Reading Scripture with Honesty

When we read the Scriptures honestly we can admit that certain passages mean little to us. We are ready to agree with God because we have no reason to disagree with him. We can approve of this or that commandment or divine action because it does not touch us personally, we do not yet see the demands it makes on us personally.

Other passages frankly repel us. If we had the courage we would say “no” to the Lord. We should note these passages carefully. They are a measure of the distance between God and us and also they are a measure of the distance between ourselves as we are now and our potential definitive selves.

For the gospel is not a succession of external commandments, it is a whole gallery of internal portraits. And every time we say “no” to the gospel we are refusing to be a person in the full sense of the word.

There are passages of the gospel which make our hearts burn, which give light to our intelligence and shake up our will. They give life and strength to our whole physical and moral being. These passages reveal the points where God and his image in us already coincide, the stage we have already reached, perhaps only momentarily, fleetingly, in becoming what we are called to be.

We should note these passages even more carefully than the passages mentioned above. They are the points at which God’s image is already present in us fallen men. And from these beginnings we can strive to continue our transformation into the person we feel we want and ought to be. We must be faithful to these revelations. In this at least we must always be faithful.

If we do this, [such] passages increase in number, the demands of the gospel become fuller and more precise, slowly the fogs disperse and we see the image of the person we should be. Then we can begin standing before God in truth.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, in Courage to Pray

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that, by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

St. Leo on Love, Faith, and Action

It is a great thing, no doubt, to have the right faith and possess sound doctrine; and sobriety, meekness, and purity are virtues that deserve high praise; but all these virtues remain vain if they are not coupled with charity. And we ought not to say that an excellent conduct is fruitful if it does not issue from love.

Let believers then examine their own state of mind and carefully scrutinize the intimate sentiments of their hearts. If they find some fruit of charity in their conscious self, let them have no doubt that God is in them. And that they may become more and more able to welcome so great a guest, let them persevere and grow in mercy which expresses itself in acts. If God is love, charity ought not to know any limits, for nothing that is limited can contain the divinity.

-- St. Leo the Great (today being his feast day), from Sermon 48

Collect for St. Leo’s day:

O Lord our God, grant that your Church, following the teaching of your servant Leo of Rome, may hold fast the great mystery of our redemption, and adore the one Christ, true God and true Man, neither divided from our human nature nor separate from your divine Being; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

A Poem for November

This is one of my favorite poems from John Keble's survey of the Liturgical Year. I find the way it links nature, scripture, our personal journey in life, and our faith to be both very touching and very thought-provoking. It is precisely this sort of integrated life I entered when I first became an Anglican Christian, and it is this practice of the faith that continues to nourish and inspire me years later. While the style of this poem may be quite dated, its content and message is eternal. Enjoy!



Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things onto Himself. Philippians iii. 21.

Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun,
   The line of yellow light dies fast away
That crowned the eastern copse: and chill and dun
   Falls on the moor the brief November day.

Now the tired hunter winds a parting note,
   And Echo hide good-night from every glade;
Yet wait awhile, and see the calm leaves float
   Each to his rest beneath their parent shade.

How like decaying life they seem to glide!
   And yet no second spring have they in store,
But where they fall, forgotten to abide
   Is all their portion, and they ask no more.

Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing,
   A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold,
The green buds glisten in the dews of Spring,
   And all be vernal rapture as of old.

Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie,
   In all the world of busy life around
No thought of them; in all the bounteous sky,
   No drop, for them, of kindly influence found.

Man's portion is to die and rise again -
   Yet he complains, while these unmurmuring part
With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain,
   As his when Eden held his virgin heart.

And haply half unblamed his murmuring voice
   Might sound in Heaven, were all his second life
Only the first renewed—the heathen's choice,
   A round of listless joy and weary strife.

For dreary were this earth, if earth were all,
   Tho' brightened oft by dear Affection's kiss; -
Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall?
   But catch a gleam beyond it, and 'tis bliss.

Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart,
   Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne
On lofty steed, or loftier prow, we dart
   O'er wave or field: yet breezes laugh to scorn

Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven,
   And fish, living shafts that pierce the main,
And stars that shoot through freezing air at even -
   Who but would follow, might he break his chain?

And thou shalt break it soon; the grovelling worm
   Shall find his wings, and soar as fast and free
As his transfigured Lord with lightning form
   And snowy vest—such grace He won for thee,

When from the grave He sprang at dawn of morn,
   And led through boundless air thy conquering road,
Leaving a glorious track, where saints, new-born,
   Might fearless follow to their blest abode.

But first, by many a stern and fiery blast
   The world's rude furnace must thy blood refine,
And many a gale of keenest woe be passed,
   Till every pulse beat true to airs divine,

Till every limb obey the mounting soul,
   The mounting soul, the call by Jesus given.
He who the stormy heart can so control,
   The laggard body soon will waft to Heaven.

-- "For the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity," from The Christian Year, by John Keble

Dialogue, charity, and harmony in a season of unison singing...

Dialogue, long before it manifests itself through words, is a union of hearts through a profound harmonization of wills in one accord, which is not necessarily a unison, a uniformity, but a harmony on one identical melody with all the richness of its variations. Dialogue is first of all the silence of someone who knows how to enrich himself by listening and reflecting, and then, the statement of his personal thoughts, respecting those of the other. This dialogue, it is true, takes time. The too hasty forming of one’s opinion, where patience is demanded, is contrary to the spirit of dialogue, because it lacks respect for different opinions often born of experience and wisdom. Charity alone successfully presides in a dialogue. So the common life, which teaches charity also teaches dialogue.

            From the chapter “Community Life,” from Serving God First: Insights on the Rule of St. Benedict, by Dom Sighard Kleiner

Some years ago, I heard from a friend about a parish where all singing in harmony was officially discouraged. The liturgical leadership told the people that singing in harmony destroyed the sense of unity in the worshipping community: unison singing was much preferable in their expert opinion. I found this strangely appropriate to our era, when we so easily confuse unison with unity, diatribe with dialogue, chicanery with charity.

The above passage from Kleiner’s almost 40-year old commentary on the Rule reflects the great difficulty involved in forming and maintaining authentic, Gospel based communities. It turns out that demanding everyone sing in unison is a great deal easier—and more gratifying—than allowing a community to sing in harmony with the melody given to it by God.

The way to respond authentically to the "melody of salvation" rests in a deep appropriation of the charity Kleiner speaks of. There simply is no way to balance the diversity of gifts and experiences in a parish, a monastic community, a diocese, or a national/worldwide body with the “Faith once delivered” outside of profound immersion in (and practice of) the Love of Christ for the Father and for fallen humanity.

And this is where the “institutional” structures of the Church—deeply imbued with secular self-understandings of “rights,” “goals,” and zero-sum decision making—are weakest. Instead of witnessing to the humility of Christ based in the Love of the Holy Trinity, we exhibit strategies of institutional self-preservation and self-justification. Once fear takes over, charity is irrelevant. “Party spirit” and loyalty to “the system” is confused with an honest (if not always easy) harmony. Unity is replaced with unison, and the institution looks for any sign of discontent with the man-made melody of conformity.

The graciousness of God is beyond measure. It transcends both narrow fanaticism and antinomian complacency. In Christ God has brought forth the melody of salvation; this melody alone sings of our freedom to become saints of God, restored to our true identity. Yet, it is not an imposed, fearful song, suppressing our individual reality or character. Rather, it calls forth from us by the action of the Holy Spirit the fullness of who we were created to be. Christ, the melody of God’s Love for Creation, summons from us the perfected harmony of hearts and minds tuned to that Love. No police state is needed. Only those communities of faith which are rooted in that One Great Melody will take the time to listen and discern how to respond lovingly, patiently, and with wisdom. 

Like the moment after the bread is broken at the Eucharist, the dialogue needed for such discernment will be marked first by a silence born of awe and reverence. This is the starting point. From there the faithful community's discernment will be marked both by depth and generosity, because its participants hear the sheer beauty of the great melody, and will want to participate in it, to sing in complete harmony to it, with all their hearts.

When the question itself is wrong...

Is the community at the service of each of its members, or is each member at the service of the community?.... The question is…badly put, and a mistake is made at the very start. Godless men necessarily question themselves on the problem of their reason for being and see it from the angle of personal profit, or, if they have risen a bit from that selfish position, from the angle of society or humanity. Humanity is the god of the godless.

Our reason for being is God and our happiness is in him. The community itself has no other end than to help us live for God, in God, and according to the will of God. We are no more at its service than it is at ours.

Dom Sighard Kleiner, in Serving God First

The Annual Survey

In the Gospel according to John we find Jesus making this striking statement to his disciples on the eve of his arrest: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:15) In these words, Jesus makes clear that his Body, the Church, will work according to different standards and patterns than normal human “institutions,” built on hierarchies of power, mistrust, and secrecy. We are called to be radically equal in our self-understanding, open to mutual critique and insight, taking our cue from a Lord who is willing to call us “friends” rather than insist on our being merely subservient.

The Church has, sadly, often failed to live up to this challenging self-understanding and calling. Too often we have substituted mystification for mission, privilege for purpose. There can be no effective mission if we do not emphasize accountability to that mission in our common life. Because of a fearfulness—often grounded in insecurity—clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Church have shied away from inviting the insights and opinions of parishioners. Not so St. Timothy’s.

St. Timothy’s produces an annual survey of the congregation regarding its general ministry, progress on various goals, the ministry of its rector, and thoughts about the parish’s future. This is the first time I have served in a parish with such an open tool for discussion of these topics, and I am very happy we have it.

So often, Episcopal parishes function in a way that makes them largely opaque to both “outsiders” and most “insiders.” The result is a community unable to discuss either its gifts or its struggles, vulnerable to dissention and often impervious to improvement.

Because many lay people work in environments where there is an annual employee review, it can seem only natural to use the same terminology and thinking in having some sort of review in the parish. Most clergy (and a fair number of lay leaders) bridle at this. The rector of a parish is not technically the employee of the parish. Clergy, in the Episcopal tradition, are not “employees” as much as they are pastors and colleagues in ministry. What is needed is not a review of employees, but a review of ministry, both in terms of quality and character. To do this, many different systems and techniques have been developed. St. Timothy’s employs one of its own devising, revised each year.

The Annual Survey is formulated by a special committee appointed by the Vestry and answerable to it. That committee sends out the survey in the late summer or early fall. The results are then tabulated and sent to the committee members and the rector for initial discussion. The committee then meets to formulate recommendations to the Vestry, which are then formally brought to a Vestry meeting.

Once the survey results and recommendations are received by the Vestry, that body decides how to proceed. Last year, the recommendations were brought the parish at the Annual Meeting and used as the basis for some small group work. Those small groups then developed plans for how to move forward on the recommendations during 2010; various commissions have been working on these issues over the year. A summary of the Survey also appears in the Tidings (our monthly newsletter)

As soon as the results and recommendations are in hand, I will schedule a private meeting with bishop Hanley so that I can take this material to my immediate superior, and lay it before him for his review. All parishioners should know that I do feel accountable to the Annual Survey as a part of my over-all accountability to Christ and His Church. Having our bishop in place will finally make this part of the Annual Review possible. I believe we are the only parish in the diocese that will approach a ministry review with this degree of thoroughness, transparency, and follow-through.

The Annual Survey gets all sorts of responses. Some people love it; other do not like it at all. No one has to take it, but the response rate has been improving over the last three years, so we know many people find it useful—especially if they see it translate into action!

Sometimes, very interesting ideas are expressed in the comments sections. Some people tell of their joys and frustrations at church. Others bring up suggestions for improvement or ask questions which we then try to answer. This is the place we are encouraged to “let it all hang out,” and many folks do so.

While it isn’t always easy to hear what people have to say, I am personally very grateful for the Annual Survey. I like the honesty it encourages, the opportunity for genuine sharing of thoughts and concerns, the way it emphasizes accountability…something our church is woefully short of in some ways.  As a priest, I value heading off problems before they grow into crises, and I like hearing from others about what needs fixing and what needs praising. Would that every dimension of diocesan life had this amount of open and effective conversation!

The Annual Survey committee puts in a lot of time on this, and it is well worth it. Together with the Vestry, the Commissions, the Endowment Fund Board, and other key parts of parish leadership, the Annual Survey is helping us discern God’s call to us a parish. Thanks, Survey Committee—and thanks to all in the parish who took the time to respond this and each year!

When we learn to see each other as friends in Christ, even with differing opinions, we are then free to respond in faith rather than react in fear. Basing our parish’s internal operations on Jesus’ call to openness and mutuality, we hope to be found faithful stewards of the Gospel in our own day.

A Prayer Before the Liturgy

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and stand with fear and trembling, and lift itself above all earthly thought.

For the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Christ our God, cometh forth to be our oblation and to be given for food to the faithful.

Before him come the choirs of angels, with every principality and power, the Cherubim, with many eyes, and six-winged Seraphim, who veil their faces as they shout exultingly the hymn,

Alleluia!

Alleluia!

Alleluia!