Session
10:
Understanding
the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)
Part
6: The Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination
The
Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of
our life. Sacraments are the prayers that pertain to the
crises in our life that confront us as we grow up within a community. The sacrament of baptism is like a practical
passport event to the Christian community.
However, God’s grace is always towards us before and after baptism. If we believe in God as our creator then we
believe that everyone is a son and daughter of God even when they do not choose
to know themselves as such. Baptism is
the particular way within the Church that we celebrate our membership in God’s
family and how God’s family has been particularized through the life of Jesus Christ. The practice of the sacraments of baptism,
confirmation and ordination have a diverse history and practice in the history
of Christians churches that derived from the early Christ communities that
arose in various locations after the event known as the resurrection of Christ.
Sacrament
as a word is not in the New Testament; it is from the Latin word which is a
translation of the Greek word mysterion. So the sacraments are a program of “mystagogy”
or a strategy/teaching of orientation into the mystery of how Christ is in us.
Baptism
and confirmation are one and the same if an adult is baptized by a bishop in
the Episcopal Church. Confirmation arose
as a subsequent supplemental maturation rite for an adult to confirm the vows
that were made on one’s behalf by one’s parents and sponsors at an infant
baptism. In the Episcopal Church a
Bishop confirms a person as an expression of their family connection in a
diocese where the bishop resides as the chief pastor of the diocesan
community. A bishop whose office
signifies the church’s connection with past and in the present with other
dioceses welcomes a person at confirmation into the universal church of history
and to the world geographical church now. A practical expression of this is to receive communion at Westminster
Abbey when you are in London and feel welcome and at home in so doing.
Baptism is also one’s ordination into the lay
ministry of the church. Holy Baptism for
infant or Archbishop is the great equalizer in Christianity. Everyone gets all of God’s grace at baptism;
the shape and the articulation of God grace varies in the diversity of
ministries. Let no one deceive about “quantitative
grace;” the grace of a baby at baptism is the same as the grace of a Pope,
priest or saint. Indeed we can vary in
how we avail ourselves of grace and how we let it be expressed in our
ministries, but let it not be said that God is cheap or partial in grace with
anyone.
At
baptism the one who baptizes invokes a prayer for the gifts of the Holy Spirit
upon the baptized person. In receiving
those gifts one receives one’s ordination in ministry even though those gifts
have to be developed and ratified in the actual reception and practice of the
church.
Baptism,
Confirmation and Ordination are public proclamations that God gives us gifts
and ministries. The gifts and ministries
are equal in coming from the One Spirit but different in how they are practiced
and in how our gifts unfold within the communities of our lives. An old quantitative notion of grace used to
be perpetuated: one gets a little grace at baptism, more at confirmation, more
when one is ordained a deacon, even more for the priesthood and more for the
varying kinds of bishops. While it may logically
seem that greater responsibility requires a greater quantity of grace it really
has more to do with the individual gift or charisma that pertains to the
responsibility of a particular ministry.
Remember
that Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination belong to the entire church; they are
not “owned” by a particular person in a specific ministry. In ministry there are two facets, Office and
Charism. The Office of a ministry is the
way in which the church administrates ministry for church order, consistency,
comprehensiveness and coherence. It is standardization
for the profession of ministry. Charism,
is the grace or the charisma whereby a person exercise the grace or winsomeness
in sharing the good news of the Gospel within a community. Just as a doctor can be a good technical
doctor without winsome bedside manner, so too a minister can have the Office of
ministry without having found or expressed one's “charisma” of ministry. The two need to go hand in hand for ministry
to be experienced as both valid and effective.
The
fourfold orders of ministry in the Episcopal Church are: lay persons, deacons,
priests and bishops. In reading the New
Testament, particularly in the Pauline churches one finds different lists of
ministries including speaking in tongues, healing, administration, teaching,
prophecy, faith and others. With the
success of Christianity it became impossible and impractical to ordain every
possible gift of ministry as an official office of the church-at-large. It became practical to reductively funnel all
of the ministries into the four fold pattern.
On the local level there is always the possibility for all manner of
individual ministry to be fostered and supported, because of the one baptismal
grace.
Why
do we have bishops? Because the Gospel
was passed from the apostles to succeeding generations and because Christ wants
us to practice unity now in the church.
Bishops symbolize in their office and person, connection with the church
in history (at their ordinations at least three other bishops have to lay hands
on them signifying this connection with the past). They also signify our connection with other
parishes in our diocesan family but also with the worldwide Communion. We have bishops because the nature of the
church is to be bishoply (I do like to coin new words). All of us as baptized Christians are called
to be bishoply by sharing the Gospel with others to the next generation of
Christians and by practicing Christian unity now with each other. Do you see how a bishop cannot do all
bishoply work required and so all baptized persons share in bishoply ministry?
So
too with the priesthood. Christ is the Priest
of God to the Church. In being like
Christ, the very nature of the church is priestly, and we have ordained priest
to remind us that the very nature of the church is priestly. Lay people make priests and bishops since these
ordained ministries arise from baptism.
Lay people are priestly in their prayers as they intercede for the people
of the world. The office of priesthood
does not exhaust the priestliness of the church, it only remind us that the
nature of the church is priestly and this priestliness is shared by all
baptized person.
A
deacon is a ministry of service within the church. A deacon is called to make the church aware of
needs of people and call us to obey Christ to help those who are vulnerable and
needy in our world. Jesus said that
when we have ministered to those in need we have minister to
Him. The presence of Christ is found in
the needy. That is the awesome reality
that deacons are to remind the church about.
A deacon also is under the oversight of a bishop and has liturgical
leadership in Reading/Proclaiming the Gospel, altar preparation for Communion,
Prayers of the People and administration of the chalice. But again, the office of Deacon is to remind
the entire church of our service to those in need. The entire nature of the church is expressed
in being servants for Christ’s sake.
I
have tried to give new language and voice for us to understand the sacraments
of baptism, confirmation and ordination.
I hope that I have opened new questions for all of us to ponder in our
service to Christ in the church.
Exercise:
Think
about your own formative idea of ministry.
Have you put deacons and priests and bishops on a pedestal as somehow
being more “super” Christians? What do
you think about the leveling effect of baptism as presented above? What do you think about being equal in the
grace of baptism, but different in how we let that baptismal grace flow through
us in what we do in our lives? Can you
begin to see your life work as a vocation from God that is equally valid “ordained”
ministry as that of a bishop, priest or deacon?
I
salute you in your baptismal ministry!
Father
Phil
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