Tradition, Pageantry, and New Additions to the Christ Church Nave

Dear People of Christ Church,
Blessings on the first days of fall!
I’m excited to share the news that on Monday the Christ Church vestry took a vote, based on parishioner feedback, to adopt the Stations of the Cross from St John the Evangelist, Boston. Marjorie Hartman told me that her father had attended church there when he first came to the United States and that he had always loved the pageantry of the Episcopal Church, eventually leading him to our own Christ Church. That’s the same thing that I loved about St John the Evangelist, too, when I interned in the year 2000/01 before I went to seminary. I was sad to hear that the space was closing as a parish (it’ll become condos, most likely), but I’m so delighted to have a little piece of that sacred place here.

There was a time when the Anglican tradition made a huge fuss about rejecting anything that seemed more in line with the Roman Catholic side of the church. Not politely, such things were dismissed as “popish” idolatry. In the mid 1800s, a group based at Oxford began a revival of heretofore “Catholic” practices, like incense, candles, and more formal ritual, coupled with a commitment to ministry in the city. The response? In 1874 the ‘Public Worship Regulation Act” sent clergy to jail for wearing chasubles (that’s the big tent-like garment worn by the priest at the Eucharist in some churches). Using wafers at communion and water in the wine—all pretty non controversial now—were also suspect.

Kneeling at communion had long been a political question. In 1552 a text was written that came to be known as the “black rubric” because it was pasted in afterwards clarifying that worshippers were to receive communion kneeling, but not to get any ideas about the traditional (Roman Catholic) understanding of transubstantiation: For as concernynge the Sacramentall bread and wyne, they remayne styll in theyr verye naturall substaunces, and therefore may not be adored, for that were Idolatrye to be abhorred of all faythfull christians.

The black rubric has come out of there since then and our Anglican view of what the sacraments mean has broadened, somewhat, and become a little depoliticized. Every church still has their own traditions about their practices, but the wider world just doesn’t view things in those categories quite the same way. Are you “low” church or “high” church? The distinction seems pointless. I hope to lead our worship into good church, to be able to pull out all the stops with incense and bells and all the rest once in a while, but also to be comfortable enough that we understand that our prayer is to help us to give glory to God, not our own performance.

Blessings,
Sara+

The wide and wonderful Anglican "maybe"

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week in our Episcopal Church class I was reminded, as always when I pay attention, how very grateful I am to be part of the Anglican Tradition.  Every church has something wonderful about it-the Lutherans have their focus on the grace of God, the evangelicals have their intimacy with Jesus, the Catholics have their long history and diversity, the Presbyterians their commitment to democratic governance...but it's our theological breadth and flexibility where I really find myself at home.

The number of times someone has asked a simple yes/no question and I've answered "maybe" reminds me of just committed we are to this diversity of belief.  "Do I have to cross myself?"  You can, but you don't have to. "Isn't the difference between the Roman Catholic and Episcopal belief about communion that one believes in transubstantiation and one doesn't?" Some actually believe in Jesus as really, bodily present, but for others it's more symbolic. But we do teach that it has a reality independent of our own experience.  Do you believe in the Bible literally? That's actually a pretty clear no. 

Sometimes all this ambiguity feels like maybe it's because we're not sure-we sometimes get accused of being a mushy middle, not committed to anything. It's not mushy at all, though-it's incredibly centered-centered on the freedom of your conscience, and also centered on our liturgical practice. One of my favorite Anglican quotes is (said to be) from Queen Elizabeth, who, during all the Catholic/Protestant controversies imperially declared "I do not desire windows into my subjects' souls." At the same time, in consolidating the practice of the church with worship in the English Language and independence from the Pope, an undeniable center still holds us together and links us to each other and across time.

A unified community coalesces around prayer, even if we differ on the particulars of that prayer.  This humility around doctrine, I think, also leads us into a constructive humility around our place in the world.  We don't have all the answers. This means that part of our work as Christians is the work of interpretation, of contemplating new learnings from science and psychology and philosophy and theology and how our tradition can be in conversation with them. From evolution to climate science to the plasticity of the human brain, we are always learning about this good creation God has given us, and there's always more exploration and curiosity to be had. I'll leave you with the prayer we say for the newly baptized, which I think captures this nicely:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.

Amen!

Blessings,

Sara+

Receiving the Eucharist

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week, I've been reading up on Anglican practices around the Eucharist. We had our meeting on Sunday to talk about what we'd like to do moving forward here, and talked about it as vestry as well. The summary is, in the words of Marcia Luce: "If they want to dip, let them dip!" That's the upshot of the thing, but as I have been discovering, it's a lot more complicated than that-and more personal, too.

I was raised to be a drinker, even as a young child. No one, that I can remember in my church growing up, was a dipper. It was just what you did. I was reminded of this a while ago when my dad served as a LEM here at Christ Church and he presented the chalice to a rather perplexed Isaiah, who hadn't had it before but seemed OK with it. In my own spirituality, the sacraments are incredibly important to me; the sense of being fed, spiritually and physically, in the Eucharist is entirely what brought me back to church after I'd spent an angry adolescence away from it. I love celebrating with you on Sundays, and administering communion to each of you is my favorite part of my work as a priest. A smiling and excited 2 year old, a distracted teenager, a child-wrangling parent, and the creased palm of an 80 year old-I get to witness the faith of so many different people as they receive the sacrament, and it is a privilege.

A simple privilege... until I start to think too hard about it. I was away this fall when the bishops made their "no intinction" policy, so I didn't have a chance to do much teaching about it. Coming back, I was sad to see the number of people who didn't feel comfortable receiving the wine by drinking, so I am glad that we had a chance to reconsider the policy. The thing is-I'm still a drinker. And that being my personal experience and faith, I still encourage you to drink from the chalice, too.

We celebrate the Eucharist because we are doing what Jesus said to do; he took one cup, and shared it among the disciples. What we do at the rail is pretty far removed from an actual meal, but it seems important to me to do what we can to keep it in that realm; including real sips of real wine from a real cup. But that's my preference. As a seminary-trained priest, I could come up with a theological treatise on why you should do it my way, but that's not the way of our Anglican/Episcopal tradition.

There is a difference between a theological opinion and a matter of faith. It is a matter of faith that we receive the sacraments-a matter of faith that you should come to church, and participate in them, and that Jesus loves us and died for love and was raised. But it's a matter of theology whether you should drink or dip, and in that theology, it's a matter of where Christ best meets you, as an individual. And that is a question only you can answer. The Anglican Church is big on theological dialogue-not so much big commandments for how you should live your life and practice your faith. So... drink. Unless you want to dip.

We will make some new efforts at keeping the cup clean for everyone, but there is no way to be entirely germ free. The Anglican Church first took up the question of bacteria in the chalice during the Plague, when they enacted the Sacrament Act of 1547: The "most blessed Sacrament be hereafter commonly delivered and ministered unto the people... under both the kinds, that is to say of bread and wine, except necessity otherwise require." Necessity, in that case, being risk of illness. But we have to keep that fear of risk in perspective. Life is risky; that's why we have seatbelts and immune systems. Every time we are exposed to a germ, it doesn't mean we'll get sick. In their theological statement on the common cup during the SARS epidemic in 2003, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto wrote:
Our liturgy of faithful remembering must not make the avoidance of all risk the primary criterion -which would mean avoiding any authentic celebration of the Eucharist. After all, this gathering at table is of no practical use whatever (a morsel of bread, a sip of wine do nothing to fill the belly). But at the symbolic level, the bread and wine are food for life, a meal of hope, a banquet "rich in delights and suited to every taste."(Wisdom 16:20)
May our Eucharistic feast be rich in all delights, and delicious to our souls.


Blessings,

Sara+

Telling Stories

This week, I’ve been thinking about telling stories.

This morning I woke up to a piece on NPR about the movie director Dave McLaughlin talking about the power of stories. McLaughlin is the writer and director of the movie “On Broadway,” (small) parts of which were filmed here at Christ Church two years ago. He was talking specifically about stories and myth in his own Irish American culture. In the interview, he spoke about how he had wanted to convey some of the more positive stories of Irish culture than those that we see in violent movies like “The Departed” or other mobster films. If our stories tell us who we are, then his community, he felt, needed some more positive stories on the big screen. The plot of “On Broadway” goes something like this: the main character writes a play to remember his dead uncle, and in the process (as tends to happen on screen) surmounts remarkable obstacles and wins the acclaim of his family and friends. It opens around town tomorrow, and in wider release after that. I hope it’s a good movie—let me know if you see it!

Another place I’ve been thinking about stories has been with our Connect class. On Tuesday we talked about how our relationship with God is understood through story telling. There are, of course, Biblical stories that instruct us about our faith. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, teaches us how we are to be neighbors to each other. The story says, “be like this.” At Connect, we also talked about the whole of our salvation story: all the way back to our creation and the calling of the people of Israel and the ministry of Jesus, and his death and resurrection and coming again. It’s almost like a play in 5 acts. We are created good, but we sin. Jesus is crucified, but he is raised. And, act 5, Jesus will come again. At Connect, we were encouraged to ground ourselves in the original blessing of the story of creation, (God created, and it was good) rather than the sin that came after that: original blessing, not original sin. We talked about how that goodness runs through and under everything else that happens afterwards, even when we fail to live up to it.

Film maker McLaughlin was talking about the importance for a community to be able to identify with good stories (families reconciling), instead of not so good ones (mobsters blowing each other up). The place of narrative as he was talking about it is like a mirror: it reinforces what you see in yourself, and you can choose to reinforce the good, or the bad. But the “Big Story” of our faith as Christians can do even more than that, and we tell it every Sunday morning. The way we make communion—that bread and wine become body and blood—is by telling this story. But we don’t just tell the story in a commemorative sense, as if we were looking back on it and these things happened to different people at a different time. We tell the story because it’s ours, and in that telling around that altar, something extraordinary happens-we ARE the story. As we remember Jesus and his friends in that upper room, we go there ourselves. That story doesn’t say “be like this,” it says “you are this.” And as we become that, we are transformed even more fully into the goodness that we were created for.

Thanks be to God!