Thank God We're Sinners?

23 Pentecost, Cp25, October 27, 2013

Joel 2:23-32 Ps. 67

2 Tim. 4:6 8,18    Luke 18:9 14  

Lectionary Link

   We can be led to some very bad conclusions and even bias from reading some good things in the Bible, and in the Gospels, or even from the words of Jesus.

   Jesus told a parable to some people whom he perceived to be treating others with contempt.  And in this parable there were two people who went to the Temple to pray.  A Pharisee offered thanks that he was not like the poor tax collector.  And the poor tax collector simply beat his breast and said,  "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner."

  One of the wrong conclusions that we can reach about this parable of Jesus is “All Pharisees were shallow hypocrites.”  We have essentially adopted in common language a pejorative use of the word Pharisee.  In ordinary English language if someone calls you a Pharisee, it is meant to judge you as a low down hypocrite of the highest order.

  This is a wrong reading of the words of Jesus and a wrong judgment on the Pharisees.  It is like saying because I’ve had unfortunate interaction with five Episcopalians, all Episcopalians are bad and if I call you an Episcopalian I am not giving you a compliment.

  We also can read the Bible and the Gospels for the purpose of locating people whom we think are the real sinners.

  I think that the parable of Jesus about the Pharisee and the tax collector is basically about the judgmental attitudes that I might have if I  live as though my social class training is better than the background of someone else.  The parable of Jesus is told to show us that sin is not a matter of association with a class of people; sin is a very positive notion if it is understood with the attitude of knowing moral direction and orientation in life.   Sin and being a sinner are very important insights in the teaching of Jesus.  Knowing about sin and being a sinner are important personal insights which everyone needs to have.

  We get the impression from some preaching that the Bible is all about God convincing us about how bad we are as sinners so that we can really appreciate how good God is in offering us forgiveness and grace.

  The attitude of knowing that one is a sinner and that one has sinned is a most important insight in life.  In fact, it is a very positive insight in life.

  What Jesus criticized was the notion of goodness that is believe to have been attained by pedigree, nature, hard work and merit.

  I am better than you because of the pedigree of my family.  I come from an important family, therefore I am important.  This pedigree could be defined as being a Pharisee, an Episcopalian, a Baptist or a Blue Blood.  I have the breeding for goodness.  It’s in my nature to be good and better than people who were not born as good as I was born.

  I am better than you because I am smarter and I work harder than you.  So by my merits, by my work and study, I am in a position to make comparative judgments on others who are not as smart and who have not worked as hard as I have.

  The problem with this kind of thinking is that if we think in this way we can always be subject to the same judgments of people who think that they are better than us by pedigree, nature, hard work and merit.

  So this kind of thinking only encourages endless comparisons.  This kind of thinking does not get at what is needed in learning the art of living well.

  So how do we learn to live well?  We first learn from Jesus about the positive notion of sin and the positive vocation of sinning.

  If we cannot help but sin because it is unavoidable then we must begin to believe that God has given us sinning as an important vocation in life.

   How can sinning be an important vocation in life?

   The Greek word for sin comes from archery and it means missing the target.  We are on the archery range or we’re hunting with bow and arrow, we shoot and we miss.

  In the Greek language, the archer would say in the English translation, “Oh no, I sinned.”

  Missing targets in archery only means we missed to try again.  We retrieve the arrows and we keep on shooting.

  And herein is the positive notion of sin.  In our lives we keep on, keeping on at shooting for the perfect.  And sometimes we get close but we always miss the mark because there is always another future shot to take.  We may have come to approximate love and justice in significant ways today and yet because there is a tomorrow, we cannot rest on our laurels nor can we judge the archery of others.  We cannot judge the sin life of others.

  The positive notion of sin as propounded by Jesus is that each of us has our own targets based upon our own situations.

  The tax collector in his situation had a different target of excellence than did the proverbial Pharisee.  The Pharisee, instead of looking at his next target of excellence, took a pot shot at the tax collector for “not being in the same archery class as he was in.

  And this is the second positive insight that we can take from this parable of Jesus.  Sin is not about comparing my life with yours.  Sin is about comparing my life now with what my life will be in a future state.  The question is not whether I will ever be able to say or know whether I am better or worse than you;  but will I be able to say that I surpassed myself in a future state?

  In the positive notion of sin offered to us by Jesus, we are not allowed to compare ourselves with others, we are to accept our own path and we are to look to be better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today.

   The positive notion of sin and being a sinner is to avoid comparison and to be on the path of having oneself in a future state be the only person in one's comparison.

  So indeed this makes sin and righteous relative and adaptable to the life situation of each person.  The Pharisee of the parable is one who had lost sight of the target.  And what is the target?  It is found in the words of Jesus when he said, “Be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.”  If we know that the unreachable is the target then we are always aware of the moral direction and we know that we always need mercy.

  So let us embrace this positive notion of sinner and sin.

  Welcome to the Episcopal Church.  A place where you can know that being a sinner is a very positive notion.

  Let us embrace this positive notion of sin today.  I do not know what targets you have been shooting at in your lives; your targets are different than mine.  But we are here today to encourage each other in mercy and forgiveness and wish each other well in the effort to surpass ourselves in excellence in future states.   We need mercy and forgiveness to tolerate ourselves until we get to where we think we need to be in excellence.  And may God grant us the sense of being justified through the experience of God’s mercy.  We are justified by having the attitude of knowing that we need mercy.  And this is the positive insight about sin and being sinners.

   We do not judge a child for not having adult knowledge and experience; we hope to mentor them in surpassing themselves daily in the path of knowledge and more experience.  From the wisdom of Jesus we can learn that this is how a loving God mentors each of us in the individual circumstances of our life experience as we grow in excellence.  We hope for excellence.  We hope for what we do not yet have in excellence and we accept mercy for not having it yet.

  Sin is mainly positive; it is only negative when we willing give up the quest for excellence or when we believe our targets of excellent should be other people’s specific targets too.

  Let us embrace the positive notion of sin and mercy as healthy attitudes to have in our lives today.  Amen. 

Prayer as Holy Nagging?

22  Pentecost, Cp24, October 20, 2013

Jeremiah 31:27-34 Psalm 119:97-104

 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5   Luke 18:1-8a

Lectionary Link

   Welcome to our weekly session of dealing with puzzles from the Bible.  Perhaps one might regard the Bible to be too out of date to be the regular choice for reading pleasure.  However, we have inherited this book as the inspired textbook of our tradition and so it is “required” reading on Sundays and is recommended for our daily reading as well.

  How do we regard this requirement to read the Bible when it now exists in the midst of an ocean of other literature?  The Bible has come into disfavor because of the ways in which Christians have used the Bible.  Why cannot we regard the Bible to be an inventory of human situations that bear universal patterns for us to look to for insights for our lives?  Too many Bible preachers regard the Bible to be a museum of final human products that we go to revere as having final inspiration.  I would say that the Bible is inspired, but not yet.  Why, because the future of Bible reading is still open.  The Bible includes the inspired principles of love and justice which need to find future occasions of application.  Remember too that the Bible as an inventory of human situations means that all of the inventory is not applicable in all places at all time.  Just because we have a wardrobe full of clothes does not mean we try to wear them all at one; we chose the apparel for the current occasion of our lives.

  Jesus was a wisdom teacher and he used parables as an indirect method of teaching.  In the parable that we have read for today, Jesus encodes within a human scenario a common human condition of need.

  A widow needs justice; the judge who can provide justice does not adjudicate justice but the widow just keeps nagging the judge until the judge is worn down and finally rules for justice even when he is not otherwise inclined to do so.

  Herein is a situation universal to humanity.   It is a fact that there is an uneven distribution of injustice throughout the world.  And when we are on the receiving side of injustice it hurts.  Injustice can be so prolonged that it begins to gain power to unseat justice as the normal condition of life.   From the situation of injustice we can easily give up and begin to think that since injustice is so common that injustice becomes what is regarded to be what is normal about life.

  And this is the petitionary situation for the practice of prayer.  Jesus provided the punchline of the parable before he told the parable:  We should always pray and not lose heart.

  But Jesus what is the use of prayer?  Why should we not take up armed resistance?   Why should we not become terrorists to strike out against injustice?   Do we not have the right to oppose with our lives the practice of injustice?  Is not prayer just rolling over and accepting injustice?

  Do you see how the parable of Jesus anthropomorphizes the situation of injustice?  When we experience things that do not seem to fair to the normalcy of justice, health and goodness we can feel powerless to do anything.  The situation of injustice seems to have a personality to it.  We take all of the events in our lives personally.  It seems as though all of the free agents in life account for the situations of uneven justice and injustice to occur in life.  It is very hard not to take life personally but in situation of oppression by other human beings, we take life doubly personally.

  And what is our personal response to the uneven situations of injustice that occur in life and in our lives in particular?  Jesus said that we should pray always and not lose heart.  It seems as though prayer is the continual expression of nagging.

  Is this really what prayer is, a perpetual holy nagging to get what we want?  Holy nagging?  Is that what the prayer life is all about?  From the Gospel parable aftermath it does not seem that such holy nagging necessarily has timely outcomes from the point of view of the petitioner.   God, we need help and justice now!  Well, just keep nagging and it may or may not come but you are obligated to keep asking for justice.  And the future Son of Man stands to us as one who guarantees justice.

  What do we think about this holy nagging theory of prayer?

  First of all, what this parable acknowledges is the conditions of freedom in this world which accounts for the uneven spread of justice and injustice.  Judges have power and authority over helpless widows.  But just because there is freedom in this world for injustice to occur, that does not mean that we have to accept injustice as the recommendable condition of life.  And this is where the significance of holy nagging comes in; we must protest injustice continuously and not let it be asserted as the normal condition of life.

  Where slavery and discrimination were once regarded to be the norm in our country, voices of justice arose to challenge the status quo of injustice.  Nagging prayers actually became a very great Civil War to challenge injustice.  In more recent times the nagging prayer of peaceful and non-violent resistance became the practice of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who kept up nagging against injustice.

  Prayer as perpetual nagging against the practice of injustice is a worthy occupation.  With such nagging we do not let ourselves accept injustice as normal.  With nagging prayer we create energy of resistance against the practice of injustice.  With nagging prayer we hope to wear out the opponents who themselves are enslaved by their very oppressive practice of injustice because ignorance has often become the accepted status quo of those who practice injustice.  “What’s   the fuss about, haven’t we always done it this way?   Women voting?  People of color riding wherever they want in the bus?  Gay and lesbian people full human rights?   Holy nagging for justice hopefully will eventually bring a fuller experience of justice.

  Prayer as holy nagging in situations where goodness, health, love and justice are not experienced is a witness both within the one who prays and within their settings that health, goodness, love and justice are what is humanly normal; and we are going to protest everything to the contrary with our nagging prayers.

  My friends, let us not be ashamed of our prayers as holy nagging today, especially if we are asking that this world experience the meanings of health, goodness, love and justice today.  With holy nagging we will never accept illness, evil, hatred and injustice as the normal conditions of life.  With holy nagging we will rally ourselves to practice justice and demand justice for all in our world.

  So, let us go forth and do some holy nagging today.  Amen.

The Invitation of Jesus Overcomes Wellism and Discrimination

21 Pentecost, Cp23, October 13, 2013

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c   Ps.66:1-11

2 Tim. 2:8-15   Luke 17:11-19    

Lectionary Link

  Today I would like for us to consider how differences amongst people have been the occasion for great human failure.

  I say this because the fearful ways in which we often experience differences, lead us to practice victimization.  Victimization creates oppression and oppression is not just an external force, it is also an attitude that we can take on ourselves and use against ourselves.  The forces of victimization are quite damaging.  Habits of victimization can even get embedded in our institutional and cultural life in blatant or subtle forms of discrimination.

  We know that victimization can start early on the playground when children make fun of the way someone looks, their size or how they are dressed. It can be institutionalized in slavery and sexism and many other cultural forms of discrimination.  We know that it can become institutionalized even in religious practices.  History reveals many examples where religious laws and practices reinforced and solidified discriminatory practices.

  During the time of Jesus and during the period of the early church there were questions that were being addressed in the religious communities.  Did God’s grace and favor and healing extend to people outside of the official religious communities of Judaism?  And would people outside of the communities of Judaism even know how to respond to God grace and favor if they received it?

  If you understand these two questions, perhaps you can understand how the Gospel story functioned when it was told and read in the early Christian communities.

  What Jesus found in the religion of his time was a religion that discriminated against people who were “sick” as designated by religious establishment that dabbled in medical definitions of disease in a way that Jesus found unacceptable.  The official religion of his time also excluded poor countryside folk and foreigners.

  Within the Judaism of his time there was a very well defined purity code that was practiced for the “safety” of the community.  People who had certain diseases were quarantined from their communities until they could be ritually cleared to be safe to appear in the general public.  The lepers suffered from what we know today as psoriasis or eczema and yet because of their appearance they were deemed unworthy or infectious to the general community.  One of the ten   lepers who approached Jesus had a second strike against him; he was also a Samaritan.  A Samaritan was something of a “mongrel” Israelite; Samaritans were northern tribal Israelites who had entered into marriages with the Assyrians, a conquering nation.  They had even retained a Torah based religion but they were not a pure ethnic group.

  It is interesting to note that the Samaritan leper was traveling with nine lepers from Judea.  When one shares a common crisis with other people, perhaps in a dire situation, one is willing to forgo some basic biases and prejudices because one understands that the hatred, fear and ignorance that drives victimization is essentially the same whether one is talking about ethnic prejudice, prejudice against the impaired or ill, or any other social group.

  In this Gospel story Jesus stands as the one who countered the religious authorities who were upholding the rather irrational purity codes.  Jesus gave permission to the stranger and the social outcast to re-enter the common community.  Health is not just about being cured of a disease; health is about having access to a significant community of support and care.

   There are non-believers and skeptics today who will tell us that they are not Christians, because they have found religious people and religious authority to be creating victims rather than inviting people to the church as a significant community of support.  And that criticism should cause all of us some soul searching about the openness of our own hearts.

  The nature of Christ is to invite all people to fellowship and community.  Many people understand religion to be like a club that has rules to tell us who belongs and who doesn’t belong.

  The Gospel of Christ is preached today to tell us that all people belong equally in the dignity of God.  The Gospel is preached so that the response of the Samaritan leper can be the true religious act of all people.

  The true religious act of all people is to take time to say thanks to God for being included in the wonderful family of God as sons and daughters of God and as brothers and sisters of Christ.

  We have accrued so much baggage in how Christianity is practiced that we can easily forget how simple and basic the Gospel is:  Wherever we are made to feel quarantined or isolated from community, Jesus stands as the gate and the door to invite us to the community of God and to the community of people who practice this ever generous invitation.

  I do hope that we will understand the mission of our parish is to practice this ever-generous invitation of Christ to all persons into our midst.

  If we can agree on this, then all of the other details that constitute what it is to live together in community will take secondary priority.

  The generous invitation of Jesus Christ should help us to give up all of the little purity codes that we have learned in our society that keep us from offering friendship to all people.

  Let us be thankful today that God is a God who invites all persons to know that they are in the family of God.

  And let us be a friendly people who are committed to let everyone know about the generous, winsome and loving invitation of God in Christ.  With the love of Christ we can celebrate our differences and overcome the habits of victimization.  By welcoming all to the love of God, we can encourage all people to make the most authentic religious act of worship of all, which is saying, “Thank you God.”  By the way, you do know what Eucharist means?  It means “Thanksgiving.”   Amen.

Mustard Seed Faith Landscape Company

20Pentecost, Cp22, October 6, 2013

Lamentations 1:1-6  Psalm 37:1-10

2 Tim. 1:6-14     Luke 17:5-10     

   If a man from Mustard Seed Faith Landscape Company came to my house and ask me if I wanted my mulberry tree removed and planted in the sea, I’d probably say, “No, I’d like to keep the mulberry tree, but what can your faith do with all of these weeds in my yard and garden?  Can you command them to be uprooted and planted somewhere else?”  Frankly I’d be more concerned about the little weeds than the mulberry trees.  And maybe it was the little things that Jesus was trying to get out in the sayings that we have read in the appointed Gospel of the day.

  The disciples came to Jesus and said, “Increase our faith.”  But Jesus responded by going right to their motives, by contrasting the desire for increasing faith with what he called mustard seed faith.  The disciples were portrayed in the Gospels as those who wanted to be great, important and famous.  So they wanted great faith.  They wanted showmanship faith; they wanted faith events that played on the stage to the crowds.

  So Jesus said,  “Take care of the little things.”  Big things can happen over time because of the continuous accumulation of all of the little deeds and faith acts that express a basic faithful character in life.     For various reasons, we are often encouraged to dream big in life.  Expect to be great.  Expect great recognition.  We can be taught to expect so much adulation and public success in life that we can make ourselves perpetually disappointed with outcomes.  Give me big faith Jesus, give me great faith Jesus.  And Jesus said, “Well, there can be big outcomes but they come with mustard seed acts accumulated over time.”

   We can be like people who spend their money trying to win the big lottery in life and forget about a forty hour work week of just doing the job and bringing home the wages and what that can accomplish if done consistently over the span of one’s life.

  The words of Jesus reveal to us how important little events and acts are but they also chastise us for how in a culture of recognition and fame that we have made the ordinary into heroic deeds.

  It’s like me patting myself on the back and saying, “Congratulation Phil, great job!  You fixed yourself breakfast this morning and ate it? Or  Great job Phil, you took the trash bins to the curb to allow your own waste to be carried away.”  Or what about on the larger level of society, “ Good job people, you’ve decided to try to provide affordable health care for more people.   Good job people you’ve decided to make the environment safer and cleaner.   Good job, you’ve decided to have safe gun laws.”  What sort of environment of values do we live in if it becomes congratulatory and heroic to do things that are actually good and obvious for the health of our well-being?

  This is how we can understand the seeming ironic words of Jesus.  What does a worker under contract do?  He or she does his or her job.  And to do what we’re supposed to do does not need congratulations and we don’t need to elevate taking out the trash to some heroic deed.

  We can live lives of affirmation and positive support without having egos that need congratulations for doing things that define what is good and basic to a good life.

  The disciples wanted faith as though it was a quantity that they could add to their life.  And Jesus was trying to say to them that to be human is to be faithful.  To be humane is basic to good life, now why do we have to make what is basic and good as something great and heroic?

  What this shows us is that it has become so normal to be unfaithful in life that we have to make good and faithful deeds into the heroic.  And if we do that we end up making the religious deeds of faith into acts to perform for recognition for people who are trapped in patterns of insecurity about their own worth.

  We have been taught to live in cultures of affirmation for our children.  We have been living for several decades in a “Mister Rogers’ culture of affirmation.”  It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood and we are all special.

  At some time we need to embrace the basic goodness of small faithful deeds not because we are waiting for a “Mister Rogers” culture to give us rewards of praise for doing things that are just plain good for us and for our community.

  The words of Jesus seem so harsh but they really are a parable with the insight about arriving at the mature stage when one understands that acting with faith is its own reward.  That we get to be faithful, is its own reward and accumulated faithful deeds in fact make great and big things possible over time.

  Today as we survey the stewardship of our lives, let us embrace this basic notion; thank God that we get to be faithful with the time, talent and treasure of our lives.  We don’t need to be faithful in order to get something; that we are faithful is its own reward because being faithful blesses our lives and the lives of other.

  As we consider stewardship in our parish life, we should look at is as having the privilege to do what we can.  I get to preach….it a reward in itself for me…though it may not be for you.  We get to sing in the choir; some are tonally impair and can’t.  And some are tonally impair and still try.   We get to read the Scriptures…we get to teach Sunday School…we get to work on the altar guild…we get to serve on the vestry.  And if any of us are looking for some great faith or some subsequent reward or recognition or public fame or praise, we do not yet understand the insight of Jesus regarding faith.

  My friends, this is the secret:  We get to have faith and we get to do faithful acts.  This is what it means to be human in the best possible way.  And that we attain being human in the best possible way is its own reward.

  Let us pray:  Blessed God, we thank you that we get to be here today to offer our time, talent and treasure to you.  That we can do this we accept as the profound reward of living faithful lives.  Amen.

Session 1 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session

Starting where we are:

We are St.Mary's-in-the-Valley, in Ramona, CA, in the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, which is a diocese of The Episcopal Church.  The Episcopal Church is a member of the Anglican Communion whose titular head is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is first among equals in a leadership role in the Anglican Communion.

But let us start personally.  Our Episcopal faith is not really about jumping through hoops for the church.  It is about your and my relationship with God and each other.  We are in a relationship with God whose reality and definition is clarified for us in the person of Jesus Christ.  And since the historical person Jesus is no longer accessible to us, we believe that words of his life and teaching have been left to give us an adequate way to know that God loves and cares for us.  People who were directly influenced by the life of Jesus have left us records of his words and life.  But they passed the Spirit of Christ to a next generation of believers and this Spirit of Christ has been passed on in each generation since the first century to engage us now in our Christian lives.

We can believe in a creator God as Father or Founder in the sense that it is rather obvious that we came into a world of Plenitude with a history and prehistory that is unknowable to us.  So we confess the great Mystery from where we have come.  In a vast world, there is not a human mind that can comprehend the Whole.  So how can we even trust whether the human mind can speak on behalf of the greater than human Being, God?   We assume that God is enough like human beings to accept the superlative attributes of human beings as being an adequate place to begin to confess One who is more than human.  The presence of Jesus in history and our belief that he was divinized, means that the confession of God as Son or Child of God is the acceptance of human experience as a valid way to come to a revelation or understanding about the existence of God as the One who is always on the horizon of human becoming.

Since it seems obvious to us that we are not alone in this world; we can experience each other and other creatures and things, we ask ourselves “What is it that allows us to have mutual experience of other sentient beings and non-sentient creation?”  We confess an ever-present Essence that is able to conduct mutual experience.   We confess the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is our confession that God’s creative Life is always with this world and is expressed as Freedom.  And this Freedom is shared in real ways by all creation that is less than God.  And so we know that the Freedom of God can be manifest in lesser freedoms in the created order and these results in the good and ills and competition of systems that account for our experience of good, bad, and evil.

Exercise:

Review your own history of how you have understood God in your life?  How have you understood God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  Be honest about the doubts that you may have.  Doubt is an honest response because we can’t possibly know everything.  Doubt can be honest humility.

Father Phil

Session 2 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 2 

Who are we?  How did we get to be who we are? 

Our Name: The Episcopal Church

We have other names: The Episcopal Church in the USA.  The Protestant Episcopal in the USA and we have a legal name: Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Are we Catholic?  Are we Protestant?

The common street language use of the word Catholic really means Roman Catholic.  But we are catholic in the sense that we use the Creed of the undivided church, the Nicene Creed and we say, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”  The word catholic comes from the Greek words “kata holos” meaning “on the whole.”  In the Apostles Creed (an ancient creed and used at baptism) we say, “I believe in the holy catholic church.”  So we believe in one church even though we know that in historical disagreements we have come to meet in separate churches or communions.

We are Protestant in the sense that we are not Roman Catholic.  The Reformation had its own unique pattern when Roman Catholic Christians in England in various ways expressed their disagreements with certain practices that arose in the Roman Catholic Church.  English Roman Catholics were influenced by Reformation movements that included the use of native language for the prayers instead of Latin.  Mutual disagreement and mutual reaction and retaliation between the Papacy and the English Crown along with a body of clergy in England who were influenced by the Reformation led to the gradual separation between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, but the separation was not fully finalized until 1896 when a Papal document declared that Anglican ordinations were not valid (canonically proper according to how the papacy defined validity).  We are Protestant in that we embraced a tradition that affirmed a greater role for the Bible, we believe prayer should be in the common language of the people who gather to pray, we allow clergy to marry and we believe that the Pope could serve as a “first among equals of all bishops” but not as an infallible spokesperson for the entire church.  As we shall see, we believe that God’s Spirit is active in our age too and can lead us to see the wisdom to change some ancient practices that seem to be unreasonable and promote ancient bias against people who dearly love God and want to follow Christ and have the full rights of all of the Church’s sacraments.

The Episcopal Church: What does our name tell us about ourselves?

Episcopal comes from the Greek word episkopos   ἐπίσκοπος.   It literally means “over seer” and from Latin we have the word supervisor(not a word that we use in the church).  The English word for episkopos is bishop.  So Episcopal means, “having bishops.”  This tells us something about our polity or church structures.  Other churches have bishops too:  the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the various Orthodox churches and there are similarities and differences in how bishops are appointed/elected/function and are defined in the various Christian bodies.

In the Episcopal Church in the United States we have a bishop in each diocese.  A diocese is a geographical area where a bishop has over sight.  The State of California has six Episcopal Dioceses and St. Mary's-in-the-Valley is located in the Diocese of San Diego.  And our bishop is The Right Reverend Susan Snook.

Exercise:

Ponder the difference stated above between catholic and Roman Catholic.  Is it scandalous that people who follow Christ are divided into so many different “churches” even while we say there is “one holy catholic church?”    Could we also understand the division into different churches as having diversity so that we can appeal to many more people?  If we had a “one size fits all” approach, would not lots of people feel left out and not part of the body of Christ?  Diversity allows us checks and balances since structural unity can be like a heavy handed “Empire.”  Diversity helps us to expand our hearts to appreciate differences.

Father Phil

Session 3 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 3 

The Episcopal Church:   Who are we?     

We are a particular Christian family among other Christian families.  Since our family identity has come from Roman Catholic, Protestant and “pre-Roman Catholic” church traditions some of our theologians have called us the via media, meaning the Middle Way.  In some ways our identity is “mongrel” in that we have incorporated aspects of so many eras of church traditions into our identity.

Since we do not view ourselves in a chauvinistic way as the best or as an exclusive Christian family, we often find that we are a church where compromise is experienced.  A Protestant marries a Roman Catholic and the couple might find The Episcopal Church to be a place where something of both traditions can be experienced.  People who eschew non-democratic Roman Catholic hierarchy find the Episcopal Church more graceful in combining connection with ancient tradition and liturgy with more modern values in assessing the meaning of person-hood and participation in church governance.  Persons who have experienced narrow fundamentalism in Protestant churches find The Episcopal Church a welcome relief because of our willingness to embrace modern science and rigorous thinking into our faith life. 

The above characteristics can be also a liability.  Since we are accepting of other people’s faith, we don’t tend to be active evangelists about our own faith community.  We assume that most highly educated people want to be their own agents of faith community choice without being button holed by someone who is pushing one’s own faith community.  We are welcoming of others who want to be with us but we perhaps rely upon the serendipity of situations for people to find us.  The Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church in our past have been very active colonial missionary churches and we do have active evangelism in our church history. It does remain that Episcopal parishes today tend to be the place where already convinced followers of Christ meet rather than places where people find out about Jesus Christ for the first time in their lives.

Exercise:

How did you come into the Episcopal Church?  Did you have a relationship with Christ before you came to the Episcopal Church?   How does the above description of the Episcopal fit your own description of your participation in The Episcopal Church?  If the above is true how can we promote “serendipity” of situations for other people who perhaps need to find us as their faith community of support?

 

Father Phil

Session 4 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 4 

The Episcopal Church:   Our chief heirloom     

We said that The Episcopal Church is a Christian family among other Christian families.  Along with a name, a family has features that provide unique identity.  The Roman Catholic Church has canon law, the papacy, and a theological architect like St. Thomas Aquinas as part of their heritage.  The Lutherans have Martin Luther’s prolific theological writings and the Presbyterians have the writings of John Calvin as chief heirlooms of their community identity.  What do Episcopalians have?  If we have a theological architect, it is Richard Hooker, but he does not have the exact corresponding stature in the Anglican tradition as do Aquinas, Luther and Calvin for their respective traditions.  So, what is our chief heirloom?  We would have to say it is The Book of Common Prayer.

In the mid-16^th century the Enlightenment was happening, feudal structures disappearing as well as the following: the rise of nation-state identities, spreading education/literacy, the printing press and the rediscovery of the “individual.”  Before this the individual was hidden in paternalistic structures and feudal figure heads decided for everyone in society.  In the church, clergy decided or mediated in the worship leadership in Latin prayers on behalf of lay people.  The Reformation was as much due to social changes in Europe and England as to any religious movement.  The social changes provide the conditions for the religious Reformation to take place.  The Enlightenment required that individuals become more active with their intellect in their faith and worship practices.  If a spectator laity watched the clergy perform the worship on their behalf in Latin, an uncommon language how could lay people fully participate in their faith except as dependent children?

Growing nationalism, King Henry VIII’s conflict with the Pope over an annulment and meddling in international affairs, a body of clergy influenced by the Reformation on the Continent, all gave rise to the conditions that brought into being the Book of Common Prayer.  When King Henry VIII, declared himself as one who would reform the Church in England as a non-papal catholic Church, he appointed Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Cranmer had been influenced by Reformers on the Continent.

A way to challenge papal authority on the Continent was to translate Scripture into the vernacular languages and not rely on St. Jerome’s Vulgate Latin version.  So what was the “common” language of the English people?  English, of course.  Cranmer penned the first Book of Common Prayer and brought the liturgy out of the exclusive grip of the clergy, the educated and the religious monastic and he made it accessible to the hearing of the average person in England.  Cranmer used various existing liturgies, reform liturgies in the Roman and Reformation traditions to create in his Tudor English what became a standard for English style. In the time of Henry VIII the Coverdale Bible in English had been placed in parish churches to be read by literate lay persons.

Cranmer collapsed the seven monastic prayer offices into Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and this was an effort to end the division between two kinds of Christians, ordained/monastic and lay Christians.

The Book of Common Prayer, consistent with its origin of being in the common language of the people who pray, has undergone various revisions and has been translated into languages other than English.  The Episcopal Church has used five versions of The Book of Common Prayer; the pre-American Revolution church used the 1662 version before gaining their own American version in 1789.  There have been three subsequent revisions, 1892, 1928 and 1979 as well as trial and supplemental liturgies approved for use.

The Book of Common Prayer is indeed the chief heirloom of the Episcopal Church, even while we with all Christians acknowledge the Bible as the “official text book” of the church.

Exercise:

Compare your own experience of public worship.  Some other Protestant Churches have Orders of Service but give much more flexibility in choice to their clergy.  Other churches have much more “extemporaneous” prayers rather than shared “common” prayer in a textual form.  In our corporate prayer, we are all equal; no one “prays better” than another, since we are offering the prayers together.  Take a look sometime at the entire Book of Common Prayer. 

Father Phil

Session 5 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 5 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

With just a cursory glance at the index in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) one can note a unifying theme, the theme of Time.  One can find a calendar of seasons and days and reference to time of day, e.g. morning noon, and evening.  The Psalmist wrote, “Our time is in God’s hand.”  The BCP is a prayer strategy for us to remember that our time is in God’s hand.  The BCP can and is used both for corporate prayer and private devotions.  It belongs to everyone and even when we pray the prayers in private we are expressing our corporate agreement.  Some people object to the reading of “written prayers” as not being spontaneously heartfelt and therefore “vain repetition.”  It is not up to anyone to judge anyone about how our hearts are engaged with the prayers that we share together.  A prayer such as the “Our Father” could be judged as vain repetition by the same criterion.  Use of the BCP is not intended to discourage extemporaneous and privately composed prayer.  The BCP provides an order for people to join together to pray.

First, the BCP is a companion to the Bible.  In fact one could say that the BCP is the words of the Bible rearranged into an organized prayer format.  Since the BCP includes a lectionary (appointed lessons from the Bible), the use of the BCP requires a commitment to reading the Bible.

The BCP is a prayer strategy to invoke the presence of God on the times of our lives.  A way to understand the prayer strategy of the BCP is to see how the prayers therein conform to the different ways in which human beings experience time.  There is the experience of cyclical time with light and darkness being the most evident sign of a natural clock.  The daily offices of the BCP, such as Morning and Evening Prayer conform to this notion of cyclical time.  Changes in weather and length of daylight mark the seasons of our calendar of months.  The BCP includes a calendar of seasons, special feast days, holy days and fast days.  Each day is the same for having a morning and a night, but every child knows that some days like birthdays and Christmas are tinged with such social and cultural meaning as to create an entirely different experience and mood of time.  I would call this the experience of "special time."  There is still a further experience of time that I would call crisis time, or “rite of passage time” or “eventful time” using the Greek notion of time referred to as kairos.  The BCP has the prayer forms for what we call the sacraments which conform to this other human experience or mood of time.

In the next sessions we are going to look at these human experiences of time and how the BCP provides a mode of prayer to conform to these human experiences of time.  

My contention will be this:  These prayers not designed to force us into conformity church rules; they are gifts to help us be honest in becoming fully human in very practical and anthropologically sound ways.

Exercise:

Look at the index in the BCP. ( Book of Common Prayer online)  Notice all of the references to time.  Reflect upon your own experience of time.  Why does time seem to go slow when one is young and fast when one is old?  Why the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun?”  What is it that causes the experience of time to seem fast or slow, or boring, or timeless, or déjà vu or sublime?

Father Phil

Session 6 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 6 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 2

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  Prayer is not so much to “convince” God to be involved in our lives as much as it is a practice to attune ourselves to live in the state being aware of how God is always already involved in our lives.  The BCP provides a strategy for praying at regular intervals as a habit.  One of the results of the Reformation was to bring an end between two “kinds” of Christians, the ordained and monastic “heroic” Christians who were called to a higher calling of poverty, chastity and obedience, and “regular” Christians, the laity who were called to keep the Ten Commandments.  Reformation Christianity was a call for everyone to be “equally Christian” in their practice.  So in the Church of England, poverty, chastity and obedience became the call of fewer people as the call to pray in one’s own language was made the requirement of all baptized persons.  To do this the strategy of prayer had to be made accessible to all baptized persons.  The monastic communities had a daily habit of prayer, spiritual reading and work.  Following the Psalmist’s promise, “Seven times a day, I will praise thee…O Lord,” the monastic community had the habit of seven prayer hours during the day.  Of course, non-monastic lay people could not drop everything seven times a day to pray.  Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote the first  Book of Common Pryaer, collapsed the pre-noon prayer hours into one Morning Prayer and the post-noon prayer hours into one Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer.  This was a call to all baptized persons to elevate their lives of prayer as there was to be an end to these two classes of Christians.  All Christians were called to the vocation of prayer as the regular and ordinary habit of life.   The prayers were no longer locked in the monastery in a Latin breviary for the “professional people of prayer who used Latin.”  The Book of Common Prayer was in fact a kind of democratization of Christian citizenry by requiring all Christians to be involved in the official prayers of the Church.  Since prayer was in the common language of the people it could be done with understanding by all English speakers.  Morning and Evening Prayer in the parish church at the center of the village was to be the new norm for prayer even as monastic institutions were closing down.

As we see now in America our life style leaves us long distances from the parish church and secular life does not cater to a “stop everything and pray” habit.  One of the ways that we can incorporate Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer into our habit of life is through the online Morning and Evening Prayer sites.  These sites include the appointed lessons from the Bible for Morning and Evening Prayer.  If one does this one is praying through the Psalms on a regular basis as well as reading a majority of the Bible in a two year cycle.  Two such sites are: http://www.missionstclare.com/english/  and http://dailyoffice.org/ .  For your convenience, the St. John the Divine Facebook page links these two site each morning along with the popular Daily Meditation from Forward Day by Day. http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-John-the-Divine-Episcopal-Church-Morgan-Hill-CA/147286963103    Obviously where there is community of people who can join for prayer, it is preferable to join others in prayer for Morning and Evening Prayer but these online sites provide “virtual” prayer together.  Online Prayer is really another manifestation of the “commonization”  that began with the Book of Common Prayer.  

The philosophy of the Book of Common Prayer is that prayer should be common or accessible for people to pray.  The church will always be looking for ways to make prayer common or accessible to people to encourage prayer as the regular strategy of life.

Exercise:

Look in the Prayer Book at the Daily Prayers.  You can find them at this site online: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/bcp.htm Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Noonday Prayer. Compline.  Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families.  Order of Worship for Evening.  You will notice that there is Rite One which is the older English style, and Rite Two which is the less ornate modern English style.  Try the Daily Devotions Prayers with your children or at dinner time.  Go to one of the online sites and acquire the daily habit of Morning and Evening Prayer.  No excuse: It is very accessible, which is the true meaning of common.  No fumbling through the Bible looking for readings.

Father Phil

Session 7 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 7 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 3

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  It provides for the experience of what can be called “special time.”   Special time is how a community celebrates its identity through the remembrance of an initiating event.  Unique events don’t recur; they happen and they make an impact and the memory coupled with the imagination is exerted to retain something of the impact and power of the event.  Too theoretical?  What about celebration of birthdays, anniversaries or commemoration of telling events?  Why do we do it?  We can’t make a birth happen again a year later, or we don’t get remarried on our anniversaries but how is it that the memorial traces of an event are retained within a community of celebrants?  Why does it happen?  Why do we want to do it?  Special time happens within the life of a community.  Special time happened in the originating events and persons of the community that we call the church and in those events and persons we are given our community identity and story.  We are imprinted with the story and we become co-celebrants of the events of the story.

The BCP  is a prayer record, a perpetuation of prayer, a book to teach prayer based the values of our community that arose in the originating persons and events of our Christian identity.  We mark special time broadly with seasons that frame the broad curriculum of our annual cycle to inculcate the values of our faith community.  The seasons give us teaching topics that receive their value from the events in the life of Jesus Christ and the community. Events on the calendar derived from the life of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and events in the lives of the saints of the church.   The Book of Common Prayer provides a format for us to anchor our identity upon the originating events of our community.

The BCP deals with special time by providing prayer texts and ceremonial prescriptions/suggestions for Church Seasons, Major Feast Days of our Lord, Holy Days, Fast Days, Holy Days, Days of remembering heroes who became remembered because of exemplary living.

In our lives time gets differentiated in how it is valued or remembered.  I do not commemorate brushing my teeth at 10:30 p.m. on July 12, 1980, but on September 11, my memory can be jolted by the fact of the event that is forever associated with that day in our country.  Special time is about differentiated time marked by liturgy and by the power of remembrance.  Even though we may believe that God is omnipresent, somehow that presence becomes more memorial in the unique occasions when God’s presence became a happening that changed life in a way that gave birth to new community meaning.  The BCP through the liturgies of Special Time express our hope to access the power of these originating people and events.

Exercise:

Think about why as a child your birthday or Christmas was different.  Why was there such anticipation for the day and a sort of pinch myself with excitement over these special days?  How is it that your family and community were able to create such powerful awe-struck events for you?  Now think about the originating events of the church.  How is it that the liturgy of the church is both a result of those events but also a means of propelling the memory of the event into the future?  One can be cynical about all manner of sentimentality but one must acknowledge the rather profound power of the memory and its durability as we use the BCP as a sort of musical score to experience something of the mind of the composer of the great events of our faith.

Father Phil

Session 8 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 8 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 4: The Sacraments

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  Another human experience of time might be what is called eventful time or life crisis time or “rite of passage” time.  I believe that the BCP provides a prayer format to deal with this nuance or mood in our experience of time.  Arnold van Gennep developed a theory of a rite of passage.  For so many years developmental psychology limited a majority of its effort to child psychological development until scholars began to acknowledge that psychological development occurs over one’s lifetime.  A rite of passage involves the way in which a culture facilitates or initiates members into distinct status change as a person gets older.  The BCP in its presentation of how time is experienced presents a corresponding liturgical format for rite of passage time, eventful time or crisis time.  In short, the presentation of the liturgy in the BCP of the seven sacraments represents the church’s efforts to invoke God’s presence in our lives as we age.  The sacraments are an honest confession that we age together within a community.  I believe most people and some clergy treat the sacraments as compartmentalized religious acts that one does to “obey” the church.  My contention is that the sacraments are the honest attempt of the church to be “inter-generationally” supportive of one another as we age in community and as we invoke God’s presence within the life experiences that come to us at various ages.

I have tried and probably failed to teach the anthropological soundness of the sacraments.  Meanwhile outside of the church, first word, first step, first day at school, driver’s license, graduation from high school, graduation from college, first major job in a career, marriage, birth of a child, empty nest, male pattern baldness, gray hair, menopause, retirement, assisted living, skilled nursing; these rites seem to be the telling rites of passage and the church has failed, I have failed, to show how the sacraments are so interwoven with our lives as to be unavoidable.  And if we live sacramentally, we live our lives as if God and the community of faith care about our lives and we prayerfully alone and together invoke the presence of God as we live into authentic tasks and crises that define the human adventure.

What I will endeavor to show in the next sessions is how the sacraments provide a structure of support and initiation in living with authenticity into the crises that confront us in life.  Sacraments are not magical ceremonies that end after the ceremonies; the ceremony is but the gateway into the duration of the life crisis that is expressed in the sacramental liturgy.  The sacraments have undergone changes in the history of how the church has prayed together because the effort to care for the people who come to pray has influenced our church to have the sacraments be a pastoral support for those who are aging together in different ways in the church.

Exercise:

Think about your secular rites of passage.  Think about your experience of the sacraments in the church.  Baptism.  Eucharist.  Confirmation.  Reconciliation. Prayer for the Sick.  Holy Matrimony.  Ordination.  How have you availed yourself of the sacraments?  Have the sacraments been a support for your life of faith within the church and outside of the church?  Are we embarrassed to make a confession or ask for a prayer when we are sick?  Ordination, does that mean the clergy do all of the “real” ministry of the church?

Father Phil