Wednesday Evening Short Courses

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Episcopalians, What makes us different?

February 24 & March 3 What makes the Episcopal Church different?

The question is sometimes asked, if all Christians believe in Jesus, then why does it matter what church you attend? Are there real differences in belief between Episcopalians and Catholics? Episcopalians and Baptists? What makes us different and how important are the differences, not only between the Episcopal church and other churches, but between different congregations in the Episcopal church?

In this course we will look at some of the distinguishing features of our Episcopal/Anglican heritage and discuss what it might mean to choose one path over another.

Maybe the place to begin is with the question, different from what?

What is your experience of or understanding of Christianity? As a cradle-Episcopalian, I sometimes assume the way we do things in this church is the standard, but that is not the case. We are actually different from most Christians in a number of ways.

First let’s talk about who we are. The Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican province in the United States, has about 2.3 million members. The Anglican Communion has some 82 million members, so we make up a little less than 3% of Anglicans. Anglicans are only about 4% of the worlds Christians who number around 2.2 billion. Other groups of Christians are Catholics (50%), Independents (20%), Protestants (16%), and Orthodox (10%). So the Episcopal Church constitutes about one tenth of one percent of all Christians.

Much of what makes us distinct is true also of Anglicans, so we will begin there. Some of the categories for consideration are:

Authority: What is the source of religious truth? On what do we base our actions? How do we decide what God would have us do?

For Catholics and Orthodox, 60% of Christianity, the primary answer would be “tradition.”

For most independents and many protestants the answer would be “scripture.”

For Anglicans the answer would include some combination of those first two answers and “reason.”

In the Episcopal Church, the mix varies among our members, but for much of the Episcopal Church “reason” seems to be on at least an equal footing with the other two. When questions of the relationship between cultural norms and traditional Christian practice have arisen, as in the ordination of women or the inclusion of gays, the Episcopal church has moved pretty rapidly to change its policy. That has been possible in part because of the high value put on the authority of reason in helping us find our way ahead. In changes regarding women’s ordination and inclusion of gays the scriptural support for new practices has had to be reasoned out of implications in writings that do not explicitly support the new way. There is virtually nothing in the tradition that would support the new practices, but “reason” has trumped the other two. That is fairly uncommon in other branches of Christianity.

Sacraments: To what extent are religious actions meaningful or effective in our lives? What happens when we are baptized? When we take communion? What about other sacraments like reconciliation or unction? What about priests? Are some of our contacts with God accomplished through the ministry of ordained persons? Why or why not?

The Catholic and Orthodox position would be that sacraments are real means by which God connects with humans and acts in their lives. The Catholic position remains that when the bread and wine are consecrated they become Christ’s actual blood and body. Something supernatural happens during the Eucharist to change the bread and wine. Most Christians take communion. Independents and many Protestants believe it is an important practice because Jesus started it, but they hear his words about the bread and wine being his body and blood as metaphor. It is done to commemorate the last supper and Jesus life, death and resurrection.

The Episcopal Church takes the Eucharist very seriously, making it the center of our weekly worship. The meaning of what is happening varies among Episcopalians and among areas of the country and among different area traditions. You can find Episcopalians who believe very much as Catholics do, that the bread and wine have a power and reality beyond their appearance that can affect our lives. You will also find just as many Episcopalians who would deny that the sacrament has any sort of power beyond its ability to recall Jesus’ nourishment of his disciples in faith and courage as he was leaving them.

What is unique about the Anglican/Episcopal Church is the wide variety of accepted understandings of what sacraments are. You will sometimes hear people speak of Episcopalians as being “Catholic” or “Low Church.” These terms speak to the differences among us regarding our understanding of sacraments. Some of us are taught that any crumb of consecrated bread that falls to the floor must be picked up and eaten immediately because it is no longer just bread. It has been made sacred. Others see the meaning more in the actions of blessing and gathering and receiving than in the elements themselves, and so are not as concerned about crumbs since the bread itself doesn’t carry the weight of the meaning of the communion.

Polity: Who’s in charge? Why?

Some of the possibilities here are a single leader, the Pope being the leader of half of the Christians in the world, congregations as independent bodies, which is true for many Christians, some sort of denominational body, or, as in our case, bishops elected by clergy and laity and ordained to lead in a geographic area.

Each Episcopal diocese is led by a bishop. The bishop has some absolute powers and the bishop also shares decision-making and leadership with other elected leaders in the diocese. The bishop and clergy are bound by laws called canons, which are enacted and revised by gatherings of clergy and laity who, propose them, debate and vote. As in all areas of Episcopal Church practice, our polity draws on tradition in the structure of bishops as leaders (Episcopal means having to do with bishops) and it draws from Protestant practice in the democratic process through which bishops are elected and laws are drawn.

Diversity: What are the faithful expected to believe? Where is that found? How is it learned? How well does this branch of Christianity tolerate ideas that are outside the norm?

If you want a clear statement of belief outlining what the Episcopal Church embraces in the way of belief, check the Catechism in the back of the Prayer Book. If you want to know what an Episcopalian believes, ask the Episcopalian you want to know about.

The Episcopal Church, like all Anglican Churches, finds its worship structure, forms and practices in a version of the prayer book written by Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century after England parted ways with the Roman Church. Belief is taught in classes for children and adults, but it is mainly taught through practice. Three lessons from scripture are generally read at services, one of those being from the Gospels. The Eucharistic prayer recites the story of salvation and each week we say the Nicene Creed, a set of basic beliefs agreed upon by the early Church in the fourth century. In all of these practices the faith is communicated and taught.

What has been true of the Episcopal Church for much of its history is that there is room in the Episcopal Church for people of widely varying beliefs. Episcopal bishops have often been in the news for having expressed unorthodox beliefs and yet those bishops continue to function and serve in the Church. Episcopal congregations vary from very high-church, tightly scripted traditional liturgical practice to modern-music centered, loosely organized very open and emotional worship. Thinking “outside the theological box” starts discussions in the Episcopal Church. In the Catholic Church clergy are often prohibited from writing or teaching because their views are not in line with the teachings of the Church. Similarly, many independent churches and some Protestants will push out those whose ideas do not fall within the norms of the congregation or denomination. There are those who say ruefully, we are the church where anything goes. Others celebrate us as the church where thoughts can be spoken and new ways of understanding our relationship with God are possible.

Holding such widely diverse views and beliefs within one Church is difficult as evidenced by the recent departure of some congregations from among us, but this branch of God’s Church has held together amazingly well these last almost five hundred years, and I expect that to continue for some time to come.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

February, 21, 2010

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4: 1-13

Read Lessons Here

In the culture of the deep south where I grew up, it was not uncommon to work during the week alongside someone who, on Sundays, was the pastor of a little congregation, often out in the country or at the edge of town. I worked with two such country preachers in my years in the car business. One pastored a little Baptist congregation in Mississippi and the other a CME church in a small town north of Memphis. Working with such folks meant that workplace conversation would, from time to time, shift to theology, and in the deep south that always involved a lot of Bible-quoting. And it wasn’t just preachers and pastors who could quote the Bible. Sometimes it seemed like everybody knew two thirds of it by heart. In that part of the world there wasn’t always a huge distinction between preaching and quoting the Bible, so an awful lot of people tended to know a whole lot of Bible. Preachers and Bible quoters were quite common in my early world, and fortunately for all of us, preachers weren’t given any kind of deferential treatment when it came to story telling.

My Baptist friend told me once about the local preacher who ran a dry goods store way back when. It was the kind of store that sold everything from fish hooks to caskets. It was also the kind of place where a bunch of fellows would be sitting around telling stories watching the world go by at just about any hour of the day. The store owner had a reputation as a Bible-quoter who tossed little quotes into the mix of daily life to put things into perspective, little gems like, “store up for yourselves treasure in heaven,” or “are not sparrows two for a penny, yet the Lord takes care of them,” or “love your neighbor as yourself.” His life was brimming with Bible.

One day, while there was a fair crowd sitting around the store, a stranger came in and asked for a blanket for his horse. The preacher went into the back and took a blanket off the stack and presented it to the man telling him it would be five dollars. The man asked if maybe the merchant had something a little better, so the preacher went back and sorted through the stack to find a blanket in a different color. He came back and told the stranger, “I have this one for seven dollars.” The stranger said his was a mighty good horse and he really wanted the best for him and did the proprietor have anything else. The preacher went out back again and pulled a red blanket out of the same stack, red being the only color left that the stranger hadn’t seen. “I can sell you this one for ten,” said the preacher, and the man bought the blanket and went away happy. When it was once again just the preacher and the regulars, a silence rested on the boys for a minute until one of them spoke up an said to the merchant, “you know, you talk about Jesus and quote a lot of scripture, didn’t you just sell that fellow a five dollar blanket for ten dollars? You sure that was all right?” “It’s right there in the book,” said the preacher. “He came to me a stranger and I took him in.”

Maybe the moral is that there’s more to quoting scripture than quoting scripture.

Today, both Paul and Jesus are shown to have been formed in a culture where scripture is a part of that formation process. They are both quoting the Bible in the stories we have today. Of course, it is not quite right to say they are quoting the Bible. They were quoting the Torah. Paul reaches into the book of Deuteronomy to find words to help make sense out of his experience of Jesus, and Jesus fights off temptation by quoting from the same book in today’s gospel. What I want us to notice today is not the content of the words they choose as they reach into their tradition, just the fact that they have such words ready to apply to their lives. Paul quotes scripture when he says “no one who believes in him will be put to shame.” We know that Paul is talking about Jesus, we know he clearly applies these words and this promise to Jesus, even though the words were originally written about God. The scriptures in which he has been steeped provide a language with which Paul can make sense out of what is happening in his world.

In the story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert Jesus and the devil are both quoting scripture. The devil is working from the psalms and Jesus is coming back with words of instruction from Deuteronomy, words attributed to Moses the great teacher of the law. In this story Jesus has the words at hand for the test in which he finds himself. The words he has carried for much of his life now have a purpose, an application, that makes them a living force for him as he contends with the powers that would bring him down. Again and again in the gospels, Jesus quotes from the sacred writings and people respond as if he has said something new. Jesus lets the old words come to life in new ways in his current situation because he understands those words to contain more than thoughts and concepts about God or law. He knows they are to be applied…...used in the living of our lives. Jesus had studied the scriptures in such a way that they had become a part of him. I would commend that as the reason for spending some time with scriptures. Read them so they can become a part of your life.

All my life I have heard people talk about studying the Bible. My preacher friends were all for it. As a cradle Episcopalian, I didn’t hear much about Bible study when I was growing up. A lot of people raised in the Catholic Church tell me they didn’t learn much about the Bible either. Growing up in a tradition that didn’t push Bible study, and knowing that people in the Bible belt where I lived who did push Bible study also usually wanted me to change my ways, I kind of grew up equating Bible study with reading about what I’m doing wrong. It never sounded all that appealing. I sometimes looked for words of comfort in the Bible, but coming at that project without some idea of where to begin can be tricky. There are a lot of un-comforting words there too, and it helps if you’re in trouble, to know where to look for what you need.

So, as we head into the Lenten season, I’m going to do what any good preacher might do and recommend that you spend some time with your Bible in the weeks ahead. And I want to suggest what might be a new way of reading scripture that may feel a little different from what you have tried before.

Often, when we speak of studying the Bible, we speak of learning what God wants of us. We treat the pages as if they contain a secret that we have to work out, or extract from the words. We often treat scriptures as if they are lists of concepts that are fixed, concepts that if we could just wrap our minds around or approach from the right perspective, we could grasp and they would make our lives work. This approach to scripture can be productive, but it can also lead to long arguments and even wars as we wonder how anyone could read the same words we read and come up with different answers. In a way, we end up serving scripture by struggling to come up with the right way to understand it.

Another way to approach scripture might be to let scripture serve us by being available to us when we need its language or its promises or even its judgements in our daily lives. If we wait until we have some urgent need to approach the Bible, we may be frustrated at what we cannot find. If, on the other hand, we, like Jesus live with the stories and the teachings, immerse ourselves in them, let them become familiar to us, we will find them shaping our lives and helping us in times of need. Learning the Bible is not an end in itself. Everything there is meant to help us in our lives and in our relationship with God.

Maybe the best way to begin reading scripture is to read it as literature. It is some of the most important literature of the Western world. Take it lightly. If something doesn’t seem possible or doesn’t seem to have anything to do with you--or if you wish it didn’t--take it as literature. Hold it lightly. The words were written by folks wrestling with some pretty big situations and experiences. We don’t usually live in such times, thank goodness. But if we have heard the stories, are familiar with the teachings, then when we do find ourselves in moments of need or wonder or deep gratitude, they may come back to us, like they did for Jesus in the desert, and connect us in those moments to a great community whose experience and encouragement we may really appreciate.

Sermon for The Last Sunday After Epiphany

Luke 9:28-36

February 14, 2010

The year is 1992, the Summer before seminary. Mary, Margie and I are in a little beach town in Mexico for a week’s vacation before the big move, and we have settled in. Hammocks, no glass in the windows of our room, just curtains that rise to the ceiling in a light breeze. Lazy. And Margie has been noticing the guy who sells horse rides all week. Each day he arrives with a few horses and picks up some tourists for an hour’s ride up the beach and today is her day. When the young man arrives today it’s her turn. “Wanna go for a ride.” Such a big smile.

Margie and I ride up the beach with our guide until the village is out of sight. Margie, who is 10 and has ridden a few times still needs a bit of watching. I ride enough to manage as we make our way along the edge of the surf. The young man who owns the horses is pleasant and friendly to Margie, which means a lot to me. His long hair, dark skin and silver jewelry mark him as part of an away-from-home adventure. We ride north, and he is leading another horse whose rider we will pick up in the next town.

She is fifty maybe, and waiting on the beach with a man. She gives him a little kiss and lets our guide help her onto her horse. Together the four of us continue along the scalloped edge of the Yucatan peninsula, one beach after another. Tangled trees and deep blue ocean separated by a line of sand, and we travel that line.

The woman we picked up hasn’t spoken a word. She is riding, looking ahead, sitting very straight in the saddle. She has ridden before. I am keeping an eye on Margie, whose horse occasionally develops a mind of its own. The young man sees me looking back at my daughter and says, “I will check on your daughter, you stay with her,” meaning the woman who is riding on ahead.

Having been assigned, I ride up alongside the woman and try to start a conversation. “Do you speak English?” I ask. “French,” is the one word answer to my question. That word and the fact that she never took her eyes off the way ahead, let me know that I would hear no other words, and that was true. And still, in the next moment, I caught a glimpse into her life, as through a window, and I knew I had seen something important I would never have any chance of comprehending.

She and I were well ahead of the others, she was riding a few yards ahead of me when the guide called out that it was time to return. I stopped and waited. The French woman stopped and did not turn immediately. She just sat there looking up the beach, savoring the setting, the day maybe, and then she brought her hand up in front of her, made a fist and brought it down just a bit in the kind of motion often accompanied by the word, “yes!” She paused a bit longer and owned that moment before turning her horse for the ride back.

I knew as we rode back that I had seen only a piece of a story, a story I would never know.

And so I said nothing in those days about what I had seen.

It is funny, as I was writing down this story, the images came back to me. I saw the horses and the guide and Margie at ten, and the woman’s sign of triumph--at least that is what it seemed to me--I saw all those things. One of my first reactions to the experience of that ride, even then, had been to associate it with the gospel story for this last Sunday of Epiphany. I carried for some time the feeling of having been only an observer, an incidental participant in a mystery that could not be conveyed. I tell you the story today, and in fear that it will seem thin or silly or too much about me and my projections, I was tempted to qualify the telling by saying, ‘you just had to be there,’ but I won't do that.

I tell the story, not because it is about Jesus or Elijah or Moses, but because it speaks to me of experiences, images, occurrences we are not sure what to do with--experiences whose meaning we may only be able to guess and about which we are likely to remain quiet. We often experience more than we tell. We may keep to ourselves experiences that challenge our take on reality, or that we think others will not easily understand or accept. And, if we are reluctant to tell others about such experiences, what do we end up telling ourselves? I love the line--I understand the line-- “they kept quiet, and in those days told no one anything of what they had seen.”

We all experience such moments. A sunset, the sight of a child playing, learning, discovering. We say it all the time, “you just had to be there.” We say nothing at all about other moments. We witness an act of kindness that makes us question our own compassion and we are likely to have to ponder that for a while. A kind word at just the right moment can soften our crust, change us, but only after we have carried the experience long enough to let it sink in, to let in work on us. And those are simple everyday kinds of experiences. What about the other things we aren’t eager to discuss?

A couple of Wednesdays ago in the Corinthians class, we were talking about Paul having had a vision of Jesus and referring to that vision as his experience of the risen Christ. I was intrigued by the idea that if a vision of the risen Christ counts for Paul as a resurrection experience, then maybe we could all have such experiences. Someone asked, “have you ever had a vision of Christ?” “Well, not exactly,” I said, and then proceeded to speak very carefully and a bit hesitantly of moments of intuition, and insight and connection in which I have thought Jesus to be at least somewhere nearby. I was surprised even as I was answering, at my own hesitation to speak of such things. You can guess, of course, what happened. As soon as I had told a bit of my story, someone else told a bit of their experience of similar things. Another person stayed after class to tell a story. Oh the stories we could tell if only we would. Prayers answered, conscience awakened, strength found to make it through difficult times, moments of deep peace in the middle of turmoil, the little voice inside that tells us to move, change, grow, try. We don’t often have much to say about such things, we may even dismiss them. What if they are not only real, but reality itself breaking into our lives. I believe these moments we keep to ourselves are often nothing less than the Spirit of God working on us, working in us, completing the work of creation begun so long ago.

Our bishop noted recently that while the number of parishioners on church roles is increasing, the number of people attending services each week is getting smaller. I have been thinking about the bishop’s question as to why more people don’t attend church. I have been wondering why someone would want to participate in a faith community, not because I don’t know some time-honored answers to the question, but because I am not sure my answers would mean anything to someone not already invested in the Church. One answer I might offer to someone who has never been a part of the Church is that in this place, one can ponder the experiences that are difficult to talk about. This community, with its liturgy and lore, provides a setting and a language for reflection on those moments when we have hints of a larger, unexamined reality, a reality of which we are a part and that is a part of us. I would like to tell that person approaching the Church also that in the community of faith you will sometimes hear stories from the people around you that sound familiar--that let you know you are not alone. I would have to tell them though that they would need to be present for a while and listen closely to hear such stories. I would say that here we understand that sometimes you just have to keep silent, telling no one what you have seen…….I would make sure they know that, and I would tell them what may be the best reason to be a part of this community. I would tell them that in this place we look forward to the day when all the stories will be told and to a time when the real won’t seem so strange. Amen.