Thoughts at Large from a Bishop at Large

Sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord

2012-01-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. --Luke 2:21

Today is traditionally celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision. Under Jewish law, baby boys are circumcised on the eighth day, so if Christmas is celebrated as the birth of Jesus as a Jewish boy, then today is the celebration of his circumcision.

The liturgical changes in the 1960’s and 1970’s led to this feast being known under different names. The church in Rome in the early centuries celebrated the octave day of Christmas as a feast in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, recognizing her role in the Incarnation, and traces of this persisted in the liturgical texts for the Feast of the Circumcision down through the centuries. So the Roman Catholic calendar renamed the feast the “Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God”. Episcopalians and Lutherans renamed the feast the “Feast of the Holy Name”, recognizing that it was on this occasion that the name Jesus was given to the newborn infant. However, the gospel read on this day continues to be the account of the circumcision, and I believe we have much to learn from considering its significance.

In Genesis, we read that God commanded Abraham to be circumcised, with all the males of his household, and to circumcise the boys on the eighth day from that point forward. It quotes God as saying “[M]y covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:13). The Hebrew word “bris”, or “b’rit”, as it is pronounced in Israel, which is the common Jewish term referring to circumcision, literally means “covenant”. The circumcision is a very visible reminder in the flesh of a Jewish man of the covenant God made with the Jewish people, promising certain things to them in return for obeying God’s commandments.

This sign of the covenant is so serious and important that, despite the fact that it would normally fall under the category of prohibited activities on the Sabbath, it is not only permitted but required to be done if the eighth day is a Sabbath. The account in Genesis states that anyone not circumcised is “cut off” from his people for violating the covenant.

What is a covenant? A covenant is a solemn agreement between two parties, with each promising to do something for the other. God promises, in the covenant of circumcision, to be the guardian and keeper of the Jewish people, while the people promise to follow God’s commandments and to be a holy people.

It was necessary for Jesus to enter into this covenant as the one inaugurating the New Covenant, which would bring Gentiles into covenant with God as well. We as Christians believe that through baptism, we are brought into covenant with God. God promises to give us eternal life, in return for our promise to renounce sin and all the forces of evil, and to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, living a new life in, through, and for him.

We often hear that the gift of new life in Christ is a “free gift” – and in one sense, it is true. We are given this new life without our having done anything to deserve it. It is a free gift of grace.

But in another sense, it is not free – in return for this “free gift”, we agree to be completely transformed in Christ, and to give our whole lives over to him.

The covenant in the Old Testament involved many sacrifices. Clearly, circumcision involves a sacrifice of flesh and blood. Many other parts of the covenant were sealed with animal sacrifice. On Candlemas, which we celebrate on February 2, we celebrate the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, with a sacrifice of two turtledoves, in accordance with the commandment in the Torah.

And much of our faith as Christians revolves around the doctrine that Christ sacrificed his life for us on the cross, and there is a long tradition of thinking about the precious blood of Jesus, and its cleansing power in our lives. There are many hymns written about it, such as “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” and “There is Power in the Blood”, but even many more traditional hymns, such as “The Church’s One Foundation”, make reference to it, saying of the church that “with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died”. There is even a devotion to the seven sheddings of blood of our Lord, of which the Circumcision is the first.

In our day, many are uncomfortable talking about the place of blood and sacrifice in our faith, and it is certainly outside the scope of this sermon to examine all of the theories of the Atonement. However, it is significant to note that just as circumcision involves the shedding of blood in bringing someone new into God’s covenant with the Jewish people, so baptism is the symbolic death and resurrection of the new Christian into Christ’s death and resurrection.

This is a very important beginning in our new life with Christ. The deepest relationships we have are with those with whom we have gone through suffering of some kind. Put another way, if you haven’t shed blood, sweat, and tears in your spiritual journey, you haven’t gotten anywhere. Being a Christian involves putting our whole being – our blood, our sweat, our tears – as well as our joys, our laughter, our happiness – into our walk with Christ.

As we celebrate the beginning of a new secular year, in commemorating the Circumcision of our Lord, may we resolve to make this a year in which we give our all to Christ, knowing that we will receive so much more in return.

Entering the Promised Land: A Sermon on Joshua 3:7-17

2011-10-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, when I lived in Atlanta, I would occasionally attend Shabbat services at Congregation Bet Haverim, the glbt synagogue affiliated with the Reconstructionist movement. They met in the parish hall of an Episcopal church that I attended for two years. One Friday night, I had the great privilege of being present for the dedication of their Torah scroll. The student rabbi leading services, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, later became the rabbi of Congregation Bet Simchat Torah, the glbt synagogue in New York City. She had us put our chairs in two long rows facing each other, and hold out our hands, and unrolled the Torah scrolls on our outstretched arms. She made a joke about no one getting out the correction fluid for the “clobber passage” on homosexuality. The passage in front of me was the one giving the laws of Yom Kippur.

The sermon she preached that night was one of the best and most memorable sermons I’ve ever heard. She mentioned that, while most of the Torah dealt with the journey of the Israelites toward the Promised Land, they never reached it within the Five Books. Even Moses, the greatest prophet of the Jewish people, was not allowed to enter, but had to see it from afar before dying and being buried. She compared that to our spiritual lives, during which we are always “on the way” toward the fullness of the presence of God, and of living in perfect harmony with our neighbors – yet we never reach that destination in this life, although it is to be hoped that we are moving closer to that destination.

I believe that this insight is valid for us as Christians as well. We will never reach the place where we are constantly “practicing the presence of God”, to use the phrase used by the Carmelite lay brother and spiritual master Brother Lawrence, who famously said that he was as conscious of the presence of God while washing dishes as he was on his knees in the chapel before the Blessed Sacrament. We may have glimpses, we may even have extended periods of this, yet we never reach the point where this is our reality twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

And we never reach the point where our whole lives are lived in perfect charity with our neighbors, live lived in full witness to peace and justice. We may strive for God’s kingdom to come on earth, but it will never be here in its fullness on earth before the eschaton.

Today’s first reading, in the book of Joshua, which appears after the Torah, tells of the arrival of the Israelites in the Promised Land. But there is a final hurdle that must be overcome before they can enter: the Jordan River. God tells Joshua that the way they can overcome that obstacle and enter is by having the priests take the Ark of the Covenant, and walk into the Jordan River. The waters will then gather in a heap, and the dry land of the riverbed will appear, and the Israelites will be able to cross over in ease.

And that is exactly what they did.

The Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred object in Israelites’ worship life. When not in travel, it rested in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Tabernacle and Temple. On top of it rested the Mercy Seat, on which the High Priest sprinkled blood on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. There are two accounts in different parts of the Bible as to what was inside of the Ark. In some places, it is recorded that only the two tablets of the law, containing the Ten Commandments, were placed inside. In other placed, there are added a scroll of the Torah, a jar of manna – the mysterious substance that God rained down from heaven to feed the Israelites, and finally, the budding almond rod of Aaron. When there were those outside the Levite tribe who wished to be priests in place of Aaron, God instructed Moses to have each tribe place an almond rod – a dead branch -- inside the Tabernacle, and in the morning, Aaron’s had budded, and the others had not.

In our own lives as Christians, while we will not reach our true home, the Promised Land, in this life, there are even obstacles preventing us from reaching those glimpses we are given in this life. Like the Israelites, God has provided us with an Ark that contains gifts that can help us overcome those obstacles, our Jordan River separating us from the land of Canaan. If I may be permitted an allegorical interpretation of the Ark, I believe we as Christians can profit from this passage.

Just as the Ark contained the scroll of the law, and the tablets with the commandments, so we are given the gift of Scripture. In the first Psalm, it says of the righteous that “his [or her] delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he [or she] meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2) – which is quoted in the Rule of St. Albert, the Carmelite Rule, as the principal duty of those following it. As we meditate on Scripture, day and night, our lives are transformed, and we are able to be conformed more and more to the image of Christ, in which we are created, and to which we are restored. The word of God in Scripture leads us to the Eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ.

We are also given manna in the form of the Eucharist, and by extension all of the sacraments. We are fed week by week, or even day by day, by the Body and Blood of Christ, receiving Him into our lives, so that we may become living tabernacles, sharing Christ with all with whom we come in contact. We receive the Body of Christ, so that we may become the Body of Christ in the world.

And the rod of Aaron reminds us of the baptismal priesthood to which we are all called. As we share in the offering of our lives to God as a living sacrifice, as Christ offered his body on the altar of the Cross for the whole world, so we too receive new life, just as Christ was raised from the dead. We mediate the reconciliation of the world to God through Christ by sharing with Christ in his eternal priesthood.

As we continue our journey, may we be filled with grace to receive these gifts of Scripture, Eucharist, and Royal Priesthood that we are given in our own Ark of the Covenant, Jesus Christ, and may we be enabled to pass into the Promised Land through Christ.

The Challenges and Gifts of Priesthood: On being a Confessor

2011-10-22T17:42:00.001-07:00

It is tricky to discuss one's experience as a confessor, lest it lead to inadvertent breaking of the seal of the confessional. However, let me just say that the challenge, as I see it, is not the particular sins confessed. Most confessions, I would imagine, involve the confession of mundane sins of the sort that everyone commits on a regular basis, and in this day and age, particularly in the ISM context, everyone who comes to confession is sincerely penitent. Most confessors, upon hearing the list of sins, will most likely think, "Oh, yes, I committed this sin just the other day. Yes, that is an area I need to work on as well." Giving a penance (and I have only given the reading/praying of Scripture -- mostly the Psalms -- as a penance) and giving absolution is not really the challenge.

The real challenge is meeting the penitent where they are in their spiritual life and helping them. Some penitents come because confession is a regular part of their spiritual lives, and they are really only seeking absolution. And that is okay -- that may only be there to receive the sacrament. Others, in addition to this, may come to the sacrament also seeking a way to deepen their spiritual journey, and the confessor ideally will be able to hear this and provide some counsel or advice that will help the person to take the next step, whatever that may, on that journey. And since people are coming from a variety of places along that journey, this can be a challenge.

It's really no different at all from ministering to the people who come to Mass. The priest's duty as preacher and celebrant of the Mass is to preach the Word of God well and to celebrate the sacrament in a reverent and prayerful way, so that all who attend may receive the Word and the Body and Blood of Christ to strengthen them for service in the world. However, there are those who will come with a particular spiritual need, and before or after Mass, the priest may be called upon to provide further pastoral care to help that person where they are. Again, that can be a real challenge -- in fact, that may be a much bigger challenge, since it comes in the context of interacting with a whole community, and it can be trickier to discern the signs of what is going on with a person.

Discussing the interesting hard cases of the really big sins, or the preaching of particularly difficult texts, or the precise rubrics of the Mass are fun exercises -- it is dealing pastorally with individuals and communities that is the difficult work, and it is an art, not a science -- and the grace of the Holy Spirit in the moment often proves much more valuable than all the conversation about it in the world.

On Priesthood

2011-10-15T15:22:00.001-07:00

(in response to a question asking "What exactly it is that priests *are* and how priest, deacon, and laity are distinct in how they *are* in the world?")

First, the three orders of ordained ministry involve identification with particular aspects of Christian discipleship to which all baptized Christians are called to some degree -- it is just that deacons, priests, and bishops are called to identify with them to a degree that ordinary Christians are not. All are called to serve, as Christ was called to serve, but deacons are called to identify with that servanthood in such a way that their whole life becomes a life of servanthood. All are called to act in priestly ways, but priests are called to identify with Christ as priest and victim in such a way that their whole life becomes a life of priesthood. And bishops, in addition to being "high priests", are called to the ministry of shepherding, of overseeing the church -- and all are called to that ministry to one extent or another, but bishops are called to identify with the church in such a way that their whole life is a life lived for the church.

Specifically, priests are called to be ministers of Word and Sacrament, most especially the Eucharist. All Christians should read and meditate on Scripture, and make the Bible their own book -- but priests are called to so identify with Scripture that they are women and men of the Word, so that it permeates their very being, so that they can preach -- the official sermons during liturgy are when they do this most visibly, but in a sense, there should never be a time in their waking life when they are not (and the dreams of a priest while sleeping should be filled with biblical symbolism). All Christians are called upon to sanctify their daily lives with the presence of Christ, but through the life of constant prayer (the center of which is the Divine Office, with its round of psalms, scripture, and prayer on behalf of the church) in intercession for the church, the priest is called to live out that Incarnation constantly. (While I know that religious do this as well, the Divine Office is more of a means of sanctification for religious, whereas priests and other clergy are more bound to recite it on behalf of the church than as a means of personal sanctification. It is sacrificial.) Finally, with the Eucharist, the priest becomes an "alter Christus", "another Christ", in acting on behalf of Christ as the priest who makes the one sacrifice of Himself on Calvary, and acting with Christ in offering himself or herself on behalf of and in intercession for the world.

Another way of looking at this is to look at where the "home" of each order is. The place of ministry for the laity is in the world. When they come to church, they sit in the nave, and are the ones who receive ministry. Laity do not come to church to minister, but to be ministered to, so that they can return to the world to minister. The place of ministry for the deacon is at the threshold -- during the week, near the door of the church, acting to communicate between church and world. The place of the deacon during the liturgy of the word is at the crossing, between the nave and the chancel, proclaiming the gospel facing the people, leading the intercessions facing the altar. The place of the deacon during the liturgy of the Eucharist is at the altar, assisting the priest. The place of the priests during the week is in the church, ministering to those who come for solace and ministry. Their place in the liturgy is in the pulpit and at the altar. The bishop, as a priest, belongs in those places as well, but also at the cathedra, overseeing the whole operation. Joseph described it thus at the gathering with the clergy -- God owns the restaurant, the bishop is the manager, the priests are the chefs, the deacons are the waiters, assisted by the minor order busboys, and the laity are the customers who come to eat.

On This Rock I Will Build My Church

2011-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Matthew 16:13-20

There are a lot of people who have fun giving ironic nicknames to others. The giant, muscular football player named Tiny. The fluffy little dog named Killer. My neighbor’s cat Pixie, who despite the cute name, has a pit bull whimpering in fear.

Jesus did something like that in today’s gospel when he made a pun on the name Peter, which means Rock. “I say to you that you are Petros, and on this petra I will build my church.” But anyone familiar with the story of Peter in the New Testament knows that he was anything but a rock. He was actually rather unstable.

When Jesus was walking on the water, Peter impetuously decided to try it as well. But as soon as he got out on the waves, his fears got the best of him, he took his eyes off of Jesus, and he began to sink, so that Jesus then had to rescue him. On the night before he was betrayed, Jesus told Peter that he would deny him three times before the cock crowed. Peter said, “Not me! I would never do anything like that!” Of course, we all know the story – he did exactly that. When the going got tough, Peter proved himself to be a fair-weather friend.

This continued even after the resurrection. In Galatians, Paul tells how Peter would ignore the dietary laws when eating with those from a Gentile background, but then would follow them with those who insisted that all the Christians had to follow them as well. Paul rebuked him for his hypocrisy.

I even read the exchange between Jesus and Peter in the beginning of today’s gospel as Jesus gently teasing Peter. Jesus asks the disciples who people say he is, and the disciples tell him the different theories they have heard. Then, he asks them who they say he is. I picture them all looking at each other, afraid to guess, and then Peter impetuously guesses – not as the act of deep faith as it is often read, but rather as a guess, a stab in the dark. When Jesus tells him that “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”, it is not so much a pious statement as it is a recognition that Peter is too much of a blockhead to ever come up with such a profound statement on his own – it is only by the grace of God that he is able to perceive the truth of who Jesus is – Christ, the anointed one, the son of the living God – fully God, fully human, God incarnate.

But I take great hope in this. If Christ could use Peter to do great things for God, then Christ can use me, as well – in fact, he can use all of us.

And when Jesus says that he will build his church on this rock, he is not referring to Peter alone, and still less to someone who holds an office that Peter may have held. He is referring to all of us who, by the grace of God, are able to recognize Jesus as the Anointed One, and who, by grace, are able to live our lives by that truth. All of us, when we make that confession, are made part of that rock on which the church is built – even as we stumble, as Peter stumbled, we know Christ is always ready to extend a hand to help us up.

So may we always live by the grace that enables us to recognize Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God.

Prayers for the Journey

2011-07-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

The request for my blessing by someone about to take a trip gives me great joy. It is not something I ever thought about prior to ordination. It is not even something that happens with any great frequency. It is certainly not something that takes a lot of time and effort, as preaching and other tasks do. But it is immensely satisfying, and I am always delighted when someone asks me to do it, as two people did this week.

I don’t have a standard formula – I pray extemporaneously for the person, adapting the prayer to the particular journey they are about to take, ending with a blessing in the name of the Trinity as I trace the sign of the cross on the supplicant’s forehead. Simple. I hope it is meaningful to the person seeking the blessing – I find great meaning in offering it.

Whenever I am about to leave for an overnight journey, I pray the Itinerary, a short office consisting of the Benedictus, the Lord’s Prayer, several versicles, and several collects evoking biblical journeys. It ends with the wonderful versicle and response “V.Let us go forth in peace. R. In the Name of the Lord. Amen.” The antiphon on the Benedictus recalls the journey of Tobit by invoking the archangel Raphael, and the Benedictus contains the prayer “to guide our feet into the way of peace”. The collects mention the journeys of the Israelites in the desert, the Magi on their way to pay homage to the newborn Christ, and Abraham as he set out from Ur, as well as recalling John the Baptist at whose birth the Benedictus was first recited by his father. It is a beautiful prayer, and it has a way of calming me as I set out. The Anglican Breviary adds to it a form of thanksgiving at the journey’s end, using Psalm 103, which is also lovely, and which helps me to return to my everyday life after a trip.

It is my prayer that all of my readers have safe travels wherever they go, as well as a blessed journey with God through life.

Part III of Sermon: "Confessions of a Church Polity Geek: Reflections on Doing the Holy Work of the Beloved Community"

2011-07-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is part two of a three-part sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County on Sunday, June 26, 2011. Part one can be found here. Part two can be found there.

Because of the time spent to prepare this sermon, I did not have time to prepare a sermon for St. Mary of Grace's Sunday evening Eucharist celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi. I had planned on recycling a sermon I have given several times on the Eucharist. A few minutes before Mass, it occurred to me that if I switched the order of "discerning Christ's body in the Church" and "discerning Christ's body in the poor", I could use the four points in the third part of this sermon as an explanation of ways to live out being Christ's body the Church. During the singing of the Gloria in excelsis, it occurred to me that each of these four points could be tied to one of the marks of the Church from the Nicene Creed, and so in brackets, I have included the appropriate mark with the appropriate section, although this was not part of the sermon as preached to the UU congregation. There was more explanation of how the marks corresponded with the points, but that will have to wait for another blogpost. Self-plagiarism is a preacher's best friend.

There are four things the church must do in order to do its work well.

[ONE] First, each part of the church, be it a congregation, a regional unit, or a denomination, must order all of its activities around the central core values it holds as foundational – the beliefs and practices that are most sacred and most important to it. Of course, first, this means that a church unit must know what those values are, and be in unity about them. Every activity in which the church engages must be evaluated to see if it is in basic harmony with those values, and if not, whether it should be let go or reconfigured in order to better express the fundamental mission of the church. The church should also carefully consider whether it is being called to new ministries to better carry out its mission.

[HOLY] A church must be concerned with spiritual growth. Many religious traditions tell stories about a mountain as a metaphor for spiritual growth. Moses went up Mount Sinai to meet God and receive the law. Jesus went up a mountain with three of his disciples for the Transfiguration. St. John of the Cross, the great Carmelite mystic, used the Carmelite foundational symbol of Mount Carmel as the basis for his teaching about prayer in his classic work The Ascent of Mount Carmel, with a diagram of the mountain laying out the progress of the Christian’s life of prayer with God.

When you climb a mountain, there are two ways to go – you can keep ascending and going toward the top, or you can start going down. The spiritual life is similar – you are either progressing, going higher or deeper, or stagnating and declining, moving away from union with the divine. Everything the church does should be helping its members grow in the spiritual life. If it is not, it is very likely that it is moving its members away from the divine and hindering the spiritual life.

[CATHOLIC] A church must also balance the needs of the community as a whole with the needs of the individual. In order for the church to prosper, its members must sacrifice in order to contribute to the well-being of the community as a whole. Just showing up week after week is a sacrifice – in our busy society, there are always more enjoyable things that one could be doing. Members need to be willing to contribute their time, their talent, and their treasure for the church to continue to do its work. And members of the church need to be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to spiritual growth so that they can support one another. A church whose members do not sacrifice is not a true community – it is a collection of individuals, a social club.

But the church must also work for the good of the individual. A church that demands sacrifice but offers no freedom in return, and runs roughshod over its members’ individual gifts and needs, is a cult. True spirituality inspires each individual to attain the highest level of growth and flowering of her individual gifts. This must always be respected and nurtured.

[APOSTOLIC] Finally, there must be a balance between the pursuit of spirituality, the nurturing of community, and reaching out to the world at large with the church’s message of faith, hope, and love. A church that focuses on spirituality to the neglect of community and mission risks pursuing a false spirituality that is not engaged with real life – a spirituality which is an illusion. A church that is only inward-looking, fostering close relationships among its members without reaching out in love to others, risks becoming a social club. A church that is only concerned with fighting for justice, neglecting spirituality and its own health risks becoming a political club or a social service agency. While there is nothing wrong with either of these, it is not what the church is called to be, and it cannot do those tasks as well as organizations whose mission is to be a political party or a social service agency. All three of these tasks are necessary, and they must be balanced.

As we reflect on how the church does its work, let us commit ourselves more fully to our beloved community, and gird ourselves to do the holy work we are called to do.

Part II of Sermon: "Confessions of a Church Polity Geek: Reflections on Doing the Holy Work of the Beloved Community"

2011-06-30T10:06:00.001-07:00

This is part two of a three-part sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County on Sunday, June 26, 2011. Part one can be found here.

There are three basic types of governance in church polity: congregational, presbyterian, and episcopal.

In the congregational model, each local congregation is autonomous and governs itself, without interference from higher church bodies. The local congregation owns its own property, and hires and fires its staff without interference. The most that can happen if it does something that displeases a denominational body is that that body can expel the congregation from the denomination. In this form of church polity, the laity are the ones with the most power.

In the presbyterian model, the governance is placed in the hands of small groups of elders, including clergy and a small body of lay elders in each congregation. Power is often distributed among the different levels, with the decisions of a lower body needing to be ratified by a higher body, and vice versa. The local body of elders call the clergy, but this must usually be ratified by the regional body of elders. Property is usually in the hands of the denomination, although there may be provisions for a church to secede with its property if it votes to do so by a supermajority, with the regional body ratifying it. In this form of church polity, the clergy and lay elders are the ones with the most power.

In the episcopal model, the governance is placed in the hands of bishops, who have authority in a given geographical area. It is the bishop who has the authority to ordain, and to place and to move clergy. The property is usually held by the denomination or by the regional unit of government, with the bishop having a lot of the authority over it. In this form of church polity, the bishops are the ones with the most power.

Many denominations do not have a pure form of church polity, but a mix of two or more of the basic types. In the Episcopal Church, it is sometimes joked that the polity is episcopal as regards the bishops, presbyterian as regards the clergy, and congregational as regards the laity!

There are advantages and disadvantages to all three systems.

In the congregational system, there is a high potential for the involvement of the laity, and decisions are made at the lowest level, so there can be a much greater chance of appropriate response to local situations. On the other hand, when dysfunctional situations arise, there is no denominational official who can step in and intervene and address the dysfunction. It is harder to address both congregations that treat clergy abusively, and clergy who are abusive of their congregations. My own father was very dysfunctional, and was fired by four congregations. It would have been very helpful if someone could have stepped in and made sure that he got the help he needed to address his dysfunctional behavior.

Also, while democracy works great in many situations, it can also lead to a “mob mentality” that inflicts harm on minorities. The Southern Baptist Convention, which is adamantly congregational, regularly votes to demonize lgbt folk.

In the presbyterian system, there is the advantage of governing by the wisdom of those most invested in the church. I have met many committed lay elders in Presbyterian churches, and they are a credit to their denomination. However, the danger can be that the process of governance so consumes the energy of those involved, that there is not enough energy for other aspects of the church’s ministry. In addition, it is more difficult to be flexible on the local level, since unity across the denomination tends to be much more highly prized in this system. And there can be a two-tier system of those with power and those without.

In the episcopal system, there is much more efficiency since one person is making most of the decisions, at least for a given region. And therein lies the rub – if the bishop is a person of great vision and wisdom, she or he can provide great leadership and can lead the church to great things. If not, however, the church suffers from the shortsightedness, mediocrity, or dysfunction of the bishop. I think this system works best in small churches, such as many independent sacramental jurisdictions, where the bishop knows everyone in the church, and when there is an absence of a theology that links the particular denomination with the church as a whole or with infallibility, so that people are free to leave if there is a dysfunctional bishop.

I have seen effective examples of all three types of governance, and disasters in all three. So it is not so much the type of polity that is most important to whether a church is doing its work effectively, but how those who govern use that polity.

Remembering My Mother's Death One Year Later

2011-06-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. She died much as she lived – quietly, avoiding the spotlight, and without fanfare.

My father, in contrast, was a noisy person, always striving to be at the center of attention. He couldn’t even sit still – sitting in a chair, he would constantly shift position, fidget with objects, sigh or whistle or say something, even when alone, so that being in the same room with him one could not help but pay attention to him. Even when he was in his study praying or reading, he did so noisily. Reading his Bible or the many biblical commentaries in his library, he would constantly remark aloud on things he saw in the text. And when he prayed, he prayed aloud, sometimes muttering under his breath, sometimes shouting quite loudly. If he was home, he was making sounds, so that you knew it.

And his death was no different. In the hospital, five days before his ninety-second birthday, as I sat waiting for the end, his breathing changed dramatically, and he began to struggle for breath. I called in a nurse, and each of us held one of his hands. I told her something of his life story – how he had lost his first wife in an automobile accident, his first daughter at birth, and how my mother and I nearly died when I was born. I told her of the poverty he endured as a child, one of fourteen children of a mentally unbalanced father whose erratic actions kept the family impoverished. I told her of his religious journey as a fundamentalist minister.

I also told her of his stubbornness. Once, while home at Thanksgiving, as I was preparing to drive my parents down to the Ozarks for the family Thanksgiving dinner, a neighbor’s cat for whom my mother would leave out food was on the carport, rubbing up against my legs and purring. My father, who walked with a cane by that time as a result of strokes, came out to join us, and fell, with his cane going through the window of the screen door, shattering the glass. After my mother and I got him in and settled in his recliner, I put on gloves to pick up the glass, first throwing the cat into our car so he wouldn’t get hurt. But my father, rather than being content with resting comfortably after his fall, insisted on driving himself to some automotive store, after the cat had been liberated, of course, and taking me with him, as if to prove that he could still drive.

Similarly, I told her how, after his doctor told me he had six to twelve months to live, he lived eighteen months – largely, I suspect, to prove him wrong. He drew a breath, and then was silent, and she said, “That was his last breath.” And then he drew what was actually his last breath, and I looked at her and said, with a twinkle in my eye, “You had to issue him a challenge, didn’t you?”

My mother, on the other hand, was quiet. When she was home, her presence did not intrude on my consciousness as my father’s did, and we could inhabit the same space comfortably. She would speak her mind when she thought it necessary, but those times were few and rather far between.

While my father would get restless and get out and drive around town, stopping to gab with his friends in various places, my mother was fairly content to stay home, and she never obtained a driver’s license. (She also never got her ears pierced, and never wore pants.) Once they were in the nursing home, my father would spend as much time in the common areas as possible, having the aides wheel him there. My mother, in contrast, would hide out in her room, refusing the coaxing of the staff to come join in activities.

The night she died, friends of theirs, although my age, took me out to eat. My mother had been unconscious for several days. He was a Southern Baptist minister, and she had been a close friend of my mother’s, both of them regarding my parents as mentors and, in some ways, surrogate parents. We returned to the room, and he prayed with us, and they left. I sat down next to her bed, watching television, and about fifteen minutes after they left, noticed that she wasn’t breathing, and so I called in the nurses to confirm her death. There was no immediate change before she stopped breathing – indeed, although she had stopped not too long before I noticed, I don’t know how quickly I noticed after her last breath. She just slipped away quietly. I remember looking out the window and seeing one of the most spectacular sunsets I had ever seen, with the sky full of pinks, and reds, and oranges.

My Christian faith assures me that she is at peace.

Mary Coldwell Cravens, January 24, 1925 – June 28, 2010

Part I of Sermon "Confessions of a Church Polity Geek: Reflections on Doing the Holy Work of the Beloved Community"

2011-06-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

I delivered the sermon yesterday, June 26, 2011, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County, in whose beautiful facilities my own church has the privilege of worshiping on Sunday evenings. The description of the sermon for their bulletin read:

Bishops have been assassinated for liturgies that lasted too long -- fistfights have broken out over the date of Easter -- excommunications galore have been issued through the centuries as people of faith have made decisions about their religious communities. Thankfully, none of these fates await the minister and lay delegation of UUCDC as they travel to Charlotte for the UUA General Assembly! While they are there, Bishop Cravens will reflect on healthy ways religious communities can engage in the holy work they are called to do.

For the reading earlier in the service, from which this sermon draws inspiration if not exactly being an exposition, I chose two biblical passages: Psalm 133 and Acts 2:42-46.

Because the sermon is a more central part of the service in the UU tradition, my sermon was considerably longer than the sermons I usually give, and since there were three distinct sections, I will post them separately (largely because I have not completed committing them to cyber-paper, given the fact that I preach like a Baptist). Here is part 1.

It may seem odd that I am a church polity geek. I love to read blogs by members of various denominations describing the political issues their churches are facing, and I tend to be pretty current in my awareness of those issues in most major (and some minor) religious groups. But I come by it honestly.

I spent a year and a half discerning a vocation to the Atonement Friars, a branch of the Franciscans in the Roman Catholic denomination. During that time, I experienced how that religious institute governed itself, and got at least some exposure to the governance of the denomination as a whole. Before entering, I actually read all of the canons of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law.

Later, I served on the vestry of an Episcopal parish, and served as a Lay Delegate to the Diocesan Convention from the parish, again getting to know much of the inner workings of the Episcopal Church. Also, during that time, I managed to get roped into serving on the board of a Presbyterian parachurch organization as an “ecumenical representative” thanks to the executive coordinator, a friend of mine from divinity school.

About three years ago, with the help of some other members of the jurisdiction of which I am the bishop, I put together the Canons and Policies that govern how we do the Lord’s work church in our own small corner of the church.

But my interest in church polity goes back much further. Given the family into which I was born, I really didn’t have a chance.

My father and eight of his ten brothers were ordained ministers in various evangelical denomination, and one of the remaining two was a lay preacher, and if the other brother had not been killed in battle in World War II, he might very well have preached as well. True story: I memorized my uncles’ names by their denominational affiliation. Uncles Rupert, Luther, and George were ministers in the Church of the Nazarene, although Uncle George resigned when he divorced, and lived out his days as a Southern Baptist layman. Uncles Wilbur, Marvin, and Robert were Cumberland Presbyterian ministers. (Cumberland Presbyterians are basically hillbilly Presbyterians. I come from an Ozark Hillbilly family.) Uncle Ellis ended up as a Cumberland Presbyterian minister as well, after being a Free-Will Baptist minister for a few years. Uncle Vernon, after briefly trying out the Cumberland Presbyterians, became a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian denomination in this country. My father was briefly licensed as a Free-Will Baptist preacher, and was ordained a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, but spent most of his career as a Southern Baptist minister, except for a few years during my childhood when he was an Assemblies of God pastor, before returning to the Southern Baptists.

I actually attended my first national church governance meeting when I was three – the Southern Baptist Convention in Denver. My main memory is going to the children’s room and sitting on a box to watch “Jot” cartoons – a church cartoon the Southern Baptists put out. (Not nearly as interesting as “Davey and Goliath”, which I also watched, a claymation program put out by the Lutherans.)

My first serious interest in church polity came at about age 9. My father had decided to leave the Assemblies of God and return to the Southern Baptists. He had a copy of the Manual of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, because a friend of his was trying to recruit him when he found out he was leaving the Assemblies of God (which is also a Pentecostal denomination), and I was fascinated with the history of the denomination and with the rules governing the church. I was also fascinated with the yearbooks of the various Southern Baptist associations and conventions, with their constitutions, bylaws, and statistical tables.

At age 10, my father had returned to the pastorate of a Southern Baptist church, and I had “surrendered to preach” – that is, come forward during an altar call to say that I felt called to become a minister when I grew up. My parents were going to the Southern Baptist Convention in Kansas City that summer as “messengers”, as the Southern Baptists call their delegates, and it was decided that I, too, should be a messenger, since the church was entitled to an additional one, and they were afraid that the “liberals” were going to take over. I was fascinated with the greetings from Baptist denominations in other countries. I remember singing “How Firm a Foundation” with the tens of thousands of messengers, hearing Billy Graham preach – telling about his experiences in a Communist country, going through all the booths in the exhibitors’ hall. I also remember that one of the votes that was taken was about homosexuality – they overwhelmingly voted to condemn it, with only a few dissenting – who were immediately looked upon with suspicion by everyone else as possibly being gay and definitely not being Christian.

On the way to the convention, we stayed with my Uncle Marvin, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, and was fascinated with the book containing their Confession of Faith and the various polity documents, and requested one, which he sent me later that summer when they went to their own General Assembly.

A few years later, my father decided to return to the charismatic world and did not pastor a church for five years. At some point during that time, we began attending the United Methodist church our next door neighbors attended. I joined, and quickly took to reading the Book of Discipline, the book containing that denomination’s polity. The rule in United Methodism is that the Annual Conferences (roughly like UU districts) and General Conference must be made up of equal numbers of lay and clergy delegates. Each church has a lay delegate for every clergymember serving the congregation. Because there are ministers who are not pastors of congregations, serving in denominational bureaucracy, or chaplaincy, or the like, various annual conferences have come up with ways to make up the difference, and our annual conference let each district appoint two youth delegates, and I was appointed to be one of them for the conference occurring during the summer before my senior year.

In many ways it was a great experience. I attended all but one of the sessions. I enjoyed meeting other people. I bought some interesting books about worship that are still in my library. But I did miss one session – and I stayed away because it was too painful.

You see, when I was about thirteen, I started realizing that I was gay. Unfortunately, around that time, the United Methodist Church was debating the issue of ordaining openly gay clergy. A bishop in Colorado ordained an openly lesbian minister around 1982, and this caused an uproar in the more conservative parts of the denomination, including East Tennessee and southwest Virginia, the conference of which I was a part. That conference, like most of the Southern conferences, and some others, passed resolutions by overwhelming majorities condemning this move and demanding that the 1984 General Conference (they are held every four years) ban the ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals”, a ban that, sadly, passed and remains in the Book of Discipline and that has been joined by bans on same-sex marriages being performed by United Methodist clergy or on United Methodist church property.

And, while I remain fascinated by church polity and continue to read – for fun – various things about religious communities and how they make decisions, it’s a very important issue, because people’s spiritual lives are at stake. How religious communities go about their work can have profoundly negative – or profoundly positive – effects on people’s lives.

Sermon for Ascension Day

2011-06-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

Acts 1:1-11, Luke 24:44-53

Watching television can teach you a lot of interesting – if erroneous – things.

The most common illness is not the common cold, it’s retrograde amnesia.

Most babies are born in elevators or the back seat of taxicabs.

If you invite Jessica Fletcher to stay with you for a weekend, you or someone close to you will end up murdered.

And there is a whole genre of movies and television shows built on the premise that if parents go away for a trip and leave their teenagers alone unsupervised, a very wild and destructive party will take place in their absence. Sometimes, the damage is repaired before the parents return and the parents remain in the dark, sometimes not. Sometimes, there is a responsible child who objects to the party, but this child’s opinions are always ignored. But regardless, if parents make plans to leave town, you can be assured that mayhem will ensue in their absence.

Today, we celebrate the Ascension. Like the parents in the movies and television shows, Jesus is leaving and is putting us in charge while he is gone. We know Christ is coming back, although we don’t know when, despite the many failed efforts of some to determine the exact date. Some of us may still be here when he comes for the second time – or, more likely, we will go to meet Christ at the end of our lives, when our eyes close in death. In any event, like the teenagers left to their own devices, there will be a day of reckoning to determine how we’ve done with Christ’s house in his absence.

In today’s Gospel, from Luke, we hear the disciples being told by Jesus that they will be “clothed with power from on high” and that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [the Messiah’s] name to all nations” and that the disciples are Christ’s “witnesses”. We hear similar charges in the other synoptic gospels’ accounts of the Ascension, as well as in the account in the Acts of the Apostles. In John 14:12, Jesus tells the disciples that “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

As wonderful as it was for the disciples to have Jesus in an incarnate body with them during his sojourn on earth, it was necessary for their growth into Christian maturity – and OUR growth into Christian maturity – for him to ascend into heaven, so that we might have a chance to do the works he had been doing, and even greater works.

What are the works of Christ’s we are called to continue and build upon?

Jesus came teaching and preaching the kingdom of God, and it was not what many expected – a military overthrow of the oppressors who occupied the land. No, building the kingdom of God means loving one’s neighbor as oneself – both the neighbors that are easy to love and the ones who are our enemies. Building the kingdom of God means embracing the paradox that true riches come from being poor in spirit, that the meek shall inherit the earth, and that those who mourn will be comforted. We are called to continue to teach and preach this message, and all of the things which Jesus taught and preached, and to do so both with our words and with our lives.

Jesus also came to heal the sick – both those sick in body and those sick in their souls. We most likely will not have the gift of miraculously healing the sick, but we are called to work to heal the bodies of those who are sick and cannot find healing, to work to heal our communities so that they become places which promote the health and wellness of people in all aspects of their being, and most importantly, we are to work to help people find that spiritual healing that can only come through repentance from sin and turning to God as Savior and Lord.

Most importantly, Jesus gave up his life for us on the cross and was raised from the dead on the third day, so that we, too, might know new life, both in this world and in the world to come. And we are called to offer our lives in sacrifice in union with Christ as well, and to preach the redemption that comes from trusting in the risen Christ.

We have been given a great work to do by Christ as he ascended into heaven. When he comes again, what will he find? Will he find that we have been faithful in doing the works he did, and even greater works? Or will he find that we have trashed his house like spoiled teenagers?

Father, Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit

2011-05-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

Psalm 31

In te, Domine, speravi

1

In you, O LORD, have I taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame; *
deliver me in your righteousness.

2

Incline your ear to me; *
make haste to deliver me.

3

Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe,
for you are my crag and my stronghold; *
for the sake of your Name, lead me and guide me.

4

Take me out of the net that they have secretly set for me, *
for you are my tower of strength.

5

Into your hands I commend my spirit, *
for you have redeemed me,
O LORD, O God of truth.

15

My times are in your hand; *
rescue me from the hand of my enemies,
and from those who persecute me.

16

Make your face to shine upon your servant, *
and in your loving-kindness save me.

The Psalms are part of the core of both Jewish and Christian worship. The Psalms were used in the Temple which stood in Jesus’ time, as well as in the synagogue. Among Christians, the Psalms are the biggest component of the Office, a form of prayer going back to the early centuries of Christian life, and which form the daily liturgical prayer of clergy, religious, and many laity. The first few verses of Psalm 31, our Psalm for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, were at one time recited every night as part of Compline, the last prayer of the day, prayed before retiring, in the non-monastic Western Office. Jesus himself quoted from the Psalms often, and perhaps the most striking example of this is the fact that of the seven utterances recorded in the Gospels as being his last words from the Cross, two are quotations from the Psalms, and the last words he cries out before his crucifixion in Luke’s gospel are taken from today’s Psalm – “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

This past week, there has been a lot of talk about Harold Camping’s prediction that the Rapture would occur yesterday, on May 21. This prediction, which was proven false yesterday, was based on a false sense of security using erroneous methods of biblical interpretation. Camping’s followers were certain that they would be taken out of the world, leaving all the unbelievers to face five months of terrible judgment before being annihilated. On the Family Radio website, there is actually a tract claiming that there is “infallible proof” from the Bible that May 21 is the date.

Sociologists tell us that apocalyptic predictions are much more common during times of economic upheaval and uncertainty, so it is not surprising that Camping attracted so many followers. But the view that we can know with absolute certainty that we will be raptured out of this world on a particular date stands in sharp contrast with verse 15 of Psalm 31, “My times are in your hand”. We have no control, ultimately, over what will happen in our lives. Certainly, there is much that we can do that will most likely make our lives better, and many things that will make them worse. But in an instant, our lives can change dramatically, be it through illness, accident, death of a loved one, the actions of loved ones – over whom, let’s face it, we have no control, as much as we might like to pretend otherwise. But the promise of scripture is not that God will miraculously change the circumstances, but that God will be with us no matter what we face.

And this is shown very dramatically in our Lord’s last words from the cross, taken from verse 5 – “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” The night before, Jesus prayed “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”. And the cup was not removed from him, and he was executed on the cross. But to the end, he maintained his trust in God, no matter the circumstances, commending his spirit into the hands of God the Father at the end. And so we are called to do. Not to seek a quick exit from our troubles, not to ignore them, but to trust God to be at our side as we go through them, so that we can pray with Jesus, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

The Rapture

2011-05-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Today was supposed to be the day for the rapture, according to Harold Camping, the leader of Family Radio, who arrived at the date through a whole series of confusing and complicated mathematical equations based on Biblical passages. So far, none of the earthquakes that he predicted have materialized, and it seems pretty clear that his predictions have been proven wrong. A lot of people – myself included – have been ridiculing his predictions and celebrating his failure.

But there is a tragic component to this – he has thousands of followers, who have quit jobs, spent their life savings spreading his message, and in general, ruined their lives. They will have to pick up the pieces of their lives and try to rebuild. Worse, many of them have children, who have been subject to abuse and neglect as part of this. I have read stories about teenagers despondent over the fact that their parents refused to save for college in light of the end of the world, and children told point blank by their parents that they would not be going to heaven.

And this breaks my heart, because I experienced the abusive effects that sometimes come from religion as a child. While my father, a minister in the Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God denominations at different points in my childhood, never predicted a specific date (although he did once say, around 1974, that he was quite certain that the rapture would take place no later than 1977), he did preach an imminent end to the world, and I was exposed to books and movies that graphically depicted the horrors that unbelievers left behind would experience. On numerous occasions, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, from a nightmare where I was one of those left behind. Sometimes, I would find myself alone in the house, not knowing where my parents were, and would experience a panic attack, convinced that they had been raptured while I had been left behind. On one such occasion, my father thought it would be fun to play a prank, ignoring my hysterical upset cries, and jumped out and scared me, and although I begged and pleaded with him never to do that again, he just laughed it off as a fun joke. (I did not tell him that the specific source of my fear was being left behind after the rapture, but his lack of empathy for my obvious fear and panic is not something I would recommend as a parenting technique.)

When I was eight, I was sick with a cold, flu, or some common illness, and stayed home from school. My father gave me a book on divine healing that morning written for adults by Hobart Freeman, a minister in the charismatic movement, and told me to read it and pray for healing. Later that afternoon, when he asked if I had read it, I told him I had not, because I did not feel well. He said that I obviously wanted to be sick, because if I wanted to get well, I would read the book and pray and believe and be healed. I later learned that because Hobart Freeman’s followers did not seek medical care because of his teaching that it was sinful, several children and others had died, and as a result he was put on trial for negligent homicide. Ironically, before the case came to trial, he himself died from a serious illness for which he refused medical treatment.

When my father was removed by congregational vote from his pastorate, something that occurred in four different churches over the course of my childhood, about the time I was nine, he received information from the denomination (at that point, the Assemblies of God) about a number of congregations that were open. I remember that he, my mother, and I would discuss them. One did not sound very ideal, and when I said so, my father yelled at me that if I kept refusing openings God was giving us, we wouldn’t find a new church, and it would be my fault. (Later, as a teenager, when they learned I was gay, my father again blamed me for his not being able to be called to a church, saying that God was punishing us for my sin.)

These experiences were very damaging to me, and although I was ultimately able to find a way to experience a non-abusive and healthy form of Christian faith, it was an unnecessarily arduous journey, and there are scars that remain. And others who have experience abusive religion have not been so fortunate.

Religious abuse can undoubtedly occur in many religious contexts, but I think there is a special danger in communities which claim infallibility for their teachings and who have strong leaders who exercise that infallibility. In the case of the fundamentalist churches in which I was raised, the Bible was considered to be the inerrant word of God, and the preachers who interpreted it were often put on a pedestal and given a lot of power over their parishioners’ lives. Fortunately for the congregations he served, my father’s sometimes combative personality led them to reject his authority, and the Baptist doctrine of soul competency – the ability of every believer to interpret the Bible without a mediating authority – and Pentecostal view that the Spirit can work and speak through all who have received the baptism of the Spirit were able to act as counterbalances to my father’s abusive preaching.

It is my hope and prayer that as we consider this latest failed apocalypse, we will give some thought to the ways in which religious faith can be abusive, and do all in our power to remove those abusive aspects from ourselves and from our own faith communities.

Book of Exorcisms

2011-05-16T18:27:00.001-07:00

Deacon Michael Shirk has put together a Book of Exorcisms, published by Rene Vilatte Press, our jurisdiction's publishing concern. It is an exquisitely typeset, hardbound book. Here is purchase information: http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/book-of-exorcisms/15386303

The following is the Preface I wrote for it.

The Independent Catholic Christian Church, along with many other jurisdictions in the Independent Sacramental Movement, maintains the use of the traditional minor orders, including that of Exorcist, as steps in the journey toward the priesthood. One of our priests, Mother Sandra Hutchinson, as she prepared to be ordained an Exorcist, had this to say: “Of all the minor orders, this is the one that intimidates me the most. Evil is real, and this is a direct challenge to it. But God is real too, I know that. And I'm looking forward to it as well." And that sums up the order pretty well – we must acknowledge the reality of evil – in ourselves, in others, in the fallen world. But we must also acknowledge the sovereignty of God, recognizing that God is able to overcome evil. In Christ’s victory over sin, death, and evil through the Crucifixion and Resurrection, God has, once for all, triumphed over evil. The war is over – God has won, and evil has lost. But battles remain, and as those called to serve God in ordained ministry, we must be ready to confront evil in order to do the work God has called us to do, through the power and authority of Jesus Christ.

The rites in this book, which Deacon Michael Shirk has prepared, contain liturgical acts of exorcism. This book is intended to be given to the person being ordained as an Exorcist as the act of ordination. These rites are of two kinds: first, ritual exorcisms that take place during the blessing of certain created things, such as holy water, and the exorcisms that take place to prepare a person to receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism; and second, the extraordinary exorcism of a person who is obsessed or possessed by demons, traditionally called an “energumen”. In the Independent Catholic Christian Church, anyone who has been ordained to the minor order of Exorcist, and certainly all Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, may perform the first class of exorcisms, the ritual exorcisms. The exorcism of an energumen should only be undertaken by a Priest under the direction of the Bishop, except in case of emergency.

We are grateful to Deacon Michael Shirk for compiling the rites in this book. It is my hope and prayer that this book may assist the clergy of this jurisdiction and others in confronting and ridding the world of evil.

+Timothy Michael Cravens Feast of St. Gabriel the Archangel, 2011

Presiding Bishop

The Road to Emmaus

2011-05-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Luke 24:13 - 35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

O God, whose blessed Son did manifest himself to his disciples in the breaking of bread; Open, we pray thee, the eyes of our faith, that we may behold thee in all thy works; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP)

Most of us are aware of the popular “Footprints” poem, in which a person looks back along the beach and sees a couple of sets of footprints, and asks God, “Whose are the second set of footprints?” and God replies, “Those are mine, my child”. When the person looks back and sees that for the more difficult sections of the walk, there is only one set of footprints, they ask God, “Why weren’t you there with me during the more difficult sections?” God replies, “I carried you in my arms during those sections, my child”. It’s sappy, for sure, but it raises an interesting spiritual truth – often, we are unable to recognize the actions and presence of God while they are happening, and can only see them when we look back over our lives.

In today’s gospel, we have a similar situation. The disciples are scattered and in chaos. For three years, they had been following Jesus, whom many had thought to be the Messiah, and then their hopes were dashed when he was arrested and executed by the Roman authorities. But after a few days, several of the women who followed him claimed to have seen him alive, and then others went and found an empty tomb where he was buried. Cleopas and another disciple were on the road to Emmaus discussing all of this, when a stranger joined them, who seemed to be the only person in Jerusalem and the surrounding area who had not heard. Astonishingly enough, he began to discuss the scriptures with them, explaining how the death and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled prophecies and had to happen the way they did to fulfill God’s plan.

Then, as they turned aside at Emmaus, he began to leave them, but they persuaded him to turn aside and share a meal with them. And then, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them – and suddenly, their eyes were opened and they recognized him as Christ, and then he left them. Like the person in the Footprints poem, they were only able to perceive his presence as they looked back and remembered how their hearts had burned as he explained the scriptures to them, and how they had recognized him in the breaking of the bread.

We are presented in this reading with at least three ways in which Christ comes to us. First, rather implicitly in this passage, he comes to us when we are gathered as a Christian community. The two disciples were together talking about Christ, and he joined them, and was present with them in the discussions of the scriptures. Of course, it is good for us to read the Bible alone, and we will be blessed by this practice if we engage in it regularly, but scripture is the church's treasure, and it is in our gathering together to read it, to hear it expounded through preaching, and to meditate on it that it will bear the most fruit. In addition to being present in our common life and in the scriptures, Christ is known to us in the breaking of the bread – the Eucharist.

But like the disciples, we may not always be conscious of Christ’s presence in these three means of grace, or in others. Life in community is difficult at times. We may find the scriptures hard to engage. And we are not going to have a mystically transcendent experience every time we receive Communion. But if we engage these spiritual practices over time, we will be able to look back, and realize that our hearts burned within us, that Christ was known to us in the breaking of the bread, and that through the difficulties of life, Christ carried us in his arms. As we continue in the Easter season, may we deepen our faithfulness to these practices.

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen. (BCP)

There can be nothing disordered about lifelong, committed covenanted love: Marriage, Religion, and Law

2011-05-12T04:19:00.000-07:00

The following paragraphs will be included in a forthcoming academic book about church-state relations in a chapter on marriage equality. I will post more details once it is published.

The Independent Catholic Christian Church believes that Jesus Christ came to abolish the alienation and isolation separating people from God and one another. One source of this alienation is the rigid classification of people based on sex, sexual orientation, or parentage. We believe that ALL are invited by Christ to participate fully in the life of the church, regardless of sex or sexual orientation. We see this beautifully articulated in Galatians 3:28 -- "There is no longer Judean nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Our interpretation of this is that all Christians are to be treated equally as regards the sacraments -- which means that all marriages between two baptized persons entering into lifelong covenant are sacramental. There can be nothing disordered about lifelong, committed covenanted love -- and to declare as "disordered" a marriage because the partners are not of the "right" sex or ethnic heritage is to repudiate one of the central messages of reconciliation in the Gospel.

The Independent Catholic Christian Church is a creedally orthodox, scripturally based, and in many ways fairly traditional church. For our legislators to enshrine into law the doctrines of other churches and deny ours is to establish the Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, and Mormon denominations, among others, as quasi-official state religions and to deny our church the right to the free exercise of ours. As people of faith who are very serious about our walk with Christ and our prayer lives, we deserve to have our voices heard equally with those of the Religious Right, who do not have a monopoly on the serious practice of religion. Every religious community should have the right to determine its own policies regarding who may and may not be married–I once met a rabbi who, in responding to my question about whether she would marry same-sex couples, replied without missing a beat "As long as they're both Jewish"–but the state should offer civil marriage to all adult couples willing to commit their lives to one another, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof.

Easter Vigil Sermon

2011-05-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

Readings: Gen. 1:1 - 2:4a; Gen. 7:1 -5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13; Gen. 22:1-18; Ex. 14:10-31; 15:20-21; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 28:1-10

Our lives are defined by our stories.

I have two cats, whom I adopted when they were six. Charles quickly adapted to his new home, because his story is that humans are there to pet him, feed him, give him treats, and entertain him. He often sits in on premarital sessions with couples planning to get married, and will sit with new people who enter the apartment. Once, when our priest in Boston was being ordained to one of the minor orders that were part of her journey to the priesthood, we held the ordination in the chapel in my home, and eight people were there. As we gathered in my living room before the service, Charles sat in the middle of the room, clearly convinced that the gathering was in his honor.

In contrast, Allie lives by a story that tells her that humans are out to SKIN HER ALIVE!!! She spent the first two weeks in her new home behind the refrigerator, and the next two weeks on top of the kitchen cabinets. It was six months before she stopped cringing in fear every time I walked in her direction. And she would run under the bed any time another person besides me entered the apartment. Clearly, there was some trauma of some sort in her past that has caused her deep distrust of people.

Like my cats, our lives are defined by our stories.

We may believe that our lives are defined by the abuse we received at the hands of a parent or significant other. We may believe our lives are destined to follow the script of our illnesses, our limitations, our flaws. We may believe that the mistakes we have made – the sins we have committed – determine the end of our stories.

Our lives are defined by our stories.

But something interesting has happened in the three years Allie the tabby cat has lived with me. People have stayed in my guestroom who have been kind and gentle to her, and by the next morning, she has slowly begun to walk up and rub up against them. More recently, she has even begun to remain in place when friends who are frequently here have gently leaned over to pet her (or in Fr. Joseph’s case, brush her hair). She even came and smelled the boots of one friend who came over for the first time, and rubbed her head against his jeans as he gently scratched her ears. She has begun to accept, however tentatively and hesitantly, that perhaps her story is not that humans are out to SKIN HER ALIVE!!!, and that she must run and hide lest they succeed, but rather that humans are there to feed her, give her milk, pet her, and take care of her.

I love the Easter Vigil because of the salvation history we hear in the readings from the Old Testament. Some of the best stories in the Old Testament are in there. We hear how God created the heavens and the earth, and that it was good, and then created humankind, and it was VERY good. We hear how, despite the wickedness that led God to destroy humankind, a remnant was saved, and that God made a covenant with humankind never to destroy the earth in that way again. We hear how God delivered the Israelites from slavery by bringing them across the Red Sea. We hear how God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son – a son that Abraham and Sarah only received in advanced old age, after they had given up all hope – and that Abraham was ready to make the sacrifice, but the angel of the Lord stopped him at the last moment, and provided another sacrifice. We hear how Ezekiel, depressed in seeing a valley filled with dry bones, was given a vision of the bones connecting to one another to form skeletons, and then saw those skeletons being covered with muscles, and sinews, and flesh, and skin – and then he saw those bodies filled with the spirit of God so that they might LIVE once again.

And we know that those stories are not just about people who lived thousands of years ago, those stories are OUR stories.

And then the lights come on, and the alleluias ring out, and we hear that marvelous epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans – all of us who have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into his death – and that, just as God raised Christ from death to new life – so we will be raised from death to new life as well, both in our daily lives, and at the end of time, when we will experience the physical resurrection that Christ experienced that Saturday night nearly two thousand years ago. And the gospel describes the women discovering that Christ is no longer in the tomb, but alive, when he appears to them. And then we experience his living, risen presence through the gifts of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

But these are not just stories that we hear in church and forget about, no – these are TRUE stories that change OUR stories.

Our stories are no longer just stories of death, sorrow, sickness, sadness, sin – although they are still there. Our stories are now stories of how we experienced these thing – and then our lives are transformed into new lives of triumph over sin, sickness, death – because we have been made part of the victorious risen Christ through baptism. And these new stories RE-define our lives -- from stories of defeat into stories of victory.

My tabby cat Allie is not very bright – and she’s just a cat – but even she has begun to accept that her story has changed from a story of fear to a story of love.

As we begin this joyful Easter season, may we embrace our new stories of life and resurrection lived through the one True Story of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Alleluia, Christ is risen – He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Two Offerings from Rene Vilatte Press

2010-11-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

Our jurisdiction's publishing concern, Rene Vilatte Press, has two offerings which might be of interest to readers.

First, our subdeacon Michael Shirk has put together Evensong for Sapientiatide, the period of the O Antiphons from December 16 through 23 in preparation for Christmas, according to the Sarum Use. He has done a beautiful job of designing a pleasing book with chant notation, to inspire those who wish to pray the traditional Vespers for this holy time in the church's year. Here is the link to purchase: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/evensong-for-sapientiatide/6107531

Second, we have just issued the official Catechism of the Independent Catholic Christian Church. It is a revision of the Catechism from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, with some additional questions to reflect our own doctrinal heritage. There is a helpful article by Fr. Joseph Menna, AIHM, on what it means to be Independent Catholic Christian, as well as various documents from the church's history, including the historic creeds. Here is the link to purchase the Catechism: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/catechism-of-the-independent-catholic-christian-church/13623131

We will have a couple of reprints of historic IC/OC liturgies available in a few weeks as well.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS (a reflection written yesterday for our jurisdictional email list in celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows)

2009-09-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because my father died earlier in the year, I was very ill in the summer, and am going through economic uncerainty at work -- maybe it's because of the recent deaths of a friend and Patrick Swayze -- or maybe it's because I'm getting sappy in my old age, but although I've celebrated this feast in past years, I'm finding that it is resonating with me today in a way it never has before.

After sending out Nameday greetings to our Carmelite Friar, Br. Robert Julian of Our Mother of Sorrows, I was chuckling about the absurdity of wishing someone a "happy" feast of Our Lady of "Sorrows" -- sort of like saying "have a good time" to someone on their way to a funeral -- and I got to thinking about the resonance the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows has with so many people. One of the wonderful things about our faith is that we can look to Christ and those around him and see that they went through the same things we did. The Incarnation sanctifies our whole life -- Christ is fully God and fully human, and by living in Christ, our whole life is "divinized" and made holy through our relationship with Christ. As Mary bore Christ, so we are called to bear Christ. As Mary suffered through seeing her Son put to death, and then saw that suffering redeemed in the salvation of the world -- so we can join our sufferings to hers, and to Christ's sufferings on the Cross, and know that there is a greater purpose, and that through the glory of the resurrection we will be saved and know happiness and an end to our suffering, even as we trust that God can work through our sorrow to make us more compassionate, more Christlike, more whole.

I also thought about how, just as this devotion has sustained Catholic Christians through the centuries, so many Evangelical Christians have had a similar devotion to Christ as the one who understands and walks with us through our sorrows -- often expressed in hymns, such as "What a Friend We Have in Jesus":

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright unclouded there will be no need for prayer
Rapture, praise and endless worship will be our sweet portion there. Amen.

Nothing original, nothing millions of Christians haven't felt through the ages. But I'm feeling it in my bones today in a way I haven't as much in the past.

Favorite Hymns

2009-06-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

Lyngine posted a question to our church email list, asking people to list their favorite five hymns. Here is my response:

1. Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation (sung ONLY to Westminster Abbey)
2. The Church's One Foundation
3. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
4. At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing
5. Christ the Fair Glory, of the Holy Angels

You didn't ask, but here goes:
6. Alleluia, Sing to Jesus (sung to Hyfrdol)
7. Wake, Awake for Night Is Flying
8. The Glory of These Forty Days
9. Ah, Holy Jesus
10. O Come, All Ye Faithful

When I was a child (age 4 or thereabouts), my favorite hymn was At Calvary.

And you didn't ask, but my favorite service music in English, for the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei is the Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena by Healey Willan, for the Gloria is the Old Scottish Chant (which we sang at Carol Bolstad's ordination), and for the Credo, the Calvin Hampton setting in the 1982 Hymnal. I also love the Sanctus and Agnus Dei setting by Schubert in the 1982 Hymnal.

I love all of the Gregorian chant settings of the Mass (and everything else), but my favorite polyphonic setting of the Latin is a tie between Byrd's Mass for 3 Voices and Palestrina's Missa de Papae Marcelli for those that can be sung at a Mass and Bach's Mass in B Minor for those than can't. (Although I do love Vivaldi's Gloria as well.) I'm also quite fond of Bach's Magnificat.

My favorite setting for Evensong is probably Robert Parson's First Service.

New Items on ICCC Website

2009-06-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

There are two new items on the Independent Catholic Christian Church website, www.inclusivecatholics.com. First, under "Seasonal Reflections" (see the lefthand menu), I have posted the remarks I was privileged to offer at the celebratory Mass on Saturday, May 30, in honor of the fifth anniversary of St. Mary of Grace parish in Philadelphia. Fr. Joseph Menna, AIHM, the pastor of St. Mary of Grace and Prior General of the Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who care for the parish, has also cross-posted the remarks at his blog, A Restless Heart, where one can also find helpful meditations on Augustinian spirituality.

The second new item is the Vocations page. We have revised and expanded it. Before, the page focused only on ordained ministry -- it has now been expanded to cover the vocations of lay Christians, ordained clergy, and religious -- both solitaries and those in communities. ALL baptized Christians have a vocation, not just those called to the priesthood.

Check them out!

Embertide Reflections

2009-06-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

In the traditional western liturgical calendar, there are four sets of three days of prayer, fasting, and abstinence known as “Ember Days”. These were observed by the church at Rome from at least the third century. The sacrament of Reconciliation was especially recommended at these times. Ordinations have traditionally been conferred on Ember Saturdays – the Mass for Ember Saturday in the traditional Western rite contains four extra lessons (five in December), with ordinations for the different orders happening after each reading. Yesterday was Ember Wednesday and tomorrow and the day after are Ember Friday and Ember Saturday.

At some point, in the Episcopal Church (I am not sure if this practice originated in the Church of England or not – if any readers know and would enlighten me, I’d appreciate it), the canons began to require postulants and candidates for ordination to write a letter each Embertide to their bishop, telling them of their progress in their formation. I just discovered a rather funny form on the website of Virginia Theological Seminary to automatically generate fake Embertide letters: http://old.vts.edu/2000/ember.htm.

In our jurisdiction, we have adopted the practice and extended it to all of the clergy (including the bishop). Rather than sending it only to the bishop, each seminarian and clergymember sends it to our jurisdictional yahoogroup. There are four parts to the Embertide reflection – reading that the person has done, a reflection on one’s ministry, a reflection on one’s prayer and spiritual life, and a reflection on one’s personal human condition and how it has affected one’s ministry. The last two, while required topics for reflection, do not have to be shared with the yahoogroup as do the first two, since they deal with the “internal forum” – however, it is strongly recommended that people share these with a spiritual director or friend if not sharing with the group. Although only clergy and seminarians are required to do these reflections, laity are invited and encouraged to do so if they find it helpful, and several do regularly share their reflections (sometimes more enthusiastically than the clergy!). The 1979 Book of Common Prayer has as one of the sets of propers recommended for Ember days a set “for all Christians in their vocation”, and it is most appropriate that laity as well as clergy reflect on their ministry and spiritual lives.

There are three aspects of this practice that I find especially helpful. First, it is good to have a regular (roughly quarterly) time set aside to reflect on my ministry and my spiritual life. It is so important to step back and evaluate how one is doing in these areas, and this practice builds the opportunity and obligation to do so into my schedule. Second, tying it to a liturgical observance places the process in a context of prayer and meditation. This is not a status report – “I said 87 masses, heard 13 confessions, missed Morning Prayer 3 times, etc.” – it is meant to be a spiritual practice – actually prayerfully considering one’s ministry and spiritual life while consciously in the presence of God. Finally, the practice of sharing it with others in one’s jurisdiction or with a spiritual director builds in accountability and the opportunity for mutual support.

I invite others to consider this spiritual practice of Embertide reflections as a way of deepening their spiritual lives.

Ordination as Exorcist

2009-05-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

Our jurisdiction maintains, as do many other Independent Catholic jurisdictions, the traditional practice of minor orders. After being made a Cleric, a seminarian receives four minor orders: Doorkeeper, Reader, Exorcist, and Acolyte. Then follows the major order of Subdeacon, followed by the sacramental orders of Deacon and Priest. (Bishop being the third sacramental order.) In the Roman Catholic denomination, only the traditionalist orders maintain these minor orders (there are ministries of Reader and Acolyte in the "ordinary form" to which candidates for ordination are admitted, but they are no longer considered ordinations), but many quite liberal indie jurisdictions maintain them. However, many liberal jurisdictions substitute the term Healer for Exorcist. It is true that the theme of healing is present in the traditional ordination rite for Exorcist. The final prayer in the rite is as follows (the translation of the traditional Latin rite is taken from the Old Catholic Missal and Ritual of Abp. Arnold Mathew):

Holy Lord, Father Almighty, everlasting God, be pleased to bless these servants of Thine for the office of Exorcist, that by laying-on of hands, and word of mouth, they may have power and authority to hold unclean spirits in check; that strengthened by the gift of healing and by power from on high, they may be approved healers for Thy Church. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity, etc. Amen.

However, emphasizing the healer aspect while negating the exorcist role obscures a vital truth about the Christian faith: the need to confront the reality of evil. God willing, I will ordain our seminarian Sandra Hutchinson as an Exorcist this coming Saturday. Sandra has this to say about her upcoming ordination, which sums up what this order is about admirably:

"Of all the minor orders, this is the one that intimidates me the most. Evil is real, and this is a direct challenge to it. But God is real too, I know that. And I'm looking forward to it as well."

Please pray for Sandra as she takes this next step in her journey.

Independent Catholic Vocations: Worker Priests

2009-05-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Independent Catholic Christians share a common baptismal vocation with other Christians, and IC/OC clergy share a common diaconal or priestly vocation with other Christian clergy, particularly within the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. However, within those common vocations, there are also vocational differences based on the unique characteristics of the Independent Sacramental Movement and of each jurisdiction within it.

One of the most obvious differences, which has a profound effect on how clergy live out their vocation, is the issue of bivocationalism. Most Roman Catholic and Orthodox clergy are paid full-time to be clergy, and although there are a number of non-stipendiary clergy in the Episcopal church, most parishes still operate on the model of being served by full-time paid clergy, and many dioceses which offer subsidies to parishes that cannot afford full-time clergy do so with the hope that the parish will grow financially to the point where it can support its own full-time clergyperson. Parishes that cannot afford a full-time priest are often downgraded to mission status, and are usually seen as “struggling” and, at the very least, not the norm.

In sharp contrast, the overwhelming majority of IC/OC communities are very small and have no realistic hope of ever being able to pay a full-time clergyperson (or own a building, but that is another discussion). Most people who are ordained in our movement will never be able to support themselves through ministry, and the overwhelming majority of the less than 1% who do will either do so through a chaplaincy job or through a wedding ministry and NOT through parish ministry. Most IC/OC priests (and bishops) will be “worker priests”. Almost all IC/OC parish communities will rely on the ministry of worker priests. (Yes, I know about Spiritus Sancti in Rochester, NY, and I’m sure there are a tiny handful of others for which this is not true, but it is true and always will be for the overwhelmingly vast number of IC/OC priests and communities – trust me on this!)

I point this out not to claim that either the “mainstream” (for lack of a better word) or the “indie” model is better or more right or anything of the sort – there are wonderful clergy and communities, average clergy and communities, and really dreadful ones in both models. Each model has advantages and disadvantages. The real point is to accept one’s lot and do the best one can to serve God given the particular circumstances in which one finds oneself.

But for those of us in the independent movement, it can be difficult to accept this lot. Almost all of us were raised in “mainstream” churches, and a large number of clergy have been in an ordination process, or a religious order, or a seminary in a “mainstream” church. (Of the 17 seminarians and clergy who have at one time or another been associated with the Mission Episcopate of St. Michael & St. Timothy, the “diocese” I head, 13 were at one time in the ordination process in the Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and/or ELCA denominations. Of the remaining 4, 3 were women raised in the Roman Catholic church who came to the IC/OC movement because the RC’s don’t ordain women, which leaves only one person who did not seriously consider ordination in a “mainstream” context first. John Plummer thinks these numbers are higher than the majority of jurisdictions, but regardless, most who seek ordination were originally members of mainstream churches of one kind or another.)

I raise this issue because most of us, having received our basic Christian formation and often, even our beginning formation as clergy from churches which assume full-time paid ministry as the norm, may find it difficult to let go of those expectations and instead focus on the expectations we should have. If we internalize, consciously or not, the idea that a “successful” priest has a large enough congregation to pay one’s salary and that a “real” church has a building of its own, we may be so overcome with shame that we are unable to minister to those God does send us. A large congregation with full-time staff and a building can engage in ministries we can’t – and we can offer an intense community life and can respond to individual needs much more readily than the large churches can. The important thing is for us to offer the sacraments and the liturgy to those who come to us, to the best of our ability, and to do the best we can to make disciples of Christ. In our community, we have a Sunday liturgy in a space rented from a Unitarian Universalist congregation, a Wednesday night service in the chapel I’ve made out of a spare bedroom (and a monthly Friday service in another chapel a parishioner has made out of a bedroom in his home), and a Tuesday night service that happens by phone conference.

What are the opportunities we as worker priests have? First, although the demands of our secular job and home life are such that we don’t have the time to focus on church that some have, we are therefore forced to focus on the essentials. I sometimes find that I accomplish more when I have a short time to do something than when I have a long time – and it is no different here. Second, this situation demands collaboration in a way that can be lacking in larger churches. I cannot imagine how an indie church could function fully without at least two priests, and small communities demand more of the laity as well, who can be much more intimately involved than they may have opportunities to be elsewhere. (Certainly, large congregations often have lay involvement, but it is often a small core – and there is less opportunity to hide in a small church. Just ask the couple who joined us in procession and would have processed out to the car – had they not left their purses inside – and who foolishly came back a second week to find themselves being the entire congregation. They are now both heavily involved in the life of the parish, the jurisdiction, and in one case, the AIHM order.) A third opportunity is to share more fully the life that those we serve lead – we can understand the challenges and burdens they face, because we share them.

But we can only fully embrace these opportunities if we embrace our position as worker priests, and see it as a vocation from God, rather than seeing it as an obstacle to overcome.

Fritz Cravens, RIP

2009-03-02T09:14:00.001-08:00

Last night, my father passed away at about a quarter to midnight. This coming Friday, he would have turned 92. He died on his 63rd wedding anniversary.

Richard Farris "Fritz" Cravens was one of 14 children, 9 of the 11 boys being ministers (and one of the other two a lay preacher). He picked up "Fritz" when fighting with a brother, and an older brother nicknamed them Fritz and Hans (which became Hank) after the Katzenjammer Kids, an early comic strip http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Katzenjammer_ Kids.

My father was converted and baptized in a Free Will Baptist Church, and was at least briefly a licensed minister with them, before being ordained first a Cumberland Presbyterian and then a Southern Baptist minister. For a few years in my childhood, he was a minister in the Assemblies of God before returning to the Southern Baptists. He loved to sing, and was in a gospel quartet in his younger days. His degree from seminary is actually in church music rather than theology. When I was a child, his two standard solos were "How Great Thou Art" and "Great is Thy Faithfulness" , both of which we will sing at the funeral.

May he rest in peace.

Great conversation on Independent Sacramental Christian issues

2008-12-26T10:03:00.001-08:00

Although Alexis Tancibok of Grace Catholic Church mentioned several times that his blog had moved, and had even prodded me into updating my link to his blog on this blog, I somehow neglected to update my RSS feed, and yesterday, I was puzzled to see several entries show up from the old blog address about how to be an entrepreneur. I emailed Alexis, and while waiting for Lyngine and Carol to arrive for Christmas Mass, got his reply that his blog had moved, and was delighted to find a very interesting conversation about OC/IC/ISM/EIEIO issues, to which Lyngine had contributed some quite insightful comments. When she arrived 15 minutes later, and I told her all of this, she was very amused.

Anywho, I encourage you to read this thread. I am mulling over the issues to make some comments of my own, either here or there.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T18:19:00.001-08:00

Charles celebrates under the Christmas tree:
Allie journeys with the Magi:
The three of us wish you a blessed Christmas!

Purpose Driven Nonsense

2008-12-19T07:19:00.000-08:00

Last night, I posted a rather intemperately-worded Facebook status update expressing my anger at President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. I was angry. I still am, but want to note, more temperately, several things in light of what people posted.

First, we have freedom of religion and freedom of speech in this country, and these are very precious things which I support with every fiber of my being. People have the right to practice their religion in ways I find abhorrent, and to say things that I find unconscionable. I will defend to the death their right to practice their false religion and to say horrible things.

However.

Freedom of religion and freedom of speech do not grant immunity to criticism, as many seem to think. Rick Warren is free to believe that bigotry against gay people is mandated by God and to spread the lies about gay couples that he does (equating them with child molesters, for example). But people of good will are also free to condemn him for these things, and our freedom of religion and freedom of speech guarantee our right to do so. And in exercise of my free religion and free speech, let me say that I do not believe that Rick Warren has a genuine relationship with God, and I believe that he is an enemy of the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ. My saying that does not infringe on his freedom to practice his religion, and I do not think his church should be shut down, or that he should be muzzled in any way. And his freedom to practice his religion also should not extend to taking away my freedom to practice my religion, as Proposition 8 has, by imposing Roman Catholic, Mormon, and Southern Baptist beliefs on marriage on my church and other religious groups, such as the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, which do not share those beliefs but whose marriages may not be recognized by the state.

But the point of my post was not to criticize Rick Warren, but rather to criticize President-elect Obama for asking him to give the invocation at his inauguration. By asking him to do so, Obama is implicitly endorsing Warren’s agenda of denying gay people civil rights. As someone who claims to support inclusive values and relative equality for gay people (he does not support full equality since he opposes same-sex marriage), this is a very bad move that troubles me and makes me worry that his support will be mostly rhetorical. I hope I’m wrong, and his term of office may be the flowering of civil rights for gay people on the federal level. But Bill Clinton ran a very inclusive campaign, and he did more to eliminate civil rights for gay people on the federal level than any other president in US history, signing the so-called Defense of Marriage Act into law and establishing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, wasting millions of tax dollars to expel gay soldiers from the military. And although George W. Bush was in most respects a horrible president and certainly waged a rhetorical war against gay people with his support of a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and probably contributed greatly to the passage of many state anti-gay constitutional amendments, he actually signed the most pro-gay law ever passed on the federal level, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which allows gay couples to inherit tax-deferred annuities without the draconian penalties once assessed. (The law does not specifically mention gay couples, but in fact extends this provision beyond civilly-married spouses to any person – and that is the key to Republican support for gay civil rights – as long as it only benefits gay people as a by-product and not as the primary purpose of the law, they are willing to support it.) So I don’t actually take the words of politicians very seriously, only their actions.

Some think that he is being “inclusive” by including Rick Warren, reaching out to conservative Christians – but I think if we compare it to other historically disadvantaged groups, this analogy falls apart. If a white president were to ask a minister who supported segregation and the denial of civil rights to black people to give an invocation, no one would talk about including racists – they would quite rightly denounce this move. But intolerance of gay people is still tolerated in ways that intolerance of other groups is not. And that is troubling. (And before anyone starts talking about how intolerance of homosexuality is supported by historic religious beliefs while racism is not, let me point out that the denomination to which Rick Warren belongs and in which I was raised, the Southern Baptist Convention, split from the Northern Baptists [now the American Baptists] specifically to teach that the Bible condones race-based slavery. My parents – my father a Southern Baptist minister -- believed and attempted to teach me as a child that inter-racial marriage is wrong and against biblical values.) By inviting this man to pray at his inauguration and implicitly condoning his successful attempt to take away my civil rights and those of other gay Americans, he is sending a message of exclusion and intolerance.

Not a good way to start his presidency, and a serious blot on what ought to be a celebration of a milestone of inclusion, the inauguration of the first African American president.

Advent Letter to Independent Catholic Christian Church

2008-12-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

I sent this out to the members of the jurisdiction last Saturday (11/29/08) but only thought to post it here a few minutes ago.

Dear Friends in Christ,

This Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, we begin a new church year. We remember the First Coming of Christ in the Incarnation, as we prepare to celebrate Christmas; we prepare for the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time; and we encounter Christ’s coming to us daily – in the Eucharist, in Scripture, in prayer, in community, and in the poor.

The first Psalm says of the righteous that “their delight is in the law of the LORD, and they meditate on God’s law day and night.” I would like for us, in this church community, to have as our goal for this new church year to get to know the Scriptures more deeply, so that we may be “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither”, as the first Psalm goes on to say of the righteous.

I would like to ask each member of this jurisdiction to do three things this year:

· prayerfully read through the New Testament;

· pray the entire Psalter on a regular basis; and

· study the Gospel according to Mark, the gospel being read this year in the modern three-year lectionary (even if you follow a different lectionary).

If we become more rooted in scripture, we will find that our encounters with Christ in the Eucharist, in prayer, in community, and in the poor will become more profound, and our ability to witness to the Light of Christ within us will grow.

Please be assured of my prayers for a meaningful Advent and a joyous Christmas.

+Tim

Ordos from Rene Vilatte Press

2008-11-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

Don't know what to get as a Christmas present for that liturgy geek in your life?

Rene Vilatte Press now offers two traditional ordos for 2009 -- guides to reciting the office for a given year -- the Monastic Diurnal edition and the Oratory of St. Michael & St. Timothy, which mostly follows the Anglican Breviary.

You can check them out here: http://stores.lulu.com/vilatte. The Independent Catholic Christian Church canons are also there, and more items will be added.

Canons and Policies of the Independent Catholic Christian Church

2008-10-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

I'm baffled as to why anyone who is not a member of the Independent Catholic Christian Church or a scholar of the Independent Sacramental Movement (hi, John!) would be interested, but should anyone be interested in purchasing a printed copy of the Canons and Policies of this jurisdiction (which will at some point be posted at www.inclusivecatholics.com for free), they may do so at http://stores.lulu.com/vilatte. There will be other works at this site, Rene Vilatte Press, available in the near future.

Sermon for Sunday, July 20, 2008

2008-07-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

This is the text I wrote out before preaching it -- I don't preach from a manuscript or from notes, and the sermon was more fleshed out than it is here. The text for the sermon was the first reading from the Revised Common Lectionary, Genesis 28:10 - 19.
____________

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

I love visiting churches, when there is no service in progress, just to experience the architecture. One of my favorite churches is St. Bartholomew’s in New York. The main church is grand and majestic and truly awe-inspiring. It is especially nice to visit when the organist is practicing, to hear the space fill with glorious music. There is also a beautiful little stone chapel off the chancel containing the font and an altar with a stone carving of the Last Supper, in which I love to pray. For those who prefer a simpler setting, there is a long hallway off to the side, with clear windows, a simple altar, and chairs for meditation. Rounding out the chapels are a large chapel where most of the weekday services are held – they have a full round of Morning and Evening Prayer and Eucharist each day – and a downstairs crypt chapel with a columbarium containing ashes of departed parishioners.

Of course, one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit expressed in art is the Gothic cathedral. These soaring edifices, truly “sermons in stone”, are a testament to the transcendence, majesty, and glory of God. But there are also many simple country churches in which, when one walks in, one can almost tangibly feel the prayers that have been offered through the years.

We Independent Catholics don’t have the opportunity to build grand edifices, or in most cases, even to have a space to call our own, and so we meet in homes or rented spaces such as this. (Many of us establish chapels or prayer corners in our own homes, of course, and these are one of the great things about our movement.) But we meet, create our own sanctuaries, and worship as the church nonetheless, not being bound by the space or the lack of it.

In today’s first reading from Genesis, Jacob is on the run. He and his twin brother Esau never got along from the moment of their birth – in fact, Jacob was fighting with Esau to see who could get out of the womb first, and although Esau won that competition, Jacob had his heel in his hand when he came out. Esau was the favorite of his father Isaac, and Jacob of his mother Rebekah. Jacob bought Esau’s birthright as the firstborn with a bowl of lentil stew, and he and his mother conspired to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the better blessing by having Jacob pretend to be Esau. Esau threatened to kill Jacob after their father died, and their mother sent Jacob to stay with relatives for awhile to be safe (and find a suitable wife).

But as scared, and as demoralized as Jacob must have felt – and as rootless as he was, fleeing from the place he had lived his entire life to a place he had never been – it was at the place he camped out for the night on his journey that God chose to appear to him. God appeared in the dream, showing Jacob a ladder with angels ascending and descending from earth to heaven and back again. And his response was to say, “How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”. He took a stone and made a pillar to commemorate this profound encounter with God – the first time we are told in scripture that God talked to Jacob. He named the place “Bethel”, which means “House of God” in Hebrew.

Jacob schemed, from birth, to get the things he needed by tricking his brother – and he ended up on the run, alone and scared. It was only when he got to that place, where his own efforts had failed him and he had no other resources, that God appeared and promised him great blessings. It was in this place of loneliness and fear that God was able to establish the House of God – the Gate of Heaven.

And so it is with us. We scheme, we struggle, we strive – and our own efforts, which may get us material wealth, social prestige, intellectual achievement – or not – cannot satisfy our spiritual hunger. As Augustine said, in the Confessions, in his famous prayer, “God, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” But God comes to us, in our greatest hour of need, and puts down a ladder between our temporary sojourn, and heaven, and builds for us the House of God, and opens the Gate of Heaven. We may not even always be aware of the presence of the Lord – “Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” But when we look back, we see the evidence of God’s presence.

So let us allow God to build within us the House of God, the Gate of Heaven, knowing that, as the hymn says, “Christ is made the sure foundation, Christ the head, the cornerstone.”

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Caturday Blogpost

2008-07-05T19:55:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of the cats in the opiu-, er, catnip den.

CAThedra

2008-06-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

It is traditional for a bishop to have a cathedra, or chair/throne, in which to sit when s/he exercises episcopal ministry. I don't really have one, but I am happy to announce that the bishop's cat now has a CAThedra. I helped a friend move in with his significant other today, and they were giving away some items, and talked me into taking a trunk. Charles has decided to make it his throne:

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-06-20T15:02:00.001-07:00

Today, I thought I would post pictures of the cats as they frequently appear. Here is Charles, on his hind legs guiding my fingers holding a cat treat to his mouth with his front paws:

I hope his end is not destruction, and I don't think his glory is his shame, but another part of Philippians 3:19 certainly applies to Charles!

Allie loves to sit on the chairs in the chapel:
In the morning, I sometimes have to have my breviary in one hand, and my other petting her!

Friday the 13th Cat Blogging

2008-06-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

Chris Tessone posted a picture of Mahler blocking access to the Anglican Breviary. Allie, in contrast, reads a section from it and then meditates on it:

Charles saw me taking a picture of Allie and was jealous, so I took a picture of him as well:

Friday Cat Blogging a couple of days late

2008-06-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

First, a friend who was moving ended up leaving most of his books with me. One of the books is "The Life and Times of St. Francis", and both Charles and Allie seem to know that St. Francis is the patron saint of animals, because each of them at different times today took a nap lying on top of it.

Second, the dish that Charles has his head in contained catnip. Allie was actually roughly where he was (there was another dish on the floor with Charles' catnip), but Charles chased her away to take her catnip. I can only assume that the wild party held by the potsmokers across the hall influenced him to behave this way. I'm glad to see that Allie did come back to sleep on the arm of the couch.

Bride of Christ Imagery in Religious Profession and Spiritual Maturity

2008-05-09T21:39:00.000-07:00

A postulant in the Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary posed the question of how the members and oblates of the order related the traditional imagery of nuns as brides of Christ to their own spirituality. Here is my reply:

The image of marriage to Christ is used not only of religious profession, but also of the church (as the "bride of Christ", imagery used by Paul in the New Testament). One of the most important aspects of this for me is the idea of a solemn, permanent covenant. Adolescents date a lot before settling down with their spouse (if they do), and there is a certain intimacy that can only come from a permanent commitment. Now, making a permanent commitment in marriage to one person, saying "I do", at the same time means saying "I don't" to everyone else (in the traditional language of the marriage service this is expressed as "forsaking all others"). And that can be scary -- as humans and more especially as American consumers, we like options and choices.

Similarly, in our spiritual journeys, while it is fine to date, or play the field, in trying out various religious options, ultimately, spiritual maturity requires that we choose a particular path in serving God, and saying "yes" to a particular call means saying "no" to other calls. But there is a depth and a maturity in one's relationship to God and the church that can only come from making that commitment.

In my own life, I "played the field" with various denominational options, and with ministry options, but it has only been in the last several years as I have really committed to the Independent Catholic path that I have been able to come to an adult relationship with God and the church. Whenever I am tempted to wonder "what if" I had ended up staying in the Episcopal or Roman churches, I must remind myself that I didn't do that, and the parameters of our Independent Catholic community -- good, bad, and indifferent -- are the parameters in which I must serve God.

Now, having said all this, while we are all called to commit ourselves to particular calls in our Christian life, just as one shouldn't rush into marriage, so one shouldn't rush into a permanent commitment in one's ecclesial life. And that is what postulancy and novitiate are for. They are like times of "dating", when one can try on a particular religious expression. And it may be that one discovers that there is not a good fit -- and that is okay. God has a call for us, and all of us should spend time discerning what it is -- but once we've found it, we're called to commit our lives to it.

Response to Alexis' Post on Why One Blogs

2008-05-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Why blog?

I had hoped to use this blog as a means of thinking through various issues facing the IC/OC/ISM/EIEIO part of the Christian Church. But one of the things that has happened since I started this blog is that the jurisdiction of which I am a part has grown, and with that growth, so have demands on my time also grown, and I have found it well nigh impossible to devote the time and energy to blogging in a thoughtful way (and see below for my rules about how to go about this). Hence the many cat blogging posts.

What are the rules?

First, do no harm. I am a very opinionated person, and I am used to expressing my opinions quite freely. But one of the things that I have discovered as a bishop is that having pastoral responsibility means that I must keep many of my opinions to myself. Jesus said that he did not come to extinguish a smoldering wick or to crush a bruised reed, and I feel obligated to attempt to follow in His footsteps. So even when I disagree with some of those for whom I have a pastoral obligation, I must refrain from criticism or confrontation if it does not constitute a central matter of faith or interfere with the functioning of the church. And even in those situations where a loving confrontation is necessary, airing my views in a way on this blog that might cause offense or pain (or defensiveness) on their part would be wrong.

Second, observe appropriate privacy – my own and others. On both secular and religious blogs, I have encountered bloggers revealing the most intimate details of their relationship with their spouse, or their children, or with other family members. One can only wonder how the other family members feel about this (or will feel, in the case of children once they are adults). While some self-disclosure is appropriate, there are certain things that should not be entered into the permanent record that is the Internet. When television first became popular, some observers of popular culture observed that “the medium is the message”, and I believe this is true of the Internet as well. The Internet has given us an amazing ability to connect with one another across previously insurmountable geographical and cultural barriers, and this is a very good thing. But it has also encouraged a narcissistic exhibitionism and voyeurism that is quite unhealthy. I think blogs are great for the discussion of ideas. Some aspects of personal lives – pictures of vacations and new babies, details of the lives of ones’ cats, etc. are perfectly appropriate. But there are things that are best left unsaid – at least in a public forum such as a blog. (And, of course, there is a gray area in between.)

Unfortunately, much of what interests me most about church life is the practical lived reality of the church community. While there is much that is written about this topic that is of great interest, what insights I have gained are mostly the result of practical experience – which means that much of it is not appropriate to share on the blog.

Third, I am not one who thinks best out loud on a blog, so for me, I am not ready to post something until I have given it some reflection. (This will not apply to all bloggers, of course – it has to do with particular personality styles.)

Those are the three that come to mind.

I am going to omit the tagging, but would be interested in what others have to say.

Friday Cat Blogging: The Right Paw of Christian Fellowship

2008-05-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up in the Baptist denomination, when members transferred their membership from one congregation to another (by "letter", as opposed to by "baptism upon profession of faith"), the pastor would usually invite everyone to come forward and "extend the right hand of Christian fellowship" to them. Of course, some wags would refer to the fairly frequent practice of a pastor being fired as giving the "left foot of Christian fellowship".

So this picture shows Charles extending the right front paw of Christian fellowship to Allie:

Expanded Liturgical Opportunities

2008-04-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

The Independent Catholic Christian Church is a very small jurisdiction, but I'm very happy that we are now offering three services weekly, with an additional service each month (see here for a listing). Of course, St. Mary of Grace parish offers Mass each Sunday at 6. Each Monday night at 10:30 EST, the Traditional Liturgy Apostolate offers Vespers and Compline by the innovative method of conference call. Wednesdays, we offer Vespers and Eucharist here at the chapel in my home, as a joint effort of the parish, the AIHM order, and the cathedral chapter. And on the first Friday of each month, the Heart of Jesus Healing Ministry offers a healing Mass.

Through the liturgy of the Eucharist and the Divine Office, we are drawn by Christ into the hidden life of the Trinity, and I am pleased that we are able to offer people these regular opportunities to be so drawn into the divine life.

ICCC Priest Accused of Heresy!

2008-04-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

Fr. Chris Tessone is completely orthodox in his adherence to the creeds and ICCC doctrine. He offers insightful commentary at his blog, Even the Devils Believe, and he has recently started the Traditional Liturgy Apostolate of the ICCC, with seminarian Michael Shirk, to provide opportunities for traditional liturgical prayer, including Vespers and Compline from the Monastic rite each Monday. So why is he being accused of heresy, and by whom?

The above committee feel that he has committed a grave offense against both faith and morals by his recent post "Friday Cat Blogging: Canine Edition", defiling the holy and sacred Cat Blogging tradition by the inclusion of profane dogs. This committee is currently deliberating about the penalties they will demand -- my suspicion is that Allie will demand the skinning alive of the dog in question (given her constant fears that I, the phone, random pieces of dust, etc. might skin HER alive), whereas Charles will demand that Fr. Chris feed him cat treats (Charles' solution to most situations -- my putting clean laundry in the sock drawer while he is sleeping there, my leaving for work, Tuesday, etc.).

Seven Dolours of Our Lady

2008-03-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Seven Dolours of Our Lady, Charles and Allie put aside their differences to sleep on my bed together. Here is the picture:

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-03-07T09:32:00.001-08:00

Charles and Allie do not always get along in perfect harmony. Allie frequently growls and hisses at Charles, and even chases Charles and swipes at him. Charles is peace-loving and will usually just withdraw from the room when attacked (even though he is significantly bigger than she is).

So I was happy, a few minutes ago, to see them sitting next to one another in one of Allie's favorite spots, on top of the kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator:

For more pictures of Charles and Allie, see Chris Tessone's blog. He stayed with me before and after our jurisdictional gathering last weekend.

Bible Meme

2008-03-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

In general, I vehemently oppose memes, and tend not to read posts responding to them -- but the Bible meme is kind of interesting, so I'll do it.

1. What translation of the Bible do you like best?

For liturgical use, I prefer the King James; for non-liturgical use (and for modern liturgies), I prefer the NRSV. My LEAST favorite versions are those that are paraphrases or rely far too heavily on "dynamic equivalence", such as the TEV, the NLB, and the NAB.

2. Old or New Testament?

I like both -- one thing I miss from my Baptist upbringing is the assumed familiarity with OT narratives. One reason I like the Revised Common Lectionary is that is much better about including those narratives.

3. Favorite Book of the Bible?

The Psalms.

4. Favorite Chapter?

Psalm 139.

5. Favorite Verse? (feel free to explain yourself if you have to)

Acts 2:42.

6. Bible character you think you’re most like?

Abraham. I've done a lot of journeying in my life, and am more concerned than I ought to be with other's opinions (see his dealings with Pharaoh and Abimelech and his being caught in the middle between Sarah and Hagar).

7. One thing from the Bible that confuses you?

The genealogies of Edom -- I can see the genealogies of the Israelites -- but why do they care about the Edomites? I can easily see why the Kabbalists came up with commentaries to say that the Edomite genealogies were in fact sources of deep esoteric teaching (even though I am decidedly not an esotericist).

8. Moses or Paul?

Moses. I can empathize with his murder of the oppressive Egyptian. I understand his control-freakish nature that required Jethro to point out that he needed assistants. I'm with him in striking the rock the second time out of frustration and breaking the tablets out of irritation with idolatry.

9. A teaching from the Bible that you struggle with or don’t get?

The teachings that are interpreted as referring to eternal damnation -- I'm pretty much a universalist.

10. Coolest name in the Bible?

Zophar the Nephite.

Request for Prayers

2008-02-25T12:43:00.000-08:00

This coming weekend, the Independent Catholic Christian Church will be having its first jurisdictional Gathering. On Saturday, God willing, I will be ordaining our seminarians Michael and Carol to the minor order of Doorkeeper and our seminarian Marian to the minor order of Acolyte. Please pray that the Gathering is a time of grace for our community, and please especially pray for those being ordained.

Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch

2008-02-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

Chris Tessone, a priest of the jurisdiction of which I'm a part, has an excellent post about today's feast, and the issues of church polity it raises. I would just add one thought, about infallibility.

The essence of idolatry is to attribute to a creature attributes that properly belong to God. Only God is infinite -- we as humans are by definition finite in every respect. God is omniscient -- we are not. God is omnipresent -- we are not. God is eternal -- we are not, and only know eternal life through God's gift.

Infallibility belongs in this category. No human being, regardless of the office he or she holds, can ever make any statement that is infallible. Nor can any book or institution claim infallibility or inerrancy. The belief that was promulgated by the Roman Catholic denomination at its first Vatican council, that the bishop of Rome is infallible when speaking ex cathedra, is an attempt to claim for a human being something that properly belongs only to God. Similarly, the teaching of the Southern Baptist Convention and others that the Bible cannot contain error is an attempt to claim for a book something that properly belongs only to God.

The Scriptures are a great gift to us, and through them we come to know God's self-revelation through Jesus Christ, fully God (and therefore genuinely infallible) and fully human, and our great redemption through Christ's death and resurrection. We believe that bishops and other church leaders are given grace to lead the church. But to attribute infallibility to either the Bible or church leaders is to distort their roles and put them in the place of the God to whom both are meant to point.

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-02-22T05:31:00.001-08:00

First, here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago of Allie peeking out from behind the refrigerator -- it came out very surrealistic:
Next, here is a picture from a couple of nights ago of both cats on the couch -- I've created a little cubbyhole for Allie, which she finds comforting -- I've concluded that she's somewhat agoraphobic:
Charles is not shy at all -- when friends were over for Vespers on Wednesday, he jumped up by one of them and promptly rolled over and demanded that she give him a bellyrub (a demand with which she happily complied).

Book Meme

2008-02-16T06:43:00.000-08:00

Chris tagged me with a book meme that is going around (Grab the nearest book that is at least 123 pages long, open to p. 123, go down to the 5th sentence, type in the following 3 sentences.) My book is Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures.

"The Son of Man shall come to the Father, according to the Scripture which was just now read, on the clouds of heaven, drawn by a stream of fire, which is to make trial of men. Then if any man's works are of gold, he shall be made brighter; if any man's course of life be like stubble, and unsubstantial, it shall be burnt up by the fire. And the Father shall sit, having His garment white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool Daniel 7:9."

Ember Friday Prayer and Cat Blogging Post

2008-02-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

First, an Embertide prayer all bishops should pray fervently, from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, who hast purchased to thyself an universal Church by the precious blood of thy dear Son; Mercifully look upon the same, and at this time so guide and govern the minds of thy servants the Bishops and Pastors of thy flock, that they may lay hands suddenly on no one, but faithfully and wisely make choice of fit persons, to serve in the sacred Ministry of thy Church, And to those who shall be ordained to any holy function, give thy grace and heavenly benediction; that both by their life and doctrine they may show forth thy glory, and set forward the salvation of all men; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sadly, Charles has picked up an additional bad habit:

And I am happy to report that Allie is beginning to feel comfortable, at least some of the time, socializing with the rest of us rather than hiding under bed, couch, bookcase, or behind refrigerator:

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-02-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that last Saturday, I adopted two cats -- Charles and Allie.

Charles was named after a basketball player, Charles Barkley, who must have made of lot of touchdowns or RBI's or the like, but I have renamed him Charles Borromeo-w, as is more suitable for a cat living in a religious household. Sadly, he is a vandal and a user of recreational drugs -- he chewed open a bag of catnip his aunts Carol and Lyngine gave him and got high while I was at work one day, and has chewed holes in his food bag (despite there being food in his bowl) and a treat bag (all safely in cabinets now). But he is very sweet and affectionate, and follows me around hoping for a treat or a bellyrub, both of which he frequently gets. Here is a picture of him on one of the couches (he has taken naps on all four couches):

Allie is cloistered, observing strict enclosure. She spent the first day under a bookcase using the Lutheran Family Bible Game as a pillow (an ELCA pastor friend gave this to me some years ago), hiding behind the stacked Grove's Dictionary of Music (Third Edition). The second day, she spent under the one couch with flaps at the bottom that can hide her. The third day, she was under my bed, before finding the tiny area behind the refrigerator, where she spends most of her time now. I had a nice picture of her peering out from behind the refrigerator, but my cameraphone was full and it didn't save -- I'll try to take another one. In the meantime, here is a picture of her under the bookcase next to the Lutheran game -- which you can see much better than her face:
I hope to have better pictures next Friday!

Ash Wednesday

2008-02-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

A parishioner wrote to Fr. Joseph and me and asked how we personally observe Ash Wednesday. Here is what I wrote back:

One thing I always do is take Ash Wednesday off from work. I try to use the day as a day of reflection. The words that are traditionally used when ashes are placed on Christians' heads are "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return", and it is a day to reflect on our mortality, and where our life is going, in the knowledge that, sooner or later, it is going to end. It is easy to become so busy that we don't take the time to stop and think about the larger picture in our life (and being clergy, it is easy for me to even become too busy with church to do this!) , and Lent in general and Ash Wednesday in particular, gives us that opportunity to do that.

Often, funerals are a time when people, in the shock of grief, and realization that since life is short, they are not necessarily living as they wish they were. It might be helpful to think of Ash Wednesday as our own "funeral", where we come face to face with our mortality, mourn it, and come to terms with how it will affect our living. Of course, baptism is our "dying with Christ so that we might rise with Christ", and Lent was traditionally the time of preparation for baptism, ending in the Three Days when we celebrate Christ's death and resurrection. So as we contemplate our deaths on Ash Wednesday, we also look forward to the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ at Easter, which is a promise of our own resurrection.

Friday Cat-Blogging -- February 1, 2008

2008-02-01T08:50:00.000-08:00

I have a momentous announcement to make -- tomorrow, I will be adopting two six-year old cats, Charles and Allie (although they may be given additional names in due course). I will be posting photos of them once I have them, but in the meantime, in honor of their imminent arrival and in honor of St. Ignatius of Antioch whose feast those of us using the traditional Western calendar celebrate today, I offer this icon of cats:

(Don't they look more like they're playing than like they're attacking and eating good St. Ignatius?)

Basking in the Light of Christ

2008-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Today, in the old calendar, we celebrate the Octave Day of Epiphany, and in the new calendar, we celebrate the Baptism of Christ. The lesson read for the Epistle for the former is "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." For the latter, we celebrate our illumination in Christ in our own baptism, as we are joined with Christ's baptism. I had the great privilege of attending the baptism of a parishioner yesterday (who was born just before Christmas), and the lighting of the baptismal candle from the Paschal candle is a moving part of the ritual. Truly, at this time, we should take the time to bask in the light of Christ.

Here is a picture of what that basking in Christ's light looks like:

We should be as eager to soak up the light of Christ as Clem (my feline houseguest) is to soak up the sunlight.

Friday Feline Houseguest Posting

2008-01-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

A coworker is out of town for several weeks, and so from St. Stephen's Day until January 21, her cat is staying with me. The cat is very affectionate, although perhaps not the most energetic cat I've ever met. Here are some pictures.

The first week she stayed with me, here was her favorite spot to sleep:

Here she is modeling some jewelry:

And here is a pose that expresses her personality quite well (my finger over part of the lens expresses my photographic expertise equally well):

Quaker Plain Speech and Independent Catholic Clergy

2007-10-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

John Plummer has an interesting post, which I heartily recommend reading, criticizing the excess of clericalism in our movement, particularly all of the grand titles which people insist on using.

I work for a Quaker organization, and Quakers have a tradition of "plain speech" in which, among other things, they refuse to use titles of any kind, even to the point of children addressing their parents as "John" or "Mary" rather than "Dad" or "Mom". When we send out fundraising letters, they go to "John Smith" or "Mary Jones", not "Mr. John Smith" or "Dr. Mary Jones" or "The Right Reverend Anastasia Beaverhausen" (which begs the question of who might be the Wrong Reverend . . . ). The envelope will include a middle initial, with the salutation being the first and last names.

The practice has much to commend it. Although there is a time and a place for titles, I wonder what would happen if more Independent clergy would introduce themselves without titles most of the time, and let their ministry speak for itself, than insisting on being called "Father Zophar the Nephite" or "His Beatitude Alexander the Coppersmith, Patriarch of Sodom and Gomorrah and All Canaan"? Perhaps we could add this to John Plummer's Advent discipline.

Very Silly Post on what to call the Independent Movement

2007-10-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Some prefer Old Catholic or Independent Catholic or IC/OC, to use both. Some prefer Independent Sacramental Movement, ISM for short. I propose a new abbreviation to use:

E I E I O

Here's why:

Arnold Mathew had a church E I E I O
And in that church he made many bishops E I E I O
With a schism here with a schism there
Here a schism there a schism
Everywhere a schism schism
Arnold Mathew had a church E I E I O

Please feel free to submit additional verses in the comments.

Places and People

2007-08-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

Because I’m the worst blogger in the Independent Sacramental Movement, I only today discovered a very interesting conversation in the comments to my last post between Rev. Sharon and Lyngine. There are two particular issues which Rev. Sharon raises that I would like to raise up – the issue of where churches meet and the issue of “treading gently and compassionately” and of “bad priests”.

+Alexis Tancibok has addressed the issue of church buildings on his blog Boze, and I want to throw my two cents in as well – which is to proclaim the not such good news that there is no perfect situation for a church community. Here is a very partial list of pluses and minuses:

House church – pluses: warmth, intimacy, a chance to build very close ties of community, the integration of spirituality and daily life (as Lyngine mentioned about the Christmas Day mass), and the similarity to the first Eucharist celebrated by our Lord
minuses: intimidating to newcomers, risk of becoming a cozy inbred community without a sense of mission to the world, may be hard on the host to constantly host (or, if there is rotation, lack of stability), “ownership” of the community by the host, risk of losing a place to meet if schism occurs and host is on one side and others on the other side (I know of one local community that disbanded in just such a case)

Renting space – pluses: advantages of church space without obligation to assume all of cost and risk, flexibility to move if circumstances change, possibility of collaboration with host community
minuses: conflict with host community leading to sudden need to move, being “bumped” from space to space given [understandable] needs of host community, must conform service times to needs of host community, may be need to conform to policies of host community (e.g., lgbt-friendly congregation renting from United Methodist church – which may not permit any same-sex couple blessings on premises, regardless of local UM congregation’s views)

Owning space – pluses: space available for needs of one’s own community, ownership and pride and stability, ease of recognition by potential newcomers to get them in the door minuses: very high costs, lack of flexibility to change, possible need to rent to outside communities (leading to some of “renting space” problems), danger of “maintenance” taking precedence over “mission”

So, there is no “perfect” situation, because we have not here an abiding city. Every community has to determine what space situations will best suit its needs at any given time, and take special care to avoid falling into the particular traps inherent in its particular situation.

As for the issue of “treading gently and compassionately” – it is important to realize two things – first, NO ONE enters ministry for purely healthy reasons. All of us who are ordained have dysfunctional and unhealthy aspects to our vocation. The real key is to both recognize one’s own “besetting sins” and to help candidates and new clergy to develop the tools to look at themselves and assess what is healthy and what is not and take steps to address that which is dysfunctional. The real danger is from clergy who do not recognize the unhealthy parts of themselves, or worse yet, don’t realize they have any. And the reason I specifically raised issues of gender and sexual orientation is to point out that often it is not the noticeably unhealthy things that get us down – adultery, etc. – but rather dealing with a broken church in ways that are broken ourselves. In other words, to use myself as an example, as a gay man, I must be careful about not attributing everything that goes wrong with my ministry to “homophobia” – just because I’m gay and believe there is nothing wrong with being gay doesn’t mean that I am not still a sinner, or that I am immune from expressing my God-given gay sexuality in a broken and sinful way.

The second thing is that, coming from a Sacramental/Catholic perspective, ordination is a sacrament that places an “indelible” mark on the soul and provides grace, regardless of the unworthiness of the person being ordained. And that is very good news, because the fact that someone who shouldn’t be ordained (perhaps ever, perhaps at a given time – and we all know that this happens far too often in the ISM) doesn’t mean that Christ’s redemptive work can’t come into play and transform a “bad priest” into “great priest” – so the key is to work for the transformation of the clergy into those clergy that can best serve Christ. (Of course, that does not mean that there are not sometimes situations in which a bishop/church community must remove a harmful clergyperson – but it does mean that, even in those cases, there can ultimately be redemption, if the person repents, and there can once again be a fruitful ministry, even if in some cases it may only be a private hidden one.)

Ordination: Consecration for Service, NOT Personal Validation

2007-07-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

No one who is ordained enters ordained ministry for purely healthy reasons -- indeed, I doubt that any human being does anything for purely healthy reasons! But it is important to be aware of one's motives, and to live out the healthy ones in one's ministry and to take care not to let the unhealthy ones affect one's ministry adversely.

The proper motive for being ordained is consecration for the service of God and the people of God in particular ways, especially the ministries of Word and Sacrament. Unfortunately, many seek ordination instead as some form of personal validation. Wearing a collar and vestments gives them some sort of status so that they can feel important, or loved, or respected, or _____ (fill in the blank).

In particular, it has been my observation that some (certainly not all) who are members of groups historically denied access to ordination, especially women and openly gay and lesbian Christians, can sometimes see ordination as a validation that they are "as good as" men or heterosexuals. This is quite understandable, and as someone who unequivocally supports the ordination of women and openly gay/lesbian Christians and who am myself an openly gay man, I have certainly felt this way myself at times. And one unhealthy result is that many forget that no individual has a right to ordination -- I agree that it is an injustice to exclude women and lgbt folk from ordination, but there are individual women and individual gay people who should not be ordained (just as there are individual heterosexual men who should not be ordained).

For those of us who make our way to the Independent Sacramental Movement, we usually find that, to our dismay, most Christians don't really take us that seriously. Our churches don't usually fit the model of "brick and mortar" churches, and we lack the respectability of the mainstream. Many assume that because they haven't heard of us, we aren't "real". This problem is compounded by those of us who use the term "Independent Catholic", since most people accept the claims of the Roman Catholic denomination to be the only "Catholics". (While I would never want to give up the substance of being Catholic, as I see it, I do sometimes wish that we could let go of the word for just this reason.)

And in response to this, many of us in the ISM spend an inordinate amount of time trying to "prove" that we are legitimate, we are Catholic, we are real -- and for some of us, this gets wrapped up in issues of being female or gay. I've been there, so I am not criticizing something I myself haven't done. But, ultimately, this distracts from the reason we are clergy to begin with.

As long as we do the ministry God calls us to do, and minister to those (however few) God sends our way (and in some cases, priests may be called to a life of solitude and intercession for the world that won't involve much direct ministerial contact with others), we're doing the right thing. If everyone else laughs at us and refuses to see our minstry as valid -- that's okay. We're not priests to be recognized as such. If God sees our ministry as valid, who cares what others think? And if God doesn't see our ministry as valid, all of the people in the world calling us "Father" or "Mother" won't make a difference.

So I would exhort my fellow ISM clergy to stop worrying about what people think, and focus instead on the ministry tasks at hand. Until we move beyond the need for validation from others, we will never be effective priests.

Blogs -- Blessing and Curse

2007-06-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I feel guilty for not blogging more frequently. Some of the members of the parish where I preach every other week have kindly suggested that I post my sermons -- but my Baptist upbringing asserts itself in my preaching, which I prepare without writing a manuscript, so I must write the sermon down later, and the written version usually bears about as much resemblance to the original as the average Hollywood movie does to the books they bastardize.

However, in reading other blogs -- and particularly the comments sections attached to them -- I realize that perhaps it is better to err on the side of blogging too seldom. St. James says "for every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue -- a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God." (James 3:7-9)

If there is anything full of even deadlier poison than the tongue, it is the internet. Far easier to make a comment on a stranger's blog one has never met than to look them in the eye and say some of the things we say. And the very concept of the blog has further eroded the line between public and private. As a means of posting about current events and ideas, it is a wonderful medium -- but as a form of personal communication, it encourages us to make quite public matters best kept between family and friends. It can lead to both narcissism and voyeurism.

I hope and pray that God may preserve us from the sinful havoc this technology can enable us to wreak so much more quickly and widely than before, and may instead inspire us to use it for the greater good.

Corpus Christi sermon

2007-06-12T19:25:00.001-07:00

“For all who eat and drink without discerning the Lord’s body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” (I Cor. 11:29)

What does it mean to “discern the Lord’s body”?

I. Incarnation and Resurrection

In the first place, to properly participate in the Eucharist, it is necessary to discern the Lord’s physical body in the incarnation of God in human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully God. In Christ’s life, we are incorporated into the divine life – through faith in Christ, our life is caught up into God’s life, and God’s life becomes intimately entwined with ours. Through his death and resurrection, Christ won the victory over sin and death, and Christ’s victory has won salvation for humankind. The Eucharist makes these realities of the Incarnation and the Resurrection present in a vivid way in our midst, and to receive Holy Communion properly, we must discern the Lord’s body in the incarnate, crucified and risen body of Jesus Christ.

II. Real Presence

Next, it is necessary to recognize that in the Eucharist, Christ is really and truly present. There have been many volumes written about the exact manner in which Christ is present, and different denominations within the Church have embraced different interpretations. However, the precise method of Christ’s present is not the important thing – rather, the important thing is to recognize that when the Christian receives Holy Communion, she is encountering Jesus Christ in the most vivid and intimate way possible this side of heaven. There was a humorous parody book published several years ago spoofing Martha Stewart, and in one section, suggested that when entertaining a bishop, “host canapés” could be prepared. Unintentionally, the author of the book captured a very important aspect of the Eucharistic encounter with Christ – the Eucharist serves as hors d’oeuvres and cocktails in preparation for the heavenly banquet we will enjoy as a result of Christ’s saving work, when we will see Christ face to face.

III. The Church, the Body of Christ

The Church (the body of all baptized believers) is often referred to in Scripture as the Body of Christ, and the third discernment we must make is that as we hear the word proclaimed and meditate on the saving mysteries of the incarnation and resurrection, and as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are transformed into the body of Christ on earth. We are called to continue Christ’s presence on earth. Liturgists often refer to two main parts of the Mass – the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist – but in reality, there is a third part as well, the Liturgy of Service, during which we take what we have received in Word and Sacrament and take it to a world in need.

IV. Christ in the Poor

Christ told us that whenever we feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, or visit the sick or needy – whenever we have done these things for the least of our brothers and sisters, we have done them for Christ. And when we recognize the Lord’s Body in the person of Jesus Christ, and encounter Christ in the Eucharist by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, we are empowered as the Body of Christ, the Church, to minister in Christ’s name to the poor wherever we find them – be their poverty spiritual or material.

May we always have the grace to properly discern the Lord’s body whenever we approach these holy mysteries. Amen.

Please Don't Mess with the Psalms!

2007-05-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, Reader's Digest, which puts out condensed versions of many books, put out a condensed version of the Bible, prompting many jokes about "which two Commandments will they cut out?" and the like, as well as a sense of outrage among many conservative Christians. While I agree that there are many parts of the Bible which are less than edifying, and even my fundamentalist Southern Baptist minister father told people to skip over the long genealogies of unpronounceable Hebrew names by just saying "and all God's children" and skipping ahead, I agree that the idea is a bit cringeworthy -- but am happy to refer people to the more edifying parts.

However, it is really annoying that many of the liturgical churches -- even the conservative ones -- have done exactly that to the Psalms. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (1979) puts a few Psalms in brackets, with more verses in parentheses, as suggestions for omission. At least Episcopalians get a choice in the matter -- the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours omits Psalms 58 and 109 and mangles many other Psalms. Also, while encouraging laity and religious to shorten the office by only reciting Morning and Evening Prayer, rather than coming up with a Psalter distribution that enables one to recite all of the Psalms in those two offices, they retained a distribution scheme that requires one to recite at least five offices in order to cover all of them (except the parts they threw away). It would have been much better had they created a scheme similar to the historic 30-day one used by Anglicans (and still printed in the text of the 1979 Psalter) or the 7-week scheme in the Daily Lectionary of the 1979 BCP. (I will absolve the Lutherans for past sins in this area since both the ELCA and the LCMS worship books just published contain all 150 Psalms. And I will be silent about the fact that our Jewish brothers and sisters omit NOTHING from the Psalms, including the titles and the word "Selah" -- I make a point at least once a year to read the Psalms from a Bible rather than from a BCP/Breviary/Diurnal just to read these.)

Mark Hoemmen, an ICCC member in San Francisco, has an outstanding post for April 26 on his blog, in which he recounts being startled by the violent ending of Psalm 139 (138 in the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering) put onto the bulk of the Psalm, which is a beautiful meditation on the comforting omnipresence of God. Mark goes on to reflect on how important it is to read even these disturbing parts of the Psalms -- because they teach honesty before God.

One of the reasons that the Church places the Psalms before us as the greater part of the liturgy each day is precisely because of this ability to lay bare our souls, not only to God but to ourselves. If we cannot face this soul-baring, we cannot truly enter into that relationship with ourselves that is required before we can healthily relate to God or others. I don't know that we can authentically pray Psalm 150 if we skipped Psalms 58, 109, and the horrifying last three verses of Psalm 137. Even if we don't see those Psalms reflected in our soul, they at least teach us about the potential we have within ourselves, so that we may safely "ground" these energies without having them express themselves in unhealthy ways in other parts of our lives.

So -- please -- put the scissors away, and read ALL of the Psalms!

Welcoming Fr. Joseph to the Blogosphere

2007-04-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

A hearty welcome to Fr. Joseph Menna, AIHM, who has started a blog, A Restless Heart. He joins fellow ICCC bloggers Fr. Chris Tessone (Even the Devils Believe), Mother Laura Grimes (Junia's Daughter), and Mark Hoemmen (The Nerdiest of the Nerds).

I hope his blog follows their examples and not mine!

More about Mother Laura

2007-04-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

For more information about Mother Laura, visit her wonderful blog Junia's Daughter.

Just to correct one inaccuracy in a recent post about me -- while it is true that my refrigerator has nothing but Dr Pepper in it, in fact the freezer does have more than Lean Cuisine's -- I do have icetrays to produce icecubes for the Dr Pepper. ;-) (And the kitchen cabinets are not empty -- I still have a few books that I haven't gotten around to shelving . . .)

Christ is Risen!

2007-04-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

People are starting to bug me about the fact that the top entry on my blog says "Holy Week Announcement" -- so I will post this.

First, our parish Holy Week and Easter celebrations were magnificent. Michael Shirk, our seminarian from Missouri, visited, and his lovely chanting voice was a huge asset to our celebrations, and I had the privilege of tonsuring him as a cleric at our Maundy Thursday Eucharist. Fr. Joseph did a wonderful job planning the liturgies. I especially enjoyed chanting the Exsultet and the blessing of the font, and the high point was certainly baptizing Kim, one of our parishioners.

This weekend was also great -- Mother Laura Grimes was in town for the Order of St. Michael retreat, and she stayed with me both before and after the retreat. Thursday night, or should I say Friday morning, we were up until 3 talking. Sunday night, she celebrated and preached at the parish, which was a wonderful experience for all. I am very pleased that she has decided to incardinate with the Independent Catholic Christian Church -- she will be a real asset to us, with her exhaustive knowledge of theology. And it is good to have a female priest -- we have been very committed to the full inclusion of women from the beginning of our jurisdiction (2002), but until recently, no women had applied -- now, Carol Nickolai is preparing for ordination as a seminarian (she was tonsured in February), and Laura is our first female priest.

The other part of the weekend that was wonderful was doing nothing on Saturday -- I had not had a full day off in a month, and it was beginning to wear on me. One of the problems for all clergy, but especially for "tentmakers", is the necessity of taking time for personal rest and renewal even in the midst of many demands. And the day convinced me that I must be more proactive about scheduling time for rest into my schedule.

Holy Week Announcement

2007-03-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

The schedule of services for Holy Week for St. Mary of Grace parish has been posted -- please visit www.inclusivecatholics.org to see it.

In addition, I will be holding Tenebrae at 9 am on Maundy Thursday (April 5) and Good Friday (April 6) in my home chapel -- email me at stmikeandsttim@yahoo.com or call me at (267) 909-3333 for more details. (Tenebrae for Holy Saturday will be sung by the parish at UUCDC at 9:30 pm Friday night.)

We will use the traditional service for Matins and Lauds from the Monastic Diurnal with music from the Monastic Diurnal Noted (both reprinted by Lancelot Andrewes Press) -- the Anglican Breviary has the identical order with slight differences in translation. All are welcome to attend.

Nigerian Divestment

2007-03-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

The Nigerian government is on the verge of passing extremely draconian anti-gay legislation, which would mandate 5-year prison sentences for any expression of homosexuality or support for homosexuality. A coalition of anti-gay people led by Peter Akinola, the leader of the Anglican organization in Nigeria, is behind this horrible legislation.

In the past, divestment has been used against South Africa for its apartheid regime, which helped bring an end to that regime. I would like to see a similar movement for divestment from Nigeria -- and government sanctions as well, including an end to government aid -- if this law is passed, until it is reversed. Similar moves should be taken against other governments with severe anti-gay penalties.

Sorry for Not Blogging

2007-03-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

March 5 - 10, I went to Missouri to visit my parents and celebrate my father's 90th birthday. While there, I came down with a nasty cold that sidetracked my blogging.

Also, while some people, like Chris Tessone, are great at blogging daily, I'm just not, so I am reverting to my blogging when I feel like it mentality.

Ember Wednesday

2007-02-28T18:43:00.000-08:00

Exodus 24:12And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. 13And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. 14And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them. 15And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. 16And the glory of the LORD abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. 17And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. 18And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
The Ember Days are observed four times a year, a set of fast days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday), which became associated at some point with ordinations -- which traditionally take place on Ember Saturday. The Mass for each Ember Saturday has 5 extra lessons, in addition to the Epistle and Gospel, and ordinations to each of the minor orders takes place before each one of the lessons. In Anglican circles, the tradition of an "Embertide letter", which each seminarian (and in some dioceses, clergy) are required to write to their bishop to report on their progress. We have recently adopted this custom in our jurisdiction, sharing them with each other on our email group (sharing what each is comfortable sharing), and it is proving to be a helpful exercise of reflection. In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the "Litany for Ordinations" is suggested for use on the Ember Days as a way of praying for vocations to ministry, for those called to various ministries, and for the ministries of all the baptized. (We prayed this as part of Vespers this evening.)

The scripture lesson above (I'm departing from just commenting on the gospel) is one of two lessons read before the Gospel in the Ember Wednesday mass, and it is intriguing to note the amount of time Moses spent in prayer -- a week BEFORE the forty days he spent receiving the Torah.

As those called to lead communities of faith, it is my prayer, that we clergy may take the time to spend in prayer and retreat to be able to be able to receive inspiration as to the direction our communities should go.

Cast out the moneychangers from the church!

2007-02-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

Matthew 21:10And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? 11And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. 12And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. 14And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 15And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased, 16And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? 17And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.

Someone once said, "Jesus came to show us the way, and people have been studying his fingernails ever since." Jesus constantly butted heads with the religious authorities of his day, because they continuously failed to "get it" -- but, sadly, the religious authorities of the communities claiming to follow him have also failed to "get it". Certainly, being physical beings, we have material needs, and communities of human beings will inevitably have those material needs as well. Although we in the independent movement tend not to have paid clergy or church buildings, there is certainly nothing wrong with either of these, and there is a proper way for churches to be good stewards of money.

However, sadly, it is all too easy for money and other material concerns to become the primary concern, replacing true spiritual values rather than supporting them. And money is not the only temptation -- political power is another serious temptation. Tragically, we see this played out in Nigeria, where the the head of the Anglican organization, Peter Akinola, is actively working to get laws passed that would ban any support for or expression of homosexuality, with five-year prison terms. That this man is condemning the Episcopal Church and its Christian leaders, such as Bishop Gene Robinson, while perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ into a tool for persecution of those against whom he is bigoted is obscene.

I urge everyone who reads this to pray for the persecuted lgbt community of Nigeria, and to contact your elected officials to urge them to act to prevent this grotesque miscarriage of justice.

Separating the Sheep from the Goats

2007-02-26T14:25:00.000-08:00

Matthew 25:31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Fr. Chris Tessone has a good entry today, pointing to an entry by Sister Mary Sue of the Order of Santa Ignora, on the necessity of seeing Lent not merely as a "journey" but also and much more importantly as an opportunity to confront the sin in our lives. Today's gospel reminds us of the stark choice confronting us -- an easy, comfortable religion that doesn't challenge us to conversion has no salvific power -- only an encounter with the Crucified can lead us to the sacrificial, self-giving way of life that leads to salvation. We may very well be a "resurrection people" and the a-word may be "our song", as the song says -- but the Resurrection only happens after the Crucifixion.

Our parish was recently given a beautiful purple chasuble, stole, and maniple for Lent by an Episcopal priest friend -- but wearing a beautiful stole without taking on Christ's yoke of sacrificial service, or a maniple without being prepared to wait tables for the hungry (the maniple, sadly not worn much anymore due to the minimalist excesses [yes, that is an oxymoron, but an accurate one] of the liturgical movement, was an early napkin that bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons wear/wore as a symbol of our service) benefits us nothing.

May this Lent not be merely about religious devotions (not that there's anything wrong with devotions!), but may it be about the conversion that leads us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the prisoners.

First Sunday of Lent

2007-02-25T17:37:00.000-08:00

S. Matth. 4. 1 THEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down; for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

One of the most fascinating literary figures of the twentieth century is Charles Williams, one of the Inklings, a friend of JRR Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and others in that circle. He has followers in very conservative Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic circles, and yet, an initiate of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, a descendant organization of the Order of the Golden Dawn, also has followers in esoteric and magical circles, and one of his novels, The Greater Trumps, considers the Tarot. He has some interesting comments on today's gospel, which I commend to your attention.

The earliest Christians saw martyrdom as the highest form of Christian discipleship -- indeed, they had to guard against the excessive devotion to it that blurred the line between a courageous stand for the gospel and reckless self-endangerment/suicide. As the Christian faith became more tolerated and then elevated to the state religion, asceticism replaced it, and drove men and women into the desert to pray and fight with demons, using Christ's forty-day stay in the desert as a model. Lent is also modelled after this forty-day stint in the desert (among other forty-day/year periods in scripture), and we, like the desert mothers and fathers, go into a desert (figurative for us) to fight our demons and pray.

Like Jesus, we will soon see that the temptations are not necessarily those to gross immorality -- rather, the most dangerous (and common) temptations are those to put good things to the wrong use. We hear a lot about social justice, and, indeed, we are called as Christians to be very outspoken about it and work toward it. However, if we get to the point where the gospel becomes a means to the end of earthly well-being, rather than the struggle for social justice being a means to the end of following Christ, we will go astray -- the Religious Right has had many embarrassing moments as it has been co-opted by the Republican Party, and the Religious Left will endure many more as it is co-opted by the Democrats. As Christians, we are first and foremost citizens of the heavenly realm, and secondly members of the church, and finally, citizens of our nation-states -- when we reverse the order, we create idols. Without being conscious of it, we will have worshipped the devil to gain control of earthly political power -- to implement godly ideas, for sure, but without recognizing the ways in which that power corrupts us.

Note that I'm NOT saying that we should abandon our efforts to achieve social justice -- rather, we must remain ever-vigilant that they are done for the right reason -- service and obedience to God -- and not as an end in themselves -- the same can be said about prayer or any other religious exercises.

Fr. Chris Tessone, as always, has some interesting comments about this aspect of today's gospel -- he quotes Luther about the ways in which fasting can become a good work rather than a means toward the end of drawing closer to God. I commend his comments to you as well -- his test about whether fasting is authentic or not -- if we do it "because it is part of the Kingdom's plan, enabled by God's grace and imprinted on our will by Christian discipleship" -- is the test we should apply to ALL of our spiritual life.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for the First Sunday of Lent, 1979 BCP)

Feast of St. Matthias

2007-02-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 26 Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. 27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. 28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

From at least the time of St. Gregory I, Bishop of Rome, the feast of St. Matthias was observed on this day (Feb. 24, or 25 in leap years) in the West, but on August 9 in the East. After Vatican II, the revised Roman calendar put it on May 14, but Anglicans and traditionalists continue to observe it on the traditional day.

I feel a certain kinship with St. Matthias, for two reasons -- first, having been born when my father was nearly 50 and my mother 41, I was the youngest cousin on both sides (I'm an only child), and so I always felt like a "latecomer" to the family, not having experienced a lot of the family history that others have. In addition, we moved a lot when I was a child, so I frequently started at a new school and in a new church (my father being pastor in most cases) -- and while Matthias had accompanied Jesus and the other disciples from the beginning, I'm sure being one of the Twelve must have been a similar experience.

The last three verses of today's gospel have always been one of my favorite passages of scripture. When I first began to pray the Office, in high school, in the form provided in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the first Office I regularly began to pray was Compline -- and these verses are one of the options for the chapter -- and the option I usually chose. And the first verse is the first of the "Comfortable Words" in the traditional Anglican Eucharistic rite -- which I heard in the Rite I parish I attended toward the end of high school, as I began to forsake the evangelical churches of my childhood for the liturgical tradition. As I was beginning to come to terms with being gay and figuring out how to reconcile that with being Christian, this promise that what Christ asks of us is not burdensome or heavy was quite reassuring, and whenever I hear these words, I am taken back to that time -- along with hearing the Willan Agnus Dei, these are my most vivid religious memories of that period of my life.

However, the contrast of this passage with the very difficult passage we read yesterday -- and Jesus' command to "be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect" -- is quite striking. The Collect for today is also a contrast (at least for those of us called to be pastors):

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles; Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When I pray it, I pray that I may be preserved from BEING a false apostle, but may instead be a "faithful and true pastor" -- and anyone in a pastoral office will sooner or later be confronted with a difficult situation where one must make an agonizing decision, with the very heavy burden of worrying if the decision made will have a deleterious effect on one's flock. I can only pray that I have more "Matthias" moments than "Judas".

I don't know how to solve this paradox -- and maybe it is not solvable -- there are times when the Christian faith is the greatest consolation in the world, and there are times when it is extremely difficult. As we continue our Lenten journey, may we never forget that consolation during the times of anguish and temptation.

Friday after Ash Wednesday

2007-02-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

Matthew 5:43 - 6:6 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. 2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: 4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Good to know the bar isn't set too high . . .

It is so difficult to love one's enemies -- I find it very difficult to love terrorists who wreak wanton destruction. I find it nearly impossible to love people like James Dobson, or Marilyn Musgrave, or Mitt Romney, or the others who lie about gay families and attempt to put as many legal and financial and human obstacles as possible in place to prevent gay families from being able to function. I find it difficult to love clergy (in our independent movement and elsewhere) who serve idols rather than Christ -- the "unity" some Episcopalians are willing to pursue to the point of turning their backs on lgbt folk, money in the case of some independent "clergy" more interested in the fees they will receive than in serving the people -- to give but two examples. And, quite frankly, if I give money to charity or the needy, I'd like a little gratitude, and I want to be known as a prayerful person.

But, as followers of Christ, we are called to let go of our hurt and anger and see the image of God in everyone, no matter how much they have defiled it. We should certainly be angry at injustice -- but we must "be angry and sin not" -- and not allow our anger to lead us to hate -- or, worse because it is easier -- give up on those perpetrating the injustice.

We should see our almsgiving as a matter of justice and not charity -- something to which we are obligated, not something we do because we are "good". In this, we can learn from our Jewish sisters and brothers -- the Hebrew word translated as "charity" in the sense of philanthropic giving is "tzedakah", literally "justice" -- and the Jewish teaching on this has translated into a strong Jewish presence in the civil rights movements for African Americans, women, lgbt folk, and others -- which puts Christians to shame.

And, if you find all this as difficult as I do, you will agree that the time spent in prayer will be necessary to seek the grace to live it out, rather than a badge of piety.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

2007-02-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Matthew 8.5 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, 6And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. 7And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. 8The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. 9For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. 10When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. 11And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. 12But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 13And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.

Some scholars believe that the centurion's "servant" was not so much a servant as a male lover/partner, offering evidence for how the Greek word used is used elsewhere. My extremely-rusty-and-never-that-good Greek is not proficient enough for me to make such a judgment, but assuming this is true, it gives the gospel an interesting spin. Certainly, Jesus' healing of a gentile and someone related to a soldier (as lover or servant), someone who was very much outside the religious mainstream of his day, speaks to his embrace of the marginalized, and if this is indeed a same-sex couple, then this only intensifies this theme.

This gospel is also the source for the beautiful prayer recited by the celebrant and communicants in the Roman rite (3 times in the classic version, first by celebrant and then separately by communicants after the invitation -- reduced to one recitation in the modern version) -- "Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest enter under my roof: but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed" (translation from the English [Knott] Missal -- the modern Roman translation is sadly deficient, as is typical).

It is unfortunate that St. Paul's admonition for communicants to examine themselves before receiving communion, lest they eat and drink condemnation to themselves, has been twisted into the de facto excommunication of the vast majority of Christians the majority of time. In the Roman church prior to Pius X, and still in the Orthodox churches, frequent communion was discouraged because of the alleged unworthiness of the average Christian. In most Anglican and Protestant churches (Plymouth Brethren and Barton/Campbell/Stone restoration churches being exceptions), the celebration of the Eucharist became restricted in most churches to monthly or even quarterly (twice-yearly in Amish and some Mennonite churches) because of the unworthiness of the congregation. This began to change among Anglicans with the Oxford Movement, and Lutherans and other Protestants since the Liturgical Movement have begun to celebrate more frequently, Christ be praised.

As long as one is not at enmity with others (and I believe that a willingness to be made willing to forgive is sufficient, if brought in prayer to Christ) and properly discerns the body of Christ (I'll post on that another time -- let's just say someone who is in relationship with Christ), one should commune. The idea that because one hasn't been to confession, or hasn't fasted, or is somehow not "spiritual enough" is a terrible reason to stay away -- better a sinner who recognizes their sinfulness should commune than a prideful person who mistakenly believes they have "earned" the sacrament through devotional exercises. None of us can ever be worthy enough to deserve to receive Christ in the Eucharist -- and none of us needs to be -- as long as we are humble enough to recognize our sinfulness, we are invited.

And, just as it would be rude to be invited to a dinner party and to refuse to eat once there, so it grieves our Lord when Christians stay away from receiving Christ in the Eucharist.

Ash Wednesday

2007-02-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

S. Matth. 6. 16AND Jesus spake unto his disciples, saying, When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Alexis Tancibok, in his reflection on Clean Monday, roughly the Byzantine equivalent of Ash Wednesday, states that:

Asceticism is not about suffering. Rather it is about peeling away the cares, worries, resentments, desires and emotions that “weigh” us down, make us sluggish to respond to grace, and the calling of God in our life. . . . During Lent, we each in our own way, take this opportunity to dig a little deeper, to be that little bit more aware of the process of peeling away those distractions that anchor us to points of suffering; in so doing, we prepare to enter the Great Feast open, un-burdened, and free, ready to receive all that the grace of the Resurrection has to offer.

That is what today's gospel is trying to teach us. We begin Lent with the ashes -- symbols of our own mortality, and the corruption that our sin has brought into the world -- -- the death of our inner life, the spiritual death of those we victimize, the death of relationships. Through the fast of Lent, we continue the washing of our face and anointing of our heads that began in baptism and confirmation, with the faith and hope that our reborn, regenerated selves may shine through more and more -- in that resurrection that happens in this life, a foretaste of the great resurrection that will happen at the end of time.

I pray that all of you may have a holy Lent, in which your faith is deepened.

Shrove Tuesday - Quinquagesima Gospel

2007-02-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

S. Luke 18. 31 THEN Jesus took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again. And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken. And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way-side begging: and hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him, saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

The juxtaposition in this gospel is priceless -- the disciples don't understand what Jesus is trying to tell them about his necessary journey to the cross -- they are spiritually blind -- but then a blind beggar is able to see who Jesus is, and receive healing. So often, those in power within churches can fail to see where Christ is leading us -- and often, those on the margins can see more clearly.

One of the great spiritual movements of the twentieth century is the twelve-step movement, begun with Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step is "we admitted we had a problem . . . " -- and in this gospel, it is the blind one who can admit and "see" his blindness who is healed -- not the disciples, who cannot even understand that they are spiritually blind.

This Lent, let us "open our eyes" to our blindness, so that we may be healed and become able to see.

Monday before Ash Wednesday: Meditation on Sexagesima Gospel

2007-02-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

S. Luke 8. 4 WHEN much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell by the way-side, and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe, and be saved. They on the rock are they which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

There is one way in which I am extremely Christlike. Just as our Savior cursed the fig tree, and it immediately withered and died, so I have an almost miraculous ability to kill plants. I'm told philodendra are among the hardiest and easiest to care for plants -- and yet I've murdered a couple. Yet even I, unlike the sower in today's parable, know that one should be careful where one plants -- I would never plant on a sidewalk, or in a thorn-patch, or in rocky soil.

I often hear this lesson interpreted such as to admonish people to make certain that they make themselves good soil, and avoid being in one of the other categories that ultimately does not bear fruit. And, certainly, that is a legitimate interpretation. But I wonder, if we look a little deeper, what it means that the sower is so careless as to distribute the seed so recklessly? (And yields being lower in that time, one would think farmers would be even more careful about planting seed only where it was likely to grow and bear fruit.) This recklessness is meant to bear witness to the reckless distribution of God's grace to all, without regard to merit.

And we should realize that we all, in different parts of our lives, fall into the various categories. There are parts of our lives that are good soil, bearing abundant fruit. There are parts of our lives that are choked with the cares and riches of the world -- not bad things in and of themselves, but things that, not put into their proper place, can choke God's grace in areas of our lives. Then there are the areas of temptation to sin that we allow ourselves to succumb to and which cause the grace to wither and die. And there are those parts of our lives that are so hardened that the seeds of God's grace become birdseed instead.

But I'm not so sure that we are always immediately able to discern which areas are which -- God's grace may bear fruit in ways in which we are completely unaware. A life filled with the grace of God is not necessarily a religious life -- and religious exercises may become opportunities for pride and sin, if we are not careful.

I hope this Lent to take time to reflect on my life and to listen to the Spirit to learn more truly where the good soil, the thorns, the rocks, and the hardened paths in my life are -- and I pray that others may do so as well.

Septuagesima gospel -- posted on Quinquagesima

2007-02-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

S. Matth. 20. 1 THE kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the market-place, and said unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the good-man of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way; I will give unto this last even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

I suppose it is appropriate that I post this two weeks late, since that puts me in the category of eleventh-hour laborers! Interestingly, the Liberal Catholic Church lectionary has this gospel for Quinquagesima, and John Plummer has some wonderful comments on it on his blog, Priestcraft.

I find much hope in this gospel, because even those of us who may have squandered our opportunities to do great things for God may still join in at this late date. God will not shame us or refuse to reward us just because we have only come to divine service late (regardless of what some who purport to speak for God may say). As it says elsewhere in scripture, Today is the day of salvation. So let us take this Lent as an opportunity we have been putting off to draw close to God, and allow ourselves to be sent into the fields to labor.

There is also hope in the fact that the owner of the field hires those whom no one else would -- those hired at the eleventh hour stood idle not out of laziness, but because they were rejected by potential employers. God chooses us for service not because of our talents or because we have a lot to offer -- God chooses all of us and then empowers us with the Spirit to do the work we are sent to do. At this eleventh hour, we see God calling women and lgbt people into the episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate, no longer allowing the church that for too long has treated the ordained ministry as a restricted club to keep them out.

Finally, we are all beginners in prayer, no matter how long we've been at it, and this gospel gives us hope that we may reap the rewards even as beginners who do not know how to pray properly.

Lenten meditations

2007-02-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

I will be posting my thoughts on the gospel each day for Lent -- using the traditional one-year lectionary. Today, although it is Quinquagesima, I will post thoughts on the Septuagesima gospel, and then tomorrow and Tuesday on the Sexagesima and Quinquagesima gospels, respectively.

Theses of Bonn and Declaration of Utrecht -- Let's Retire Them

2007-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

One of my pet peeves about many jurisdictions within the Independent Sacramental Movement is that they use the Theses of Bonn and the Declaration of Utrecht as confessional statements. Now, many of the people that do this are very good people, some of the best in the movement, and my criticism of this practice should not be taken as any indication of whether or not a given jurisdiction is healthy or not.

The first reason I don't like these documents as authoritative in the ISM is that they were not produced by us -- but rather by our cousins in the Old Catholic movement as found in the Union of Utrecht. Many in the ISM wish they were a part of the Union of Utrecht, and some are actively trying to join (an exceedingly bad idea, IMHO) -- but the fact remains that, although we may have our roots in Utrecht Old Catholicism, we are a different animal. The only jurisdiction in the USA that was ever a member of the Union of Utrecht was the Polish National Catholic Church, which is no longer a member due to differences over women's ordination and lgbt inclusion. On the other hand, there is a jurisdiction that is in full communion with Utrecht, and it seems that those for whom full communion with Utrecht is important ought to seriously consider joining it -- I'm speaking, of course, 0f the Episcopal Church. Using Utrecht documents implies an identification or relationship with Utrecht Old Catholics that does not in fact exist, and I think we would be better off without that confusion.

The second reason I'm not fond of these documents is that they largely define Old Catholicism in negative terms -- by what Utrecht rejects about Roman Catholicism -- than in positive terms by what Old Catholics stand for. I can understand, historically, the reasons for this, and I don't deny that these documents may have been useful at the time -- but I would greatly prefer to see a positive confession of who we are and the principles we espouse, rather than a repudiation of those we reject.

Closely related to the second reason is my third -- much of what is rejected about Roman Catholicism - particularly in the Theses of Bonn - is obsolete thanks to developments in the twentieth century, up to and including the Second Vatican Council. The liturgy is now, for the most part, in the vernacular, and the Roman Catholic denomination now encourages scripture study in the vernacular. The statement that no translation of scripture can claim an authority higher than the that of the original texts refers to the fact that the Roman Catholics formerly regarded the Vulgate as the inspired version of scripture -- something put to rest by Vatican II. (I've heard many bizarre explanations of this particular thesis by ISM folk with no knowledge of Old Catholic history.) As a matter of ecumenical charity and truthfulness, it is inappropriate to hold up as our central confessional documents statements which reject aspects of another denomination's faith and practice which no longer apply.

Finally, there are aspects of contemporary church life which must be addressed by any confessional statement -- the question of women's ordination and lgbt inclusion -- which were not addressed at the time of these documents' composition. Regardless of where a jurisdiction stands on these issues, it certainly seems more relevant than questions about the Vulgate or vernacular liturgy.

I look forward to the day when we can produce our own confessional statements and not rely on outdated documents of other ecclesial families.

Covenanted Community

2007-01-31T17:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who commented on my previous post, particularly John.

"Community" is an overused word that has come to be almost meaningless -- which is why I used the phrase "covenanted community". As Christians, we are incorporated into the one invisible Church by baptism (evangelicals would substitute conversion for baptism, but that doesn't change my point). In order to live healthy Christian lives, we must also become part of particular expressions of church -- in parishes, small worshipping communities, religious orders, etc., which may in turn be part of other expreessions of church -- jurisdiction, denomination, etc. Now, in order for any group of people to function, there are certain common rules, laws, regulations that must be established -- otherwise chaos will result. That is where the "covenant" comes in -- the agreements that communities make in order to function. Without the depth of commitment to such relational covenants, true intimacy and authentic "community" will not result.

While I am an outspoken advocate of indie priests offering solitary masses if no congregation is available, I don't think it is healthy for such liturgy to be the only expression of prayer. Corporate worship is a necessary part of the Christian life, and without it, one falls into the danger of an idiosyncratic, eccentric spirituality that is not grounded in the incarnational reality that worshipping with others offers. And to get the full benefit of corporate worship, one must establish a relationship with a particular praying community -- worshipping with different congregations without settling down is a sign of immaturity.

But existence as a regular congregation does require sacrifice, and rules, and lots of mundane things that many "spiritual" people may prefer not to deal with. If nothing else, there is the at-least weekly sacrifice of an hour or more for worship (and hopefully, also, fellowship). It may seem spiritual not to deal with money, but in an incarnational religion such as ours, there are hymnals and vestments and bread and wine to purchase. Conflicts will arise, and compromises will occur, and the music won't satisfy everyone's tastes, and not every sermon will meet one's needs, and the text of the liturgy may be too traditional or too modern -- and yet, it is to such a human community, with human problems, that one must commit -- not merely a collection of friendships, but an actual community, that can make some demands on one's life (and vice versa).

Hopefully, local communities will have some connections with other local communities, which may lead to jurisdictions or other arrangements, or may not. But without entering this covenant of community, one risks a spirituality cut off from the incarnation.

Balancing Community and Individual Needs

2007-01-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

John Plummer has an interesting post today entitled "Running Free". In it, he elaborates on a theme that he has expounded before, especially in his book The Living Mysteries -- the idea that the church and jurisdictions and organized communities are unnecessary, as the priesthood and the sacraments are the important thing.

Indeed, many churches have caused a lot of harm -- one need merely think of the persecution of the Jews by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and other denominations (Martin Luther was shockingly bigoted in his anti-Semitism); the endorsement of racist slavery by the Southern branches of the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist denominations in the United States; the denigration of women inherent in denying them the opportunity for full participation in the church's life; or the current vicious attack on lgbt families by many denominations, with an anemic response by most "liberal" mainstream denominations (the United Church of Christ being the shining exception). There are many other examples that could
be offered. And John is absolutely correct in pointing out the ridiculousness of many independent jurisdictions.

Yet, there are also many examples of how unbridled individualism can lead to great problems as well -- especially in our movement. While there are many holy people doing good work in our movement, there are also a lot of people who want quick ordination with no demands to feed their egos -- and while John points to jurisdictions that feed this, I think abolishing this for a "free" priesthood would only exacerbate the problem, since it would remove all accountability.

Individualists can point to unhealthy and abusive communities and say, "See? Everyone is better off on their own, with complete freedom!", with justification. Communitarians can point to unhealthy, abusive, and eccentric individuals and say, "See? Everyone is better off in community, with accountability!", again with justification. In fact, God has created us with a hunger for community, so that we cannot be fulfilled human beings without being in deep, intimate, covenanted relationships, as well as creating us as individuals with deep longings of the Spirit demanding that we express them, even if we go against the grain and march to the beat of a different drummer (if I may be forgiven for mixing metaphors).

Healthy priesthood can only exist within covenanted communities that honor and encourage healthy individual development -- and it is this search for balance that we must pursue, rather than recreating unhealthy communities or establishing unaccountable "free" priesthoods.

Fr. Chris Tessone

2007-01-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to report that Fr. Chris Tessone, author of the blog Even the Devils Believe and pastor of Our Lady of Peace Independent Catholic Church in Durham, NC, is in the process of incardinating into the Independent Catholic Christian Church and has been accepted as a postulant in the Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Chris is very prayerful and a very well-read theologian, and I know he will make great contributions to the Independent Catholic Christian Church.

Hooray! Alleluia! And thanks to Bishop John Plummer for ordaining him.

Aristocratic Title

2007-01-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mother Laura Grimes at Junia's Daughter for this fun exercise:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Imperial Majesty Timothy the Recumbent of Leper St George
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Visit from Chris Tessone

2007-01-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I was fortunate to have a visit from Chris Tessone, the Andrew Sullivan of Independent Sacramental bloggers (not in ideology, but rather in rate of prolific writing), whose blog, Even the Devils Believe, is always interesting and thought-provoking. We had many interesting conversations, and we made a pilgrimage to the grave of the Prince de Landas Berghes, about which he blogs. It was also great for him to join us in worship and fellowship at St. Mary of Grace parish on Sunday night.

Not to beat a dead horse, but unity in our movement will NOT be achieved through the Grand Uniting Organization that people propose setting up on a twice-weekly basis (almost never with any clear idea of what, exactly, the organization is supposed to do, or what resources will be required or where they will be obtained, and usually there is the ridiculous notion that such an organization will cause Rome, the Episcopal Church, the Union of Utrecht, or the little green bishops that inhabit the planet Mars to "recognize" us finally -- because, really, we are absolutely nothing until "someone" [fill in the blank] "recognizes" us -- but I digress). In fact, far more will be accomplished if more people in our movement will take the time to visit each other, get to know each other, worship and eat together. And visiting the graves of our forebears can't hurt!

As I mentioned on Chris' blog, I do plan, in the near future, to produce holy cards with third-class relics of the Prince de Landas Berghes, who brought the Arnold Mathew line to this land, and will make them available to anyone to wants them and sends me a SASE. Stay tuned!

Threat to Religious Freedom in New Hampshire

2007-01-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

Representative Daniel C. Itse is attempting to suppress religious freedom in the state of New Hampshire with a proposed law (HB 69, oddly enough . . .) that would prohibit clergy and churches from performing religious marriages for same-sex couples. Civil marriage and religious marriage are separate institutions. Just as Roman Catholic clergy are not compelled by the state to marry couples where one or both have been divorced without an annulment, and just as rabbis are not compelled by the state to marry interfaith couples where one partner is not Jewish, so clergy (such as UU, UCC, Ethical Culture, Reform/Reconstructionist/Conservative Jewish, MCC, and Independent Sacramental, to name just a few examples) should not be prohibited from performing religious marriages, even if such a marriage is not yet recognized by the state.

This is a very dangerous bill, which I hope is swiftly defeated by the New Hampshire Judiciary Committee.

What's in a Name? -- Homily for 12/31/2006

2007-01-01T09:04:00.000-08:00

First reading: Numbers 6:22-27 Gospel: Luke 2:16-21

What’s in a name?

Well, first, tonight we are celebrating the eve of the feast celebrated on January 1, and that feast has different names, depending on the era and tradition in which it was celebrated. For most of the church’s history, and still in churches following the Byzantine calendar, January 1 has been celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision, since it is the eighth day of Jesus’ life if one celebrates his birth on December 25, and Jewish boys are circumcised on the eighth day of their lives. In the modern Roman Rite, returning to an ancient tradition, this day is celebrated as the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, even though the traditional gospel recounting the circumcision is still read. And our Anglican and Lutheran sisters and brothers celebrate the day as the Holy Name of Jesus, since it was at Jesus’s bris, or circumcision, that he received his name. Since our Independent Catholic tradition has roots in the Roman, Anglican, and Byzantine traditions – I propose that we celebrate all three!

In our first reading, we hear of the solemn blessing with which the priests blessed the people of Israel. Within the Jewish tradition, this blessing is still used to this day, given by those believed to descend from the family of Aaron, and the solemn blessing is one of the holiest moments of Jewish liturgy. God’s most sacred name, thought by scholars to have been pronounced something like “Yahweh”, is invoked, a name so holy that it came to be uttered only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, by the high priest in the temple. The rest of the time, whenever the sacred name appeared in the text, the term “the LORD” was substituted, as it was in the version we just heard. In most English translations, you can tell when the sacred name is used by the fact that “LORD” is in all capital letters. In time, even the Hebrew word for “Lord” came to be deliberately mispronounced by Orthodox Jews outside of prayer. And the name means “He/She causes to become”. So the One who causes all things to come into being is the one who blesses us, preserves us, and gives us peace – and the word for “peace” in Hebrew, shalom, is derived from the root for “whole” or “complete” – so the peace that the Source of all being grants is not merely the absence of conflict, but a state of wholeness.

In the gospel, we hear that Jesus is initiated into the covenant of Israel through his circumcision, and he is given the name “Jesus”, which is how we pronounce the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Yehoshua”, or “Joshua”. That name means “Yahweh is salvation”. And we as Christians believe, as the foundation of our faith, that Jesus is Yahweh, God, incarnate – that the One who causes all things to come into being chose to accept the limitations of becoming a human being subject to the limitations of time and space in order to give us salvation, to free us from those very limitations by giving us eternal life. And how better to express that than by being born to a couple too poor to afford a room in the inn, being born in a dirty stable?

And what should be our response to this salvation, this freedom from sin, death, and all of the other limitations of humanity? We hear that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in our heart”. Mary is humanity responding to God with a resounding “Yes!” to all of the ridiculously impossible things God offers, starting with the Annunciation. And she draws closer to God by reflecting on the mystery of the Incarnation, reflecting on it in her heart, or as another translation puts it – “pondering”. Let us also meditate on this great mystery of our faith, that God has taken on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. And let us know that it was not merely an event from 2,000 years ago – Christ is present in our midst, in our individual lives, in our community, most tangibly in the Eucharist. The One who causes all things to come into being is our salvation – Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the Name of Jesus! and Happy New Year!

Christmas Midnight Mass Homily

2006-12-25T18:56:00.000-08:00

Epistle: Titus 2:11-14 Gospel: Luke 2:1-14

One of the most interesting devotions ever to develop within Catholicism is the Infant of Prague. This model [at this point, I placed a particularly garish example of one on the altar], rescued by a friend from the garbage where grandchildren of a recently deceased devout grandmother had discarded a wealth of devotional items, has the cope painted on, but some models are designed so that one can make cloth copes in the colors of the different liturgical seasons, and change them. Sort of a “dress-up doll” for priests! Around its neck, I have the Infant of Prague chaplet.

The original statue, in a convent in Prague, was damaged in a war, so that the hands were destroyed, and in the seventeenth century, when the church’s priest was praying, he heard a voice say to him, "Have pity on Me and I will have pity on you. Give Me My hands and I will give you peace. The more you honor Me, the more I will bless you." He repaired the hands, and various miracles occurred, and the devotion to the Infant of Prague was born.

We hear, in today’s epistle, that “the grace of God has appeared, offering salvation to all people”. The grace of God appeared in the birth of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God who took on humanity so that we human beings might take on divinity, restoring the image of God in which we were created, but which has been broken through sin.

And this miraculous birth, which took place through the grace of God, could only take place with Mary’s cooperation, through her saying “yes” to the divine call, communicated by the angel Gabriel.

Christ’s Incarnation was not just an event that took place 2,000 years ago, however. It is continued in our lives as Christians each time we, like Mary, say “yes” to God’s call to us in our daily life. Christ is born in the stable of our mundane, ordinary lives, whenever we show love to one another, whenever we feed the hungry or clothe the naked, whenever we bring about peace and justice in our small part of the world.

The Infant Christ says to us today “Give Me My hands, and I will give you peace.” The call is not to repair the hands on a broken statue – the call is to offer our own hands to Christ, to do His work today. So when you receive the Infant Christ in Holy Communion in a few moments, offer Him your hands – and whenever you see a statue of the Infant of Prague, or the figure of the Infant in a crèche – give Him your hands. Christ will give you the blessing of peace. Merry Christmas!

Unity in the Independent Sacramental Movement

2006-12-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of talk lately within the Independent Sacramental Movement about "unity", and I would like to throw in my two cents.

First, some people look at our movement and see the lack of a central organization controlling things and see disunity. They see a lack of neatly organized regional dioceses, with only one bishop per region and only one diocese per region, and see disunity. They see small worshipping communities meeting in homes or rented space, clergy who must work at a secular job to make money, and see a failed model of church.

I look at the same things and see something different. First, having been in both the Episcopal and Roman Catholic denominations, I know that mainstream churches have a lot less unity than many realize. The Episcopal Church's struggles have occurred in the newspapers, with splits, and constant fighting, and lawsuits over property. While the structure of the Roman Catholic denomination allows it to enforce a greater degree of uniformity, having been in both a traditionalist parish and a liberal order, I know that there is a lot of hostility and resentment between liberals and conservatives, traditionalists and modernists, and there are different camps within that denomination that have as little to do with one another as possible, each seeing itself as the authentic expression of Roman Catholicism.

When I look at our movement, I see a movement that empowered African Americans through the consecration of George McGuire and the establishment of the African Orthodox Church at a time when they were relegated to second class in mainstream denominations. I see a movement that consecrated a woman as bishop eight decades before the Episcopalians got around to it. I see a movement that reached out to gay people in 1946, long before any other denomination would touch us with a ten-foot pole. I see a movement that welcomed people attached to the Tridentine Mass and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer when they were persecuted by the Roman Catholic and Episcopal denominations.

None of this would have been possible had we had a centralized authority like the Roman or Anglican denominations.

When I look at our movement, I see a multitude of small, close-knit communities where the faith of Christ is practiced by committed Christians, with the church defined by networks of relationships and not by accidents of geography. I see a movement where men and women are so committed to the ordained ministry that they exercise it without a paycheck, and a church willing to accept the gifts of those rejected by other churches. I see a movement that is committed to inclusion. And while I do see some problem clergy and some troubled communities, I've seen those in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic denominations as well. (I'm not picking on these two denominations in this post, by the way, it's just that most of those in our movement seem to have been in one or the other or both of these two denominations, and they are the denominations, along with the Eastern Orthodox, that our movement most often compares itself to, and I don't know the Eastern Orthodox church well enough to comment, though I suspect it has the same problems as all other churches, since its members are human beings.) I'm reminded of Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares -- the owner of the field counsels against pulling up the tares, for fear of also destroying some of the wheat.

My vision of unity does not involve reducing the number of jurisdictions, or restricting the creation of new ones, or of attempting to form some sort of grand megajurisdction. Rather, I would like to see jurisdictions get to know one another (and take the time to do that well before moving on to other steps). I would like to see us regard ourselves as a family, much as churches with congregational polity do, and work collaboratively where possible. For example, when I receive inquiries from those interested in ordination, if I think there is another jurisdiction they might fit in better with, I refer them. Local interjurisdictional groups can meet together for fellowship. There can be national gatherings for fellowship and worship (and hopefully nothing else).

However, I am extremely suspicious of efforts to create institutions beyond the jurisdictional level. First, such institutions divert energy and resources away from what ought to be our first priority, which is the creation and sustenance of local parish communities. Second, they will inevitably attempt to control the jurisdictions, which will not work, and which will only create more animosity. Problem jurisdictions will always be with us, interjurisdictional efforts to control them won't work, and the efforts to do so would be better expended on creating healthy commuities. Like the wheat and the tares, let God deal with sorting out which is which. If you see a jurisdiction that seems unhealthy, stay away, but pray for them, and rather than attacking them, build up your own.

So I hope that the current move for unity will achieve REAL unity, that based on genuine community and real relationships, and not the creation of yet another organization that, like all its predecessors in our movement, will fail and only divert efforts and energy from building church.

Prayer in Response to Act of Hatred

2006-11-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County (www.uucdc.org) has provided a very warm welcome to my parish, St. Mary of Grace Independent Catholic Church (www.inclusivecatholics.org) -- we have been meeting in their church since May. As a welcoming congregation, they fly a rainbow flag in front of the church as a sign of their embrace of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Unfortunately, their flag was stolen, vandalized, and returned. In response, the Unitarian Universalist church had a series of candlelight vigils culminating in a beautiful service held last Tuesday night. Their minister gave a beautiful reflection: http://uucdc.org/sermon_112106_paper_beats_rock.html. I offered a prayer, and Fr. Joseph offered a scripture reading. Below is the prayer I offered:

Loving God, We adore you, the Source of all life and the giver of life in all of its diversity. You developed the lavish beauty of creation over the ages through the prism of evolution. Creator of pregnant seahorse fathers, the duck-billed platypus, and gay penguins, You placed the rainbow across the sky as a sign of the covenant between humanity and the Divine, reflecting the Light of the Divine in many colors.

We come to you this evening broken and saddened. We are angry at the defilement of sacred symbol and the attack on principles we hold dear. We are saddened by the demonstration of hatred in our midst. We are frustrated that our efforts have not borne more fruit.

We ask you to heal us and our entire community. Let us not hate those who have perpetrated this act of malice, but inspire us to pray for their healing, too. Let us not be discouraged from our work to bring forward the Beloved Community, but let us be strengthened for even greater service.

We pray for special blessings on all of your lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender servants. Hasten the day when all who act in your name will fully welcome them into their embrace. Heal the hardened hearts of officials who refuse to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. Strengthen, comfort, and uphold all young people struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity, and be with us as we create a society in which all are welcomed as they were created to be. Lead us to live in love and renew us in our desire and work to eliminate racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, war, and poverty from our midst.

And as we are being healed of our pain this night, let us not forget to be grateful for the many blessings with which you have enriched our lives. Strengthen us for service to You and to creation.

And let us say, Amen.

I Hope to Blog More Often

2006-10-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

I hope to start blogging on a more regular basis. I moved to my new home, a condominium in a rather sketchy neighborhood that is nevertheless within walking distance of downtown Philadelphia, in mid-July. Because of problems with various Internet providers being rather lackadaisical in setting up service, I only reconnected with the Internet at home last Saturday.

The new place is great. I have three bedrooms -- one is my bedroom, one is the library/guestroom, and the third is the chapel, where we sing Vespers together on Wednesdays (see September post below) and where I offer Mass and the Office the rest of the week.

I've always had a corner devoted to icons and prayer, since I was in Divinity School way back in the early 1990's. Since becoming involved in the independent sacramental movement, I have had an altar set up. However, this is the first time I have been able to devote a whole room (albeit a rather small one . . . ) to being a place set apart for prayer.

Once I figure out how, perhaps I will post pictures.

Vespers

2006-09-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

The Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and St. Mary of Grace Independent Catholic Church have started praying Vespers every Wednesday evening in the oratory in my apartment, followed by dinner at a local restaurant (so far an Italian restaurant down the street with great meal specials). Usually, there are two or three of us. It is quickly making Wednesday night my favorite night of the week. We chant a few Psalms to traditional Gregorian chant tones (we use the St. Dunstan’s Psalter, available from Lancelot Andrewes Press http://www.andrewespress.com/), read a passage of scripture, followed by the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise (also chanted to traditional Gregorian chant tones from the St. Dunstan’s Psalter with the antiphon from the Monastic Diurnal Noted, also available from Lancelot Andrewes Press). Then, we pray, with the Lord’s Prayer, a collect of the day, and lots of silence with opportunity for individuals to make intercessions or thanksgivings.

This offers an oasis of peace in the midst of what are usually busy weeks. I would encourage others to consider making this a part of their prayer discipline as well – any Christian can lead the office, there is no requirement of ordination, as there is for some liturgical rites. Just invite a friend or two, and pray.

The Shame of Not Being Who We Aren't

2006-09-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

I believe that one of the biggest challenges the independent sacramental movement faces is the shame many feel at our perceived failures because we don’t replicate the mainstream churches in certain ways. Here is a list of some of those ways in which we differ from mainstream churches and about which I have witnessed much embarrassment among independent sacramentalists:
· Tiny congregations
· Lack of a centralized unifying organization
· Very high proportion of membership who are ordained
· Unpaid clergy
· Lack of recognition by the “real” church, whoever that may be (for some, it is Rome; for others, it is Constantinople; for many liberals, it is either Utrecht or the Episcopal Church)
· Embarrassment at “bad” clergy

Of course, there are many others, but I do want to address the shame behind these, because I think the shame attached has done far more harm than the conditions about which the shame is felt.

The reason many people end up in the independent movement is because they are unable to be ordained in mainstream churches, especially the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, for a variety of reasons. For those from Roman Catholic backgrounds, it is often because of celibacy, sex, or sexual orientation. For those from Episcopal backgrounds, it is often sexual orientation, or because of arbitrary and abusive ordination processes that exist in most dioceses (especially liberal ones), or because someone deviates from the norm of the ideal priest in some way, or because of going against the prevailing trends. (For example, in my early 20’s, the trend in most dioceses was to discourage young aspirants to ordination, because the ideal was someone with lots of life experience, but then in my 30’s, the trend was to encourage those in their early 20’s as being more energetic.) Both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal denominations have many good, solid clergy doing great work, and both denominations have many clergy who never, ever should have been ordained – in fact, that is true of every denomination, because despite the best efforts of church bureaucrats of all persuasions, there is no perfect ordination process. Heck, JESUS made Judas Iscariot an apostle! And so many who end up in the independent world, where it is much easier to be ordained, are good people whose gifts were spurned out of human sinfulness. Many others are nutcases who were rightly turned down. In other words, we are EXACTLY IDENTICAL to every other Christian denomination – and probably every religious denomination of every persuasion – on the planet. We have good, bad, and indifferent clergy.

But because the overwhelming majority of our clergy come from other backgrounds, unfortunately, it is easy for us to view some mainstream denomination as the standard by which we should be judged. And it is easy to forget the problems the mainstream churches face, or else to reduce them to one or two issues – celibacy, women’s ordination, lgbt issues – and ignore the many other problems. I hear a lot of complaints among independents about the lack of standards for our clergy – yet we forget that the very absence of uniform standards is precisely what has allowed us to embrace the ministry of women and lgbt persons who would have been rejected elsewhere (particularly at the time we started embracing them) – and we also forget the harmful clergy who are nevertheless ordained in churches with high standards. We bewail the lack of a unified structure – yet forget all the headaches that they bring in churches that are more centralized (look at all the lawsuits over property in the Episcopal Church, for example) – and the reason we are unable to develop a structure is that, when push comes to shove, we are (rightly, in my opinion) unwilling to surrender the freedom that such a structure would demand.

I believe that, for us as a movement to move forward, we must recover from the “mainstream shame/envy” we feel, realize that we CANNOT and, more importantly, SHOULD NOT try to replicate the mainstream churches, but that instead, we should embrace the positive things about our own identity – including the positive aspects of those things listed above – and be who we are with the greatest degree of integrity and faithfulness possible. We are not here to replace the mainstream church – they have their own mission from God to which they must be faithful – we are here to complement them and provide ministry they are unable to, and that is our mission from God, to which we must be faithful.

I hope to explore some of these differences and the positive gifts they bring in the coming weeks.

Renewing the spirit

2006-08-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Some of my best experiences in the independent sacramental movement have been attending weekend retreats or gatherings where people from different parts of the country gather for a few days of fellowship, liturgy, and often, ordinations. My first such gathering, in 1999, was the yearly meeting of the Friends Catholic Communion. Although not a part of that body at that point, I was ordained a deacon on Saturday afternoon, and two bishops were consecrated the following day. I attended a couple of other gatherings of FCC, the last being a joint retreat with the Catholic Church of the Holy Grail (now the Contemporary Catholic Church) in Richmond, Indiana. In my early years of involvement with this movement, my religious life was divided between worshipping in a local Episcopal church where my involvement in the independent sacramental movement was not known, and practicing a liturgical and sacramental life in solitude at home, a practice which sustained my involvement in various social justice movements. Those weekend gatherings were wonderful because they supplied me with almost my only experience of community within this movement, apart from internet connections. (My experience is rather common, because many are ordained in our movement for a solitary liturgical life combined with a ministry in the world that is non-parochial, and many of these worship in mainstream churches who do not recognize their ordination.)

Since moving to Philadelphia, I have come to a much more integrated practice, since I am now co-pastor of an independent sacramental parish and therefore part of a small local community. Also, before moving, I did help organize an informal group of independent sacramentalists in New York who meet roughly quarterly for dinner and fellowship, and have continued to participate even after the move. And, while it is less than ideal, I have forged many close friendships with fellow independent sacramentalists by email.

Nevertheless, this past weekend, I had a MARVELOUS time attending the retreat of the Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to which was added an ad hoc gathering of Independent Catholic Christian Church clergy, including an ordination. It reaffirmed my strong belief that this is that part of Christ’s church to which God has called me (it’s not for everyone – our movement complements the more mainstream denominations in the one body of Christ). There were eight of us present for the retreat.

The liturgies were very powerful. Before the retreat actually began, I conferred the subdiaconate on Bryan Marabanian in a simple mass in the chapel. We prayed lauds and vespers each morning and evening, Friday evening through Sunday morning. John Bartholomew Scott was received as a novice on Saturday night. Friday night, we had a compline service of reconciliation, with Fr. Joseph Menna, Prior General of the AIHM and myself available to hear confessions, an oblate bishop anointing, and the giving of general absolution. We had a spontaneous compline on Saturday night that was mostly silence and Taize chant. This singing was quite beautiful – we were an all-male group (by happenstance, not by design, as both groups are open to women), and I added bass lines wherever I could.

Saturday morning, we had a beautiful mass for the ordination of Bryan to the diaconate. Several of us had tears in our eyes at different points. We did a contemporary setting of the Litany of Saints (Becker), and I included a verse with Independent Catholic saints. I could palpably feel their presence with us. The entire mass was very moving. This was the first time I have conferred major orders (not counting being a co-consecrator at episcopal consecrations), and it was a very powerful experience. I truly believe the Holy Spirit was present. Sunday morning, we had another beautiful mass for the renewal of Fr. Joseph's vows. His homily beautifully summed up the weekend.

Fr. Joseph led most of the sessions, which were focused on the Myers Briggs test, which everyone had taken, based on Jungian archetypes, and the implications for spirituality and for working together as church. The information was very helpful, and the exercises we did facilitated getting to know one another. The highlight was perhaps the assignment to determine the Jungian spirituality type (using the two middle polarities of the Myers Briggs) of the four main characters of the Golden Girls and Star Trek – one of the groups also analyzed Will & Grace! I also led a session on Independent Catholic history on Saturday evening, and I will be writing up the talk for an article.

The fellowship was wonderful. Old friendships were strengthened, and new ones were forged. Sadly, for me, this was very much at the expense of getting good nights’ sleep, and I ended up not going to work on Monday to recover! One of the retreatants received word late Saturday night that his sister had died. We supported him in prayer and friendship the rest of the retreat.

Fr. Seraphim McCune, an ICCC priest from Texas, although not able to be present, graciously gave a beautiful wooden monstrance he made to the Order of Augustinians of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I very much look forward to future retreats as a way to renew the spirit – and I urge others in this movement to attend such gatherings whenever possible.

On the Other Hand

2006-08-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Just to clarify what I said in the previous post – there is no perfect church on earth. Joining ANY church at all (my own included) means accepting a certain set of strengths and weaknesses.

Also, I do believe in the power of prayer.

So, it is quite possible for a progressive Christian to feel called by God to be a Roman Catholic despite that denomination’s flaws, and there are certainly many, many holy people and many, many wonderful communities within it. Conversely, a conservative may be called to be in a more liberal denomination.

However – and this is my point – to do this requires ACCEPTING the flaws of that community. Basically, one must approach one’s church membership with the attitude of the Serenity Prayer – “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. The point of the previous post is that the women recently ordained are trying to change things they cannot change, and are expending a lot of wasted effort in the process.

Ecclesiological fantasies – on the “Roman” Catholic Womenpriests

2006-08-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

There are a number of Roman Catholic women who are being ordained by various bishops (most, perhaps all, of whom are, in fact, Independent bishops and not Roman) who are claiming to be “Roman” Catholic priests. In fact, this is not the case. The Roman Catholic denomination – like all organized religious groups, from fundamentalist churches to pagan covens – is governed by a set of rules, in this case, its Code of Canon Law. That Code is quite explicit in stating that only baptized males may “validly” be ordained, and that those who are ordained (or “attempt” to be ordained, in the case of ordinations Rome views as invalid) outside of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Catholic (in communion with the pope) denominational structures are automatically excommunicated. Furthermore, it is quite explicit that only the pope can promulgate changes to the rules, and since the pope appoints the cardinals who in turn elect the pope, it is quite accurate to say that no Roman Catholic who has not attained the rank of cardinal has any real say in the governance of the denomination.

I have been rather offended at these women’s claims to be the first “female Catholic priests”, since they ignore the history of both Independent Catholic and Anglican women priests. Furthermore, I think that they are deluding themselves in thinking that they can have a real effect in bringing about change, given the structure of their denomination. Progressives within the Roman Catholic denomination can chant “we are the church” all they want, but at the end of the day, the pope appoints the bishops, and the bishop appoint the male priests to serve in each parish, with no decision-making authority given to any laypeople.

For pointing all of this out in an online discussion, I have been attacked because this is “bad ecclesiology”. I happen to agree that it is horrendous ecclesiology, but that does not change the simple fact that it is the ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic denomination, for better or worse, and pretending that it is not because one does not want it to be does not change that fact one iota.

I happen to believe that, rather than hit one’s head against a brick wall over and over again is counterproductive. Much better for people who disagree with Rome’s ecclesiology to leave and join and help build churches they can believe in. (The same could be said for those in many other denominations, even those with more democratic structure, but I’ll leave making the Anglicans and Protestants angry for another day.) I am not impugning these women’s call to ministry, but far better for them to find communities willing to accept their gifts.

New Home

2006-08-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

I have moved, and the process of moving has disrupted this blog -- I hope to do better.

My new home is great -- it is the first time in a very long time that I have had enough space. I even have a room set aside as a chapel. I will have to purchase some furniture (such as a day bed for the guestroom), and have a couple of bookcases to put together (IKEA), but I am very close to having a home that really supports me and my work. I've even had a couple over for wedding preparation -- not something that could happen in the old place!

The only glitches so far have been in the area of communications -- phone (I've been forced to get a cellphone), internet, and mail forwarding.

Nonetheless, I hope to blog more frequently from now on.

Disappointments at Federal Debate on Same-sex Marriage

2006-06-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

I am utterly repulsed by the bigotry and hatred being spewed by those pushing for an amendment banning same-sex marriage (and, Senator Brownback, yes, those who oppose same-sex marriage ARE by definition bigots ["bigot - one who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ"], and your misuse of this word is probably a violation of the "English only" law for which you voted, and no, President Bush, you CANNOT " treat [every American] with tolerance, respect and dignity" in a debate about denying a class of Americans access to marriage -- the debate ITSELF is intolerant, disrespectful, and a denial of basic human dignity.) Anyone who votes for such a reprehensible act of bigotry and hatred forever loses the ability to get my vote for any office.

But, sadly, as always, I am much more disappointed by our "friends" and "advocates" in this debate. First, I am tired of the "President Bush is doing this to draw attention from the IMPORTANT issues facing this country, blah blah blah". Yes, I understand that he is trying to divert attention from his monumental incompetence and failure. However, same-sex marriage is a very important issue, and to imply or explicitly state that it is not is an insult to every binational couple cruelly separated by our immigration police, every gay or lesbian person refused admittance to the hospital room of their dying lover, every widowed same-sex spouse refused a place at the funeral. Furthermore, I am getting to the point of wanting to vomit everytime I hear one of our "friends" get up to say "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but I oppose this amendment."

TO BE PRO-GAY IS TO SUPPORT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. TO OPPOSE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS ANTI-GAY. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE ELECTED OFFICIALS WHO WOULD DENY US OUR RIGHTS BY A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND THOSE ELECTED OFFICIALS WHO WOULD DENY US OUR RIGHTS BY FAILURE TO ACT IS ONE OF DEGREE, NOT KIND!

I will vote for an anti-marriage, but anti-amendment (whether pro-civil union, pro-domestic partnership, or whatever) as the lesser of two evils, but never again will I give a penny to or lift a finger for any candidate who does not publicly and without hesitation support my right to marry the man of my choice. (Nor will a penny of my money ever go in the offering plate of any church that does not perform same-sex marriages, and "holy unions" and "commitment ceremonies" don't count!)

Lobbying in Harrisburg

2006-06-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of speaking at a press conference and lobbying a number of state legislators in Harrisburg against the anti-gay constitutional amendment being proposed for the state constitution. This was part of the efforts of the new Faith Coalition for PA Families (more info here: http://www.imagodeimcc.org/downloads/faith_coalition_brochure.pdf), an interfaith coalition of clergy and faith communities who have come together to oppose this mean-spirited, bigoted attack on lgbt families. Sadly, the legislator with whom I and others talked the most (by which I mean we started sentences which he interrupted) is completely clueless on this issue. Kudos to Stacey Sobel of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, the Rev. Karla Fleshman, pastor of Imago Dei MCC, and the Rev. Nadine Sullivan for doing such a wonderful job. I had the privilege of riding up with Rev. Karla and lobbying with her and Rev. Nadine.