Information on Lambeth

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The Lambeth Conference begins today. Meeting every ten years, it brings together bishops from across the Anglican Communion for prayer and conversation, and occasionally to decide matters of doctrine and practice. There has already been a great deal of news about Lambeth–much of it having to do with who got invited and who didn’t, and about those boycotting.

Many of the primates from the Global South, most notably Nigeria and Uganda, announced they, and their bishops wouldn’t be attending. Others have boycotted less noisily. But it turns out that there is only one province (Uganda) with no bishops in attendance.

As always, Episcopal Cafe and Thinking Anglicans keep up with everything that’s going on. In addition, Episcopal Cafe has listed all of the blogging bishops here. Jim Naughton, one of the best Episcopal journalists is also present and blogging.

It will be interesting to follow the action, but I don’t expect a great deal to happen, especially legislatively. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it quite clear that he wants to focus on bible study and reflection rather than on resolving the deep divisions. But we’re all likely to be surprised in the next couple of weeks.

Of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury has his hands full. The General Synod of the Church of England voted to ordain women bishops. It was a vote that sparked an uproar among conservatives, many of whom are threatening to leave the Church. There was a well-written profile of Archbishop Williams in the Guardian.

A “Dead Sea Scroll” in stone

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The New York Times reports on the recent discovery of a text, written in ink, in a stone, found probably near the Dead Sea. Scholars date it to the late first-century BCE, in other words, just a few years before Jesus. It is a messianic text, full of imagery derived from  the biblical books of Zechariah and Daniel. The Times article focuses on one scholar’s reconstruction of the text. It’s a reconstruction because it is not quite clear what the text says at this very crucial point. He offers “In three days you shall live, I Gabriel, command you.” It may be that this is evidence of a belief in a Messiah who will die and be resurrected on the third day.

What’s significant about this is that most New Testament scholars have argued that belief in a Messiah who dies and is raised again is the attempt by Jesus’ followers to make sense of their experience after the crucifixion and resurrection, and that such beliefs did not exist prior to Jesus.

The article is available here. I’m sure there will be much more discussion of this in the media in the near future.

Schism after all?

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GAFCON has spoken. Their concluding communique is available here. The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded. So, too has the Presiding Bishop. One should probably see this as another volley in a long-term struggle over Anglicanism. From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement, it is clear that he has grave theological and ecclesiological reservations about the communique and about the path the leaders of GAFCON are taking.

If you want to understand something of the theological background of the conflict, GAFCON appeals to the 39 Articles and to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The 39 Articles have been relegated to the “historical documents” section of our BCP. You should read them some time. The traditionalists bring together several streams of Anglicanism. One is Reformed, Calvinistic, which emphasizes human sinfulness. Another is Anglo-Catholicism, which draws on the rich theological, spiritual, and liturgical traditions of Catholicism. These two strands are mutually incompatible and are allied only because they have a common enemy–everyone else.

The 1662 prayer book has been mentioned before as one of the marks of Anglicanism. I’m not sure why contemporaries appeal to it. In fact, there is a strong tradition of alternatives to it, beginning with the Scottish Book of Common Prayer, with which the first American prayer book of 1789 was closely allied.

Most disturbing perhaps is the discussion by GAFCON of a “primates council” made up only of like-minded primates, self-selected. What this points to is an alarming trend, not just among conservatives, but throughout the Communion, of appealing to some central, hierarchical authority, independent of any lay involvement. The church, to thrive, needs to hear the voices of lay people at every level of government. It may be messy, but the alternative is authoritarianism.

Pray for Rain

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Thanks to the vision of Al Hipp and the hard work of a number of parishioners, we now have a parish vegetable garden. Produce from the garden will be distributed through the Hispanic Ministry at St. Francis. Although planting was fairly late for South Carolina, things seem to be thriving and already ten pounds of squash have been harvested. This form of ministry is catching on throughout the country. In addition to providing food for the hungry, gardens are opportunities for fellowship and for meditation.

As I said during the Blessing of the Garden, in Genesis 2, God placed the first man and first woman in a garden to till it, and the vision of a new heaven and a new earth includes a garden in various biblical sources. I’m a gardener myself, although my involvement is chiefly in the heavy lifting and work, the sweat and toil.

We are in the midst of a drought and the ground is completely parched. We’ve received less than an inch of rain in June. Both Corrie and I look at the skies every afternoon in hopes of seeing dark clouds that will bring rain, but so far all we’ve received this week are a few sprinkles. The garden at St. James will thrive only with a lot of water, more than I used when blessing the garden some weeks ago. Here’s a picture of that:

Schism?

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You may have heard something about GAFCON, the Global Anglican conference, or “pilgrimage” currently taking place in Jerusalem. It was organized as a conservative alternative to the Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops that will meet in late July. Many thought that the conference would result in an outright schism, with the traditionalists pulling out of the Anglican Communion and forming something new. While the final communique has not been released, it seems that no such drastic result will ensue. Instead, the traditionalists will continue to work from “within” to reform the Anglican Communion.

On the one hand, this news sounds somewhat positive. A split has been averted. On the other hand, it means that things will continue very much as they have for the past decade: conflict boiling over, vitriolic rhetoric, a singleminded focus on issues of sexuality.

A parishioner asked me last week why St. Christopher’s ended up where it did. He was suggesting that to focus solely on matters of sexuality was to lose sight of the work of the church. It seemed to him to have become something of an obsession with some. That’s certainly true, and it’s also true that one of the leaders of the conservatives in the US, when asked why he continued to do battle with the Episcopal Church rather than stepping away, replied, “I like a good fight.”

In the history of Christianity, conflict has often functioned to clarify issues, to define doctrine and polity, to shape the church. But the real advances have often come when people have chosen, or been forced to withdraw from the larger communion and gone their separate ways. Only centuries later have the opposing sides often come to see the depth of their commonality rather than only their differences. And conflict often leads many on the sidelines, or those less invested, to simply walk away entirely.

As the Anglican World Turns…

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You may have heard about events surrounding St. Christopher’s, Spartanburg. Recently, many members of the vestry resigned, and the Rev’d George Gray, Rector, indicated to the Bishop that he was unable to continue serving. In response to these events, Bishop Henderson returned the parish to Mission status, and named the Rev’d Michael Bullock, Canon to the Ordinary, Priest-In-Charge. Bishop Henderson also inhibited the Rev’d Gray. If you would like to learn more about this, details are available on the diocesan website: www.edusc.org.

I visited St. Christopher’s a couple of times when we were living in Spartanburg. It is one of the most beautiful contemporary churches I know. I also have friends on staff there. This has been in process for a long time, and St. Chris’s has been a parish in trouble, for a number of reasons for a very long time, too. Let us pray that from this deep wound will emerge healing and new vitality in that place.

There is also increasing news as we look forward to the Lambeth Conference in July. Some bishops and provinces (notably Uganda) have declared that they will not be attending Lambeth and conservatives are organizing an alternative, known as GAFCON, which will take place in June. Stay tuned–things may get interesting, if you don’t find it all rather boring by now.

After-Thoughts on the Ascension

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On Thursday, we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension.  It came just as I was also preparing to discuss the Resurrection in my Intro to Biblical Literature courses at Furman. Thinking about both, and reading again the gospels’ accounts of the Resurrection, reminded me of both the importance of the Ascension, and our faith’s uncertainty about it.

Only the Gospel of Luke (and its related work, the Book of Acts) clearly report on the ascension. Luke 24:51 reads in part “he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. Acts 1:9 says much the same thing. What I find interesting is that in contrast to Luke, neither Matthew or John say anything about the ascension. John uses the language of “being lifted up” throughout the gospel, but it always refers, at least in part, to the crucifixion.

What Matthew and John agree on is that Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee and that he gave them some final instructions. Matthew’s version is what we call the Great Commission. Jesus sends his disciples out into all the world, to teach, make disciples, and baptize. And he concludes that commission with the promise, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What intrigues me is that this promise of Christ’s continuing presence with his disciples is in some way a direct contradiction of the notion that in the Ascension, Jesus returned to heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God.

In the end, the Ascension is about both Jesus’ presence, and his absence from us.

What’s a Saint?

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Someone asked me to explain the place of the saints in the Episcopal Church. First, a little background. In the New Testament, “saints” was a generic term, used to refer to Christians, members of the body of Christ. Quickly though, some Christians began to receive particular honor, especially after their death, and especially if they were martyred. In the Early Church and in the Middle Ages, whether someone became a saint or not was largely a product of the initiative of those who were devoted to them. Over time, however, the Catholic Church began to develop a process for determining whether someone was a saint. Now that process involves a fairly rigorous investigation that includes medical and scientific analysis of alleged miracles.

In the sixteenth century, the saints came under fire. Most Protestants saw devotion to the saints as misguided or as downright idolatry. In the English Reformation, many of the local and obscure saints were removed from the calendar. The Roman Catholic Church elevated no one to sainthood for most of the sixteenth century.

In Anglicanism, “sainthood” isn’t really an official label. We call people saints, like the Twelve Disciples, or Mary, or prominent church figures from the Early Church and Middle Ages, like St. Francis. We tend not to call people “saints” who have been elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church since the sixteenth century unless we are very Anglo-Catholic.

The Episcopal Church, and indeed the Anglican Communion, no longer elevates people to sainthood. However, in the Book of Common Prayer, there is a calendar that provides dates to commemorate not only the saints of the New Testament and Church History, but also people who have led exemplary lives in more recent times. The daily office calendar provides biographies of these people. You can find it here. Additions to the calendar are made by General Convention.

Choral Evensong

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On Sunday afternoon, St. James received a wonderful gift–choral Evensong sung by Furman’s Chamber Choir, accompanied by our own Dr. Charles Tompkins. Evensong is one of the greatest contributions of Anglicanism to Christian worship. Its roots lie in the monastic hours of the Middle Ages, but when Thomas Cranmer prepared the first Book of Common Prayer, he sought to make the discipline of daily prayer available for all Christians. So he collapsed the monastic hours into two services of Morning and Evening Prayer and designed them so that all of the Psalter would be read in a month, and most of the Bible in a year.

Evening Prayer, or Evensong, as it came to be called, became one of the most popular services in many Anglican churches. In the cathedrals, where there were choirs and musicians available, Evening Prayer came to be sung, hence the name, Evensong.

Done well, as it was this past Sunday, Evensong is inspiring and spiritually rich, inviting the listener into a conversation with God through music. Many thanks to all who were involved–especially Dr. Karen Eshelman who organized it; the Furman students who sang, and senior Adam Pajan who took a seat at the organ for the postlude, to Dr. Bill Thomas, who directs the choir, and to Dr. Bill Allen, who was cantor.

I would hope that at some point in the future, St. James could put on its own Evensong and perhaps even make it a regular event.

The BBC broadcasts Evensong each week. Recordings are available here.

He stretched out his arms in love on the hard wood of the cross

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I taught for a year at the School of Theology of the University of the South (Sewanee). During that time, and for the next year, too, I made a habit of attending Morning Prayer at the seminary. It is one thing to say MP for oneself; it is quite another to do it regularly in community. I quickly came to love one of the collects for mission that includes the phrase “you stretched out your arms on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within your saving embrace.”

At Eucharist last night, I talked about the meaning of the cross. The lessons were 1 Cor. 1 “I preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” and Jn 12: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

It seems to me that so often the cross is a divider, a sign that is meant to create boundaries, to delineate who is in and who is out, but in the collect as well as in John 12:32, the cross is a uniter. I’ll be pondering the meaning of the cross more in the next days, and will probably preach on this in some way on Good Friday.