TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM - A Homily

This homily was delivered on August 25, 2019 at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota.  On this date, the congregation hosted a choral group, "Mirabile," which sang renditions of gospel hymns "There's a Balm in Gilead", "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and Faure's "Tantum Ergo" which was used as pretext for this homily.

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+ In the Name of the God who loves us more than we can comprehend, the God who made us who we are; the God who loves us regardless of what we've done or left undone.  In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. +

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity after hearing “Tantum Ergo” set to the moving music of Gabriel Fauré and beautifully sung by Mirabile to meditate on the subject of this novum ritui, this new ritual known as Holy Communion, Holy Eucharist; the Sacrament of the Altar or the Lord’s Supper, among others.  

I’m not going to spend this morning talking about the various ways this rite has been treated throughout the turbulent history of the Church, how it has been used to divide and separate the followers of Jesus.  Rather I want us to explore what may be a new way of looking at it.   I want us to revisit, to imagine the night in which Jesus takes a loaf of bread and gives thanks for it and then breaks it apart and says, “This is my body which is for you. Do this remembrance of me,” and then taking a cup of wine says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. When you drink this, do so in remembrance of me.”[1] 

What would we have taken away from Jesus’s comments, if heard for the first time, if we only knew Jesus as a man, a teacher, a brother, a friend, and weren’t thinking he was about to be arrested, tried for blasphemy, and killed within the next 24 hours?  At the time he said these words, what do you think Jesus wants us to remember about himself?   Knowing Jesus, the man, the human being, a person just like us is difficult isn’t it? 

We say Jesus is true man and then we add that he is also true God and when you do the theological math we end up with the God part of that equivalency getting all the attention. Of course, we avoid the math, we side-step it all by calling it a mystery. 

Such an interesting word, mystery, because in ecclesial circles, it avoids the need for explanation.  Don’t understand something?  No problem. Its’ a mystery. You don’t have to know.  You just need to believe it.        

When mystery is used in that manner it defeats the whole purpose of scripture, which was written for our understanding, which is not to say there isn’t mystery. The fact that we’re sitting in this church at this time is enough mystery for me

We should be zealous about protecting the identity of Jesus as being purely one of us; because if he isn’t just like us in every way: prone to sin, to temptation, to making mistakes then everything he taught, everything he did has no relevance in our lives.  Perhaps that is why Christianity is struggling today and we are finding ourselves living in a Post-Christian world where the teachings of Jesus seem to have lost their impact and importance.

The Jesus I know - the Jesus I love is the Jesus who knows me, who loves me because he’s just like me, and I’m just like him and there is nothing I need hide from him because there is nothing I can hide from him.  He’s seen it all.  He’s done it all.  He’s been through it all.

The Jesus I know and love had to grow up. 

The Jesus I know and love had to evolve into what he became, the Christ of God. 

From the moment of his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus was prompted to live into being God’s son.  That intense realization sent him into the wilderness of the life we share to deal with his own demons so that he could deal with ours.

Throughout his ministry Jesus was surprised at the depth of what it means to be created in the image of God.  He saw it exhibited by grateful a Samaritan healed of leprosy, by a Roman Centurion who in his deep love for his slave humbly sought  his slave’s healing, and by a Syro-Phonecian woman who had the temerity to stand up to him calling her a dog and turning his ridicule into a demand for justice and healing.  

Oh yes…  There is a Balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole and heals the sin-sick soul.  It’s the healing grace of God and all of us have access to it.   

It was in such moments that Jesus was awakened to the realization that God is that Being in which everyone past, present, and future, lives and moves and has their being.”   That’s the mystery we are living in; the mystery we’re living into.

On the night Jesus broke bread and offered a cup of wine, Jesus was emptying himself, was giving himself away to us.  The body Jesus was symbolically breaking is the same body we have.  The symbolic blood he was pouring out is the same blood that runs through our veins.   

The point of this rite is not about reenacting a past event, but is that we remember to do the same; that we break ourselves open, that we pour ourselves out; that we enter into communion with each other and with the world for its sake and the sake of Christ. Holy Communion is about taking on the very body and blood Jesus to become his risen and his rising presence in this world and this should cause us to do so humbly and with reverence as Aquinas reminds us. To be a communicant is to be a communicator of the love of God in Jesus for the world.

Approximately seven hundred years before Jesus appeared, God through the prophets like Isaiah said, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? … I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.[2]

Jesus’ death on the cross was not a blood sacrifice meant to appease God.  God did not delight in sacrifices; much less, human sacrifices, and certainly not that of a son.  It is clear that God did not care for the literal and metaphorical bull being offered as appeasement; that God was through with sin being atoned for in that manner; because it meant nothing to those who were doing it as a payoff and then going about as they pleased.

That is not what Jesus’s death was about; to give us license to go about doing whatever we please and then coming to church and putting it on Jesus’ tab. The sacrifice Jesus offered at his death was the sacrifice described by the psalmist in a Psalm frequently read on Good Friday: “The sacrifices of God are broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”[3] 

It was at his death that Jesus fully lived into being what it means to be a true human, a true child of God.

It was at his death that Jesus lived out to the last drop of life everything he taught.

It was at his death, that Jesus came into the fullness of his being the Son God proclaimed him to be as he asked his Father with his dying breath, “Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing;” a saving indictment for all ages on this planet.

Yes – this novum ritui brings us into a sacramental relationship with God and with the world through Jesus, the Christ. 

The third century Christian apologist, Tertullian said that when a Roman made a sacramentum to join a Roman legion, he made an oath to change one’s life, as if starting a new life.

When we come to the table of the Lord’s Supper, we enter into this sacramental relationship with Jesus, taking an oath to persevere in keeping the covenant Jesus established, to be grounded in the work of Jesus, to remember what he taught, to act as he acted; to evolve into the daughters and sons God intends us to be until that day when we come full circle with Jesus in that being in which we live, move, and have our being.    

Amen.

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[1] A paraphrase of the earliest account of this event in 1 Corinthians 11:25 & 26

[2] Isaiah 1:11

[3] Psalm 51:17

LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI - The Lord's Prayer - A Homily

This is a recollection of an impromptu homily I delivered at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota on July 28, 2019

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In the name of our ever-loving, life giving God, who loves us more than we can imagine, who loves us for who we are, in spite what we have done, what we have left undone, and what we will or will not do, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, our redeemer.  Amen.

When we first entered this interim period of having no priest; a period that is likely to continue for some time, I began a series of homilies entitled, "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi."  Lex orandi, lex credendi is a term that was coined by the 5th century disciple of St. Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine.  This rather enigmatic phrase literally means the law of prayer , the law of belief.  I tend to define it as how we pray is shaped by what we hold dearest in our hearts and, conversely what we pray about shapes what we hold in our hearts.  

It is unfortunate that Prosper wasn't invited to the Council of Nicea, where our creeds were formulated because the truest creed is one that was given to us by Jesus, the "Our Father" or the "Lord's Prayer."  We don't often think of prayers as creeds, but this prayer, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples reveals something about God and reveals something about ourselves.  It gives us something to believe that has pragmatic relevance in how we live.

There are two versions of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospels, the one we heard this morning from the Gospel of Luke and  another in the Gospel of Matthew, which is the more familiar version. This morning I would to take a few moments to look at this prayer, not so much as prayer, but rather as a creed, that says something about what we are to hold dear in our hearts and reveals what it is that we, as Christians are to do.  

The most important two words of this prayer/creed that we are familiar with are right at the beginning,  "Our Father" or as Luke's version simply states, "Father."  This is what we are claiming God to be, our Father, the creator of everything and a father/ mother/ the creative parent to everything  that exists.  Jesus said those words.  Jesus says those words with us every time we say them.  Jesus is not God's only child, not God's only creation, we all are and Jesus is our brother.

"Who is in heaven"  are words that meant something in Jesus day as a place, that dome that covered the Earth from horizon to horizon.  But we, today, have a much broader, much more expansive understanding of heaven as something that totally surrounds us, no matter where we look.  Heaven is all around.  "The kingdom of heaven," Jesus said, "is at hand."  God is as close to us as our next breath.  St. Paul put it this way to the Athenians in Acts 17, "God is that being in which we live and move and have our being."  That's how close God is to us at every moment.  

"Holy is your Name."   Have you noticed in our Episcopal liturgies and in our hymnal that the word  "Name" in reference to God is always capitalized.  We really can't name God, because God is so other - so holy.  In fact, we really can't describe God as a noun, a solid construct, because God is always active, always defies description in a concrete manner.  People who say Jesus is the face of God, get it part right.  But think about that for a moment - the face of Jesus is our face.  You want to see God - look in a mirror or look at the person next to you wherever you are  - you're seeing God in part.  God is a pronomial verb, something so real, so intimate and imminent that God is more felt than something  or a someone that can be adequately described by language.  Yet we know God to be!

"Your will be done on Earth as it is heaven."  This is a revelatory statement.  It is telling us something  about the workings of God.  Let me put it this way.  God's will is done, in spite of what we do or don't do.  The bottom line is God's will is done, is being done, is taking place.  The sad fact is most don't see it, most don't understand that God works through what we do, with what we do, and around what we do.  God's will seeps through us.  The only part we have to play in this is how we see it carried out in our lives.  God is creative.  God loves to play in the dirt to create things out of the messiness that is - the question is how do we want God's will to take shape in our lives?  What are we offering God to work with when it comes to us? 

"Give us this day our daily bread."  Remember, a few Sunday's back I said God was a minimalist.  How minimal is our daily bread - the simplest form of sustenance.  We're not just saying, give me my daily bread - we're talking us.  The totality of us - the people that have and the people that don't have.  We're talking about the migrants, the people with out food and shelter, the imprisoned, the persecuted, those who seem to be without.  We need to think about that, because they are a part of us. And Jesus is not only talking about food; he's talking about the Word that sustains us and the words we use to sustain each other.  The Gospels remind us that we are fed by the Word of God and I might add by the words we use.  Do we like the menu we're serving up?

"Forgive us our sins, as we forgive the sins of others"  or as Luke records, "Forgive us our sins because we forgive the sins of other."  How are we doing with that?  How well are we forgiving the sins of others.  I have often felt that after saying the Confession of Sins during our services instead of priest standing to pronounce the absolution,  we just turn to everyone present in this church and say, "I forgive you."  I might not have done anything wrong in my eye or might not feel you've done me wrong, but I'm going to forgive you - just in case and I'm going to mean it.  Christianity has not fully lived into the promise of God's forgiveness in it's two thousand year history.  It hasn't even come close.  [I think we would be living in a much different world if it had.]

"And do not put us to the test."  This is another revelatory statement.  God does not test us.  We test God.  We test each other all the time.  What we sometimes perceive as a test from God is perhaps God telling us something rather than testing us about something.  If we feel tested, what is the nature of the test - What am I lacking in?  What am I not getting?  Better yet, what are we not getting?   What is God strengthening me in?  God doesn't need to test us. God knows us, better than we know ourselves.  So what is it that we need to know about ourselves, about myself?  

The Lord's prayer is the best creed of the church because it touches the heart.   I have sat at the bedside of those who are dying, of those who are sick and in deep need.  People in those positions don't ask for the creeds, they ask for prayer and they know and want this prayer - no matter what state they're in or whether they are very communicative, I've watched people mouth these words [who have stopped speaking for some time] because they matter.

Let me say one final word about prayer in general.  The measure of one's faith is revealed in the context of one's prayers.  Scripture, Jesus, and the apostles all advised us to pray without ceasing - to submit everything to God in prayer.    It may be that some of us don't want to bother God with our trivial problems, the attitudes that we acquire, the feelings we entertain that bother us because we feel we should be able to deal with it, but those are the things we frequently need to let go of in order to let God work through them.

May we find in our prayers the depth of faith to let God be God, the liberation  of hope as God works through us, and the immensity of  God's love that encompasses all.

Amen.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

FAITH AND INTUITION

In this post, I consider faith and intuition.  In my previous post, I observed, "that there is interplay between (belief, faith, intellect, and intuition) as in intuition informing intellect and faith informing what we believe."  This seems accurate because all knowledge is derived from what we learn as experience, and faith and intuition are experiential activities. As a result, this avenue of information is largely a one way street; in that, belief does not cause one to have faith and intellect does cause one to have intuition, neither does belief produce intuition, nor does intellect result in acts of faith.

It can be said that one's beliefs and intellect  gives definition to one's acts of faith. The same could be said regarding intuition.   Nevertheless, one's beliefs and intellect do not produce faith or intuition.  Faith and intuition are not a product of one's ideologies or dependent on a certain level of intellect in order to occur.  Faith and intuition are, strictly speaking, experiential events.  A common reaction to such experiences is that the person engaged in an act of faith or intuition rarely recognizes it as such and generally is unable to indicate a direct reason or motive for what compelled one's actions or experience at the time. 

The best illustration is the person who does a random heroic deed carried out in the split moment.  Heroes of the immediate-take-action kind are not known to take action because of an ideological belief or intellect that is capable of weighing all the contingencies that one's actions can result in. Such individuals simply act, without a sense of self-regard to what could have, might have, or should have happened. Whether they admit it or even realize what they experienced at the time of their heroism, there is detected in such actions a level of faith and intuition that surpasses what they and others would do if solely based one what they believe and know. 

Something far more powerful and swift came into play and that something I would identify as faith and intuition.  People who act from faith often credit God with such occurrences, and I won't argue that assessment because that too proceeds from a person's experience with faith and intuition.

What is observed in such instances is what I described in earlier posts as the Impulse of Religion that evolved from seeing a need for the other as seeing in the need of the other one's own need.  I believe that the Impulse of Religion is a primal response that has evolved in the human psyche before the dawn of human history.  Faith and intuition proceed from an untraceable, deeper sense of being than one's intellect and ideologies.

There are, of course, other types of heroes; people who are highly intellectual and possess strong ideological beliefs, whose heroism is not of the immediate-take-action type.  Such individuals represent a heroism that is of the deliberate-steady-action type who demonstrate faith in what they are doing and possess a sense of intuition beyond knowing, who feel that what they are engaging is the right thing to do without the aid of knowing for sure, who are willing to risk an investment in hope.   Such heroes can go unrecognized in their life-times, but who have changed the course of human history, who may have averted disasters, found cures, prevented wars or gave rise to new ideas and broadened our sense of knowledge at the risk of losing life - people like Galileo, Thomas Payne, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Madame Curie, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. to name a few. 

Such heroic individuals were frequently dealing with the dangerous occupation of speaking truth to power or who had to overcome their personal inclination for playing it safe.  Again, such faith and intuitive activities I would posit as being motivated by the primal Impulse of Religion.

Faith and intuition are more operative in a person's life than most think or would credit.  The simplest, most mundane expression of faith is getting out of bed each morning.  It takes faith to face each new day as a human.  Possessing beliefs derived from negative experience and a reasoning ability based on both one's negatives experience and beliefs derived from it can possess one to the point of immobility.  Apart from clinical depression, that is frequently the result of brain chemistry, depression as mood is frequently connected to intellectual perception and processing, occasionally associated with ideologically induced dissatisfaction.  Getting out of bed and moving on with one's day, in spite of them is an act of faith. 

Intuition is perhaps harder to detect, but at its simplest level it come as that gut reaction, that quick feeling one gets to do or to refrain from doing something at a moment's notice. Intuition is that sense which defies rational explanation because it does not require it, but seems rational after we acted on it; particularly, if the intuition is correct.  One can also experience intuition as a persistent sense of alertness to undefined events that are taking place and are beyond one's control; that cause one to be vigilant about events that resonate or give definition to this intuitive feeling.

Faith and intuition are largely processed intellectually after the fact of an identifiable occurrence.  It is only after the fact that one's ideological beliefs come into play as way to define and identify such occurrences.  There is, as I have posited, interplay between these functions.  Faith and intuition are more likely to occur at a subliminal level than at a fully conscious level.

My reason for bringing this and my last post to light is because we are not functioning, as a whole, in a faithful and intuitive way.  We are prone to being numb to intuitive sensations regarding nature and human relationships.  Many are choosing to turn a blind eye to the earth and to the moral responsibilities we humans have towards it; that such responsibilities transcend our mere ideological viewpoints and subjective values. 

We are not acting in faith to address problems, to fix what is wrong  nor are we listening to the inner impulses that connect us to the pulse of the natural earth and humus of our nature; to the primal Impulse of Religion that I believe resides at the core of the human psyche.

Our intellectual abilities can override intuition.  Our ideological beliefs can become a substitute for faith; that when combined can lead one to ignore the inner impulses that alert us to what our intellectual faculties fail to register.   If there was ever a time in which to take a giant step back and examine one's beliefs and embrace the limits of our collective intellect and be alert to our intuitive senses that proceed from a primal need for the other as meeting our own needs and to act from faith as an investment in hope, now is that time.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

BELIEF AND INTELLECT

In naming my blog "The Faithful Agnostic,"  I have used the Greek term "agnostic" to literally to mean one who does not know; as in the saying, "The more one knows, the less one knows" or as I would clarify, "The more one knows, the more one knows that one doesn't know anything; at least, not for certain."  When combined with the term "faithful," my intent is to place faith beyond the certitude that frequently comes with knowledge based and derived from ideological beliefs..  In this and my next post, I am revisiting terminology that I have used frequently in my blog:  Belief, Intellect, Faith, and Intuition.

One could say that there is little difference between belief and faith or intellect and intuition, or one could say that they have very little in common.  I maintain that there are significant differences which are important in understanding how we relate to others, our world, and our sense of being.  At the same time, I would also maintain that there is a great deal of interplay between these terms as in intuition informing intellect and faith informing what we believe.

BELIEF AND INTELLECT

In one of my earliest posts I examined the difference between ideological beliefs and non-ideological beliefs (to review click here). What we believe is absorbed as knowledge regardless if such beliefs are based on fact, speculation, or wishful thinking.  Ideological beliefs are usually based on some factual evidence, a good amount of speculation as to what those facts mean, and a pinch or two of wishful thinking regarding the efficacy of such beliefs.

Knowledge in its simplest form is anything we learn, have some understanding of, and have an ability to use.  Knowledge takes in and encompasses all we encounter, experience, and learn.  Intellect is our ability to employ reason to what we know or what we believe we know.  Reason can help us distinguish between these two types of knowing, and therein lies the rub to paraphrase Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

We humans believe many things.  I am no exception.  They shape our perspective of the world and we readily obtain them when something needs definition or explanation.  The fact is I'm writing this post because I have beliefs about beliefs, knowledge, and intellect.  We simply cannot avoid having them or expressing them in some manner.

I try to temper any certitude about the beliefs I entertain by maintaining a healthy skepticism about them.  In fact, I could adapt the saying about the more one knows to the beliefs one entertains; as in, "The more I believe in something, the more I believe that I might be wrong about what I believe in."

I know - this makes me appear uncertain about almost everything - a true neurotic about life in general. And while I admit to having more than my share of anxiety about things, I'm not a complete and utter mess because intellect is helpful in this matter.  By employing intellect, don't get me wrong.  I am not claiming to be overtly intellectual or being some sort of a genius.  I'm neither of those things, but I can reason, and reason is important in dealing with what I believe.

Without an ability to employ reasoned skepticism to our beliefs, what we believe, if unchecked will land us in a mess, and human history is proof of that.  In fact, we appear to be in a time when our ideological beliefs have polarized the world, generally speaking, into two opposing ideological camps that foster either intellectual blindness perceived as idealized elitism or willful ignorance perceived as an irrational longing for an idealized past, both of which, has led humanity into the dangerous waters of irrational nationalism, selfish objectivism, exploitive capitalism, and intentional racism.

The intellect has its limitations; particularly, if it is disciplined by a strict adherence to ideological beliefs perceived and treated as absolute truth. Treating ideological beliefs as absolute truth invariably results in the distortion of reality.

REALITY

Reality can be fickle.  As I have explained in other posts, reality is largely anthropocentric and geocentric.  It proceeds from a consensus of perceptions.  As such, reality is both a cultural and social construct. Nevertheless, within that construct, we humans have allowed for the notion of transcendence; of knowledge beyond fact, where our creative ideas, our imagination, and our abstract theories find a safe haven.  The bottom line, which is important to hold on to, is that the reality we know and interact with is largely shaped by what we know and what we do with such knowledge.

It is an interesting and dangerous phenomenon, observed throughout history, that when ideological beliefs are treated as inviolable truths promoted as fact, intelligence in all of its forms becomes a target because intelligence, if allowed to function properly, will question belief.  Throughout human history, demagogues and totalitarian regimes of every kind have systematically persecuted, imprisoned, and killed intellectuals of every kind because their being intelligent threatened and threatens the ideological beliefs such demagogues and tyrannical regimes wish to impose on the masses as a reality of their making.

It is not surprising then that the "Intelligence Community" within the free world is under attack by those who wish to change reality to fit their personal endeavors and  personal gain, regardless of the empirical data and facts that counter such egotistical endeavors.

On the other hand, pure intellect can be soulless, unimaginative, irrational, and selfish. The evil genius comes to mind  - The lone individual who sees no value in others, apart from something the individual can manipulate,  The individual who lacks a social  conscience and believes only in prowess of his or her mind, who denies having beliefs because the individual's intellect is completely ensnared by the individual's solitary, unquestioned belief about the individual's superiority.  Such individuals are rare and largely diagnosable as psychopaths.

Fortunately, the vast majority of geniuses are not pure intellectuals in the aforementioned sense.  Many are highly imaginative, creative, and possess a well-developed social conscience.   But I suspect that pure intellectualism is being inadvertently or willfully pursued by some individuals who lack a stable intellect and are mesmerized by and believe in the variant alternate realities produced through the internet that is capable of feeding the realities searched for by the blind intellectual and the willfully ignorant.

In this post, we have examined the connection between belief and intellect as shaping knowledge.  In my next post, we take a look at knowledge derived from faith and intuition.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm.

THE MANTLE OF HERITAGE - A Homily

This a recollection of my unscripted, rather impromptu homily that I delivered at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota on Sunday, July 7, 2019.

In the name of our loving, life-giving God, who loves each and every one of us of more than we can comprehend; who loves us for who we are in spite of what we've done or left undone - In the name of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. + Amen.

On this Fourth of July weekend, I want to spend some time talking about our heritage both as a nation and as a congregation.  I want to continue with where I left off last Sunday, where Jesus told a would-be follower and disciple who wanted to say goodbye to his family before heading out that " One who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom of God" - seemingly harsh words coming from Jesus, but important ones for us to pay attention to.

For the past several Sundays we've been hearing about Elijah.  I want to talk about Elijah and Elisha.  There is so much I'd like to say about Elijah - what an interesting prophet.  If you recall last Sunday's first lesson was about Elijah ascending into heaven.  You know the story  - how Elijah was caught up by a fiery chariot and how his disciple, Elisha said, "Father give me a portion of your prophetic abilities.  And Elijah said something like, "If you see me taken up, you will know that what you have asked for will be yours."  And then Elisha sees Elijah ascend in that fiery chariot and Elijah throws his cloak, his mantle to Elisha who  tears his own clothes, puts on Elijah's cloak and picks up where Elijah left off, as we heard in today's first reading.

A heritage is like Elijah's mantle, something tossed to us, something to carry on; as in continuing to do likewise.  One of our members informed me that last Sunday,  June 30th was the one hundred fifty-ninth anniversary date of the first Episcopal service held in what would become the Dakota Territory.  You talk about putting your hand to the plow and not looking back. Bishop Joseph Talbot and Fr. Melancthon Hoyt took off from Sioux City (Iowa) to minister to settlements along the Missouri river as far as Fort Randall.

The first Episcopal service held in Yankton was at the Frost, Todd & Company Trading Post.   A year later, Fr. Hoyt would return to Yankton and establish this parish, being this congregation's first priest.  Bishop Talbot and Fr. Hoyt picked up the mantle of the apostles and continued their work.  The heritage left by Talbot and Hoyt and those who established this congregation and built this church is  a mantle tossed to us to carry on and build upon the ministry of this congregation, a mantle given to the Church by Christ to go out into the world and spread the Good News.

This past Thursday our nation celebrated its two hundred forty-third birthday, the signing of The Declaration of Independence.  It was a bold and prophetic statement, penned by Thomas Jefferson.  It established a premise that is universal in its scope and applicable to people everywhere, "...all men (all people) are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

It was on this untested, yet unfulfilled, aspirational premise that this great nation of ours was launched.  It is what made this nation a beacon to the rest of the world.  It is what has drawn people to our shores, and it is what brings people to our borders as I speak.  It is a mantle that was tossed to us, a mantle tossed to all those who seek liberty and freedom.

For me, the most important document, the most important mantle of heritage that remains as an aspiration and a responsibility to carry on was written and ratified thirteen years later, the Preamble of the Constitution:

"We the People of The United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States of America."

This preamble is both a mantle and a lens by which to measure how we as the people of this nation are doing.  It is what I personally use to discern how well our elected and appointed officials are doing:

Are we, through them, establishing justice?  And by justice, our forefathers weren't talking about punishment, but rather were referencing the Hebrew prophets who advocated for the poor, the oppressed, and those unable to support themselves.

Are we, through them, insuring domestic tranquillity?  Are we, through them,  keeping the public square safe?

Are we, through them, providing for the common defence?

Are we, through them, promoting the general welfare?

 Are we, through them, securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity?

Our founding fathers struggled in establishing this nation. They acted out of faith and hope.  They put their hand to the plow and didn't look back.

They established the framework by which "our democracy" functions, The Constitution, that great distillery by which the will of people is derived and discerned from the mash of our collective voices.

It is so easy to take the blessings of liberty for granted. None of us present today have known a life without them, but many in this world have never experienced what we have.  But what we have is not a gift but rather a mantle tossed to us by those who came before us.  Freedom is not to be taken lightly.  St. Paul described freedom prophetically in last Sunday's second lesson when he wrote to the Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,but through love become slaves to one another.  For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.  (Galatians 5:13-15)

Amen.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL THE FAITHFUL

Note:  What follows is an article I wrote for my church's most recent edition of its monthly newsletter.  While written with the small parish I am a member of in mind,  it may resonate with what other small congregations are facing or currently coping with.  This post serves as a follow-up on my posts on the Priestless Parish.  

From the First Epistle of Peter:

“Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:  If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.  ... ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:  As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.  Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.  
1 Peter 2: 2:1-3, 9, 15-17.(KJV abridged)

When we started the search process for a new rector more than a year and a half ago, our Bishop made a comment, something to the effect, that he expected our church (our congregation) to look different in five years. Something else that caught my attention during the search process came as a question that apparently all search committees and all prospective candidates are asked to answer, “What are you doing to prepare for the church of the future?”

The message that comes through our bishop's expectation and the preparation question is that change is in the wind. The world is changing. The Church is changing, and the message is clear that Christ Episcopal Church must change or it will be swamped and lost in the sea of changes taking place all around us.

What the ecclesiastical structure of the Church has not done a very good job of throughout the centuries is promoting the priesthood of all the faithful. We hear mention of it from time to time in vague homiletic tones, but the concept of the faithful taking seriously their priestly role has not been emphasized as it should have been, but that is changing; particularly, in the Episcopal Church. We, the laity, need to take this priestly role of ours seriously here at Christ Church; especially now that we’re coping with uncertain times.

We need to discuss the changes that are around us and are affecting us. We need to discern how and what we must change in order to present Christ in a changing world. By being serious about our priestly role, I am not talking about going around wearing a “dog collar” as the English call the wide white band worn by many Anglican priests or taking on specific liturgical roles that ordained priests perform. It’s about becoming servants in a very literal sense.

We need to face some difficult realities that have contributed to shrinking congregations everywhere. Part of the reason congregations shrink and die is because they don’t exercise faithfully in exercising their faith. They say they need a priest or a pastor because they’re so use to being served pew-side. They want a priest who will serve them; to give them interesting sermons that don’t upset them, to give them communion, to baptize their children, to marry them off, to bury their dead, and to be on-call whenever any need arises and, above all, are good at not making many demands on them. And when the priest doesn’t live up to those kind of expectations members can become quickly critical and “snarky;” especially, if they don’t like the priest changing the things they have become comfortable with. They expect the priest to take their snarky criticisms without complaint because the congregation is paying the priest’s bills.

They say they want leadership, but then rarely follow the priest’s lead, unless it suits them. Eventually, ennui sets in and the church dies. If that sounds familiar and we don’t want to end up becoming a thing of the past, we shouldn’t expect that getting a priest will fix those types of problems. It’s up to us.

Let’s face it: We need to become the servants who serve, and by that I don’t mean throwing money at things as being equivalent to serving. Yes - money is a reality we all must deal with and deal with wisely but being part of this royal priesthood literally means serving others, person to person and person by person. It means getting our hands dirty – reaching out to the perceived untouchables in our midst – touching the dead in order to bring them to life. That’s the way of Jesus, and that’s what the priesthood is about; presenting the face of Jesus Christ to the world around us.

In our parish survey, a number of us said we need more people. Is it because we need people in the pews who will throw enough money in the offering plate so we can afford a full-time priest to serve us?

The bigger question is: Do people beyond our doors really need us?

Do we present Christ as a real presence and as an answer to what others are longing for in their hearts and in their lives?

We said we’re inclusive and welcoming, but are we?

Or are we inclusive and welcoming to those who look like most of us, act like most of us, and are opinionated like most of us. Because the reality is most of the people like us already belong to our church or are in another church.

Who are we not reaching?

We should view and use this interim period as God giving us the grace of time to figure out our ministry as a congregation. We should be doing this right now.

We need to embrace our roles as priests – as servants– as the face of Christ in our community. We need to sincerely want and earnestly pray for the fire that is God’s Holy Spirit to motivate us, to engage us in ministry beyond the doors of our church, and to push us beyond our comfort level in order to reach those who have not yet been reached. We need to embrace them in the name of Christ and build the Kingdom of God in our midst.

We can’t afford to keeping looking back to what was or longing for people who left our church and seeing them as an answer to our empty pew (financial) problem. They are always welcome here as children of God, but we who are here in the pews on most Sundays need to move on and take ownership of our priesthood and become the people God intends us to be.

God’s love for us and our small congregation is far more than any of us can imagine. God can and will work wonders among us and work wonders through us – right now if we start putting our “hands to the plow” without looking back as Jesus advised in the Gospel of Luke to those who would be his disciples.

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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm

THE PRIESTLESS PARISH - THE MEANS OF GRACE

I am picking up with my series of posts on The Priestless Parish after offering my views on the sacraments as the means of grace.  If you have not read those posts, I invite you to do so now [Part I and Part II]. 

Since my last post, the small parish I belong to had an interested candidate make the trip from Texas to South Dakota to check my small parish out. We liked this candidate very much and unanimously offered a call to become our next rector.  Unfortunately, the candidate chose to be the rector of a different parish.  In the candidate's refusal notice was some noteworthy advice; foremost of which was that we did not come close to offering the candidate (freshly out of seminary with student loan debts) what the parish the candidate agreed to be a rector at was offering. 

This is a reality my parish must come to terms with, as we have not heard anything from the diocese about someone who we can consider for this position.  Our rector's position has been vacant for more than a year and a half.  In addition, our interim priest has also retired.  So we are truly a priestless parish at the present time, and it is uncertain whether another priest or seminarian will be willing to take a serious look at us.  

Furthermore, when asked for a list of supply priests, our small South Dakota diocese directed us to look to the Diocese of Nebraska for supply priests.  Of the eleven supply priests on their list only two showed interest in helping us out.  To do so they may end up having to drive well over one hundred miles to get here.  Doable on occasion and during the summer months, but not regularly or when the weather turns cold.  

In this post I will offer some thoughts on how our small parish or any small parish like us maintains a sacramental ministry without a priest.  

SACRAMENTAL LIFE

When it comes to the sacramental life of a parish, most parishioners see the sacraments as something they receive rather than something they offer.  This is definitely true when it comes to the Sacrament of the Altar - Holy Communion.  While most liturgical churches have been using lay servers to distribute the elements of bread and wine as the Body and blood of Christ to the communicants for some time, the consecration of the these elements remains strictly in the domain of the ordained priest or pastor.

The question being addressed here is what happens when a supply priest or pastor is no longer available to serve a small congregation on a regular basis or not at all?  Does a congregation that had a regular eucharistic life just put up with whoever they can get, whenever they can get someone, and go without the sacraments for long periods of time or does the congregation take seriously their role as members of the royal priesthood of all the faithful and begin utilizing this sacrament as Jesus did?

Christians claim that Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion.  By that they mean Jesus took broken bread and took a cup of wine and declared them to be signs and symbols of his body and blood. Something that has been lost on most Christians throughout the centuries is that on the night Jesus instituted this sacrament every person in that room would have understood that Jesus was using bread and wine as an intimate symbol of his own being, his own body and blood given  and poured out to and for others kenotically because the flesh and blood Jesus was standing right in front of them.

Jesus established that whenever this ritual is done in remembrance of him, the people participating in it; receiving it become one with him, one with each other in him, and one with God through him.  It is not about literally changing bread and wine into his actual body and blood of Jesus. To render what Jesus was doing that night as such is nothing more than an attempt to perform some type of ecclesiastical alchemy.

Holy Communion is not transubstantiation or consubstantiation; rather it is the participants willfully desiring to become the presence of the risen and rising Christ in the world through the ritual ingesting of these signs and symbols of the man Jesus who lived and died as a flesh and blood one of us and who emptied himself  on a cross to make room for us; in whose forgiveness of those who crucified him forgave the world with his dying breath.  This is what we are called to remember and are called to be; one with this Jesus who was raised up by God to be the Christ.  Holy Communion; as such, is what I have described in my previous post as ENSUBSTANTIATION.

WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED

As always, I do not pretend to have an inside track to know what God is up to, but in my reading of scripture God is frequently seen cutting things down to a manageable size and recreating what was into a new what is.  Pruning comes to mind; cutting things back to a reset point in order to encourage new growth.  We are well into what is being described as a Post-Christian era where pruning back seems to be the order of the day.

The need for a priest in my small parish is completely linked to Holy Communion and being served sacramentally.  It is almost near impossible for members of my congregation to think of  Holy Communion as something they can do for themselves.  Yet, I see no reason why they can't; apart from a bishop saying no, but that's a discussion for another post.  There is nothing in scripture that would prevent such a thing from happening.

Frankly, not much need change regarding the ritual practice in an Episcopal parish, apart from the rubrics in our prayer book.  The major shift is in understanding what the sacraments mean; in particular, Holy Communion.  The formula for a change in practice is written in the New Testament itself.

The fact is that the celebrant consecrates the elements in the stead and on the behalf of the people gathered.  Holy Communion should never be consecrated or instituted by one individual but rather by two or three if there is a desire to maintain a liturgical structure to this ritual.  The Gospel of Matthew has Jesus telling us that wherever two or  three are gathered in his name, he is present. What this Gospel is telling us is that the real presence of  Jesus is found in the communal experience of those gathered in his name.

Holy Communion implies a communal experience; a shared experience ritualized by the community itself.  The rite involved should require the whole congregation serving as celebrants.  The point is that lacking a priest should not become a factor whether a parish has and maintains an active sacramental life.  In fact, I would recommend that parishes with priests should be required to involve one or two lay people as co-celebrants when offering sacraments to signify that all present serve as celebrants.   The Body and Blood of Christ is a communal presence, given by Christ to those willing to become the presence of Christ in the world.  As suggested here, Holy Communion is a two-part ritual:  Consecrating bread and wine as signs and symbols of Jesus's body and blood and instituting the recipients as one with all of humanity and one with God, in, through, and with the risen and rising Christ.  Holy Communion and Holy Baptism are intended to be moments of transfiguration, of seeing and embracing a vision of the world through the eyes of God as Jesus did on the cross.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm