Session 9 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 9 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 5: 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.  Sacraments, like baptism, confirmation and ordination may be a one-time rite but the rite does not exhaust the meaning of what is being celebrated in the rites.

Our common conceptions of these sacraments may include the following.  Baptism is done with water; the Baptists a lot of water and Catholics and Episcopalians a little water.  Baptism is for our salvation to save us from going to hell.  Baptism is like a birth ritual that all families do because that is what our parents and grandparents want us to do to our babies. 

Many people come to the church to ask to have their babies baptized without having any intention at all of ever bringing their children to church.   It is sort of like, “just in case there is something to all of that hocus pocus, I want to have my children covered.”  What people don’t realize is that if they do get their children baptized and respond to all of the baptismal vows and then do not follow up with honoring the vows, they have in fact begun their children’s life by lying to God and to themselves or they may just be ignorant about what is involved in the meaning of baptism.  People need to know that Jesus said the kingdom of God belongs to children and he said that about children who were not necessarily baptized.  So there should be no pressure to get children baptized if one does not commit to baptismal living.

What is the crisis that we live into in our baptism?  The crisis involves setting the values to define and express the meaning and worth of our lives.  How do I come to know who I am and my value?  This is the major crisis of our entire life at every age and baptism is a particular way of determining and setting value in our lives.  For adults who are baptized (and remember that even though infant baptism may be a more common practice, the words of the baptismal rite assume adult maturity) they have come to discover that the value of their lives has received significant definition because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as it has been received and practiced within Christian tradition.  To be baptized is to come to understand that one is loved by God, one is forgiven by God, one is perfectible (always able to be better through educative repentance) and that one is gifted by God for purposeful worth and value to other people in the community. 

Living in an imperfect world with imperfect people means that we can take on unenlightened self-value and value of others.  In baptism we commit to a willingness always to be on the path toward more excellent values in knowing who we are and what we are to do with our lives as it pertains to loving God, loving our neighbors and loving ourselves.  Each person is constituted by the way in which he or she has taken on the words of their lives.  Our lives get scripted by our learning environments even as we exercise some freedom of choice for the discovery of new values through the ways in which we take conscious steps in learning.

For parents and adults in a community of baptized infants and children, we become the ones who express the prevenient grace of God to the young ones whom we have promised to mentor with the example of our lives.  As adults we are to give the word framework for our children to value their lives in the very best possible way.  We want to constitute the word lives of our children with the following values: they are loved by God, they are forgiven even as they are encouraged to understand their perfectibility, they are gifted for their own self care and for their value to their community.  In a community that practices infant and child baptism, the adults need to embrace their ministry to “be God’s prevenient grace” to our children.  Prevenient grace simply means that grace and love is expressed towards us before we ever fully understand the significance of that grace and love.  With the word environment that we give to our children we are in effect setting the context for how they come to understand their value.  And this is real and active grace.

In the next sessions, we are going to look at baptism, confirmation and ordination.  Confirmation historically became a maturation rite when infant baptism became the prevalent practice.  Baptism involves the proclamation of the gifts of the baptized.  Gifts pertained to our value to our community and so ultimately baptismal grace is articulated in what we do in our lives because of our gifts.  This will be the tie in that we will make with confirmation and ordination.

Exercise:

Ponder the meanings of baptism in your experience and in the experience of the culture in which you have lived.  How have you understood baptism?  Reflect upon different baptismal practices.  Jewish proselyte baptism.  The baptism of John the Baptist.  Why did Jesus get baptized by John the Baptist, if his baptism was a baptism for the remission of sins?  Is there infant baptism in the New Testament writings?  Who were the Anabaptists?  Why do some churches require that you get re-baptized as an adult?  What is the relationship between salvation and baptism?  Why do some churches say that baptism is not related to salvation, only a public witness after one has been “saved or asked Jesus into one’s heart?”

Don’t be afraid of doubt or questions.

Father Phil

Session 10 February 25, 2013

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

Session 11 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 11 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 7:  Holy Eucharist

A major crisis in life is the social crisis of the maintenance of community.  How do communities stay together?  How do they attain viability so that they achieve an identity as a social group that in turns provides identity and story for membership to achieve the value structures for their lives?  What happens when family, tribe or village or city does not provide a social group to help persons negotiate their identity and purpose within the larger society?  People cannot live as simply detached from community and people need communities that perform a mediating function in their lives with their communities at large.

In a family life there is something very formative about the family meal.  A family meal sustains the life of a family in a very practical way: the provision of food.  The family meal necessitates a gathering and provides the occasion for human fellowship, the sharing of story and identity.  The Holy Eucharist is the Christian family meal and when people gather for the Holy Eucharist one can find the most concrete social expression of the reality of what we call the church.

The Holy Eucharist arose out of the meal traditions that were received from ancient Hebrew religion and forms of Judaism that developed in subsequent history, particularly during the times of exile when the community lost a temple based religion.

In the tradition of Christianity, one can find that the early Christ communities practiced meal gatherings that also  included prayer and commentary and preaching on Scripture.  As they tried to reconstruct the origins of their religious meals traditions they used an oral tradition that we call the Last Supper.  This meal tradition that was explained in various ways including using the “manna” or bread from heaven tradition in Hebrew Scripture became the basis for how worship was constituted on the first day of the week.  The arising of the practice of Eucharist occurred in communities that understood that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.  The Christ communities practiced in their lives the experiential return of Christ as the reality of his resurrection in what was known to be the presence of the Holy Spirit. Christ was known to have a particular presence in the effervescence of the gathered worshipers.  The intentional gathering and the repeating of the words of Christ over bread and the wine was known to be an experience of being constituted or mystified as the body of Christ and so they practiced a presence of Christ in the bread and the wine.  This meal at certain times was connected with real eating for hunger needs too and so the community was given a public gathering to eat together and to make sure that everyone in the community had something to eat.  It was truly a spiritual, social and physical life giving event.

As the Christ communities became comprised by more Gentile members  and as worshipers received and  provided food in other “non-communitarian” gatherings, the Eucharist became more of a highly stylized meal where the bread and wine stood alone apart from other food in having spiritual meaning for the community.  This does not mean that Eucharist cannot and should not still have vital connection with actually feeding people who are in need of food.

We continue to practice today this ancient Eucharistic tradition.  Some traditions have almost made the bread and wine into separate and individual objects of veneration and divorced from the gathered church while other traditions have minimized the importance and the frequency of the Eucharist.

In the Episcopal Church, we have continued this ancient pattern of regarding the Eucharist to be the constituting gathering of the church on Sunday.  Along with the ceremonial that pertains to the bread and wine, we have the accompanying context of the words through the reading of Scripture, the prayers, the confession, the proclamation of forgiveness, the Peace of making ourselves reconciled with each other before receiving communion, and the sermon as a way of teaching and applying the Scripture, tradition and reason to our everyday lives.  Perhaps the most important part of the Eucharist ironically is the dismissal to go into our everyday lives carrying with us the Eucharistic values that we have practiced in our gathering.  The Eucharist arises from our lives, and is a particular and intense invocation of God’s Spirit upon us and the ministry of our lives and it is a sending of us into the world to live as a Eucharistic people in the world.  

Exercise:

Do you remember your first communion?  Why is communion special to you?  How do you understand or appropriate the Presence of Christ in the bread and the wine?  Do you ever associate the Eucharist with people in the world having enough to eat?  Do you understand the connection of the Holy Eucharist with your everyday life and the importance of the dismissal at the Eucharist?  Do you understand how people gathered at Eucharist are the most concrete expression of the social nature of the church?  Have you ever had some special experiences at Communion?

Remember one of the Baptismal vow questions:  Will you be faithful in the apostles teaching, the breaking of the break and in the prayers?

We will with God’s help!

Father Phil

Session 12 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 12 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 8:  The Reconciliation of a Penitent, also known as Confession or Private Confession

 A major crisis in the life of a person and a community has to do with the experience of what is known as sin.  In our social lives we know of legal traditions that define legal wrongs and juridical procedures for assigning/declaring guilt and authorizing and adjudicating penalties or remedies to people for committing acts deemed injurious to their communities.  Acts which are criminal may be sinful acts; all sinful acts may not be criminal acts.  Sin becomes a factor for people who are given a vision of what excellence means in their lives.  To fail at excellence is to know the experience of sin.

The practice of the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Private Confession is not widespread in the Episcopal Church and varies to local parish or the piety of clergy in parishes who are persuasive about its usefulness.  The sacrament suffers from the memories of Roman Catholics who practiced it as obligatory prelude to receiving communion and in the frequency of its requirement there was a diminished sense of its practical purpose except something that was being done because it was a requirement of the church.  From our Reformation and Enlightenment perspectives Episcopalians have had a healthy suspicion of the power of clergy expressed as condescending paternalism and the complete baring of one’s soul to another person in an age when there is not such a wide educational gap between lay person and priest.  This is different from the age when the clergy served as the most omni-compentent local psychologist and educated person in the community. Episcopal priests do not want to live on any such omni-competent pedestal.

What can The Reconciliation of a Penitent mean for us as Episcopalians in practice?  Its very existence as an expression of our liturgical tradition is an indication that sin is something that is a crisis in the life of each person and in the life of the community.  That we are sinners and why we are sinners has been the topic of long discussions in all religions and in our Judeo-Christian traditions.  It used to satisfy people to say that a literal first persons, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and their one act made everyone after them to be born in sin and therefore sinful.

The Greek word for sin comes from an archery term and it means literally “missing the mark.”  The arrow is shot with intention to hit the target but the arrow misses.  In life we become aware of our failure to live up to standards of conduct in how we live towards others and in our willful delays to progress in excellence.  Sins often have open consequences within a community and if there are not strategies of interdiction there can arise harmful revenge and retaliation or divisions and separations within a community.  Christian bodies have lived in various relationships with legal procedure practiced outside of the church.  So sometimes a fault or moral failure has complication inside and outside of the church community.  The church has a commandment against stealing but so do the civil and criminal courts.  There can be an overlap between sin in the sense of lack of moral excellence and the legal consequences of harmful social behaviors.

I think the best way to understand Reconciliation is to see the notions of sin and repentance as positive features of our being on the baptismal path toward excellence.  We know that we are not perfect but we know that we are made perfectible, in that we know that we can make amendment and improvement.    Jesus encourged the continual work of education or repentance and this is the positive goal of every Christian.

The sacrament of Reconciliation grew in the tradition of the apostles who were told by Jesus that they had the power to forgive or retain sins.  The church has come to practice this as a ministerial act of the priestly office, but I think this ministerial act is more symbolic of what is psychologically and sociologically healthy for a community, namely, the forgiving of sins.  In practice if a family or community retains “or remembers” sins, then that community cannot survive.  Survival of the community depends on forgiveness occurring within a community of people who are all on a baptismal path of trying to become better.  At any point, none of us is as good as we need to be and at any point we understand that God’s forgiving grace is given to us to tolerate our not yet perfect selves.  Priests and bishops are to declare this in God’s name in the general absolution and private absolution of sin.

On the practical level, reconciliation is the honesty of a person saying “I am not an island and my life affects others and so no sin is personal or individual, it always has community dimensions.”  To say, what I do does not hurt anyone is to ignore the good that one could do instead of the so-called “private sin.”  When a priest declares absolution the priest has heard the confession on behalf of the community, “forgets it under the seal of confession,” and declares absolution on behalf of the community.  The absolution has nothing to do with the personal power or saintliness of the priest.  In fact, if you look at the last words of the priest in the rite of Reconciliation, they are, “Go in peace and pray for me, a sinner.”

Reconciliation may also be in a phase when a person cannot confess or make amends to a person who has been harmed by a deed. Sometimes we do not come to amendment of life until people are no longer in our lives and the path of reparation is impossible.   Reconciliation often occurs for persons in 12-Steps programs where in the 4^th and 5^th steps a moral inventory is made and admission to God, self and another person is made.    Reconciliation accompanies spiritual direction as one commits to an intentional path of spiritual excellence and seeks help of directors and confessors.  When one is in a crisis or life change, a life confession with a confessor may be an extended period of examination with the help of someone to assist in doing a general evaluation of one’s life so as to become open for some new insights for new directions in one’s spiritual path.

The practice of Reconciliation can be an indication of a healthy spiritual life just as therapy can be a sign of good psychological health.  The Sacrament of Reconciliation of a Penitent needs to be understood and practiced as a sound habit of spiritual health.

Exercise:

Think about the times you have made a confession.  Was it in another church?  Have you had some “natural” non-clergy confessors in your life?  Those with whom you could bare your soul?  Do you think that Reconciliation could ever be a part of your own spiritual rule of life?  What do you think about the Anglican position on Private Confession?  All may, no one must and some should!

Father Phil

Session 13 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 13 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 9: The Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick or otherwise known as Holy Unction.   

A major crisis in life is sickness.  As people we have members who experience in uneven and varying ways the weakness of body and mind.  We know that our lives are affected by sickness; family and community are affected by sickness.  One is reminded that in certain eras of history plagues devastated large numbers of the members of societies.  Sickness is a crisis that we have to face and the church believes that it is our calling to invoke the Holy Spirit upon our lives as we believe that God’s presence can be known to us during the crisis of sickness. 

There are some images of the Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick that make some people wary of its practice.  For some Holy Unction referred only to what used to be known as Extreme Unction otherwise called “Last Rites.”  So Holy Unction in some people’s view was limited to be an end of life ritual done by the priest.  For others, in watching televangelist healers, it is associated with Pentecostal group frenzies where healing events occur.  It is associated with Elmer Gantry type hucksters who seem to be more about “fundraising” for their ministries.  Sickness is a vulnerable state of being and no sacrament should ever have an association with the requirement of an offering.

Response to sickness has a long history and historical anthropology of medicine can trace a varied practice in many times and cultures.  In the days before it was discovered that microscopic beasties were responsible for illness, sometimes it was convenient to suggest that demonic forces were the cause of all illnesses.  We know this is a very unsatisfactory explanation even as we also know that sickness and disease are influenced by states of mind.

The Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick is a liturgy that derives from the ministry of Jesus to the sick of his time and from the practice in early Christian communities of the elders of the community to pray for the sick and anoint them with oil.  One of the things that makes me personally uncomfortable is to associate cause of sickness with a sin.  There has been a long association of sickness and sin.  The words of Jesus stated that a man was not blind because his sins or the sins of his parents.  We know that lifestyle behaviors can have certain health results but victimization can occur when one presumes to know another person's sin and resulting illness.

How does the Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick function in the church?  I think it is here for us to promote the ministry of health within the parish family.  How does that happen?  I believe that all of us are healthier if we practice within our significant communities an “orientation” towards health.  Too obscure?  I once worked as an orderly in a VA hospital and I noticed that the hospitalized Veterans who had family and friends and church involved with them had much shorter stays in the hospital.  This is what I mean by creating an orientation toward health within the community.  This does not mean instantaneous “cures” or exemption from the full range of things that can occur to anyone of us.  It means that we are “sick” together and not alone and by being together and by invoking the power of the unseen sublime we hope for the wonder of health to be known in a fuller way than if we “suffer” alone.

In an ironic way one’s sickness can be a “gift” of the community when it is brought to the attention of the community in this Sacrament.  A person experiencing sickness becomes representative of what can happen to any of us and in presenting a condition of sickness to the community, the practice of health within the community is called forth.  Meals are delivered to help families, children are car pooled and the effects of sickness are ameliorated as the community practices community health.  Also the Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick mobilizes and raises up the gift of healing within a community.  When some people hear about the sickness of another they are deeply moved within themselves with a special concern.  That moving concern is a particular gift of empathy that includes lots of “energy,” even an intuitive energy that inspires them to pray and to care in a special way.

The actual Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick does not exhaust the ministries and the gift of health orientation within a community but it stands as a reminder that we as Christians are all called to the ministry of healing and health in many different ways.

Share the knowledge your sickness with others so that the gift of health and healing can be practiced within the church.  One of our practical ministries is our prayer ministry is our Healing Mass on Wednesdays. The prayer chain ministries consists of a group of people who have committed themselves to be informed about the prayer needs of people and who pray in agreement with one another and in our prayers this energy may be like a healing energy that is transmitted to those for whom we pray.  In faith we believe prayers can help promote health but also that our prayers changes us and mobilize us towards health as a caring community.

The Sacrament of the Prayer for the Sick is offered each Sunday or upon request.  This Sacrament stands as our calling to the ministry of health and healing as a caring community.

Exercise:

Do you have the gift of healing?  Do you have a deep sense of empathy when you observe the sufferings of others?  What do you do with the energy of empathy?  What do you think can happen when the energy of empathy is shared among people within a community?  Can you see yourself as helping to practice this Sacrament as our community orientation toward supporting each other in our health concerns?   

Remember we are called to health and healing.  The most accessible meaning for salvation is “health.”

Father Phil

Session 14 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 14 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 9: The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony or Marriage in the Book of Common Prayer

Review: In our sessions on the BCP, we have been looking at how the sacraments express our response to the human experience of “rite of passage” or eventful time.  In our sessions on the seven sacraments, we now reflect upon Holy Matrimony.  Of the seven sacraments two are dominical or “commanded by our Lord,” namely Baptism and Eucharist.  The five other are five pastoral sacraments that were implicit in the practice of Jesus and the New Testament churches.  One must admit that all of the sacraments have gone through many different changes in how they have been regarded in the history of their practice within the church.  One can note that for much of history in some churches marriage has not been permitted for those who felt called to the ordained ministry.  Marriage has had varying manifestations in the various locations throughout the world and the church has adapted to customs but also influenced the practice of civil marriage.

Probably a major crisis in life is loneliness or aloneness.  About the primordial person Adam, the writer of Genesis believed that God understood aloneness and so God in the creation account said, “It is not good for Adam to be alone.”  Was this said by a God who doubted the adequacy of God’s own companionship with Adam?  This primordial insight expressed the truth that no one can feel complete while alone.  One can advance in a high degree of self-reliance but not even that can be done alone.  This insight shows us that God is most evident and speaks mainly through other people; it is within human community that we learn language.  We learn that we are not alone; we learn that we belong together in a general way, but we also learn that the mutual magnets of particular love bring people together to share with one another in the fullness of ways that people can share.  Fellowship, companionship, mutual joy and ecstasy, joint stewardship in tasks, procreation and the fostering of the next generation are all a part of the basic intuition regarding how human beings are supposed to be together. 

The Episcopal Church regards marriage to be a sacrament, a mystery, in that we believe that in the companionship of marriage persons encounter the mystery of God’s presence.  An ordained clergy does not preside at a marriage to make love happen but to acknowledge that it has and the blessing stands in the moment of offering to God with thanksgiving the vows of the couple.

Marriage involves four vows.  Spouses to each other, the vows of the community to support the couple and in the blessing, we the church, understand God to be making a vow to be present in the wonder of love.

Spouses need to keep renewing their vows in their daily practice.  Spouses need the support of their communities (including the society at large to encourage commitment in the married life).  Spouses need to continue to go to find God in the mystery of their love.  The marriage rite expresses the vows that are lived into for the rest of married life together.

Among traditional churches, The Episcopal Church believes and practices that God’s Holy Spirit can inspire new understanding and new practice and new wisdom.  We also believe that God inspires rules, practices and theology from the event of care.  We, in the Episcopal Church are flattered when people wish to gather with us to pray and we endeavor to love and care for the people to desire to be with us.  With regard to Episcopal Christians who have found themselves in lifelong committed relationships with people of the same-sex it has seemed reasonable, just and loving to acknowledge the blessing and grace present in these loving relationships and provide a community of support for these brothers and sisters in Christ.  Recently, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has approved liturgies for us to acknowledge, celebrate, bless and support the persons who have known such commitments of love.  Like everything in the church the implementation of new liturgies sometimes have an uneven reception in how people understand and respond to the changes.   It is important to inform ourselves about how such liturgies can be done with integrity and continuity within our faith community that has always relied upon Scripture, tradition and reason to appraise what we do in our faith and community practice.  It should be known that just as in our country we do not yet fully practice the great ideal of The Declaration of Independence that states that all people are created equal, so too Christian Churches have not yet completed the full practice of the meaning of love as it known in justice.  This is not said as a condemnation, it is noted as an invitation for us always to be seeking God grace to surpass ourselves in love and justice.  We have to use our imaginations to ask in faith, “What would Jesus do and how would he respond?”  I do not think that Jesus would tell parables today using slaves as subject matter because of how terrible the very notion of slavery has come to be known.  We embrace our current understanding of science, psychology and sociology and we ask  what would Jesus do today.  We may come up with some different perspectives but in the Episcopal Church we have come to believe that the life-long commitment of love among our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should have a liturgy of blessing/a marriage and loving support, as a true acknowledgment of their love.

Exercise:

Ponder your own history with loneliness and the important event of being in love to want to spend a life with a companion and friend and to bear witness that God is love.  Ponder the meaning of your marriage within a community.  How important is it to you that your community recognizes your marriage?  Do you have the habit of setting up a support team for your married life?  Did you know that in America when clergy officiate at a wedding they most often do so for both the State and the Church?  Did you know that some countries separate the civil ceremony and the Church Blessing ceremony? 

Father Phil

Session 15 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 15 

 Review: I have explained the Episcopal Church as a particular Christian family among other Christian families.  As each family has a name, I began by looking at the meaning of our name.   Each family has defining heirlooms and I spent quite a few sessions reflecting upon the chief heirloom of the Episcopal, the Book of Common Prayer.  I presented the Book of Common Prayer as being organized by invoking God’s presence upon the times of our life.  I see the Book of Common presenting prayer strategies for our various experiences of time, regular time, special time, and rite of passage time.

A family has a history and a genealogy and with this come legend and lore and a continual looking to the resources of our past and the current resources of our age in our methods of defining and living the significant purpose of our lives.  Our Episcopal Church has a history, it has a genealogy but much of it we delve into not because we can return to the past but because we are seeking significant purposes of faith in our current life.  We also hope for a future in what we are leaving for the people in our lives who will outlive us.

I would to present the history, the genealogy and the lore of The Episcopal Church as an interacting dynamic between Holy Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  The relationship between these three are something like trying to argue about what came first, the chicken or the egg.

It is false for any family to think that they exist alone and so when I talk about my family, I do so, also by referring to who is not in my family.  The world outside of my family helped to define my family.  So too when we are speaking about the Episcopal Church and all of its ancestors in faith traditions, we and all faith traditions cannot escape the fact that we existed among people in the world who have not been members of one’s faith tradition.  Traditions derive and form in world settings greater than their own arbitrary community boundaries.

Holy Scripture refers broadly to the Bible in the content form that it has come to be used in the Episcopal Church.  Tradition refers to the communities that received Holy Scripture and collected the writings and passed them on but also it refers to all of the faith practices that have been standard for various communities of faith at various times.  So there are practices and applications in community traditions that may not have explicit formulae in the Holy Scriptures.  (For example, it may be a tradition for a priest to wear a chasuble at Eucharist without claiming that Jesus wore the same at the Last Supper. The use of a chasuble comes from adopting a standard Eucharistic vestment.  It becomes an honored tradition even while not mentioned in Holy Scriptures, though it is consistent with Temple priests wearing robes).

Reason refers broadly to human experience and specifically how we work collaboratively to interpret the meaning and function and value of Holy Scripture and Tradition for our lives today.

We could say that our history, tradition and lore date from pre-historic times and Holy Scripture relate significant oral traditions that derived from pre-historic times and eventually became written as writing became a significant technology of memory in being able to connect people of the past with succeeding generations.

Part of my American tradition is the inheritance of Pragmatism.  In Pragmatism we admit that truth values are revealed by how an idea or concept functions for a community.  I would like to be as “functionally” orientated as possible in leading up to the functional value of the Episcopal Church in our lives.

The history of the past is so vast that all one can do is choose arbitrary reductions of information to present a view of history.  This does not make the views true; it only means that they are offered to see if useful insights can arise.

For my own understanding, I divide history into Pre-Modern or Classical, Modern and Post-Modern Periods.  Each of these periods have habits and features that define their utility as it pertains to human relationship to what has come to be called the Divine.  Subsequent period retain the habits and understanding of the previous periods even though same words or terms can come to have different functional meaning or value in the later period.

In the Pre-Modern or Classical understanding of God, God became one who is known and who speaks directly to and through people in ways that “seem” to be self-evidential to the ones who present the words of God.  God may be special and different (such difference is so great as to disqualify limited humanity from knowing such greatness) but this great God can become known and supports purposeful behavior within the community.  God was also located in space but also able to be invisibly evident.

In the Modern Period, the understanding of God comes to be admitted as a “human understanding” of God in a very deliberate way.  In the Modern Period when Reason takes over as an interior attribute that humanity has access to, it essentially replaces God as the self-evident reality of life.  From the Pre-Modern view it seems like arrogant “humanism” to say that all experience of God is but human experience.  But from the Modern point of view it seems to be humble to but admit that nobody has a “non-human experience” of God.  The pride of the Modern period is modern science and the constant attempt to find alternative answers for the phenomena that used to be attributed to actions of God.

The Post-Modern Period is much more recent.  The Post-Modern Period involves a critique of the Modern Period and in part is caused by disillusionment with the modern notion of progress.  Look what progress has done; we can really now do atrocious things to destroy the world and each other.  It seems like each scientific advance has several devastating consequences, e.g., environmental ruin or unchecked population growth.  In terms of theology and philosophy, Post-Modernism is based upon the insight that human experience is essentially mediated through the use of language, so whether word or deed, everything has come to language.  Everything is constituted by language including the long history of humanity with the sublime entity that is known in the English language as God.

In our next sessions, we are going to try to look at our history, genealogy and lore of Scripture, Tradition and Reason in light of these characterizations of human history.  But we cannot be but where we are in 2013, and whether one likes it or not, by participation in all of the manifestations of our informational age, we are Post-Modern people.  Lots of people are living in reactive fear and nostalgia to this while I would like to explore the possibility of a vital and dynamic faith in our Post-Modern Age as members of The Episcopal Church.

Exercise:

Why does the Bible or Greek mythology sometimes seem inaccessible to us today?  What does Holy Scripture mean to you?  What does Church Tradition mean to you?  What does Reason mean to you?  If we say that our authority and identity in the Episcopal Church involves the relationship between Scripture Tradition and Reason what does that mean in practice?  Can a person like St. Peter who is a Jew honoring their dietary restriction be led by the Holy Spirit and reason to think that a Gentile who eats pork can be regarded as equally obedient to God?   Can people of reason come to judge slavery as inhumane and unchristian even though New Testament times tolerate slavery?  In what other areas can reason over turn Scripture?  Geocentric or Heliocentric solar system?  Flat earth or round earth?  Evolution or seven day creation?

Father Phil