Session 23 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 23  Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Did ever wonder why children play the games that they play?  They play house, or school, or doctor, or war, or princess or super hero.  The topic matter is supplied by our culture but why is it that they play at all?  How is it that a mere stick from a tree can morph into almost anything in the imagination of a child?

Could it be that in the midst of a vast universe that children begin the reductive practice of making life very, very local to themselves?  By playing house, school or doctor, they are creating a liturgy of their art imitating life outside of their play as perhaps their mode of giving them a sense of freedom and control in the face of such vastness of experience that could overwhelm them.  Their liturgy of play gives them confidence that their free acts make a difference and influence the wider scope of life.  Play is structured by how we take on language and it involves speaking language acts, play objects on which our imaginations are projected and it includes stylized body acts or ceremonial acts.  All of this might be like a parallel play event to the world outside as it gives a child a safe place to train for the reality of living in a family, going to school and going to the doctor’s office.

The play proclivity of humanity is obvious in our post-modern world as we devise endless ways to play and be involved in games.  Churches with highly ornate liturgical or ceremonial tradition understand the proclivity of humanity toward play.  There is no shame in admitting liturgy and ritual as our communal “play” toward God done with each other.  Churches that declare that they eschew “superstitious” ritual only reinvent their rituals and call it something else like, spontaneous words and praise for God.

In the study of religion the word “cult” is an academic term and is not used to refer to wacko religious groups who try to ensnare people into programmed behaviors that trick them into leaving the religions of their birth.

When we read the Hebrew Scriptures we must understand the progressive unfolding of the cult and ritual of the Jewish people.  Children, aboriginal peoples and people of the pre-scientific past were able to be more honest about the proclivity of play in humanity that would be known as cult or ritual for adult practitioners of community.  We moderns can readily accept all kinds of secular games but then be very dismissive about “silly superstitious liturgical games” of the church.

Let us also admit that in former times the religious ritual events of a community commanded more respect because there was less competition of other offered events.  The modern world has created the proliferation of specialization in every field including the field of games and entertainment and so the religious events occur within a greater field of choice.  I don’t feel sorry in retrospect for Moses who had to compete with those who made golden calves: “Sorry Moses but I have to compete with youth sports, golf, professional sports and an entire array of weekend leisure alternatives.”  I don’t have the luxury of anger in the face of such competition; but I will continue to try to make the case for the importance of a communal “holy play before God in worship” and remind people to complete themselves by including an activation of their “holy play” proclivity.

One of the text generating groups in the writing of the Hebrew Scriptures is called the Priestly Source.  So the Hebrew Scriptures provides us with pre-Hebrew religious archetypes for cult, ritual and priestcraft.  The pre-historic patriarchs practiced a kind of lay priesthood.  They offer animal sacrifices to cement covenants with God and each other.  They offered meal offerings and special meals to angelic visitors.  They had contact with pre-Levitical priests; the famed Melchizedek who received gifts from Abraham and the great Moses worked for his father in law who was a Midian priest.

One cannot read the Hebrew Scriptures without missing the preponderance of the interest in priestly things.  This tells us about the editorial influence of priestly writers in the compilation of the Hebrew Scriptures.  An entire family was dedicated to the priesthood.  Aaron, the brother of Moses was the first Levitical priest in their lineage.  (Please note how a genealogical priesthood becomes a spiritual line of priests and bishops in Christianity.  So in Hebrew Scriptures one can find the inspiration for what we call apostolic succession or the historic episcopate).

One cannot even think of Jews and Judaism without thinking about the Temple and Jerusalem.  What did the priestly writers need to do to give the logic and authorization of the priestly role in their community?  One could say that much of the writing of Hebrew Scriptures involves a legitimization of the role of the priest and the place where the priest practiced, namely the Temple and other regional shrines.

The profession of the priesthood is about having a craft for the ritual proclivity and ritual fulfillment of community.  Of course then the public ritual was the socialization process of inculcating religious value as the dominate value in the lives of the members of the community.  The ritual function also provided for the maintenance of the distinct identity of the Jewish people and a way to continue to pass on this community identity to the next generation.  Religious gatherings had a segregationist exclusiveness about them.  Such segregation was based upon people who willingly wanted to follow the rules of inclusion.

In the holy play of cult and ritual for adults there is an acknowledgment about the smallness of humanity in the face of a vast universe.  In ritual behavior, priests, prophets and sages continually look for wise ways to interact in healthy and safe ways with the great observed behavior of the natural and human order.  How can we express a forced upon us humility in face of things that happen to us that we cannot control?  Can we build mini-shrines, temples as a smaller model of the universe where we can play and then go outside of the liturgy of play to be bolstered to face the realities of living in the greater temple of this grand universe?

The priestly caste then devised codes of worship for times and prayers, incantations, blessings and curses, as a way of forming the person to face the truly great problems of life.  The priestly caste tried to set behavior boundaries of the community so that the community in a poly-theistic environment would not break down and lose its distinctive identity.

In America we hear people worried about the Islamic Sharia law.  Some people worry about Sharia law even while they hope that their own brand of religious law and piety could be forced upon the entire country.  Let us be clear, wherever there has been a wedding between political power and religious power, there has been something like Sharia law.  The Torah was an embracing law for a theocratic culture in Israel.  Religious law was public law when it could be so enforced.  In Christendom, when popes controlled monarchs, one can find a similar dynamic.  The priestly caste of ancient Israel sought to order society with a Holiness Code.  If the Lord your God is One, that God is also special or holy.  And such a holy God requires that the people of covenant must also be holy.  And so the priests set out to define and write down holiness codes.  And every holiness code is based upon ancient presuppositions and even upon their own ancient science.  One could conceive injunctions against the eating of pork arising from seeing the effects of trichinosis.  But one could also see it as developing as a way of distinguishing their own community from a surrounding community of “pork eaters.”  It could also have its basis in economic; if one came from a nomadic culture sheep, goats and cattle were more likely to be herded in longer distances than swine.  Pigs may have been more common with already settled people who had begun to do farming.  No matter what we think about the purity codes (read the book of Leviticus for the most potent dose of codes) there were probably specific reasons for the development of such practices.  If a priestly writer can add the ideology that it is a requirement to please a holy God then the code received promulgated authority within the community. 

Exercise:

Church begins with a prelude.  What does this mean?  It means “before play.”  Ludic means playful.  Liturgy is holy play.  Can you accept that part of a basic universal proclivity or capacity is the capacity of play?  Can you understand the value of ritual as the play preparation of evoking God’s will in heaven in a ordered way on earth so that we are given an orientation toward the ordering of the world outside of church towards our aspirations of what we think God’s will is for this world?  We received a profound history of holy play and ritual from the Hebrew Scriptures and keep this in mind when you are reading the Hebrew Scriptures.

Keep the holy play aspect of your personality alive and well.

Father Phil