Category Archives: Anglican

Wolf Hall update

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Finished it and have been reflecting on it ever since. I’m still not sure about the title, but of course the Seymours would loom large over the next stage of Cromwell’s life. I also liked the constant presence of Mark Smeaton, foreshadowing events to come as well. The final scenes of the novel were quite powerful. In the end, I found the depictions of both More and Cromwell utterly believable.

As I thought about the novel, I also thought more about my perspective on the 1530s, that first phase of the English Reformation. I suppose it’s safe to say my scholarly judgement was largely shaped by my own Protestant upbringing. In addition, my undergraduate senior thesis focused on the early English reformers’ attacks on the wealth of the church. In researching that project I read almost everything written in the 1520s and 1530s against the Catholic establishment and I gained a deep appreciation for the theological and ethical commitments of the early reformers like Tyndale, Frith, and Latimer. They had a vision of a church and state that were very different from the institutions that existed, and the ones that emerged in the course of the English Reformation.

Cromwell used those reformers to support his efforts to dissolve the monasteries. Of that there is no doubt. That the reformers’ ideals were not realized is also true. But somehow over the last 150 years or so, the Protestant side has tended to get the blame for what happened.

But between More and Cromwell, I suppose I would still choose Cromwell. For all of Cromwell’s faults, I find More’s choices, and his theological positions, deeply troubling.

It’s interesting finishing that book over the holidays when the attempted bombing of a Northwest flight is in the news and there is again talk about the use of torture in the media. Andrew Sullivan’s blog, as always, keeps a close watch on all of the outrageous statements by politicans and pundits. More’s problem, from my perspective, was his absolute sense of certainty. That’s always a danger, because if you know you are right, than any means you use will be justified.

The Anglican Covenant

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I suppose I ought to make some comment on recent doings in Anglican-land. Truth be told, I’ve come to find it rather tiresome. In December, the latest draft version of the Anglican Covenant appeared. Some of the background and the full text is available here. There has been considerable commentary on it. As always, one can keep abreast of the latest developments at Thinking Anglicans.

Among the saber-rattling is a statement from someone that any province that doesn’t sign on to the covenant by the end of 2011 will be excluded. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church cannot sign on before General Convention 2012, and if canonical changes are necessary, until 2015. In other words, the lengthy process continues.

As the years have passed and the conflict within Anglicanism continues to boil, I am more and more inclined to say the Communion is simply not worth the hassle. One of my greatest concerns has always been the increasing centralization of power and the disenfranchisement of lay people in communion structures.

There have been enormous theological disagreements in Anglicanism for generations–deep fissures between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, for example–and now there are deep divisions on matters of sexuality. It really is hard to see what a church that elects Rev. Glasspool bishop has in common with a church that seems to be pushing for a law that would punish gays and lesbians with execution.

Unity for unity’s sake is meaningless and overcoming diversity by centralization of power will never succeed. It seems to me that the communication and media revolution of the last decades has brought us closer together but has also heightened awareness of our differences. What it has not done is led to increased understanding.

It may be that the idea of “national churches” which is at the heart of the traditional notion of Anglicanism no longer has any meaning. Certainly, to call the Church of England a national church is misleading. It is the church of a small portion of people in England, and in fact the various parties within it have stronger ties within themselves than to the national church.

In the US, with its long history of denominational diversity, it is relatively easy for like-minded people to break off and form their own church. That has happened repeatedly, and among Anglicans in the US, it continues to happen. But whether groups from different perspectives (Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical) can remain united in spite of their theological and liturgical differences remains to be seen.

One of the most perceptive comments on the Anglican Covenant was written by Scott Gunn.

Advent 4, Year C

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Pondering

Advent 4, Year C

Grace Episcopal Church

December 20, 2009

Finally, we are back to Luke’s narrative of the Christmas story. We’re not quite there, yet. For that we have to wait until Thursday, Christmas Eve; but after weeks of focus on Jesus’ teaching concerning the end times, and on John the Baptizer’s birth and ministry, we are finally into the heart of the story.

The gospel lection is a brief one and omits, this year, the larger story of what comes before. The angel Gabriel has announced to Mary that she will give birth to the Son of God. After hearing the angel’s words, Mary goes to visit her cousin in the hill country of Judea.

Mary’s song, the Magnificat, has been running through my head all of Advent. That’s not new. If I reflect back to past years, I soon realize that the words she sings in response to her visit to Elizabeth are a recurrent theme for me this time of year. They provide something of a framework for my personal meditation on the season. Partly it’s been running through my mind because of the choir’s marvelous performance of Biebl’s magnificat at lessons and carols on the two weeks ago.

Some of us have been reading and talking about Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan’s book The First Christmas. In it, these two prominent biblical scholars take a close look at the stories of the birth of Jesus, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, and try to look for the larger meaning behind each author’s version of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. For Matthew and Luke tell very different stories—different in details major and minor. We tend to overlook those differences and combine the two stories into a single whole. Thus, our crèche, our nativity scene has wise men and shepherds, though Matthew has wise men and Luke shepherds. It is also a stable, as in Luke’s gospel, while Matthew refers to Jesus’ birthplace as a house.

These differences are important, not so much for trying to nail down what really happened—we can’t know that from the distance of two thousand years, but rather, what the gospel writers, Luke and Matthew were trying to say about the birth of Jesus. Luke’s version is probably even more familiar to us than Matthew. The central episode in the story, the trip to Bethlehem by Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ birth in a stable, the visit of the shepherds, is what we think of when we think of Christmas.

But Luke is not interested only in telling the story of Jesus’ birth. He is interested in putting that story into a larger context, or perhaps it would be better to say contexts, for there are several larger issues at stake. First of all, there is the Roman Empire. Luke takes great care repeatedly to place his story in the story of the empire, something he does by repeating at several points, the name of the ruling emperor, and other Roman officials. He is going to contrast, throughout his gospel and into the book of Acts, the military might of the Roman Empire with the kingdom of God that Jesus preaches.

The other important context for Luke is Judaism. Like Matthew, Luke is interested in tying the story he is relating with larger Jewish history and biblical narrative. Where Matthew does this by linking events in Jesus’ birth with quotations from scripture, Luke does it by using motifs from scripture in his story. The barren woman, for example, appears again and again in Hebrew scripture: Sarah, Abraham’s wife, like Elizabeth, the mother of John, was long past child-bearing age. Hannah, too, whose story we heard some weeks ago, was barren and prayed to God to give her a son. Her prayers were eventually answered and she gave birth to Samuel.

The song Mary sings in response to Elizabeth’s words is itself a reformulation of Hannah’s song. The connections between past and present are deep and strong. When Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the lord,” she goes on to mention God’s mighty acts in saving God’s people:

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

These are not single actions of God, they are the way God acts in history; the force of the Greek is to make these things aspects or characteristics of God. In other words, this is the kind of God that God is. It is in God’s nature to do these things.

Luke stresses this in another way. Here, for a moment, all of our attention focuses on these two women—Mary and Elizabeth. Our tradition has so overwhelmed the story that it is hard for us to recapture what Luke had in mind. Elizabeth’s words “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb” have been memorized by millions, perhaps billions of Catholics over the centuries and the Magnificat itself has been a part of Christian worship for centuries. When we think of Mary, we think of those images of her as the theotokos, “the bearer of God” or the eternal virgin, sitting in heaven beside her son. Those of us who visited the Chazen with Maria two weeks ago, or heard Tom’s talk last week have all of those medieval, renaissance, and baroque images of Mary fresh in our memories. She has long been a focus of Christian devotion and piety.

None of that is what Luke intended. When he turned his focus to these two women, he was turning away from the obvious political and imperial history that was his context. It wasn’t simply a change in subject matter. The contrast between the powerful men he names, and the centers of power, his focus on Bethlehem and on these two women was meant to highlight the contrast between the way of empire, the way of the world, and the way of Jesus Christ.

In these last few days before Christmas, when our attention is directed at all of the final preparations we need to make—the shopping, cooking, last-minute decorations, and for many of us travels, too, the world of a peasant girl, two thousand years ago, awaiting the birth of her child, and her cousin’s child, seem remote and unimportant. The clash of empires depicted by Luke seems far-fetched at best. We don’t want to think too long and hard about what it all means, because that might distract us away from what’s really important—the holiday that is only a few days away.

But Luke encourages us to contemplate a God who acts in history in a certain way and acts with a certain kind of people:

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

Our understanding of God may not be able to comprehend this notion of reversal, turning the world upside-down. We are apt to want to reinterpret these words spiritually, to think that what Mary meant, what God does is uplift those who are depressed and humble the proud. But these are to be taken quite literally as well as spiritually.

For that is just what God did in the incarnation. God took what was lowly, a poor peasant woman from Nazareth, and through her made Godself incarnate. God took ordinary human flesh, a body just like ours, and became one of us.

This may be so hard for us to understand because Luke describes a world so very different than ours. One reason we have turned Christmas into an extravagance of cuteness and kitsch is because we cannot get our heads around the notion that God comes into the world in just this way.

Can we really, sincerely, sing with Mary the words of the Magnificat today? Does the God she praises look and act in any way like the God we worship? I’ve been thinking about the Drop-in Shelter a good bit the past few weeks. I suppose it’s been more in my consciousness in part because the weather has turned colder. But I’ll also admit that I’m more aware of it because with the switch to winter hours in November, I’m much more likely to encounter the guys waiting in line at the door when I leave the office at the end of the day.

I see the men and I think about the magnificat and the God of the Bible who intervenes on behalf of the powerless, the homeless, hungry and poor, the God whom Mary praises, and I wonder what connection there is between that God and the God we worship here. Of course they are the same God, but have we so remade God in our image that we cannot hear the force of Mary’s song? Have we so created a God who comforts us, that we cannot experience a God who unsettles us, who scatters the proud and casts down the mighty?

On Christmas Eve, we will gather here again, to listen to the story from Luke of the birth of Jesus Christ. We will sing the familiar carols, we will celebrate with joy; many of us will be coming from, or going to lavish parties among friends and family. All the while, on the opposite side of the courtyard, the guests in the shelter will do what they do every night, wait for a warm meal, a warm bed, a place to rest their tired feet.

Mary’s song challenges us to experience and imagine a God who acts on behalf of just those men standing in line at the shelter. Mary’s song challenges us to consider what our responsibility to them is in this season and around the year. Grace is justly proud that it gives a home to the drop-in shelter. Many of you, like me, come here in part of that presence. But being a landlord is not enough. As we think about a God who acts in, and among the poor and the oppressed, as we worship a God who becomes incarnate in a stable in Bethlehem, we must seek to make that God present, not only in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, but also in the line of men waiting to enter the shelter on a cold winter’s night, and everywhere else that the poor, downtrodden, and hungry congregate.

Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent

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I love this collect for its powerful imagery and especially for its opening petition”Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us”

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Popular books discussing Christmas and Advent often mention that the Third Sunday of Advent was known in England as “Stirrup” Sunday because of the two opening words of the prayer. Whether that is true, I have no idea. In its current form, it is largely the work of Cranmer’s translation, who placed it as the collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. In fact, the Sarum Missal had four prayers on the Sundays preceding Christmas that began with the Latin “Excita”–“Stir up.”

The use of “Stir up” puts me in mind of the opening verses of Genesis:

In the beginning when God created* the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters.

But “stirring up” has many other parallels in scripture. Among the most interesting is in John’s story of Jesus healing the lame man at the Pool of Siloam; he was waiting in vain for some one to help him into the pool when the water was stirred up (John 5).

As an Advent collect, the emphasis on God coming among us in power, is obvious. But like the collect for the preceding Sunday, this one, too, asks for God’s grace to deliver us from our sins. God’s power, with the potential to destroy, can also save.

Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent

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Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

According to Hatchett, this collect is based on that for the Third Sunday in Advent in the Book of Common Worship of the Church of South India, although it expresses ideas similar to those for the Third Sunday in Advent from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

What I like about it is that it begins by invoking “merciful God” and it puts a positive spin the prophets preaching repentance. But all of the action is in God; first, with God’s mercy and God sending prophets. But it continues in the same vein, with a petition for God’s grace that we might hear the message of the prophets, amend our lives, and greet Christ’s coming with joy.

More on the Archbishop of Canterbury

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There have been a number of blog entries concerning what seems to be a double-standard from the ABC. He spoke out immediately to criticize the election of the Rev’d Canon Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of LA, but continues his silence on Uganda. Fr. Jake points out the timing here.

Ruth Gledhill observed that the Archbishop is in a very difficult spot because of these two events.

Others have contrasted Williams’ statements before becoming ABC with his current stance. Among the most eloquent is from Colin Coward, who was one of Williams’ students in the 70s. Again, Ruth Gledhill has the story.

Perhaps the best analysis of the ABC’s apparent inconsistency is this blog entry. The money quote from Williams:  “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.”

gay bishops and gay bashing

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It was inevitable. Resolutions passed at General Convention this past summer affirmed the canonical process for ordination of priests and deacons, and elections of bishops. Namely, our canons (laws) do not discriminate against sexual orientation. In other words, sexual orientation does not preclude ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, or election, and consecration to the episcopacy.

That reaffirmation for many of us was nothing more than a statement of reality. But it also seemed to affirm the possibility that gays and lesbians might be elected to the episcopacy. For conservatives, that seemed to suggest that the decisions of General Convention in 2006 were being abrogated. In fact, the hotly disputed resolution that was finally passed on 2006, only urged that bishops and standing committees exercise restraint in consenting to the election of a gay or lesbian bishop.

Yesterday, the Diocese of LA elected an openly lesbian, partnered woman to be suffragan bishop. This has again brought the Episcopal Church into the news, aroused the ire of conservative Episcopalians, and led to much confused thinking. We will see whether the bishop-elect receives the necessary consents from standing committees and bishops. That is not a foregone conclusion by any means. You can read about the election and its aftermath in all of the usual places.

While this is going on, Uganda is debating a bill that would punish gays and lesbians with the death penalty. The Anglican Church of Uganda has thrown itself behind the bill, and today, we’ve learned that a Ugandan Anglican priest has equated gays and cockroaches. The Episcopal Church has made its views known on this issue and it is said that the Archishop of Canterbury is furiously working behind the scenes to soften the legislation. At the same time, some of those most actively involved in crafting and pushing the legislation are supported by American Evangelicals.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the “impaired” communion created by actions of the American and Canadian Anglican churches. I, for one, don’t want to be part of a communion in which a member church supports capital punishment for gays and lesbians. Let’s be done with it already.

Collect for the first Sunday of Advent

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Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The prayer book collects are a wonderful spur to reflection. Having said them over the years, they strike me anew each time with power. That is especially true of the collects for the Sundays in Advent. I mentioned in my sermon the contrast between the candles we light on the Advent Wreath and the growing darkness of the season. This collect draws on that imagery, too. It’s been running through my head all week.

According to Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, this collect was composed for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. The juxtaposition of dark and light, as well as the emphasis on the contrast between now “in the time of this mortal life” and “the last day” remind us of the poles of our existence. They remind us, too, of the sharply different times in which we live, this present time, and God’s time, or eternity.

The beginning of Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical year, which takes us each year from the expectation of the birth of Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, to the birth of the Church at Pentecost. That annual remembering of the story with its incessant yearning for us to return to those events, to participate in them is challenged by another powerful force in the Christian message–the urge to look forward to the second coming. Those are two very different attitudes towards time, and occasionally they leave Christians feeling schizophrenic. Where should our real focus be? On the past, or the future?

Perhaps our focus should be somewhere else entirely. God exists outside of time and created time in the process of creating all things.

Reflections on Catholics and Episcopalians

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James Carroll has written eloquently about his own faith journey and about the history of the Catholic Church in Constantine’s Sword, which I heartily recommend to everyone.  He blogs today about the increasingly right-ward turn of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the US. His observations are here.

His comments provide a fascinating juxtaposition with a couple of recent encounters I’ve had. One was on Saturday, with someone who came by during our open doors. We talked for a few minutes; he was clearly interested in Grace only for its aesthetics, and left after mentioning he was Roman Catholic and attended Latin Mass.

Another man came by last week and asked if we heard confessions. I made an appointment with him, and we talked this morning. He grew up Catholic, was divorced, and needed to get something off of his chest. I doubt whether he could have faced a Roman Catholic priest in a confessional, but we had a lovely conversation, that ended with me offering him absolution.

In the twenty-first century, people are going to make sense of their spiritual lives from their own perspectives, with the wide variety of resources available to them. Some will be drawn to and accept the rigid, hierarchical, authoritarian approach of traditional Catholicism or fundamentalist Protestantism. Others will search elsewhere.

Bishop Elections

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I haven’t been keeping up with the Anglican blogosphere in the past couple of years, but it seems to me that one of the very interesting effects of the internet on the Episcopal Church has been the way in which things that once were probably almost unnoticed, have become matters of great significance throughout the Anglican Communion and indeed, often far beyond.

One example of this is bishop elections. I’ve never actually participated in one, on either the lay or clerical side, but I’ve been Episcopalian for nearly twenty years and have never even been cognizant of the politicking involved until the last few. Probably it was the controversy surrounding the consents to the election of the current Bishop of South Carolina that brought elections to the front of my mind. But certainly the failure of the bishop-elect of Northern Michigan to receive consents from bishops and standing committees elevated the profile of elections to a matter of national and international significance.

The slate of candidates for Bishop of Upper South Carolina was announced a couple of weeks ago. I am interested because until mid-September, I was canonically resident in that diocese, and I was nominated, though thankfully not selected to serve on the search committee earlier this year. It’s clear that the internet has changed the dynamics of the election process. There is discussion in various quarters about the relative merits of each candidate, and about the process itself.

On one level, such conversation can help to bring issues of enormous significance to the fore. I do think that the controversy surrounding the election in Northern Michigan was useful to some degree. It remains to be seen, however, whether any candidate can survive close internet scrutiny. We are allowing ourselves to be shaped by the way in which the blogosphere has shaped the political process nationwide. One wonders whether the church will be any better off than the nation as a result. If you want to know more about the candidates for bishop of Upper South Carolina, I commend Deacon Tim Ervolina’s blog.

Tim is a deacon of the church and one of the few voices of progressivism in church and state in South Carolina.