Ember Days: The Value of Prayer for Ministry

Today begins the summer Embertide…a period of focused prayer for the ministry of the Church. The quarterly Embertides teach us that all ministry—lay and ordained—requires prayer if it is not to be merely another human project. This intentionality of prayerful communion in God marks authentic Christian witness; it is never and “extra,” some sort of “icing” on an already-made cake. We may have plans, ideas, hopes…but what makes them ministry is their submission to God in discernment marked by true prayer. What makes ministries last longer than our own strength is the strength found in prayer.

In the Western Christian tradition there has come to be a very peculiar and destructive division between the “spiritual” and the “practical.” We speak about not wasting time in fussy liturgies or “church-speak” and getting “out there” to do justice and good works. One hears many calls to action, witness, &c., but very little in the way of a creative, deep, and honest call to prayer as the basis for all this action.

This division between prayer and ministry has no basis in the Christian Faith. Christ is shown again and again in the act of prayer in the Gospel. For Christ the God-Man, prayer and action are both expressions of a state of communion in the will of the Father. It should be so for us, his disciples, who through him are now called to become "partakers of the Divine Nature." (2 Peter 1:4)

Today we see many movements and programs in the Church that run a predictable course: a great deal of excitement to begin with, then a fairly predictable and inevitable decline. Various terms are used to describe this decline: “compassion fatigue,” “burnout,” “over-extension,” &c. They often indicate the same basic problem at heart, though: these were not ministries in the fullness of the word; they have not been consecrated in prayer, offered in prayer, soaked in prayer.

The Embertides provide a regular time for withdrawal from the doing of ministry in our doing-obsessed world into the being of ministry—the reality of our being in communion with the source of all authentic Christian service: the Holy and Undivided Trinity. By offering the Embertide prayers, reading the lessons in Sacred Scripture, and coming silently before God in humility, we are renewed in the vision, energy, direction, and meaning of ministry. Our true place, rôle, and significance in whatever relationships or forms of service we are offering is revealed. This, along with good spiritual direction, confession, and study, helps us understand what we must do and what we must not do in the particularities of ministry.

Each Christian is called to serve, but only in the way Christ gives us. It is this radical and deep dependence on Christ—not our own egos or ideologies—that marks true Christian ministry and makes it “sustainable.” Once we put our hand to the plow of discipleship, we may not look back, either in longing for the old life, or to get our instructions from some other source.

The service we offer in such a prayer-soaked ministry is revealed for what it truly is: not servitude, “but true and lasting freedom in the Redeemer.”

Collects and Lessons for the Ember Days

Wednesday in Embertide: For those to be ordained

Collect

Almighty God, the giver of all good gifts, in your divine providence you have appointed various orders in your Church: Give your grace, we humbly pray, to all who are [now] called to any office and ministry for your people; and so fill them with the truth of your doctrine and clothe them with holiness of life, that they may faithfully serve before you, to the glory of your great Name and for the benefit of your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Numbers 11:16-17,24-29

1 Corinthians 3:5-11

Psalm 99 or 27:1-9

John 4:31-38

Friday in Embertide: For the choice of fit persons for the [ordained] ministry

Collect

O God, you led your holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that your Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of your kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Ephesians 4:11-16

Psalm 63:1-8

Matthew 9:35-38

Saturday in Embertide: For All Christians in their vocation

Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Exodus 19:3-8


1 Peter 4:7-11

Psalm 15

Matthew 16:24-27

An Embertide Litany

(adapted from the Litany for Ordinations in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer)

For use on Ember Days or other occasions, this Litany may be used for the Prayers of the People at the Eucharist or the Daily Office (following the collects), or it may be used separately.

God the Father,

Have mercy on us.

God the Son,

Have mercy on us.

God the Holy Spirit,

Have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, one God,

Have mercy on us.

We pray to you, Lord Christ.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For the holy Church of God, that it may be filled with truth and love, and be found without fault at the Day of your Coming,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For all members of your Church in their vocation and ministry, that they may serve you in a true and godly life,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For all bishops, priests, deacons, and the laity, that we may be filled with your love, may hunger for truth, and may thirst after righteousness,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For the ministries of this diocese and parish,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

That, mindful of our covenant with you in Holy Baptism, we may faithfully fulfill the duties of our ministries, build up your Church, and glorify your Name,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

That by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we may be sustained and encouraged to persevere to the end,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For our families and all the members of this community, that they may be adorned with all Christian virtues,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease and that all may be one as you and the Father are one,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For the mission of the Church, that in faithful witness it may preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For those who do not yet believe, and for those who have lost their faith, that they may receive the light of the Gospel,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For the peace of the world, that a spirit of respect and forbearance may grow among nations and peoples,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For those in positions of public trust [especially___________], that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For a blessing upon all human labor, and for the right use of the riches of creation, that the world may be freed from poverty, famine, and disaster,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For the poor, the persecuted, the sick, and all who suffer; for refugees, prisoners, and all who are in danger; that they may be relieved and protected,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For ourselves; for the forgiveness of our sins, and for the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

For all who have died in the communion of your Church, and those whose faith is known to you alone, that, with all the saints, they may have rest in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal,

we pray to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Rejoicing in the fellowship of the ever-blessed Virgin Mary, (blessed N.) and all the saints, let us commend ourselves, and one another, and all our life to Christ our God.

To you, O Lord our God.

The collect

O God, you manifest in your servants the signs of your presence:  Send forth upon us the Spirit of love, that in companionship with one another your abounding grace may increase among us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

A very personal view of Rogationtide

This is a re-posting of an article from last year at this time; its message remains true for me, and I hope it proves useful for those learning of this faith tradition, and for the linkage of worship and life which is the essence of classical Anglican spiritual practice.

The Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day form a short “season-within-a-season” in Easter: Rogationtide. These days originated many centuries ago as part of the agricultural cycle in the liturgical year—feasts and fasts connected to seed-time, growing-season, and harvest.

Unlike our modern American era, where children think food is just another industrial product (which, sadly, it often is), our forebears knew that food is both a vital and a risky thing. Among the dangers were drought, plagues, pestilence, fire, hail, flood...the list was endless. The Rogation days meant going into the fields themselves and praying for the upcoming months of growth and harvest. It meant being very clear about our dependence on God for our most basic needs.

Today, people can think of their food as simply “there,” a kind of public utility with no inherent connection to the earth. But then there are things which change that.

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to spend a semester abroad in England. In addition to learning much and deepening my faith in God, I met my wife-to-be. It was a blessed time.

And yet…

Some years later we heard about the horrors of “Mad Cow disease,” and then of a human form of that illness…variant Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease. It was all very horrifying. We learned that this ghastly, debilitating breakdown of the brain was the result of feeding cows (herbivores) foods derived from the carcasses of cattle and other livestock. A basic rule in nature (herbivores should not be fed meat—especially the brains of other herbivores) had been violated with incalculable consequences for many.

At this point, you might be saying something like “that’s horrible to hear about, but why are you so upset about it still?” The answer would be that I was in England during the period when the infected meat products were being sold and consumed. For all I know, I was exposed. Because of this, I cannot give blood any longer (even though I have a somewhat rare type), and I cannot be sure if I will develop this frightening disease myself (there is no test, and the incubation time is unknown). I live with a fear in the back of my mind about this…all because of the greed and folly of a culture so disconnected from nature that it could ignore its revealed wisdom.

To cap it all off, the most recent lectionary of the Episcopal Church has determinedly removed almost every possible reference to the venerable tradition of Rogationtide just as the need for it in our liturgical life has become so clear.

So, while Earth Day is promoted by some in the Church and others are bent on adding a politically preachy “Creation Season” to the calendar, the very practical and down-to-earth (literally) customs of Holy Church are forgotten.

At St. Timothy’s, though, it is the parish custom to keep Rogationtide. We value the connection between earth and altar, between human ethics and the “other book of scripture” God left us—the Creation. If we were looking at our industry, science, and economy through this lens in the first place, perhaps my haunting about Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease—and so many other maladies caused by human actions—would not exist.

Keeping Rogation Sunday at St. Timothy’s means, in practical terms, this: After the main liturgy, we will have a formal procession out the doors to “beat the bounds” of the parish grounds. This entails singing the Great Litany (with Rogation petitions added), going to markers at the corners of the property, offering prayers for various concerns common to our neighborhood and community life (with children in the parish “beating” the markers with pool noodles while we use verse 1 of Ps. 68 and ask God’s protection!), planting a tree or bush, blessing the Community Garden on the parish’s property, and finally blessing and distributing rogation crosses made by a parishioner. These crosses are then taken by parishioners to their own gardens and farmlands to be visible signs of the holiness of Creation and our constant intercession for a just, good and safe harvest.

None of this is done because it is “quaint.” It is entirely the result of one thing: a call to know Christ in every aspect of our life, receiving in gratitude and offering in joy to our God. Perhaps the Church will see fit to review its estimable tradition and renew its commitment to Rogationtide as an act of justice, spiritual integrity, and moral leadership. If we do not, there will be an increasing number of us who will feel the results of turning a blind eye to the misuse of the Creation over which we were set as stewards.

Some Rogation Prayers:

I. For fruitful seasons

Almighty God, Lord of heaven and earth: We humbly pray that your gracious providence may give and preserve to our use the harvests of the land and of the seas, and may prosper all who labor to gather them, that we, who are constantly receiving good things from your hand, may always give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

II. For commerce and industry

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ in his earthly life shared our toil and hallowed our labor: Be present with your people where they work; make those who carry on the industries and commerce of this land responsive to your will; and give to us all a pride in what we do, and a just return for our labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

III. For stewardship of creation

O merciful Creator, your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us always thankful for your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

IV. For all who farm the earth

Eternal God, creator and sustainer of life, we praise you for the beauty and fertility of the earth. We praise you also for its complexity and mystery, before which we bow in wonder and awe. Bless all farmers everywhere upon whom we depend for the production and provision of our food, bless the management of the countryside and the husbanding of its resources.  Amen.

For more on this subject (from a Church of England source), you may want to go here.

Each by Name to Follow Where He Leads...

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Collect for the 4th Sunday of Easter

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

In our day of automated responses and the reduction of the human person to an anonymous statistical probability, it is essential to remember the deeply personal nature of the Christian Faith. There is nothing anonymous about the Christian. We are all known to God even as God has become known to us in the person, the life lived in our midst, of Jesus Christ.

To be a Christian means total commitment to the personal dimension of being. This means practicing  relationship as restored by Christ, because personhood in its deepest sense is about relationships. When we proclaim the Creed, for instance, we are not merely giving lip service to a collection of sterile formulae. We are speaking of an experience, the experience of a personal relationship: firstly revealed to us by God in Trinity, and secondly our own experience of living with the neighbor and our self as part of the Creation. Only in this way, through being a community of holy relationships, can the Church become its true self: Christ's Living Body of Holy Love.

Jesus tells us of this relationship in the Gospel quite frequently. Perhaps one of the most moving expressions of his complete commitment to relationship is found in the passage read on this Sunday from the Gospel according to John. Here, Christ speaks of us as individuals in relationship to him, and through him, in direct relationship with God the Father. This is the basis of all true "religion," for  religio is a Latin word, one of whose primary meanings is to be bound in relationship. It is for such religion, and not institutions and systems, that humanity thirsts.

Christ tells those who seek a public declaration of his being the Messiah that this is not the point of his ministry. He does nothing for self-glorification or aggrandizement. Rather, he has come to the world to love it into communion with the Father, and only those committed to this truth may hear his voice and follow. When a person truly hears Christ's voice, accepting the claim that Christ has on our heart and will, that person follows him--imperfectly, of course, but following him all the same because in Christ there is the fullness, the restoration of real relationship with God, the neighbor, and the authentic self as part of a redeemed Creation. Here alone do we find this totality of Love, in the Shepherd who is also one of the sheep and uniquely able to serve as well as lead.

But this is never an abstraction. It must be lived out day by day in a costly specificity. This same Sunday we read of the death of Tabitha in the Book of Acts. Here is a story about the complete primacy of relationship. A woman has died, but she is not simply another anonymous person: she is a loving and faithful disciple of Christ Jesus. The others around her do not take her death "in their stride." It is is a grievous thing, an assault on all parts of the Body, and a response by the Body is required.

They urgently summon St. Peter to be with them, and in a remarkable detail, they bring examples of Tabitha's handiwork to him in their mourning. Her very individual nature, her gift and stamp of uniqueness, is brought forth, recalled, cherished. They weep from love, and they call the Apostle to be with them in this sorrowing love before God. He, in turn, calls upon God to show that death has no final victory over Christians and is answered in Tabitha's being raised from the dead. The universality of Christ's triumph over death is here directly connected to the specificity of a particular person's meaning and value. The costly nature of Love--God's and ours--is revealed and reaffirmed.

This same significance is found in the reading from the Revelation to John, where the enormity of worship in the Heavenly Liturgy is suddenly connected to the specificity of the lives of the holy martyrs who have individually suffered for the Gospel. Each person's life, his or her struggles, his or her gift, is revealed to be part of an unseen network--visible only to those whose eyes are illuminated by a loving faith--a network that gives dignity to the human person not from accumulating power or possessions or place, but by the relationship we have to Christ who is in continual communion with the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit.

Christ ends the passage read from the Holy Gospel this day with these words: "What my Father has given to me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one."

These are not words of sterile doctrine. They are a revelation of the primacy of eternal communion between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There can be no faith, no true service, without personal relationship, and all such relations between persons find meaning and permanence in the eternal love of the Trinity.

This is "greater than all else"in faith. It is the salt giving savor to the disciple. There can be no actual Christianity without it. It is into this communion that each Christian is baptized, and it from this communion that each of us must serve God and others. No ideology, no institution, no system is worth such love: only another person. It is for this reason that all so-called theologies of an "impersonal God" are not only irrelevant but ultimately evil. They open the door to a practice of impersonalization, a legitimizing of objectifying the Other in a way that our God never permits or showed forth in Christ life of utterly personal love.

Christ Jesus gave all for us. God has offered up everything so that we might have access, participation in the Divine Love itself. This is what it means to "follow where he leads," and only those who truly hear his voice will receive this testimony in joy and humility.

We know we have become worthy of the name "Christian" when we see another person as a person, not an object.  When we do not first ask how much she or he will cost us in terms of time or effort, but how that person may be part of our worship of God, how serving the Other will make us complete, sharers in the eternal communion of true persons in the love of God--then we are Christians in the fullest sense of this word. And each Eucharist is renewal in that message and a re-commitment to this truth.

Amen.

Easter as a Template for Episcopalians Going Forward

When the temple police had brought the apostles, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him." (The first lesson for 2 Easter, Year C – Acts 5:27-32)

It is an open secret that during much of its history, the Anglican Tradition has been deeply imbued by Erastianism. This doctrine, loosely put, sees the Government as being the locus of temporal authority for the Church. Erastianism tends to look to the State to execute the power to “bind and loose” in matters of Faith. In short, we tend to take our lead from Those In Charge because we like to think that God put them there to do just that.

Early Anglicanism made this quite explicit. Henry VIII and his son Edward VI were both “Supreme Head” of the Church of England—a very bare statement of Erastian thinking. Archbishop Cranmer (the chief architect of the Book of Common Prayer) subscribed completely to Erastianism, interpreting St. Paul’s views on the rights and dignity of Civil Authority quite broadly. It was, after all, Cranmer’s pliability on this topic that helped provide his neatly-crafted solution to the “King’s Great Matter.” Such loyalty to the authority of the Crown in Church matters continued in the Church of England for a very long time. So, while the Sovereign on the British throne is no longer “Supreme Head” but “Supreme Governor,” that Sovereign (and the cultural elite such Sovereigns symbolize in every age) is still “Supreme.”

This tendency to look to the State for guidance about the Faith continues even in the democratic USA. The Episcopal Church, for so long closely allied to economic, governmental, and social power, has often wrapped itself in the Erastian mantle of access and significance. In some cases, this access yielded great results in terms of service to those in need, legislative and judicial decisions favoring Gospel-based ideals of compassion and mercy, and in public affirmation of faith as a necessary part of creating and maintaining a truly civil society. But as with Henry VIII, Lord Acton’s dictum looms large in this story: such colossal power tends to lead to colossal corruption.

At some point, the Erastianism latent in American Anglicanism caused us to cling to the movements of our cultural “Supremes” even when many of this class ceased to believe in God or value religion on any level—profound or trivial. When the State became more secularized in its public character, and when Late Capitalism embraced Freudian psychology and German philosophy with its concepts of fungible “values” and power-as-truth, Episcopalians gradually found themselves in dialogue with an elite who thought Christianity not so much quaint as contemptible. The “Supreme Governors” of our placid and reasonable faith now saw no need to keep up the charade, and—in the parlance of our disposable era—moved on from God after declaring him dead in the late 1960’s. 

The response from the Episcopal Church has been something between bewildered denial and a child’s anxious efforts to regain an alienated parent’s love.

Some Episcopalians hoped that the cultural changes would all just blow over, and clung passionately to their elite and arcane Anglo-Saxon traditions even as that demographic accelerated its slide into minority status. Admitting no change in the mission setting (and not even particularly interested in seeing it as such), they preached a gospel amounting to the Pharisees’ "Tradition of the Elders." Looking to the past for truth, they violated a key American dogma: the absolutism of the Now. This group’s grasp on power, already tenuous in the brave, plastic world of postwar America, slipped away to nothing by 1970. Largely dead, buried, and un-lamented, they are today merely a dim echo whose primary legacy is found in diminishing endowments and emptying neo-gothic church buildings piloted by their institutionally more adept (but perhaps theologically less rigorous) successors.

The second major response to the failure of American Anglican Erastianism in a secularizing era was to embrace the thought and practice of Secularism itself, but in such a way that it simultaneously seemed Christian and yet had no truck with the cultural “untouchables” of the emerging religious right—the traditional class enemies of enlightened Episcopalians. At first, this project looked to have energy and vision: the reforms of the Church’s ministry, liturgy, canons, and self-understanding—though fraught with various problems and shortcomings—reflected a tremendous investment of time, effort, and (occasionally) scholarship.

The hopefulness of this epoque was based on a renewed notion of the Church as both engaging with the world and leading it to the Kingdom of God Jesus so often spoke of. Fueled by the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council (and in a heady ecumenical climate promising great things), it seemed a season of rebirth in spiritual creativity and possibility.

Yet, the promise turned out to be more complicated than expected. This was, in part, due to  the central problem of assumptions. The leadership of the Episcopal Church was willing to make major changes to its culture with the hope that the Church would become more “relevant" and thus more accessible and influential. Predictably, decades of internal warfare over matters of identity, sexuality, and power ensued. In many ways, a radically different body emerged: battle-scarred but hopeful, it tried to engage a society that was at that very moment losing faith in the entire project of "Church." 

The Episcopal Church leadership had, it seems, assumed that the culture would essentially wait for it to get relevant and then flood in once we were "just right." But this did not turn out to be the case. In a consumerist society, it is tempting to turn the things of the Spirit into mere "goods." But, once done, this means constant market research and product updating. That level of revision and change was unexpected, even to the revisers and change-agents of the 60's, 70's, and early 80's. To put it colloquially, we came to the party too late, and wearing the wrong clothes.

While the Episcopal Church had been "retooling for relevance" and ridding itself of wrong-thinking opposition, a postwar scientistic and consumerist society based on philosophical materialism had bundled off the familiar old world of denominational loyalties and rivalries, replacing it with something quite different. The entire metaphysical category had ceased to register with most Americans. Evolution became the mantra. Unlike crusty old religion (now firmly linked with a repressive past), a consumerist society could really solve problems and make people feel better.

Imponderables requiring long periods of disciplined practice to understand no longer made any sense. In a secular society, time is of the essence because we don't have eternity anymore. With life ruled by the clock and the scale, measurement is everything. Since Faith could not be measured like so many cases of Coca-Cola being sold or episodes of a sitcom being watched, it ceased to be a category that mattered. Heaven was out; the Mall was in.

From that point on, the Church gradually became either a tool in the endless Culture Wars that were hammering out postmodern America, or merely a niche “lifestyle” deserving only as much attention as its consumers’ spending on “spiritual products” justified. Either way, it simply wasn't relevant in the deepest sense; a more limited relevance had to be sought.

While today the Episcopal Church may have finally learned to preach all the correct thinking and official attitudes held by the folks it admires (the successors to the “Supreme Governors” still haunting the Anglican Erastian mind), it turns out that very few people, either in its pews or outside its doors, are interested in listening to sermons of any type whatever. If you want this crowd's approval, they need to be entertained, to be told that the spontaneous self is always right, their politics justified, and to be sold products and lifestyles appealing to their carefully-formed consumer identities. They are elusive, demanding, and complicated. Staying relevant to them is harder work than ever.

And this brings me to the point of this little journey: the First Lesson read in the Sunday Eucharists during Eastertide. It is the custom of the Lectionary to take us on a multi-week journey through the first half of the Acts of the Apostles during the Great Fifty Days of this glorious season. In so doing, we are nourished in the experience of the first Christians as they began the work of sharing what is sometimes called the missio Dei…God’s rescue mission to this broken and death-focused world through the person of Jesus Christ. This is the message St. Peter is sharing in the lesson read this Sunday.

One of the things that must strike any student of Anglicanism reading Acts is that it cannot be construed as an Erastian document. The State—while acknowledged—simply is not looked to as the locus of authority for the Church. In Acts, the Church has only one Supreme Governor: God. Indeed, the Church tends to find itself continually at odds with a State that sees itself as God: the final and highest arbiter of Truth. For Christians to refer to Christ as “Lord” was an utterly subversive action in Roman Imperial terms, arrogating to this Jesus a term reserved to the Emperor alone. The followers of Christ understood things from a radically upside-down perspective: while God may allow human rulers to exercise authority, they are all ultimately under the judgment of the Gospel. It is this sense of mission which gives the Church authenticity, energy, and vision.

Functionally, the Church in Acts demonstrates zero interest in making God relevant to the world; rather, it seeks to bring the world into relevance to God by proclaiming and living out the Gospel. As Christ’s Resurrection is the re-creation of the world in a radically new type of life (Zoë, rather than Bios), so the Church in Acts is the instrument of that New Life in Christ being delivered to a dying world.

This gift of an apostolate or ministry of living and sharing the Gospel fuels St. Peter's tremendous boldness in these early chapters of Acts. It also has fueled the explosive growth (against tremendous resistance and oppression) of Anglican Christianity in Africa and Asia, where the Church often has no Erastian pretensions whatever. It is the common denominator of truly free Christianity throughout history.

In the passage above, an unlettered man in a despised class speaks without a hint of fear to the “Supremes” of his day. While not showing disrespect or contempt, he carries no nascent Erastian need to gain the approval of the High Priest or other religio-political elite. They are simply bypassed. By obedience to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit rather than in trying to turn obedience to the culture or its elites into a replacement for that direct participation in God, Peter and the whole Early Church knew they had something much more than a lifestyle or a product to share: they were midwives to God’s mission in Christ. 

That mission is a fiery coal of compassion, truth, justice, mercy, and mystical participation in the very Divine Nature itself. This mission always puts us at odds with the powers of this world who feast on death and its tools of sin, division, and fear. Nothing could—or can—hold the Church back from its ministry when it bears this message. 

What of that spirit today, in our own part of God’s vineyard?

A pervasive sense of anxiety threads its way through our part of the Church today. Amid the nervous chorus of realized eschatology and ritualized pageants celebrating an increasingly monotonous and flavorless diversity, the grim facts of demographic and institutional decline fall like a steady rain, with predictable results.

Still locked in the bitter aftermath of the Great War for Relevance, we look for quick fixes and new gurus to improve the product line, refine the lifestyle, or market the brand. We regularly “re-invent” ourselves with various Decades of Evangelism or mission plans. New “metrics” are trotted out for a time, each one intent on measuring things for no clear purpose, then folded up in futility as we await the next “new thing” that will somehow coax new life from dying embers. Though the results don’t seem to justify it, we continue to reaffirm our trust in the tools of biblical criticism, sacramental minimalism, and theological reductionism that helped get us here over the last half century or more.

This misplaced conservatism (again, a fruit of Erastianism) becomes apparent even when we are most self-consciously trying to be progressive: the notion that we might need to reexamine the whole assumption that the Church is an institution or a lifestyle rather than a Body is resisted again and again as a distraction from trying to find out where “the Supremes” are heading and getting out in front. The language of business, entertainment, government—anything—is preferable in our discourse to opening the Bible and spending time in Acts and its story of ordinary people transformed not by mimicking elites but by intimate contact with God.

All of this tends to result in less and less enthusiasm or energy in places where Erastianism lingers in the marrow of Episcopalians. The joy and hope of the new Church in Acts can seem unimaginable when our highest good is propping up the burdens of an antique and failed way of discipleship. When it is not God’s mission but ours, the labor is simply beyond us.

It is time to terminate our association with this hideously out-of-date mindset. It saps us of far too much energy and joy. Clinging to this "wrong end of the telescope" way of being a Christian makes us anxious and depressed because we see our job as trying to service a large institution, not live and freely share a new way of Life. 

The Sundays of Easter focus on the nature of Resurrection as a dynamic reality inaugurating the Kingdom of God; they carefully re-tell of the story of how the first Christians didn’t confuse themselves with the mission of God itself (Christ Jesus). These Sundays are the opportunity par excellence for Episcopalians to cast off the shackles of a dead worldview and embrace the possibilities for mission our God is setting right here before us.

Alexander Schmemann, the prominent Russian Orthodox liturgical theologian, once remarked that one of Eastern Orthodoxy’s enduring problems was that it believed history “came to an end” in 1453 with the fall of Constatinople. He characterized much of the Christianity practiced from this mindset as essentially tragic and closed. He was criticizing the Eastern Church’s own form of Erastianism and its paralyzing effects on mission and witnessing to the Resurrection of Christ. He frequently pointed out how this confusion of history with mission produced both ignorance of the Church’s actual journey through time and the abandonment of its true purpose for fixation on lesser matters. At every turn, Schmemann’s writing, lecturing, and thinking was filled with the radiance of the Resurrection and the utterly new kind of Life it presents.

Out of his efforts—and those of many others in that era of renewed spiritual vision—arose a new openness to the Church as Life itself, and not merely a department of State clinging to an imagined relevance. It can be so for us.

When we join St. Peter in proclaiming “We must obey God rather than any human authority,” taking seriously what it means to be witnesses to the things of the Paschal Mystery in each dimension of our being, we take our first steps towards liberation. By witnessing in its worship, preaching, and membership a commitment to the New Life in Christ and the kindling of that new life in specific believers—rather than maintaining the tattered remnants of a bygone Erastian past—the Episcopal Church will already possess the relevance and authenticity that it has sought for so many decades. Having that relevance, it will then stop turning on itself or focusing on the endless project of substituting method for message, proclaim from its own experience the truth that:

“God exalted Christ at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."

This is the message those who cry out for salvation desire. They are frequently not the "Supremes" of this era, but then, neither were the Apostles themselves. It is such company we in the Episcopal Church would do well to keep.

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter:

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.