After Pentecost: “Ordinary” Time & Eternity

 

On the day after Pentecost (Whitsunday), the church's calendar makes a sudden shift.  Eastertide is over, Ordinary Time has begun.  Rather than the progression of events from Christ's rising through his various post-resurrection appearances, then the Ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit on the Fiftieth Day, time in the church calendar becomes a succession of Sundays numbered or ordered after Pentecost—thus “ordinary” time.

 

Contingent on Easter’s lunar-determined position, this part of the Ecclesiastical Year has to be extra flexible.  Rather than starting on a fixed date, it “floats” back and forth each year.  To accommodate this, Ordinary Time begins on a given “Proper,” a week of readings and a collect for both the Eucharist and the Daily Office that are proper to that week.  The Sunday of each “Proper” is described as being closest to a particular date.  Thus, in years when Easter falls late, the week after Pentecost will use readings and the collect from Proper 4 or 5, but on years when Easter falls early, it might be from Proper 2 (or, if Easter is exceptionally early, Proper 1). 

 

In this way, Ordinary Time is a bit like an accordion—stretching back and forth with Easter’s date and ending in November so that there are always four Advent Sundays prior to Christmas Day.  The other period of Ordinary Time—the weeks after the Epiphany—does this in reverse, with the day of the week on which Christmas (and thus the Epiphany) falls setting its start, and Ash Wednesday (contingent on Easter’s date) forming the conclusion.

 

Once learned, this approach to time has spiritual benefit beyond its practical application: it reminds us that what we experience as the inevitable progression of time in this world is ultimately framed by eternity.  For, just as the ordinary times of the Church Year begin and end with great feasts celebrating eternal truths, so our lives on earth are set in the midst of an eternal “before” and a heavenly “ever-after.”

 

 In the great Seasons of the Church Year (Advent-Christmastide-Lent-Easter) we focus on the teachings of the catholic faith as found in the Creeds and especially on the centrality of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery to the Christian community and believer.

In Ordinary Time we put the focus on the orderly telling of scriptural stories in the Daily Office and a deep examination of Jesus’ public ministry and teaching in the Sunday Gospel lessons.  These stories give meaning and application to the eternal truths proclaimed in the creeds.  They are the filling of the sandwich, so-to-speak. Being made in the image of God yet also born of earth, we need both the teaching and the application, the eternal and the earthly.

 

In all things, the Church Calendar is a tool by which we enter into the mystery of time and eternity.  It gives meaning to our journey through life and also connects our daily, weekly, and annual rhythms with what transcends them.  The Church Year shows that there really is no “ordinary” time in the sense we usually understand that term—only time lived in the presence of the Eternal God, consciously or unconsciously, purposefully or aimlessly, lovingly or pointlessly.  The choice is ours.

Ordination Anniversary: A Prayer and some Thoughts

A medieval English window depicting an ordination;
not a picture of my own (though some may wonder).

A Prayer for Ordination Anniversaries (to the Sacred Priesthood)

O God, by whose command the order of all time runs its course; look graciously on your servant, whom you have been pleased to ordain to the order of your holy presbyterate; and that my service may be pleasing to you, mercifully preserve me in your gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Adapted from William Bright's translation of the prayer in the Gelasian Sacramentary)

Nineteen years ago this evening, on the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, I was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood. In one sense, it was the culmination of something. A sense of call to this ministry had developed (quite unexpectedly) at the end of college. Leaving law school and an orderly plan for a career at the bar for the unknown territory of vocational discernment almost immediately after marriage, I entered a seven year process of prayer, trial, anxiety, blessing, uncertainty, formation, mentorship, education, and trust in God preparing me for ordination--first to the Sacred Diaconate (on Pentecost), and then some months later to the Priesthood.

Both ordinations were beautiful and holy experiences. As I think about the one to the Priesthood, I always remember the love of family (especially my wife, who had labored so hard to help me come to that day), the support of friends, the solemnity of the sermon and the liturgy, the press of the hands laid upon me at the moment of ordination, and the utter silence and enfolding sense of God's presence when the chasuble was lowered over my head.

Yet, that night was not really a culmination so much as a translation, a movement from one place or role to another in the Church by God's grace and human response. As a follower of Christ, I was not "stopping." Rather, grace was being given, authority deputed, and a new mission being transmitted for the journey ahead.

Ordination is not a "graduation" from the ranks of the laity (the laos, or People of God). It is an intentionalizing, a specifying (and, in a sense, a narrowing) of one's ministry in and with God's People. It points always to the Kingdom of God, wherein it is both completed and dispensed with (there are no clergy in heaven, a fact we all would do well to remember). If lived properly, it never points to itself. And this is what I am thinking of particularly today.

Ordination places a solemn and very real burden on the person being ordained, and on the rest of the Christian community, to recall the wholeness of our identity in Christ. All of us are needed for the work of the Body. Ordination is never an excuse for imperiousness in the clergy or for slackness and indifference in those not ordained; all the baptized are equal in God's sight and all are called to show forth the Kingdom in the way God calls us, with the gifts God gives each of us.

An ordination anniversary is always a good time to review one's vows as a deacon, priest, or bishop. It is also a time to remember that our basic identity as disciple is never superseded, never put into the background by ordination. Our effectiveness as leaders and sacramental ministers of the Gospel is fed and given authenticity only by the state of our discipleship. The current era, in its fascination with a plethora of techniques and its re-definition of vocation into "profession" or "coach" (verging, sadly, on "career") needs to hear this especially.

On this anniversary, I am grateful for all those along the way who have shown me both the potential of ordained ministry and its direct correlation with discipleship in Christ. I continue to feel my utter poverty as a deacon, priest, and disciple--and the unending flow of grace from our merciful God that fills up the lack and speaks through the limitations of the frail person I am. As the prayer says, may I be "preserved in God's gifts"...for it is the only way anything lasting, holy, and truly good will result from my (or any other disciple's) ministry.

Of your charity this day, remember to pray for me, Christ's most imperfect ordained disciple.

John Henry Hobart: A Leader for Then and Now

Today is our annual observance of the life and witness of John Henry Hobart, Third Bishop of the Diocese of New York, and one of the seminal figures in the Episcopal Church’s early history.

Part of Hobart’s significance is that he was willing to invest the time, energy, and creativity to take a struggling, demoralized, and lukewarm faith tradition from complacency to mission. Many of the clergy he inherited were not particularly well-trained; the priorities of the Episcopal Church had been for a long time mere survival and compromise. The nascent Episcopal Church simply didn’t have a transformative vision. Hobart had that vision

Into the miasma of early nineteenth-century Episcopalianism came the thoughtful, energetic, and zealously Christian Hobart. In the face of sometimes determined opposition, he recalled the Episcopal Church to its authentic identity, as found in the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Early Church. He labored to bring forth an Anglicanism for America that was both firmly rooted in a deep reading of the Scriptures as well as responding to the mission challenges of his time. Under his leadership, God blessed the Episcopal Church and it grew. With a renewed and sound sense of its identity, it presented an alternative to—and not a participation in—the spiritual distortions of the day. We would do well to study this in our own era.

Hobart did all this because of an inner experience of Christ as Risen Lord and Savior. His writings (particularly his sermons) make this clear. His was a rich and inspiring witness for the power of the Gospel to renew the world, derived not from superficial techniques or ideological fixation, but a regular prayer life, participation in the sacraments, and exposure to the true mission of the Church to proclaim the Kingdom of God, not the spirit of the times. “Evangelical Truth and Apostolic Order” was his watchword, and by adhering firmly to it, he had the solid foundations, clear plan, and energy to take up his mission to help renew a weakened and listless church. May that same renewal shake us in our day.

Collect for the Commemoration of John Henry Hobart

Revive your Church, Lord God of hosts, whenever it falls into complacency and sloth, by raising up devoted leaders like your servant John Henry Hobart whom we remember today; and grant that their faith and vigor of mind may awaken your people to your message and their mission; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

John Keble and the Character of Lived Anglicanism

Yesterday the Church commemorated John Keble—priest, poet, teacher, preacher, pastor, and unlikely prophet. It was through Keble’s ministry that the Oxford Movement began. More than most involved in this movement, Keble kept grounded and focused, refusing to fall in with any of the various “-isms” arising from the conflicts in the Church of England of his day. When others felt the call to leave for the Roman Catholic communion, he remained faithful to Anglicanism through good times and bad over a long life, demonstrating the gift of stability in a time of tumult.

Though an Oxford academic and leader of an important spiritual movement, Keble had the good sense to know his limits. He was not a master Church politician or innovator. Neither was he a born activist. He was instead a man of faith so deeply grounded in the Gospel that he could see where the culture (and the Church) was heading. His witness of faithfulness, integrity, and deep continuity with the Scriptures and the Fathers was a reproach to the indolent and self-indulgent Regency era in which he had grown up. Holiness of life is always a critique of worldly corruption.

Keble knew that the Church of England, though reformed, was a catholic Faith. He knew that it had been through a period of laxness and decadence. He could also see that the forces of government and economy in his day were aligning themselves to reduce the Church to an utterly “harmless” entity. Those forces wanted the Church to be entirely the lap-dog of the State, devoid of its connection to an ancient, pre-industrial vision for humanity. Keble knew that to accept this would lead to a nation without meaningful foundations for conscience or ideals. His sermon “National Apostasy,” which challenged this decent into secularism, is the usually-accepted beginning of the Oxford Movement.

For me, one of Keble’s best characteristics was integrity. When some began to take the recovery of the catholic dimension of the Church to mean an obsession with ritual and microscopic exactitude in observance, he was clear that “high” Anglicanism was no “knock-off” or wanna-be Roman Catholicism. His was not a “theoretical” catholic Anglicanism: it was the real, lived, vital thing. He did not need to embrace various fads or trends in order to look catholic: his whole life in the Church was the practice of the catholic Faith as an Anglican.

Keble also knew something that many of us today have forgotten: that the soul of the Anglican tradition is pastoral in nature. This means that the parish (or whatever one is going to call the local sacramental faith community gathered in prayer and study for mission) must be a place where human life is deeply interrelated with the Divine Life through all its stages and in all its activities. For Keble, the “cure of souls” was not a burden but a gift, and the parish clergy were to engage in the care and formation of parishioners with eagerness and skill.

During his lifetime, and for many decades after, Keble was best known for his collection of poems entitled “The Christian Year.” This little book, along with his sermons and pastoral work for many long years at Hursley Parish, expresses beautifully Keble’s ideas. In it one finds poem after poem integrating the Scripture lessons and the collects with the feasts and fasts of the Church Year. With this volume (now admittedly dated in many places—but still quite valuable), many average Anglicans began to understand the value and meaning of the Liturgical Year anew. We could use a modern analog in the Episcopal Church today.

In his famous sermon about the spirit of apostasy and our response to it, Keble the professor and poet showed that practical character which was to make him a witness to the enduring qualities of Anglicanism: prayer, faithfulness, constancy:

After all, the surest way to uphold or restore our endangered Church, will be for each of her anxious children, in his own place and station, to resign himself more thoroughly to his God and Saviour in those duties, public and private, which are not immediately affected by the emergencies of the moment: the daily and hourly duties, I mean, of piety, purity, charity, justice. It will be a consolation understood by every thoughtful Churchman, that let his occupation be, apparently, never so remote from such great interests, it is in his power, by doing all as a Christian, to credit and advance the cause he has most at heart; and what is more, to draw down God's blessing upon it.

And elsewhere, he reminds us of the need to remain balanced and whole-minded in the midst of our struggles, not becoming small-minded or resorting to the bald use of power:

As to those who, either by station or temper, feel themselves most deeply interested, they cannot be too careful in reminding themselves, that one chief danger, in times of change and excitement, arises from their tendency to engross the whole mind. Public concerns, ecclesiastical or civil, will prove indeed ruinous to those, who permit them to occupy all their care and thoughts, neglecting or undervaluing ordinary duties, more especially those of a devotional kind.

It is this way of being a catholic Christian—doing all with "piety, purity, charity, and justice"—that continues to draw many to Anglicanism (where it is practiced). We know we fill fail, and we know we may repent and return to Christ when we do. His was a vision that can inspire and not wear out, encourage but not cajole.

But in our day, when the Church’s focus is so often distracted by an anti-intellectual trendiness, fears of becoming “irrelevant,” ideological fixations, and witch-hunts for those not sufficiently “toeing the line,” it is refreshing to be reminded of Keble’s witness for stability, depth of piety, personal integrity, and commitment to the highest and best in the Faith: and Anglicanism still (in some sense) waiting to be born.

Collect for the Commemoration of John Keble, Priest

Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servant John Keble, we may accomplish with integrity and courage that which thou givest us to do, and endure that which thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Break Glass in Case of Success?

Today is the commemoration of St. Sylvester I, who was Bishop of Rome (Pope) from AD 314-335. He was the leader of the Roman Church community at a very dramatic time: Constantine the Great had embraced Christianity. The persecutions were over. The Church was allowed to come out from the catacombs and flourish. It all seemed very much like a miracle.

Sylvester had to guide the Church through a rapid and dizzying transition. In addition to dealing with the overwhelmingly powerful Constantine, he was also occupied with keeping the witness of the Church whole and truly “catholic” in an era of burgeoning heresies.

But perhaps his biggest challenge was success. The Church was legal, it was favored, it was being promoted. Success was, and always will be, a very dangerous time for Christians. To use a quote from Blake: “The strongest poison ever known / Came from Caesar's laurel crown.” The challenge was to use the opportunity, the peace, the freedom effectively and to God’s glory. This challenge remains for the Church today, in whatever place it is found--persecuted or not. That is something to think about as we end one year and look towards another.

Will we rely on success, reaching for money, power, position—and the opportunity to settle scores—rather than on the humility of the Gospel? Will we rely on the Holy Spirit, or will we “break the glass” and reach for what promises, in the short run, what only God can truly give the Christian disciple? Will we forsake the Gospel for earthly power and prestige? Do we actually love success more than faithfulness? These questions must be asked again and again, especially whenever we feel confidence in our opinions rather than awareness of our fallibility.

We actually know very little about St. Sylvester (though much was made up about him later), even though he was such a pivotal figure. In a way, though, I rather like this. It allows us to ask the above questions without having lots of answers…and to look into the mirror of faith and give what we see (and desire) some honest scrutiny as turn to the task before us.

The Collect for St. Sylvester

O God, our Heavenly Father, who raised up your faithful servant Sylvester to be a bishop and pastor in your Church and to feed your flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Convention Meditation

Thoughts upon a picture distributed at a diocesan convention, after lectures on the Kingdom of God, the Church, and our seemingly endless love affair with earthly power…

Triptych, Redux

You wait in rhythmic ranks,

            Frozen and timeless, aloof and secure;

Ivory butterflies without concern,

            Save for the flowering Imperial Christ

                         Holding all by unseen force.

We, your egalitarian successors, salute you,

            We lift our fair-trade coffee

To our unfair lips in grudging admiration

            For what you are, or were, and

                        What we still half want.

Our pensions, position, power and place

            Betray our rants, chants and daring poses:

We are radicals, Oh yes, until

            We feel the weight of our cross.

                        Then we look back at you

Furtively, in envy’s green light.

            We wonder:

Where will we fit ourselves

            In your silent, secure parade?

                        Where is our recycled, righteous triptych found?

Cyprian: A Witness for All Seasons

Almighty God, who gave to your servant Cyprian boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St. Cyprian, whom the Episcopal Church commemorates this week, stands as both a great theologian and a great practical witness to the Gospel. As a theologian he wrote and spoke widely about the basics of Christian faith and about how to handle the controversies and failings in church life. As a practical witness he led the Church in organizing relief efforts ministering to all—Christian or not.

Beyond this, Cyprian’s life provides us with a very human example of what it means to “know the times and seasons” in discipleship. During the Decian persecution, Cyprian went into hiding. He did not deny Christ, as did many during that furious era, but he did not go out of his way to confess him in public, either. He waited out the persecution, guiding is diocese through a series of wise and encouraging letters. For this he was severely censured. This makes sense to a degree, given what others experienced at the hands of Imperial Rome.

But God had plans for Cyprian that required his surviving the Decian reign of terror. Cyprian—a man trained not only in the Gospel but in the intricacies of Roman law and culture as it was found in North Africa—became the chief framer of what would become the catholic point of view regarding those who turn away from the faith but later seek admission: a recognition that a sin has been committed, but an openness to re-admission, following a process of coming to grips with the nature and seriousness of apostasy. In this, Cyprian found the middle way between the extremes of those who thought no repentance was necessary for re-admission (and thereby turned the baptismal promises into little more than sentiments), and those who would not allow apostates back into the Church (thereby rejecting the Gospel’s mandate to forgive others, bear with “false brethren,” and be the servant of Christ’s reconciling work in the world).

One of Cyprian’s greatest insights was that the Church must strive to stay unified. A divided witness, even for a supposed "purity’s sake," destroys the message of Christ’s once-for-all action of atonement and humanity’s deification through Him. This is the “hope that is in us” the collect speaks of—something nearly lost in the often petty and devalued vision accepted by Christian leaders and laity alike.

St. Cyprian’s insight continues to be valid in our own day, when denominationalism and inter-denominational rivalry are held up for all to see as a sign that the Church is really no different than anything else on offer. Cyprian knew that whatever our failings, to “throw in the sponge” and accept human sin and division as normative in either the Church’s teaching or practice is a grievous error for which we will continue to pay until we climb down off our ladders of pride and embrace all of Christ’s disciples in love and humility. This is what denominationalism does. Do we have the courage to accept this? Or will we continue to look at the “other Christian” as the source of the problem, rather than our own, squalid selves?

When the time came (under the next persecution), Cyprian was ready. His mission was accomplished. His message was sent. It continues to challenge all who lower their expectations of what it means to follow the Son of God who was first and foremost “servant of all.”

On this his feast day, we can honor him no better than by repenting of our personal and institutional pride, seeking to be transformed by God’s grace into witnesses of right teaching and right practice as was God’s holy servant, Cyprian the bishop and martyr.

Vivat, BCP!

Today is the annual celebration of the First Book of Common Prayer, which was made (by act of Parliament) the liturgy of the English realm on Pentecost, 1549. Much of that era’s history is fraught with painful actions, and no group emerges unsullied from it, but the content of that first Prayer Book—and its subsequent history as a liturgy and a way of church life—continues to amaze and nourish this Anglican.

I join the Church as a whole in giving thanks (though mindful of its flaws and limitations) for this compendium of worship and instruction in the Faith “once delivered to the saints.” As one who uses it daily, and who has experienced various forms of the BCP (as well as having experienced various forms of Christianity taking very different approaches to worship and doctrine), I believe it to be a tremendously wise, grounded, and flexible means of continuing to deliver the “faith that saves.”

In recent years we have seen the Episcopal Church move further and further away from the notion of “one liturgy for one realm” by allowing more variety of liturgical texts in our common worship. Some of this seems very laudable, as the old BCPs were often “unofficially” augmented on the local level in past years due to a paucity of enrichments for the seasons and a lack of various “occasional offices” that are needed to live a fully sacramentalized liturgical life. However, it has become almost universal today in many of our parishes to witness large-scale innovation in Sunday worship, often using materials put together by local clergy and “liturgy committees,” but without either the consent of the local bishop, or any vetting by the wider Church. The results are often idiosyncratic, to say the least.

The dialogue between the local and the universal is an old one in the Church. One could say that in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is keenly aware of the significance of the local origins of the Gospel, but St. Paul was aware of the universality of its message. The conflict between them at some stages represented our first foray into grappling with what it means to live out the tension between the specificity and the global-ness of Incarnation. They both have profound merit. They both have limitations when applied in isolation of the other. We have been living in that tension ever since.

Much the same thing can be said, I believe, for the current era’s uncertainty about how to address the question of a shared liturgy. For centuries the first Act of Uniformity and all that it meant—and was based on—has had a massive impact on global Anglicanism. However, in recent years the issues of diversity, pluralism, and the experience of the marginalized have called into question the notion of a monolithic liturgy—especially when we look at the variety of liturgical forms in the Early Christian period. This has led us to authorize many new services, options, and rites. It has also led to the tacit (or even explicit) license in many dioceses for parishes to “write their own ticket” in terms of public worship.

But, the tension will not be done away with so easily. Many ancient liturgical innovations failed; many new forms of worship tell us more about ourselves than they do about God. Often, the more “relevant” we seek to be, the more dated and shallow we become. The notion of a shared identity starts to look much more valuable when amnesia becomes more common amongst us than does anamnesis.

My sense is that we will eventually find out that, while we don’t need royal warrants or the use of violence to impose the BCP on congregations (things which did accompany the BCP’s birth in 1549), we all need a fairly well-defined (though not anxiously so) “still center” around which to move. That center is in its richest sense, of course, Our Lord—known in the Holy Scriptures, the historic faith, and reason enlightened by divine grace. But in a practical sense, that “still center” in our common life is, and needs to remain, the agreed-upon access to the Holy Mysteries and catholic Faith found in the Book of Common Prayer.

Long live the BCP!

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

A Bishop-elect for Oregon

Yesterday, the Diocese of Oregon in Convention elected the Rev’d Michael Hanley to be our next Bishop. Assuming the majority of Diocesan Bishops and Standing Committees in the Episcopal Church give their assent (and that seems highly likely), he will be consecrated the Tenth Bishop of Oregon on the Saturday after Easter. In the coming months we will look at the Consecration Liturgy from the Prayer Book in some detail, learning what the office of Bishop means to us, and what promises Fr. Hanley and we will be making at his ordination to the Episcopate.

For now, please keep him and his wife Marla in your prayers as they begin the often bitter-sweet process of moving from one part of God’s vineyard to another. Pray, too, for our Diocese that we may be given grace and guidance to return faithfully to the normal polity and operations of a Diocese of the Church after many months of operating in an irregular (though canonical) manner. We look forward to ministering the Gospel of Christ the King with our next Bishop.

Thanks be to God.

Jeremy Taylor on The Episcopate

Here are three extracts from the great 17^th century Anglican Divine Jeremy Taylor’s writings on the office of the bishop – something we are thinking a fair amount about in our diocese just now.

The first one deals with the way in which the apostolic character of the bishop’s office may be deputed to the priests and deacons, yet that office remains fully vested in the bishop.

The second is as much the case today as in Taylor’s day: a priest may share in the sacramental and preaching ministrations of the bishop, but may only do so in a diocese by license from the bishop. This points to very real order which exists in the ‘college of presbyters’ with their bishop.

The third addresses the fact that priests, in essence, are all ‘vicarious representatives’ of the bishop, who cannot be everywhere at once in a diocese. Thus, when the bishop comes to a particular parish or other community in a diocese, the priest no longer has the ‘right’ to lead the liturgy. It falls to the ‘chief priest and pastor’ of the diocesan family. A visual sign of this in our worship is that the bishop is seated either in a special bishop’s chair, or (as at St. Timothy’s) takes the celebrant’s chair under the icon of our patron saint, with the priest now seated to the bishop’s left and serving as an assisting figure during the liturgy.

While a bit dated in content and having a rather convoluted style to modern tastes, Taylor’s writings on the Church still yield valuable insights for those willing to wrestle with them. Taylor was one of those leaders to whom it fell to reconstruct the Church following the disastrous period of the English Civil War and Parliamentary rule.

Although deacons and priests have part of [the offices of the apostolate] and therefore, though in a very limited sense, they may be called ‘successors apostolorum,’ [successors to the apostles] to wit, in the power of baptizing, consecrating the Eucharist, and preaching (an excellent example whereof, though we have none in Scripture, yet if I mistake him not we have in Ignatius [bishop martyred c. 115 AD], calling the college of presbyters… ‘a combination of apostles’); yet the apostolate and episcopacy which did communicate in all the power and offices which were ordinary and perpetual, are in scripture clearly all one in ordinary ministration, and their names are often used in common to signify exactly the same ordinary function.

The whole power of ministration both of the word and sacraments was in the bishop by prime authority, and in the presbyters [priests] by commission and delegation, insomuch that they might not exercise any ordinary ministration without license from the bishop. They had power and capacity by their order to preach, to minister, to offer, to reconcile, and to baptize; they were indeed acts of order: but they might not by the law of the church exercise any of these acts without license from the bishop, that is an act or issue of jurisdiction, and shews the superiority of the bishop over his presbyters by the practice of Christendom.

The whole cure of the diocese is in the bishop[;] he cannot exonerate himself of it, for it is a burden of Christ’s imposing, or it is not imposed at all; therefore this taking of presbyters into part of the regiment and care does not divest him of his own power any part of it, nor yet ease him of his care, but that as he must still episkopein [oversee], ‘visit’ and ‘see to’ his diocese, so he hath authority still in all parts of his diocese…. When the bishop came to any place there the vicaria [deputed office] of the presbyters did cease… and… he being present might do any office, because it was in his own charge….; and therefore praesente episcopo [when the bishop was present] (saith the council of Carthage and St. Leo) ‘if the bishop be present’, the presbyter without leave might not officiate.

What is a Bishop?

A characteristic view of the Episcopate from the Restoration period of the Church of England; it is both remarkably simple and fairly “high” in its understanding. Yet, it does not mention the maintenance of the Apostolic Faith – something largely assumed at the time. It also seems (to many today, at least) rather concerned with maintaining a pyramidal structure. The focus on the bishop as one who keeps deception and heresy from becoming ‘normative’ is significant; then, as now, many different denominational traditions had sprung up, some with highly peculiar perspectives on the Gospel.

A bishop is a pastor set over other pastors. They were to ordain elders. They might receive an accusation against an elder. They were to charge them to preach such and such doctrines; to stop the mouths of deceivers; to set in order the tings that were wanting; and lastly, this was the form of Church government in all the ages. So that to reject this, is to reject an ordinance of God…. Every true and lawful bishop is the representative of Christ in his own Diocese.

Thomas Watson (1663-1755), in Sacra Privia