nature of the profession of our classic form with its closing verses from Ps. 96. Creeds are not mere propositions, but profess, proclaim, acclaim, do and hear, the God Who is this, this way, like this because showing himself to be so through these mighty deeds of creation and redemption. Creeds invite us to trust in this One. But more than this, Creeds invite us to trust in this One Who is present to us here and now in the profession, proclamation, acclamation. From God's opening our lips to our profession, we are made aware that God is present, that this is a Real Meeting, a communion with our God in psalm-singing and scripture-reading.

A Good Friday Reflection at the Cafe

2010-04-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

Nativity and Passion piety are inextricably bound with a solid teaching of Creation as well as Resurrection and Ascension.

Qualities of Sanctity and Criteria for Selection

2010-03-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

In his piece, "Holy Women, Holy Men, a different definition of sanctity," Derek points us to two different sets of criteria for determining our Sanctoral calendar.

As he notes, one set is concerned with what salvation in us might look like, that is, what are qualities of mature Christian faith and discipleship, that is, sanctity. It is a sketch, but one that is rich enough to encompass a multitude of worthies. The other is concerned with process to provide a variety of models for the community.

On the surface, it could seem we have two competing notions of sanctity or even commemoration. At first, I would hazard to say a more Catholic and a more Protestant version. But that is not, in fact, quite right. In fact, one set is concerned with sanctity, the other with selectivity.

In my own dissertation research one of the things I discovered is that Anglicanism as a whole, whether from our more Reformed or our more Catholic emphases, has never let go of the goal of Christian life as increase in Christ, sanctity, that is, salvation once-for-all wrought in Jesus Christ now being worked out in each of us here and now in our flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, especially through the regular, public life of the Church.

What Anglicanism has done is reestablish the Ground upon which salvation might be worked out in us at all, namely, Jesus’ once-for-all self-gift who is always present to us and especially so through public prayer and the Dominical Sacraments. Our imitation of Christ does not flow out of a need to purchase salvation or plead our case, but out of our receiving salvation once-wrought, Love’s own purchase of us particularly received in Holy Baptism and renewed in Holy Communion.

That is why our imitation is never aping, either of Christ or of the Saints. The former because he has in himself and does now make available salvation, the new humanity, in all times and in all places always--notably, liturgically. Redemption is finished and draws nigh to us that we might be made new in our selves. The latter because we are each particular persons, so salvation working himself out in us will not look precisely the same in any of us. We do not know ahead of time where Sin has touched us all the ways down, we can only know that in hindsight as we grow in him. We do not know in advance those gifts we are given for the whole, aptly given but unable to release, except in him who by his Spirit releases us to live for the life of the world.

Nevertheless, we do know something of what Christ-likeness looks like. And this raises the sanctity question. The sanctity question is this: What does salvation look like in us? The fruits of the Spirit are a good place to start. Expansion by considering other virtues continues in this trajectory. We have learned, for example, that a particular Anglican gift and virtue is theology wrought in verse and other poetic forms. If any one thinks it easy to write poetry praising God who works in the midst of things, and hence, not a virtue sharpened, take it up for a day. A number of worthies, Herbert, Donne, and others well-serve. Courage is another, and Bonhoeffer serves us well on this score.

What this tells me is that any set of criteria primarily concerned with sanctity will examine gifts, fruits, and virtues. Set one goes precisely in this direction. Now if our concern is what is commemoration, that is, whether commemoration is of those past who we are to consider as role models for their gifts, fruits, and virtues they commend to us or whether it is recognition of living relationship with those in the heart of God whom we honor for the gifts, fruits, and virtues they commend to us, then we have a different matter to consider (and different prayers). Nevertheless, just as with sanctity, whether our understanding of commemoration is more Reformed or more Catholic, qualities persist as reason for selection. (And I have to admit that my bias is toward relationship with living persons in the heart of God who inspire me to aspire to beauty in its most graced and expansive sense.)

What strikes me, therefore, is that the second set of criteria to which Derek directs us is actually neither classically Reformed, nor classically Catholic on either count (sanctity or commemoration), and certainly, not that of the Reformed Catholicity to which I assign broad Anglicanism. A Reformed Catholicity by which I mean that the starting point for our theology is God’s love for us revealed in Jesus Christ rather than our own sinfulness, and by which I mean that this Love will change us.

No, the second set strikes me as Liberal Protestant of a most modern form, concerned with what read as quotas, more than qualities.

Now, it is very true that in the whole of Church history, laypersons, married persons, women, and others, who otherwise might qualify for our various sanctoral calendars, have been given short shrift. Again, not necessarily for lack of sanctity. Prejudices and one-sided understandings of sanctity, not to mention politics, have at times driven the process. We do need to be mindful in a tradition that is rooted in homely divinity that we should expect those living quite ordinary lives to be exemplars of grace. We should expect in a tradition that is meant for all, that is common, that we would find sanctity among all sorts and conditions. And we can expect that virtues properly understood show many sides. Humility, for example, is multifaceted depending on the person in whom it is manifest. Diversity should abound in oneness. After all, grace is many-splendored. And we want to encourage all sorts and conditions to holiness.

So, we have to be mindful that our selectivity has sometimes been touched by Sin. Yet, nevertheless, our Sanctoral will be selective if it is to keep in mind the concern to retain our principle Sunday Holy Communion and Daily Office cycle rather than revert to former trends that saw the Church Year so clogged up with saints days as to have central feasts overtaken by minor fasts. Solutions to the blessing of having many worthies may be to provide possibilities for local observance while retaining a pared down Provincial Sanctoral. Others include ordering of festivity.

Again, the second set speaks to some considerations for selectivity in light of past problems rather than to sanctity per se.

At the end of the day, it would seem to me, if selectivity criteria overtakes sanctity criteria, however, we run into the possibility of altogether losing sight of the purpose of the Sanctoral. In an effort to correct for selectivity touched by Sin, the very Liberal Protestant tradition that looks to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement among others, that lauds social justice and equality, ends up undoing the heart of their own message—that all are capable of Christlikeness, of Godly character, that is, of sanctity. We are left not with a sense that persons of all sorts and conditions might rise to the occasion through increase in character by the power of the Spirit, but that persons of all sorts and conditions are fine as we are (that Love need not change us) and thus equally worthy of consideration for the sanctoral irrespective of actual character of life, sometimes irrespective of actual Christian profession of faith. Without qualities such an equality ends up undoing equity, removing the necessity of a sanctoral for a Church Militant seemingly already arrived. A too realized rather than inaugurated eschatology pertains if this set is pushed. And we end up no longer looking for what salvation looks like as wrought in this life—in our life—here and now.

The solution to our calendrical problems, in my opinion, is not a set of quotas, but a set of qualities and a contingent yet coherent selectivity process. A quota mentality is the spirit of the age found both left and right and sometimes middle, that reduces persons to a portion of her or his identity irrespective of the qualities of her or his discipleship and the content of her or his character and the fruits of her or his faith. The solution is to inspire all Christians—black and white and red and brown and yellow, male and female and intergendered, rich and poor and middle and working class, married and partnered and single and professed, American and Nigerian and Malaysian and Aborigine, gay and lesbian and straight and bisexual and asexual—to discipleship, to character, to fruits. A proper set of sanctoral criteria sketch out for us what Christ might look like in each and all of us while leaving room for God to shape us each particularly and personally using the gifts he has given us for the work he has given us to do for the sake of the whole Church and world. We must begin there before turning to selectivity.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Gal. 5:22-23.

The Lutheran Catholic and Ecclesiology

2010-01-24T20:04:00.001-08:00

As I write a short piece on a unity that points not toward itself but breaks open to Christ in iconic fashion, I found this fine lecture by the current ABC on one of the theologians who has most influenced my thinking on Christ and Church, Michael Ramsey. Like Ramsey, Luther has played a vital theological influence in my own life especially through our Articles as well as through Maurice and Bonhoeffer.

I note this as vital in our current discussions about ecclesiologies and Covenants wherein I sense a tendency to do precisely that against which Luther, Maurice, and Ramsey warn, making our ecclesial ontology something separate and of its own self from rather than rooted in utter dependence upon Christ and the Holy Spirit and too often captured by an over-against-the-world way of thinking that threatens to cut off a sense of God's at-work-ness in the ordinary things of human life:

There is an obvious misunderstanding which Ramsey is well aware of and which he attempts to guard against. It is to think that because the model of a reasoned choice of a philosophy of life doesn't fit belonging in the Church, the Church as a visible structure is thereby given rights over the particular person in a way that denies individual freedom and enshrines unaccountable authority. When Ramsey writes about the mediaeval Church, this is the kind of misapprehension that seems to be most clearly in his sights. The mediaeval Church, he argues, failed in faithfulness to the gospel because it defined itself increasingly as a system of institutionalised order or control, comparable to the other systems around - or rather, in the early Middle Ages, providing such a system because no other power was able to. And because of this, the primitive notion of a community of unique solidarity defined by God's act was replaced by a society which guaranteed to 'broker' good relations with God: Ramsey has some tantalising but suggestive remarks about the way in which sacrificial language changed its register in the Middle Ages (pp.168-9), so as to obscure both divine initiative and corporate human response. Whatever he is supporting, there can be no doubt that he is criticising any institutional framework that suppresses human liberty by executive force.

But Christian commitment demands a transformation of how we understand that liberty. It cannot be imposed, but the ethos of the Catholic Church, in Ramsey's sense, nurtures and deepens another sort of freedom - freedom structured around the freedom of Christ to offer himself to the Father and to human beings, that freedom which Ramsey so often writes about in relation to the glory of Christ (there is a good brief critique of some modern theological accounts of freedom in GCW, pp.34-8, and a summary of what is to be learned from Christ's freedom in FFF, pp.11-14). A proper Catholic identity, he implies, is one in which the absorption of what Christ's freedom means is daily sustained by a climate of exposure to the full radical reality of Christ incarnate embracing the cross - in scripture and sacrament and contemplative prayer as well as the reality of that kind of service in the world that does not look for success or fashionable reputation but simply does what Christ does (see, for example, the comments on the 'servant Church' ideal in FCC, pp.55 ff.). And this is different from a supposed Catholic identity for which what matters is that the Church should be a plausible competitor in the struggle for ideological dominance, power over individuals or societies.

Core Doctrines, Living Relationships

2010-01-22T07:15:00.001-08:00

Our core doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity as found in the Creeds are not about mere intellectual assent or dogged adherence to formulae, they are about professions of the living relationships between persons and Persons in which we find ourselves by sheer gift not only in our Redemption but in our Creation through the Word and by the Spirit, that is, from the beginning, acknowledged or not.

After all, no one existing is outside of Creation, and as both St Maximus and long after him, F.D. Maurice, remind, and the Lux Mundi school also. Because this is so, no one is ever outside of Christ though they may not know this is so or may refuse to acknowledge their dependence. This recognition and profession of dependence, what Maurice calls the heart of conversion and repentance, sits at the heart not only of our Creeds, but our classic Canon and the Dominical Sacraments . By no merits of our own are we created, redeemed, sustained, by only for His Love's sake. Our life is utter gift always and each moment. Turn and believe in He who loves us so. Only in Him do we find life eternal. Outside of Him is no thing.

These doctrines tells us, this is Who God is and we know this is so by how God has been for us and to us and with us in his self-communication through Creation, through His relationship with Israel in guide, prophets, and wisdom, and definitively in Jesus Christ, His very self in the flesh who in His Ascension raises all of Creation into God's own life, "that He might fill all things." To confess these is not merely to give assent to some dead-letter or offer adherence to a set of words not easily understood, but to admit our utter dependence upon and need for the One they proclaim who creates, saves, and sustains us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This One who makes Himself known to us and yet remains more than we can ever comprehend.

The late William Temple better than I writes in this regard in describing Anglicanism in the relationship of doctrine and life in God:

Our special character and, as we believe, our peculiar contribution to the Universal Church, arises from the fact that owing to historic circumstances, we have been enabled to combine in our one fellowship the traditional Faith and Order of the Catholic Church with that immediacy of approach to God through Christ to which the Evangelical Churches especially bear witness, and freedom of intellectual inquiry, whereby the correlation of the Christian revelation and advancing knowledge is constantly effected. (Temple, Encyclical, Lambeth 1930)

Pattern Formation: Dog-eared Prayer Book and Tatty Writ

2010-01-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

As you might well imagine, several editions of the Prayer Book line my shelves. In addition, several copies of the 1979 edition float around our house. One is falling apart on the spine, another is so dog-eared that you would think the pages came rounded on the edges. And some of our bibles are so worn as to be almost embarrassing. Indeed, I've had to retire a few over the years.

In his essay, "The Anglican Spiritual Tradition," Martin Thornton writes of this phenomenon:

Symbolic of this emphasis on the unity of the Church, with its domestic spirituality, is the extraordinary weight of authority given by the Caroline Fathers to the Book of Common Prayer, from 1549 onward, and further up to 1928. It It is customary for Benedictines to read selections from the Rule at silent meals, the Ignatian exercises still form the heart of Jesuit spirituality; but no school of prayer has been so firmly tied to a book as the Caroline Church of England. "Bible and Prayer Book" were the twin pillars of this spirituality, with the latter given almost equal status, and subjected to the same kind of systematic study as the former. The Book of Common Prayer was subjected to annotation and commentary with not a rubric, colon or comma regarded as insignificant.

It is again necessary to look at the historical setting, for the Book of Common Prayer is derived from a long line of ancestors, ultimately from the Benedictine Regula, with which, ascetically, it has much in common: both are designed to regulate the total life of a community, centered on the Divine Office, the Mass, and continuous devotion as daily, domestic life unfolds. Both are concerned with common, even "family" prayer. Neither are missals, breviaries or lay manuals, because here the priest-lay division does not apply: they are common prayer, prayer for the united Church or community.

The vital principle, tragically missed by both modern liturgists and their critics, is that, like the Regula, the Book of Common Prayer is not a list of Church services but an ascetical system for Christian living in all of its minutiae.

To the seventeenth--or indeed nineteenth--century layman the Prayer Book was not a shiny volume to be borrowed from a church shelf on entering and carefully replaced on leaving. It was a beloved and battered personal possession, a life-long companion and guide, to be carried from church to kitchen, to parlor, to bedside table; equally adaptable for liturgy, personal devotion, and family prayer: the symbol of a domestic spirituality--full homely divinitie. [1]

As I have previously written elsewhere:

The Prayer Book is a Rule of Life. The saints formed and community maintained looks quite Benedictine in its aspirations. Something like this from another previous post:

Anglican Common Prayer is an understated concrete expression of this christological-soteriological life together. Rather than emphasize the heroic ascesis of the desert or the monastery, we have tended to opt for a moderate, communal discipline in prayer and lifestyle focusing on daily praise and weekly Communion. In such a moderated offering, holiness may not often dazzle on pylons or in caves, but it shines through in the ordinary ways of life, in how we go about business, order family life, do justice, work for the common good. And yet, we do dazzle, and it is precisely in our praising sense, our poetic sense both in prayer and in sermons, devotions, and poetry that the particular beauty of Anglican holiness shines. And it shines precisely by seeing in the ordinary, the light of Tabor. As the late Fathers recognized, having to deal with ascetical nutjobs, they made firm that the heart of our life together and of holiness is rooted in Holy Communion, that is, life together through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. It is the heart of Patristic christology that grounds our ecclesiology and understanding of holiness.

Perhaps if there is a unifying thread that runs through the distinctive pieties of those younger calling for reverence it is this: The Prayer Book is our Rule.

In fact, the Prayer Book is a distinctive enfleshment of a moderate, generous, gentle, common, and above all else, awed way of being together in the world that insists that we are homo adorans and asks that because we praise God, we reverence one another and creation by making our own contribution in daily life ("Contribution" is a term I shamelessly borrow from Dr John Booty who describes Anglican response to awe of God in this way as we go about daily life.).

In other words, our Prayer Book is the heart of St Benedict's instruction: Prayer above all else. And prayer in everything. It is in many ways the fleshing out of Chapters 8-20 for us in parochial, homely, daily life.

And we recommend it stay that way.

I often toy with personal liturgical expressions. After all, my shelves are littered with resources and I want to play with them. And often because I get irritated by our current BCP. It was designed for enrichment and resource rather than pattern-formation. But Anglicanism is not a resource tradition. We are a common prayer and Prayer Book tradition. What this requires in practice is that I pattern any actual personal liturgical expressions within the "may" rubrics of the Prayer Book or use an authorized expression (A Monastic Breviary, for example). Fortunately, that isn't terribly difficult as there is flexibility.

Just as the Rule of St Benedict has never been fleshed out the same in every monastery, we might find similar particularities and peculiarities in a Province, the equivalent of a monastery in our ecclesiology. And how Morning Prayer is prayed in the average home versus a cathedral is likely to differ. Those of us who are uebers tend to conflate the two and in doing so turn many away who might do with something more fitted to home use.

What all of this recommends, in my opinion, for any future Prayer Book revision in our province is something different than more resources and more enrichments.

It requires setting patterns. That is why I have resorted to A Monastic Breviary. It gives a clearer pattern even though I end up usually saying "slowly and reflectively" only one section of the Psalms for the day and reading only one Lesson.

One of the great frustrations I have with the 1979 BCP is that it is not user friendly, by which I mean it does not set out a straight-through and obvious pattern. Before everyone's feathers get ruffled and we get into that huffy Episcopalian "well those people just need to be shown how" mentality, let me illustrate how we could do better in terms of pattern-formation. In favor of resource approach, pattern is undermined. I'll take Morning Prayer and how it might be done better. Instead of making the resource approach normative, I would make pattern formation normative correlating a basic pattern that cuts across parish and home but that could be filled out in the parish. This way, we maximize a basic praying in the parish as well as the home. The goal is all Episcopalians at prayer twice a day. Keep that goal in mind, especially those with expertise, ueber sensibilities, etc. This also pulls in some traditional monastic enrichments as part of the pattern, while leaving others as enrichments. Others might have better ideas, so take these with a grain of salt. But again, remember the goal: Pattern-formation of all (not satisfaction of ueber or party sensibilities of some):

Morning Prayer

Monday

-rubric noting Sentences and Confession of Sin in Resources pp. following (the pattern) the Daily Office perhaps also noted in Seasonal Propers with a particular Confession of Sin for Advent and Lent in each?

-Lord open our lips...

-Monday Sentences with rubric to Seasonal Propers pp. and Resources pp.

-Glory be...

-Monday Invitatory Antiphon with rubric noting seasonal Antiphons in Seasonal Propers pp. following (the pattern) etc.

-Venite with rubric noting Jubilate and Pascha nostrum distributed in Seasonal Propers pp.

-Monday Invitatory Antiphon

-Monday Psalms Antiphon

-Monday Psalm(s) or portions of Psalms with rubric to see a full appointed selection in the Lectionary pp. and Psalms pp. (noting also Psalms for use for particular moments in our lives--for this is what we do in a fully homely divinity--we sometimes do pray the Psalm speaking to our need; they're good for that). I recommend two Psalms or portions thereof, one a praise and another a confession in the pattern of 67/51.

OR recommend a pattern of saying one (or portion of one) Psalm from the Psalter everyday as found on pp. while pointing to a full Lectionary on pp. and Psalms pp. I know this won't satisfy the ueber among us, but we want all following a pattern that can be enriched rather than an enriched following after a pattern. Imagine all Episcopal homes and parishes praying a basic (that can be fleshed out with enrichments) pattern of MP in the Episcopal Anglican tradition...

-Glory Be

-Monday Psalms Antiphon

-Lections as well as the possibility of (Short) Monday Lesson(s) with rubric pointing to seasonal options set out by day in Seasonal Propers and a full appointed selection in the Lectionary pp. and Psalms pp. Again, this is modifying the desert approach melded with the "cathedral" approach in another direction than traditionally Cranmerian, but it is Benedictine and provided for even in our current Prayer Book (when traveling, the Sentences function for me as the Lesson and I use them in the Lesson position at those times). Hence my use of desert rather than monastic in describing the tradition we have. Will it get us through the entire Scripture in a year. No. Does it make that a possibility. Yes. Should our parishes be doing more in the way of Lectio and Bible Studies to supplement this. Yes. Again, keep sight of the goal, which was Cranmer's goal, modified to our times and place.

-rubric noting the possibility of silence for reflection/meditation on the Lesson(s).

-Monday Hymn with rubric pointing to Seasonal Propers pp. Set the text/music directly in the BCP. If necessary, use settings no longer copywritten to make these available in a public manner. Or make arrangements to pay artists/publishers to allow for public domain option.

-Monday Benedictus Antiphon with rubric noting seasonal options in Seasonal Propers pp.

-Benedictus with rubrics noting other Canticles either in Seasonal Propers or in Resources. OR have two short Monday Lessons. The first followed by the Te Deum on Sundays (except Lent, etc.) and a portion of the Benedicite (to be distributed among the six other days); the second followed by the

-Glory Be

-Monday Benedictus Antiphon

-Apostles' Creed

-Short Kyrie

-Our Father without doxology (Using A Monastic Breviary, I have figured out why I have found the current BCP use clunky at this spot. The doxology breaks up what otherwise is a smart flow right into the Suffrages, which are in essence a Litany or Prayers of the Church and continuation of the Lord's Prayer).

-Monday Suffrages with rubric to pp. for Prayer Forms for enrichment in parish settings, etc.

-Monday Collect with rubric to pp. for Collects appointed (include in those Collects those for all who are on the Calendar to stop book juggling for those of us who do want a minimal acknowledgement of the Sanctoral)

-Let us bless the Lord...

-2 Cor 13:14

Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.

A basic pattern is set up that can be enriched, rather than enrichment is set up that can be patterned. That is one of the deficits, any ways, to my mind with the current BCP, something that A New Zealand Prayer Book begins to reckon with but provides again more resources than a shared pattern.

The structure of the Prayer Book would be helpful if arranged something like:

Table of Contents

CALENDAR
Calendar

DAILY OFFICE
Office Lectionary
Morning Prayer: Sunday-Saturday
Noon Prayer
Evening Prayer: Sunday-Saturday
Compline
Seasonal Propers: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Trinity (Pentecost)
Enrichment Resources

PSALMS
Psalms

PRAYERS
Prayer Forms

COLLECTS
Collects

HOLY COMMUNION
Mass Lectionary
Mass

Etc.

__________

[1] Martin Thornton, "The Anglican Spiritual Tradition," in The Anglican Tradition, ed. Richard Holloway (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc., 1984), 86-87.

Rite III Additions

2010-01-13T18:46:00.001-08:00

Though there is really quite little in Prayer I that is entirely impossible to understand and the poetry in its cadence and sounds are shifted by slight changes in wording, why not a slightly updated version for Rite III:

All glory be to you, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for you, of your tender mercy, gave your only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again:

For on the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take, eat: this is my Body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Likewise, after supper, he took the cup; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father, according to the institution of your dearly beloved Son our Savior Jesus Christ, we, your humble servants, do celebrate and make here before your divine Majesty, with these your holy gifts, which we now offer to you, the memorial your Son has commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering to you most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.

And we most humbly beseech you, O merciful Father, to hear us; and of your almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with your Word and Holy Spirit, these your gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to your Son our Savior Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

And we earnestly desire your fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching you to grant that, by the merits and death of your Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we, and all your whole Church, may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

And here we offer and present unto you, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto you; humbly beseeching you, that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ, be filled with you grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.

And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto you any sacrifice; yet we beseech you to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses, through Jesus Christ our Lord:

By whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory be to you, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.

In Defense of Rite One, Prayer I

2010-01-08T07:07:00.001-08:00

At my defense, my committee members were astonished that I gave such a thorough defense of and plug for the Rite One Eucharistic Prayer in its composition and christology as well as for its regular use.

Was it because I reject Rite Two?: No. Actually, I am rather fond of Rite Two.

Was it because I reject theories of the Atonement other than a reformed Anselmian notion: No. As I explained drawing on David Bentley Hart and others, Anselm--and thus, Cranmer's, Atonement theory has more in common with Patristic Incarnational (and also, Creedal) notions of Atonement than has often been recognized. Many scholars in revisiting St Anselm have noted that his "theory," for Anselm's work is deployed by many in ways he would not recognize or own, could be read as a short version of classic Patristic christologies with their emphasis on the Incarnation. It is a shorthand for such. Remember, as I argue again and again, we cannot divide out the Incarnation from the Crucifixion in Patristic modes of thinking. The latter is supreme highlight of the former, especially in the mind of St. Cyril of Alexandria from whom we inherit the communicatio idiomatum. At any rate, I recognize that the Church catholic has never promulgated one theory of Atonement as the theory.

Was it because I reject contemporary English: No. I in fact reject notions that suggest somehow that present language is incapable of the divine because too ugly, etc. To suggest that contemporary language is incapable of the divine is to reject our own reformed history. But I will suggest that liturgical contemporary English need not be the same as the way I speak on the street. Nonetheless, I am aware of the resonance required for understanding English literature. To not know the Authorized Version, the Book of Common Prayer pre-1979, and Shakespeare among others is to be at a grave disadvantage. My Lutheran high school English teacher taught me that, and because of her insistence that we know these, I can read English literature with a depth others may not be able to do.

I was born in 1974 and not raised Episcopalian, though my mother flirted with our becoming so when I was age nine. I have never known 1928 except as a book of prayers. And remember, I have only ever experienced Rite One once in my entire life, and that botched by the removal of the Prayer of Humble Access, one of those superb Cranmerian compositions.

So perhaps it is nostalgia?: No. It is because I recognize christological motifs in the prayer that are vital to retain and because to sideline Prayer I is to sideline a vital piece of our inheritance of the reformed Sarum.

My first concern is that there are a number of priests in The Episcopal Church committed to never using Rite One with all of its Anselmian, and therefore, radically Benedictine and feudally-subverting as well as Cranmerian christological riches. Remember the Enclosure controversies were still an issue in Cranmer's time. Economic feudalism still a reality. Prayer I testifies to Christ quite powerfully within its context and at heart is this Anselmian notion that reforms and subverts abuses of feudal relations--Christ's merits alone save. This is an important part of our inheritance and one that resonates with Archbishop Tutu's own context when he resists Apartheid by declaring we need produce nothing to be loved by God. Prayer I subverts our consumerist notions as much as it subverts feudal abuses.

Being the Body, our ancestors in the faith bequeath to us a criticism of ourselves that we dare not ignore. Thus, to refuse to use Rite One at all is hardly a Common Prayer spirit in which all, priest and people, are guardians of our liturgical life and pray-ers of its riches and its criticisms of us. Indeed, to remove this prayer from use altogether is to rob pewsitters and impose a form of clericalism that is rejected by the Common Prayer spirit.

My second concern is canonical. In other of our prayers, other riches of christology are to be found, from the East, from our debates over the Word as Creator (think Maurice and Lux Mundi), Apostolic Tradition, Julian inheritance, etc. What we have developing in the 1979 Prayer Book (and EOW) then is a canon-in-the-making, by which riches of our christological arguments are to be found in holding together all six (nine if we count EOW) of the Eucharistic Prayers. To pull out Prayer I, for it is this prayer that receives most villification, is to cut off a corrective to the others. It would be like pulling out James and Revelation from the Scriptural Canon, something we Anglicans rejected though other Reformers tried to do just that.

My third concern is christological and thus corrective. The Rite One prayer is very honest about God's mercy in Christ and of our being sinners. I suspect that it is the latter point that receives most objection--we are sinners. Given what I see around me daily and in myself reflectively, that we are sinners seems a fairly honest assessment of who we are before God. Yet, underlying the seemingly penitential thrust on our part is actually an incredibly generous foundation, a Deity who not only names us sinners but calls us children and friends. Think Lancelot Andrewes' sermons on sacrifice and George Herbert's "Love (III)" with recommendation that all read Stephen Syke's analysis of the piety of that poem in light of classic Anglican Canon(s) of which Prayer I is a descendant. The prayer begins in mercy and ends in mercy. We find ourselves held by a merciful Father in Christ. The reason, I explained to the committee, that I so strongly defended Rite One is that this "hard-nosed" anthropology names our times and what my generation and those younger see. It names sin squarely without denigrating either creation or us. Here is what we see: Environmental degradation, greed, poverty, etc. My own christological (and thus, theo-anthropological) sense must attend to the reality of all creation at praise with the wonder of the thought of such things as dolphins being considered by researchers as non-human persons and at the same time to the sewage spilling in the creek in park near our home, must attend to the wonder of Corrie Ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Maximillian Kolbe and to the hell of Bergen-Belsen.

The point is this, Prayer I is very clear that God saves, and that God does so through means of Himself, namely, Jesus Christ. That God bears our sins and undoes sin. That we cannot save ourselves. And this all goes counter to some of current christological tendencies in our Church that want to understand Jesus Christ as only teacher whom we follow (which implies the possibility of our saving ourselves through moral behavior--left or right, or enlightened spiritual practices. In short, does not want to deal with sin.); a human child (and thus, person) who was enlightened (and thus, so can we be) rather than a Divine Person become human being who enlightens the whole world by means of Himself; and a God who changes us primarily or only by drawing us to himself and thus by our own efforts rather than He who is Salvation once-for-all and works out that Salvation in us by grace through faith in Him. These tendencies cropping up bend toward the boogies Pelagianism, a version of Arianism, and finally Moral Influence as a singular soteriology rather than a theory appropriate to our appropriation of Christ who has saved once-for-all in His Person. These tendencies do not want to deal with a Person outside ourselves--i.e., objective Reality and Presence, and the intersubjective relationship of God-with-us. Instead, they tend to the subjective and focus on ourselves.

All of these subtly twist emphases Anglicans have maintained as reformed yet catholic: that as Logos, Christ is Teacher because He is the Pattern for all existence and for human life as brought into conformity with God's will and is particularly so for us as revealed God in the flesh; that God's self-identification with us in the Incarnation dignifies human persons, creation, and all flesh such that though sin goes all the way down (affects every bit of us) we are wounded rather than depraved and thus redeemed by Him and able to be healed in Him (not of ourselves); that salvation (and growth in God) is rightly about our participation by pure gift in God's own life and thus we are called to live in the relational/personal way of that Life who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

My analysis is this: I believe the 1979 revisions made a mistake in not providing for a contemporary translation of the prayer in Rite Two, which would not have been without precedence. After all, updating of the language of the prayer has occurred before our time. The last changes were minor, but English has changed a lot since then. Leaving the prayer and others only in Elizabethan-Jacobean-esque English made more easily the sidelining of what comprises a sizeable inheritance from our ancestors in faith.

Hence, the suggestion, as Derek rightly espies that Rite One was for those who could not get with Rite Two. Rite One was largely relegated to the early morning service with the hope of its dying. That may have been the original intent, but as Derek reminds thirty years out, Rite One is ensconced as ever and beloved of many of the younger.

Further, Rite One should not be relegated to the early service in such a way that Episcopalians have no experience of its riches. To avoid Rite One altogether is to pray less than Common Prayer. Pewsitters should be in riot over this as much as Maurice reminds us that The Apostles' Creed is our defense against clerical theological tyranny.

From the close of my dissertation:

The scuttlebutt I have heard ever since I became Episcopalian ten years ago has been about retiring Rite One and moving beyond Rite Two. Enriching Our Worship represents in part how this might be fleshed out. This runs counter to the canonical method that is our strength as provided for in 1979. I would argue that retiring the former and moving beyond the latter without paying careful attention to what each teaches us will leave us the poorer. Such a decision will leave us unable to offer the sort of critique that is not only prophetic but practicable, not only joyous but critical. We need both movements, that of Rite One and that of Rite Two, that of utter dependence on God and emboldened thanks, if Episcopalians are to honor who Christ has been and is for us. Together these, and I would argue that portion of EOW that takes up creation as Christ’s work, provide firm ground upon which to not only criticize society, but our own grasping after satisfaction through production and consumption. To not only set ourselves apart from “out there,” but to recognize where we too are often worldly-captured. To downplay any portion leaves us unprepared for our ecological age.

Maybe it is my Benedictine formation or my love of the subversive theology of St. Anselm of Canterbury and appreciation of Thomas Cranmer’s catholic concern, but I do not want us to lose the substance of the old prayer-tongue. Rite One has found some favor among those my age and younger if anecdotal remarks have even some modicum of accuracy. The sense of transcendence and language somewhat ancient and tradition long-tested surely draws. But I would suggest it is something more than this. We, who see these looming crises not as something future but as something we are already inheriting, recognize that another orientation and new practices rooted in this are needed. What better place to begin than on Christ’s merits alone or in modern idiom, “God’s unearned love in Christ”? This frees us to question a sociality and society based in exploitation, production, and consumption for meeting the gaping maw of unending dissatisfaction.

Reformer or Commoner?

2010-01-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

Whatever setting of the proper chosen on this day, it is a more fitting way to begin Mass than with a people's hymn that is designed for popular and not liturgical occasions. (Novus Motus
Liturgicus)

Change will appear straightforward if history is reduced to a sequence of reforms, ignoring reactions, reversals, alternatives, and contexts. Change will seem easy if its opponents are left out of the story, or treated as silly old fogeys destined for defeat. But such distilled history is an illusion; it is not how the past was.[1]

I went searching for the Introit for The Feast of the Epiphany yesterday and happened upon this piece from Novus Motus Liturgicus: The Introit is Not “We Three Kings.”

Reformers always want some sort of purity. Purity of liturgy and of church often go hand in glove. As Derek smartly observes this sort of purity and the culture wars are very much in operation in the Roman Church. But liturgy and church are rarely pure, and I would argue that this is a good thing. As Anglicans, we are committed to common prayer, that is prayer for all comers not just prayer that suits the expert and the elite (terms themselves that can misrepresent, for most considered such are also very much shaped by the tastes of the so-called “popular” even if not that of this century). Self-selecting to liturgy that only fits my tastes is likely to isolate me from the Body. It runs contrary to the parish model. As I have discovered liturgical tastes are as various and numerous as persons. If we are to pray together, we will have to live with bits of which we are not fond.

So, I was not so much troubled by recommendation of the Introit over “We Three Kings” as I was by the underlying hostility toward the hoi polloi, that is the common crowd, among whom I count myself and toward any expressions produced or beloved by "them". Simply because the Introit would be best does not mean that “We Three Kings” is unworthy or of not value at all for liturgical use. Common prayer runs against the grain of this reforming impulse and acts as a long-term corrective to the zeal of reformers. Push to hard and the people will dig in their heals. You may get us to give up our beads, but we will still mumble off our Hail Mary until after you are long dead and survived by our children and our children's children who do the same—because we trained them at home. You may remove "We Three Kings" but we will continue to sing it at our desk. Historian, Christopher Haigh, observes:

The title of this book has been chosen quite deliberately: it is English Reformations. It is not The English Reformations. That would claim that the only English Reformations which ever were took place in the Tudor period, and suggest that they formed a complete and effective process. But the various (and varied) Reformations in sixteenth-century England were haphazard and had only limited success, at least by comparison with Protestant aims: they did no make Church or people emphatically Protestant, and there remained much still to be done….Rather, it examines some English Reformations, some of the campaigns to change the constitution of the national Church and the beliefs of its people….Nor is the title The Reformation in England. That would assert that what happened in England was simply a local manifestation of the wider European movement, an integral part of ‘the Reformation’, in which Martin Luther’s personal rebellion became a widespread revolt against the authority and superstition of the Roman Church….These English Reformations took some ideas from the Reformation; they could happened as they did because they coincided with it….Whatever such English Reformations had in common with Reformation on the Continent, they were not the same thing: not the Reformation, declared by reformers and demanded by the crowds….In England, such events did not come in swift and orderly sequence, as consecutive steps of a pre-planned programme or a protest movement: they came (and went again) as the accidents of everyday politics and the consequences of power struggles.[2]

I think F.D. Maurice is right that sometimes in spite of themselves, what resulted from the Reformers was for all, that is, common. That is, to some extent the reformers were successful, and to some extent, they failed:

I claim it as the first and noblest distinction of our Prayers, that they set out with assuming God to be a Father, and those that worship him to be his children. They are written from beginning to end upon this assumption; every other makes them monstrous and contradictory. It confronts you in the first words of the Service; it is so glaring that you almost overlook it; but the further you read the more earnestly you meditate, the more truly you pray, the more certain you are that it is not only on the surface, but reveals the nature of the soil below. That God is actually related to us in his Son, is the doctrine which is the life of the Prayer Book, and apart from which it becomes the idlest and profanest of documents.
And there in no opportunity for special pleading about the word “us.” The compilers of these Prayers knew not who would frequent the Churches in which they were to be used. I do not believe they decoyed men into these Churches by unfair arts, but I do believe that they expected men of all kinds to be there—Pharisees and Publicans, decent people and conscious sinners—and they provided a language for each and all of them. And this language was, “Almighty and most merciful Father.” It was a very bold step to take. There was that in their own minds, and in the minds of all about them, which must have been revolted by it. But they did it. Not a vulgar calculation, which lowered them to a level beneath that of their ordinary lives, but a wisdom which carried them above themselves—above their own schemes, notions, and theories—led them to feel—“We have a right to do this: we are honouring God and his covenant by doing it.” But most of all this thought must have possessed them, “We are not Reformers unless we do it.—We cannot assert the truth of an accomplished salvation, of a perfect Mediator, unless we do it. We cannot put an end to the idolatry into which men have fallen, through ignorance that they can draw nigh to God as a reconciled Father, unless we do it. If there are to be Prayers at all, there is positively no course open but this. And if there are not to be Prayers, and Common Prayers, we are bearing no real practical protest against false worship.[3]

I find it somewhat ironic and insulting then to read this in the comments at Novus Motus Liturgicus:

So now its just a matter of changing their expectations! If we could only inform them, in a way that doesn't offend them, that although these vernacular hymns are all well and good, the actual propers have already been selected hundreds of years ago and are integral to the liturgy...now its only a matter of gradually changing the introit from We Three Kings to Ecce Advenit and so on.

Why? Because the Mass is so ever rarely a purity. I would say to NML, the zeal of youth clouds your love for God's people. For God's people are rarely without formation of some kind, and some of the most holy of pageant songs were those to mock an overly self-important clericalism. Most importantly, it comes across as if these experts have not set themselves alongside their fellows in the pews. I am not opposed to expertise, after all, I am an expert, but I am not so willing to dismiss “them” so haughtily as if they know nothing of the faith. A peasants’ song may become a high holy hymn given time. A desert poet may become all the rage. A pageant song, no matter how simple, may capture the heart and will be sung in the street or at my desk as it were. A desert poem may change the course of a church. We Three Kings captures because it is simple and has an interesting, singable melody. To divorce street piety from sanctuary song so readily shows a failure to understand that formation is a whole life affair and that most will be singing hymns over Introits when at their work or in their play.

What is most ironic, to my mind, however, is that this is precisely the opposite attitude found in the works of the likes of Eamon Duffy, who acclaim the populus against the Reformers to serve Roman Catholic interests no matter if theological heavy-weights of the likes of Nicholas Lash point out that the late Medieval understanding of the Mass had some theological problems. It seems the people can be right, that is useful, when they agree with me and my liturgical tastes or theological proclivities. In either case, however, I’m afraid reformers and purists will find themselves frustrated or clipped to some degree by the people and time. Cranmer did. So will Novus Motus Liturgicus. The zeal of reform is always softened by the stubbornness of long established practice, the seal of purity (liturgical, moral, or otherwise) will be tested by common sense.

Both called in their own way also for us to line up with a pure church, that is, one that agrees with the reforms whole cloth. Just as the reforms of Cranmer were not completely divorced from the interests of the state, current reforms of the reform are not completely divorced from the interests of certain portions of the Church. Nor reforms (Enriching Our Worship et al) of the reforms (Liturgical Movement) of the reforms ad nauseum in our own Church. Nonetheless, given the softening agent of the pewsitters and of time, what results may be liturgy more beautiful, yet vernacular, enriched, yet common.

What reformers never understand is that the people are never merely a tabula rasa upon which they can impose their reforms. The Reformers learned that the hard way, and hence, it is in some part that we have a via media and a reformed catholicism because the people would not be wholly reformed.

And those people are not only those in the pews, often times they are also clergy and even liturgical experts. For the same reasons. Common prayer, prayer in which the affections of all, not just the monastically or liturgically inclined, has been unleashed with its goods and ills. Just as the Reformers learned this the hard way, these liturgical purists may as well. The Roman Rite will never be the same post-Vatican II, just as it has developed many times over many centuries taking in the worthy from wherever it may be found, from peasants’ revelries or from monastic chants.

Reform comes in fits and starts and will only be received in pieces and parts. In the mean time, I remain less interested in choosing or obtaining pure liturgy or pure church, and content to offer my expertise where we God’s people are at prayer in such a way that respects formation of hearts in multitudinous and complex fashion. I am happy to recommend the traditional Introit and still also sing "We Three Kings." That prayer may not always be fully to my taste, may indeed sometimes be in need of reconsideration, and still, I will continue to worship alongside my fellows as we work it all out together:

Perhaps they may be called ‘parish anglicans’: ‘parish’, because they stressed communal values of village harmony and worship and objected to the divisiveness of the godly; ‘anglican’ (but not yet ‘Anglican’), because they stressed Prayer Book rituals and objected to the nonconformity of the godly.[4]

__________

[1] Christopher Haigh, The English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 16.

[2] Ibid., 12-13.

[3] Frederick Denison Maurice, “Introductory,” in The Prayer Book (London: James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1966), 5-6.

[4] Haigh, English Reformations, 291-292.

Christmas Antiphon

2010-01-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

For the duration of Christmastide, I've kept to the Christmas antiphon for the Magnificat. Like the O Antiphons as Advent shifts into the days before Christmas (Sapientiatide), Christmastide might be better served with a series of Hodie antiphons at a time when After Christmas sales are already happening on December 23!:

Today the Christ is born; today has a savior appeared; today on earth angels are singing, archangels rejoicing / today the righteous exult and say, Glory to God in the highest. Alleluia.

(A Monastic Breviary)

A piece at the Cafe

2009-12-29T06:17:00.000-08:00

Opening musings on sufficiency.

Vocation

2009-12-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last few days in New York City. My good friend was ordained a presbyter on Friday.

I am asked about my vocation a lot these days--a recurring theme in my journey with God. "Get him ordained." "When will you become a priest?" and so forth. Sometimes I wonder what it might mean to pastor a parish, to preside over the Holy Communion. I, after all, deal with our liturgies all the time in so many ways. As someone growing into being a public theologian, I am quite lovingly protective of our Prayer Book. Sometimes I wonder if I should not consider entering the process again.

And then I hear again the stories of trauma that our call process induces. Many leave with scars even as they pass through. The process does not always seem concerned with raising up prayerful, pastoral priests. Misused power, arbitrariness, personalities, and egos seem to drive processes that should be about discernment. When I was considering entering the process, I remember the priest of my parish say to me, "Once you're in the process, you're mine--we own you." I was appalled by such a misuse of authority. On the other hand, too many come through the process who have no particular care for a personal prayer life much less a love of those things I consider primary to the presbyteral calling: prayer, sacraments, pastoral care. Do priests even make visitations to all of their parishioners anymore anywhere? How many parishes insist upon reform to a regular round of the Office? If I were to change one thing, I would want our discernment processes taken out of the hands of the powerful and placed into the hands of the prayerful. Discernment processes in each diocese should be done by wise councils of contemplatives with such gifts as discernment. Be that process as it is, I have no desire to enter such a process as currently structured.

Again seeing one called to be a presbyter, I get a better glimpse of my own calling.

While flying, I am reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. It is a life of prayer according to my station in life--essentially monastic or contemplative in the world. Perhaps a spiritual director or theologian in its richest sense. I am struck in the book, for example, by the way Br. Philip leads and advises and cares for others. This is the type of person I want to become.

I sat with my friend in meditation for twenty minutes before he had to leave to prepare for the Holy Communion. I inwardly prayed for him to be surrounded by Christ's love and filled with Christ's peace as he led us in the Holy Communion. This is his work. Mine, at least in part, is to sit with others in prayer. In the same way that I catch glimpses as I preside over the Board of Directors of my community, I saw what I might be sitting in prayer with my friend. That prayerful, centering, advisory, discerning presence is what is my deepest longing. It is not to powerlessness, but to prayerfulness.

Prayerfulness is its own authority, I am discovering.

Christus Consummator or the Feast of Christ the Consummation of All Things?

2009-11-23T06:56:00.000-08:00

This is the theology F. D. Maurice bequeathed to us, building on the Fathers and Reformers, and it is the theology upon which Michael Ramsey built his christological ecclesiology, Ecclesia Consummatrix. This is a thoroughly catholic christology, but it is wider in its mercy than many other catholic accounts. It presumes not Christ's absence, but his Presence. It presumes a form of realized eschatology that I call Presence or liturgical eschatology (because there is not currently a technical term for such an eschatology). Christ, the Last Day, the Final Judgment, the End of Days, the Omega as the Alpha, is present to us everywhere he is Named and explicitly in Word and Sacrament, and yet, the Consummation is not yet. It is this same theology that I have discovered in our anaphorae over and over again. Christology grounds our ecclesiology. Our Episcopalian christology is rooted in a vision of Christ as the Consummation of All Things.

bls points to an important observation. Christ the King may be wending its way into our calendar, but before it does, perhaps we should consider our own collect for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (or Trinity):

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

I could not help but think of this as the close of All Saintstide and the opening onto the eschatological, even apocalyptic mood of Advent. After all, the Incarnation is himself the End as much as the Beginning, so too the Feast of the Incarnation. This collect is a fitting close to these All Saints weeks when we consider the great cloud of witnesses and our relationship with the Whole. All Saints is itself a feast of the Incarnation, to pick up on Derek's recent post, noting the Anglican change to Wednesday. Our christology is pleromatic.

Worm Theology

2009-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

The other day as I walked through the parking lot, a large earthworm crossed my path. He-she was wriggling his-her way rapidly toward a patch of green-covered ground. As I drove out of the lot, I carefully drove so as to avoid running over him-her. I smiled to myself as in the rearview mirror, I saw him-her reach land.

When I see earthworms, I am reminded of a professor who once told me about her childhood church experiences. She remembers that her church drilled into her that we humans are lower than worms. We are wretched. She calls this "worm theology."

I read a portion of the Rule everyday. Recently, I read from Chapter 7:

The seventh step of humility is that he should not only pronounce with his tongue that he is inferior to and more common than all, but also believe it in the intimate sensibility of his heart, humbling himself and saying with the prophet: As for me, I am a worm and no man, shameful among men and an outcast of the people (Psalm 22:7).

I thought of my professor. But I remained struck by the quotation from Psalm 22.

St. Benedict, writing for the Roman men of his era, wants to remove any sense of airs on the part of his charges. In a community filled with a mix from late Roman society, slaves and free, highborn and peasant, noble and vagabond, Benedict wants his monks to be rid of worldly notions of rank in relating to one another.

As I read the passage now, I am struck by the wonders of God's creation. I think of the earthworm that crossed my path.

To count myself with worms need not imply worthlessness or contempt toward my person. I came to a quite different conclusion in reading that passage after a joyous round of Psalms and an earthworm encounter. We are not to count ourselves better than others, even earthworms. We too are creatures of earth. We are clay. We are dust. We are createds to use a term by theologian, George Tinker. Or creatures of stardust if we want to think more cosmically. Within the context of the Psalms as whole, and I think especially of those Psalms in which all of creation lauds God, this passage asks us to accept that we too are creatures, ordinary, common. At the same time, this overall Psalmic context reminds us that all things created, all that have their being from God, are also beloved of God.

We humans, to quote my grandmother, "Get too big for our britches."

We start thinking of ourselves as better than worms and frogs and horses.

Soon we start thinking of ourselves as better than one another.

And it is not long before we think ourselves better than God.

To count myself no better than a worm is to accept that I too am a creature of earth.

We so often confuse humility with humiliation.

Humiliation is precisely to show ourselves or another contempt. Humiliation always plays in a vicious pattern: Superior/Inferior. When we humiliate others, we feel superior. When others humiliate us, we feel inferior.

Humility is to count ourselves among the worms, that is, creatures of earth. To be humble is to step outside of the worldly game of superiority and inferiority. We too are creatures. We too have talents and gifts, as well as lacks and growing edges. Knowing our own fragility, we more easily bear with others' faults. Knowing the value of an earthworm in the sight of God, we consider the hippopotamus and the whale with Job's silence and awe.

Surprisingly, when I am willing to place myself alongside the earthworm, rather than humiliation, I find a peace and joy. What better place is there to be than singing praises alongside all of God's creatures? This is the overall context of the Psalms. We humans want to pretend we are not of earth. One way or another, the Psalms remind us that only if we accept our earthiness will we find ourselves human.